Looking for treasure in Chafford Hundred

Chafford Hundred, I kept seeing those words in emails and I kept thinking, what is it? rather than, where is it? We met at Chaffered Hundred it felt like a Russian out-post in the sideways rain and ice wind. We sheltered in a Tescos and bought 'reduced-price' sandwiches. It felt grim. Past Ikea was the warehouse which holds the old BBC control room from the Queen Elizabeth Hall, staircases and plant room equipment and other treasures. We spent three hours unpacking stuff, measuring and identifying what was treasure to us and what was boring. Best find.... a large box or box frame....with a handle...we pulled the handle to reveal a fold-down seat. There was a ticket from 1974 in the seat and the seat number was T1, which is an ushers seat.It was beautiful. I discovered that my attention span is much shorter than Sal's and Andrew's....I tend to drift off in a dream after a couple of hours...I did the same the next day...good to know!Then back on trains to London and chats over pizza and beers to shape the exhibition.

First time exhibition designer....

So what is the process, how do you put together an exhibition? Where do you start? A sketch, an outline. A working title. The original title was 'Made with Care', which felt uncomfortable for the ambition of the exhibition.... Concrete Dreams is strong, pioneering... A narrative was put together, with elements the archive team and heads of departments wanted included. A space was found in the building to create a walk-through journey. This must have been a really challenging part of the process as the exhibition last July was destined for backstage at the QEH, and is now kind of backstage in the Purcell Rooms...glad I wasn't privy to that and well done folks who did the negotiating! Next stage is getting the exhibition designers in. KlangHaus was chosen for our experience and dramatic response to journeys through buildings, our ability to layer tonnes of content without overwhelming the audience and our knack of inducing fast pulse-rate responses to architecture. We are working with LYN Atelier, very experienced at exhibition design, public outdoor art and architectural/interior design. We are working with one part of that team, Andrew Lock, an utter joy. Next stage is establishing how we all work together and immersing ourselves in all the archive material. This is a stage of back to back meetings. Talking, talking, talking is essential, it's the only way a huge group mind can come to any consensus. This is where we are at.

Re-opening the Queen Elizabeth Hall

We've taken a huge leap of faith. The KlangHaus team are exhibition designers for the re-opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. It feels amazing. The hard work starts this week. We've had lots of weeks of waiting for the go ahead and a couple of weeks of immersing ourselves in the archive of the building. Working in the Southbank Centre is truly awe-inspiring. I love it 100%. The meeting after meeting, sometimes in glass box-like offices overlooking the Thames...or on the top floor of the Royal Festival Hall over looking The Houses of Parliament. The staff are incredibly skilled and can be described as 'professional'. I recognise how I leap in and react spontaneously in negative ways without measuring my answer...... although it's kind of honest, it's also 'unformed' and in this atmosphere shout of being ugly...interesting...I'd never thought that I'd want to act in a 'professional' manner, rock n roll's the way ahead yeah? But I'm finding more and more with KlangHaus that being professional leads to better results and essentially allows you to get you what you need. I'm not putting my sometimes firery responses to bed, but enjoying a wider pallet of ways to interact is making my life bigger. It's this interaction with people that I thoroughly enjoy and I'm collecting the budgetary emails for deep in the future publication for sheer skill of these Southbank women to navigate financial dealings. (I say women because most of them are.) The exhibition is called Concrete Dreams..tickets can be booked for free here, https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/127136-concrete-dreams-2018

Recording in our Haus

We decided to audio record a KlangHaus show... put some microphones around and capture what was happening. A natural thing to do, we knew folks who had seen the show would want to listen back somehow, make sense of things. Maybe even take away a vinyl with beautiful artwork. Recording was a good experience and working with producer David Pye, we captured an essence of Klang. We then decided to take 4 key songs from the most recent KlangHaus: 800 Breaths show and record them in a studio in Stockport. Eve studio was like an actual house of sound, an old vicarage full of instruments and old music gadgets and gear. 800 Breaths was performed in the Royal Festival Hall and we were excited to recognise cast-off RFH carpet through-out Eve Studios...it felt right. We loved recording there. Sal did lots of filming. Again we worked with the wonderful skills of David Pye. We came away from the session excited. We listened to the songs and mixes were created. Usual doubts crept in. But something deeper was happening. We kept working and working, listening and listening. I was project managing and pushing things forward. We sent the masters to press for making into vinyl. That day SF, listened to the songs and gave feedback. It galvanised our gut feelings. STOP. In a dramatic turn of events, we stopped the vinyl being cut. Through no fault of David Pye, we realised that the songs did not communicate what we wanted to say. What did we want to say? The song writing was not strong enough...honest enough. SF 8.11.17 It’s not the calling card.’ ‘I can’t hear it on the radio’ Pulse Addict sounds like another song 2/3 of the way through. Ball in the Hole is my least favourite Reason is beginning to sound really good. 9.11.17 Emergency Meeting The Bicycle Shop 10pm: J,K,M J: What are we trying to say? What are we trying to communicate? We don’t want to be mediocre ‘What do the chords mean?’ M: Some great ideas Neither one thing or the other. It’s not extreme enough or not conventional enough. Something incomplete You feel unrewarded by listening to this. K: We will stand up at a conference and say this is a turning point. Over complicated Not direct enough The meaning is lost. Authenticity is desirable… We went back to Sal, shared our doubts. Two things happened, we realised/remembered that KlangHaus is of course, both audio and visual... the songs started to work again when played alongside the film... as if we had split the heart of the show in two... one needs the other.... this alongside digging down into the song writing itself felt like the next step. The career changing moment....or at least the beginning of a new journey. ACTIONS: Do we need a song doctor….is this us? Collaborate with other musicians in our home city. ask for help. We make an album in the house. Use the entire house to make an album. We involve our musical community. We learn from each other to find a way to enjoy the flow of recording. ‘Look at what’s happening in this place’ Start date: 21.12.17 And it began.

KlangHaus want radio

Six months forward from my previous blog... 800 Breaths at the RFH was a triumph. We put in place a rigorous structure for working, time lines and lots of checking in with each other, which made for a smooth and fun show creation period and installation. We don't have to be tortured artists, we just need to be good. Good means happy to fail as well as succeed. At the beginning of the 40 show run I wanted to be asked to return, somehow. We have been asked to return, in order to be part of the re-opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. We are currently in Stockport in a recording studio called Eve, it is a Klang House. A domestic house full of vintage gear and sonic possibilities. We aim to record four tracks and other stuff from the 800 Breaths show in order to build a relationship with radio. Radio has eluded us and that stinks.

KlangHaus: 800 Breaths

The next KlangHaus is in the making, a return to the Southbank with 800 Breaths a new show, back in the Royal Festival Hall ceiling. We vowed never to return to a space, but realised we had made such headway in building relationships with the team at the RFH, we could really push the show much further. The tickets are on sale and plans are hatching.

KlangHaus : Four Storeys day 4

So we are in the middle of our Norwich Klanghaus get-in. Day 4. Improvements so far are, the power distribution was in from day 1. The building is exciting to be in, load in was easy as we can drive in and the building owners are very accommodating. We have a show shape. We have found some interconnecting holes between the floors, so some rope and pulley fun ahead.There is a telephone intercom still connected. It is very cold. We are installing trees in the safest way we know. Let's see if they get past H&S! More soon.