The last two weeks in Australia - part 1

so it seems from the last post that i had not played the show in sydney by the end of it, so i'll start there... i invited kate carr to join me in the performance, so we played in the same style as the active crossover events, with kate starting, playing a solo set of nice musical parts combined with field recordings. i then joined her for a short collaborative section where both of us were unsure who was playing what(!) and then i continued solo. after playing a laptop set combining recordings from the trip so far, i then proceeded too move around the room grinding two pieces of concrete together that i had obtained from some workmen outside of serial space. the grinding sound combined nicely with some metallic tones i left playing and worked well in the room. we had a nice appreciative crowd and the guys of the now now who organised the show were great. and of course it was a pleasure working and hanging out with kate.

heading back to melbourne the next day, i managed to catch up with anthea varigos, who also goes under the name 'chopin's lovechild' and who i have many mutual friends with, as she used to live in bristol. very nice to meet her after all this time as well as her fella and housemate, then had to run to the airport, fly into melbourne (to an airport waaay out of town called avalon), get a very expensive bus back to southern cross station, get a train to castlemaine that was delayed for over an hour because of an attempted suicide on the line, meet jacques soddell at castlemaine train station, take his speakers and connectors to the icu and then try and relax in preparation for setting up the installation over the next few days. thanks once again to jacques for the loan of all the equipment.

for the whole of the week i was in the icu space composing with my recordings and combining them with the compositions supplied by my 3 collaborators (lizzie pogson, jacques soddell and tarab/eamon sprod), working out speaker placement (6 active speakers), and also using my sound exciters once again to play sounds through resonant objects. it was great to have the time to get it all working without too much pressure. during that week i was also fortunate enough to have (a gorgeous african) dinner in melbourne with eamon, camilla hannan and lawrence english, who was in town for a couple of days.

also during that week i met rex hardjadibrata, a sound artist and musician who has recently moved to castlemaine, and it turned out lives really close to where i was staying. i had a most pleasant evening with him and his wife katey - thanks for dinner guys, and the records - haven't listened to the vinyl but the cd is great!
and then the following night i was invited to bendigo to have dinner with jacques and his wife fran. again a very lovely evening and once again thank you! during my short tour of bendigo when jacques picked me up, we even saw kangaroos in a field close to his house - my first of the trip...


i ran the active listening workshop on the sunday, which was attended by a few folk but went pretty well - unfortunately the weather was a little cold so the blindfolded walk had to be a little shorter than i would have liked. then once again to eamon and emily's as i had to leave early for perth the next day.


part of my trip to australia was always going to be a drive through the outback in a campervan, seeing as much as i could and recording along the way. and friends had advised to visit the west coast as the landscape is very different there. i had 3 days before i had to be in perth again to perform, so drove up north to a town called geralton, and then headed inland for around 60km to a small town called mullewa. i had to then stop as i was really low on fuel, and it was dark - having been told my insurance was invalid if i had an accident driving in darkness i thought it best to stop! it's funny to think of it now but every single scarey movie i'd seen came to mind while trying to get to sleep in the middle of nowhere. and another thought that crossed my mind was that someone might see the camper and come and shake it as a joke to scare me!

thankfully i wasn't bothered by psychopaths or pranksters in the night. i did wake up just after dawn, got some fuel and then headed south east, trying to get to baladjie nature reserve, but having to stop close to the nearby town of warralakin, as i also was told not to drive on uncovered roads. this evening i managed to record the dusk chorus, with one bird even landing right in front of me and singing it's little heart out! a great moment. upuntil that point, i had only managed to record some sand blowing across a dune (which was nice btw) and some of the infamous western australian wire fences.


on the wednesday i had to head west as i had a performance scheduled at spectrum in perth, organised by cat hope. the evening went well, with an improvising trio playing first, all from different spaces in the gallery (the drummer was in the kitchen), then dr. nigel helyer presented some of his works, and i finished up, playing a 4 channel piece, and once again worked with the space,rattling and grinding some shells i had picked up on my travels during the previous 2 days. after the show i was taken into perth proper for chinese food and then stayed at cat's place the night - thanks for all cat!


after hanging out with cat's partner carlos in the morning i hit the road going south. this part of western australia seems to be more populated, and cultivated, so it took a while to get completely away from civilisation, but i got there in the end, sleeping in the greater kingston national park. here i got some nice recordings of kangaroos jumping around in the woods - lovely.


the friday was spent heading back to the airport to drop off the camper and fly back to melbourne. the plan was to get the last train back to castlemaine, which left southern cross at 23:45, however the combination of the plane taking off and landing half an hour later than scheduled, and then the luggage taking around 15 minutes longer than normal to arrive meant it looked like i would miss that train. speaking to the bus driver who was heading to southern cross from the airport, he suggested i take a taxi to one of the stops closer to the airport and catch the train from there. a tense taxi ride, with a driver who did not know where the station was, and neither did the satnav, we got there with 5 minues to spare... so i did manage to get back to castlemaine that night- or rather the next morning, so i could be there to start up the installation and greet any visitors to it.


to be continued...