I’ll be heading back to China soon to perform the music I created for the Musicity project. Just found this footage of driving through Shenzhen after a long day of recording with my new friend and sound artist/musician/promoter/hardest working artist in China, Dickson Dee.
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Shenzhen Electronics Markets
The electronics markets in Shenzhen are famous. It's easy to assume they are full of fake iPhones and other brands, but there is much more to Shenzhen than that. Shenzhen is the place to go if you are designing new technology, because you can get prototypes built in a fraction of the time it takes anywhere else. You can also buy pretty much any electronic component you can think of.
I spent two hours exploring 7 floors of electronics, using my LOM Elektrosluch electromagnetic microphone to record the hidden sounds that the circuits, LEDs, components and gadgets emit. The LEDs in particular were a rich vein of sounds; the colours, patterns and movements creating a beautiful minimal techno album 12 hours a day, hidden from human ears. Recordings coming soon.
Factory Silo doors
Just after a heavy downpour. water was falling against these huge doors at a factory in Shenzhen, China. I attached stereo contact microphones and recorded the vibrations of those rain drops and drips resonating through the metal. Those sounds will find their way in to my track, Silo, for Musicity and The British Council.
Musicity China
I've just returned from a truly inspiring trip to China where I've been gathering field recordings and researching buildings for the latest Musicity project. Nick Luscombe (BBC Radio 3) with the support of the British Council, has commissioned a group of artists from the UK and China to create pieces of music for buildings and structures in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
I spent 5 days each in Shenzhen and Shanghai recording with traditional microphones, contact microphones and electromagnetic microphones - Huge factory silos with beautiful reverb, 7 story electronic markets, Maglev Trains, Power Stations and much more! I'm currently back in the studio and working on the first of the tracks for a building in Shanghai that used to be a slaughterhouse. 1933 is a mix of art deco and brutalist architecture and resembles an Escher painting; a maze of concrete bridges and stairways lead to a circular central structure where the cattle met their fate. My plan is to use the shapes and patterns of the building as a graphical score. I also found an interesting document that talks about the Feng Shui, numbers and codes believed to have protected the local population from the negative 'death energy' leaking from the building.
