Where Dead Voices Gather
Where the Dead Voices Gather is an indeterminate, process driven, radio experiment that uses the book 'Where The Dead Voices Gather' by Nick Tosches as its starting point. Songs are chosen from a series of libraries based on the structure of a haiku. Each show includes 17 songs / sounds, that could be considered to be the sonic syllables of the haiku. ‘Where the Dead Voices Gather’ is attempting to explore the sonic potentials of written text and the indeterminate.
The rules of the process that decide the tracks can be found below…
artwork: Matt Littler
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Where the Dead Voices Gather: A Haiku Jukebox
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Recently while researching the secret lives of vinyl records and the specific narratives attached to these objects by their owners I happened upon a book by the American author Nick Tosches , 'Where the Dead Voices Gather'. This text is attempt by Tosches to trace the life and work of one Emmett Miller, singer and songwriter working in the Minstrel tradition, and cutting sides on the Okeh label in the nascent period of sound recording. Miller cuts an interesting figure; blacked-up, singing songs of which crossed genres between, jazz, blues and more traditional American folk music with consummate ease. Tosches sees Miller as the prism through which to unpack the twisted ontology of modern American music, with all its myriad miscegenations.
Finding a path through the incremental developments in a genre's history, or in music history per se, seems to be a cartographic impossibility. Where does one genre end and another begin? In the delineated racks of the record shop, or on a record companies spread sheet, in the listeners ear or in the ink of the critics pen? And how relevant is generic conformation in our age of digital music consumption, where we can access any sound we want at the click of a button, without political, social or musical context. This mass of sonic information being shared across virtual space is like mycorrhizal fungal networks, in which each spore produces a new micro genre, a cluster of sonic life, clinging onto its moist virtual branch in a digital clearing hoping that attention doesn't dry up and leave it macerated and clickless. Record pass from hand to hand, from ear to ear, and as Eisenberg reminds us a 'shelf of records is like a row of possible worlds.' These recordings are ghost voice trapped in a vinyl sarcophagus, they commune with us again, and are reanimated by us as the needle stabs the vinyl voodoo doll to scream its incantations into our rooms and lives.
'Where the Dead Voices Gather - A Haiku Jukebox' draws from the tradition of work by Burroughs, Cage and Phillips, using cut up, words and chance to exhume sound from a found text. I propose the following operations to create a monthly radio show using the book as a starting point for the determination of the songs played. Each page of the book will determine the pieces played for each 'show'. In this instance I think of each song as one individual sound. 17 sounds will be selected for each 'show', corresponding to each syllable of that pages' hidden haiku.
“Haiku is grasped with all five senses, not by logic … in order to jump over the gap between logic and the senses” (The Matsuyama Declaration, 2000.)
THE BOOK AS 'SCORE'
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1. Count out the syllables of the haiku across each line.
2. Stop on the letters of the syllable 7, 5 and 7 in sequence.
3. Repeat until 17 syllables have been found in sequence.
4. If the syllable is a single letter, the preceding letter will form the two letter code.
5. The first letter of each two letter code will correspond to the artist's name.
6. The second letter of each two letter code will correspond to the song title.
7. The syllable codes found will be used in sequence to select one piece of sound from one of 16 libraries (see below) For example the first code found will select a song from library 1 and so on.
8. The selected songs must be played in the order determined by the page, but can be treated in any way decided by the producer.
THE 17 LIBRARIES
These libraries can be interpreted in any way seen fit by the producer.
1. Personal collection, analogue or digital archive.
2. Music periodicals / magazine, free downloads / giveaways.
3. UbuWeb
4. Penn Sound
5. Soundcloud free downloads
6. Student work
7. Charity shop finds, analogue or digital.
8. Personal field recordings archive.
9. TV or film recordings or OST.
10. Library archives.
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This second section of libraries will be created by chosen participants in any way they see fit and should be accessible via dropbox or similar method.
11. Ask participant 1
12. 1 nominates 2
13. 2 nominates 3
14. 3 nominates 4
15. 4 nominates 5
16. 5 nominates 6
17 - THE FINAL SOUND
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1. The final syllable sound, will be the final sound for each 'show'.
2. It will be recorded as just the sound of the syllable, if this is a word then so be it.
3. It will be processed according to the parameters given below.
4. After 17 shows all the final sounds will be played consecutively to produce a 'sonic haiku'.
5. The letters of the word from which the final sound comes will determine the following manipulation of that sound.
A - PITCH
B - AMPLITUDE
C - DIRECTION
D - TONE
E - LENGTH
F - ECHO
G - DELAY
H - FEEDBACK
I - LOOP
J - CUT
K - INTERVAL
L - ARPEGGIO
M - COMPRESS
N - SCRATCH
O - PAN
P - EXPLODE
Q - DISMANTLE
R - IN DUET WITH
S - PREPARE
T - REVERB
U - TYPE
V - SYNCOPATE
W - RECORD OUTSIDE
X - WITH BREATH
Y - WITH LOVE
Z - WITH TRUTH
