I'm an award-winning composer, engineer and historian of technology. I present talks, make radio shows and perform live with Spacedog - my band of humans, theremins and uncanny robots.
Thanks to all of you who came to see Spacedog and Project Moonbase at Rocket Lolly this weekend. I had a wonderful time, playing theremin and sharing my archive of peculiar vintage science clips. As you can probably tell, I spend a lot of time in the archives, hunting for treasure. We’d love to take the show to other destinations so do get in touch if you’d like to host a Rocket Lolly evening at your venue or festival.
Those of you who came to the show might be interested to hear this number from the archives again. It’s a wonderfully optimistic song about the future of women’s lives in the age of electricity, recorded in 1935 by the Norwich Corporation Electricity Department. The song features Helen Raymond and the Sydney Baynes Orchestra. It’s available from archive.org under a Creative Commons Licence.
For one night only, Spacedog are taking over the big, BIG screen at the Ghillie Dhu, Edinburgh, and showing vintage infrasonic terrors, smoking robots, mind control experiments, space age fashions, bizarre time and motion studies and other gems from the archives. A feast of scientific and technological curiosities on film, from 1900 to present day, Rocket Lolly makes its Edinburgh debut on 15 April, bringing the International Science Festival to a close. Many films are accompanied live by Spacedog on vocals, vibes and theremin and the night will include some live performances from our robot pals.
Rocket Lolly
8pm Sunday 15 April
The Ghillie Dhu, 2 Rutland Place, Edinburgh EH1 2AD
90 minute film-show with live music followed by a DJ set
Tickets £10 (£8) Buy your Rocket Lolly tickets online
On the night, we’re teaming up with Edinburgh’s finest retro-futuristic outfit Project Moonbase who are making a rare visit to planet Earth. They’ll be on hand to answer your queries about the future and to turn the Ghillie Du, Edinburgh, into the finest space age cocktail lounge as DJ Bongoboy takes to the wheels of steel. Hear a preview of Project Moonbase on iTunes.
This weekend, I’m heading to Sheffield to perform at the Megadork, an electronic cabaret for the city-wide Lovebytes Festival. I’ll be there with fellow Spacedog Jenny Angliss, my theremin and a few of our robot pals. Our set will include a new number featuring The Ventricle, my ox blood red 1960s handbag which pulsates like a human heart.
The Megadork is at the Showroom Cinema, Sheffield, 7pm, on Friday 23 March – see the Lovebytes website for tickets. On Saturday lunchtime, we’ll be performing for free in the Winter Gardens for the Lovebytes headphone festival. On Friday night, we’re sharing the bill with some very fine fellow hackers, including one of my heroes Paul Granjon. If you’ve never seen him in action, here’s an early film of him with his cybernetic parrot sausage… Read more →
I’m back in Brighton after performing at QEDCon, a festival of talks and performances exploring science, technology and skepticism. Thanks so much to the organisers and volunteers for making the weekend run so smoothly – Stephen Hiscock and I had a fine old time.
Those of you who saw my talk ‘Voices of the Dead’ might enjoy this video. It features the voice recording I made on wax during the show, using an Edison phonograph. You can hear three voices. The first is Helen Chorley, reciting a poem, and the last is me, signing off. If any of you can pass on the name of the plucky individual who talks between Helen and me, I’d be really grateful.
Find Us is a miniature I’ve composed using sounds from the Voyager golden record. You can download it free as part of Soulless Party’s album Electronic Encounters – Special Edition.
This year we’ll be celebrating two thirty-fifth birthdays. In November 1977, Columbia Studios released their blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind, arguably the film with the most gratuitous use of the Arp 2500 modular synthesizer. And just a few weeks earlier, NASA launched Voyager 1 and 2, probes which took stunning images of the outer planets before taking a slingshot around Saturn and Neptune to journey out of the solar system. Voyager 2 is now around 11 billion miles from Earth, in the outer reaches of the heliosheath, the bubble of solar wind which envelopes the solar system. It will soon be out of the heliosheath and travelling into deep space.
After many years exclusively playing live, my award winning human, theremin and robot band Spacedog have launched our debut album. It’s called Juice for the Baby and you can listen to the whole album, download it or buy a physical CD here.
Spacedog creates live music for theremin, vocals, saw, percussion and our famous uncanny musical robots. Our work reflects our obsessions with defunct machines, faded variety acts and the darkest English folk tales.
This Radio 4 documentary aired at 1:30pm on 5 July 2011. It’s repeated at 3:30pm on Saturday 9 July.
Now available on the BBC iPlayer.
For those of you who would like to know more about The Bird Fancyer’s Delight, here’s a bumper crop of references I’ve found over the last few months, including transcripts from the British Library, music excerpts, photographs of a serinette and details of contributors to the show. I hope you find them interesting.
As a thereminist who performs live with robots, the only time I suffer ukulele envy is when I have to set up or strike a show. After years of arm ache and stress before gigs, I’m trying to adopt the carefree life of the ukulele player by re-engineering my equipment so it can be carried on the bus, wheeled onto the stage, plugged into a DI box and played. The life of the ukulele player doesn’t need to be the stuff of fantasy – that’s why I’ve thrown myself into this re-engineering task – a job that’s unglamorous but essential. Currently, you’ll find me obsessing about flight cases and castors and pouring over ebay pictures of old prams. Read more →
I'm performing live at the Lovebytes Festival, Sheffield, QEDCon, Manchester, and the Catalyst Club, Brighton, and composing music for CE3K-inspired Electronic Encounters and some other forthcoming collaborations (stay tuned for news). I'm also hard at work, re-engineering some Spacedog robots, and selecting films for Rocket Lolly, Spacedog's two-hander with Project Moonbase at the Edinburgh Science Festival in April.
News: January 2012
Juice for the Baby, Spacedog's debut album, is here! I'm ducking out of the Kinetica Art Faire this year but am huddled indoors, writing, sleuthing (investigating a recording in the archives) and devising a new biologically-inspired musical instrument - all will be revealed soon.
News: December 2011
Juice for the Baby, Spacedog's debut album, launches in mid-December. Join us for the launch gigs at the Marlborough, Brighton, on 9 December and the Horse Hospital, London, on 14 December.
News: November 2011
A busy month writing and editing the forthcoming Spacedog album - stay tuned for news.
News: October 2011
I'm focusing on my writing this month (so am quite the hermit) but I'm squeezing in the occasional live performance here and there.
I'm looking forward to working with Helen Keen in her Spacetacular on 20th. I'm writing a code-based work for the new label Chordpunch and some owlish music for that fine wordsmith Professor Elemental.
Spacedog are booked into the studio at the end of the month to complete work on our album.
News: September 2011
A busy month writing, preparing a get-together of maker musicians for the Brighton Maker Faire After-show party. I've also been electrifying a teapot for the Chi-Tek - an exhibition by MzTek of female tech artists at the V&A. And with my fellow Spacedog Stephen Hisock, I made an appearance on the 10th Anniversary edition of BBC Click.
News: August 2011
The Spacedog song For Laika is now available on iTunes (and the album is on its way). Meanwhile, we've been busy preparing our set for Green Man, including the first outing of our torch song for Tommy Cooper.
I'm procrastinating over a teapot which I'm going to electrify for a MzTek event at the Victoria and Albert Museum in September.
I took a short trip to a very rainy Edinburgh Fringe where I played at an event for Edinburgh Skeptics in the Royal Observatory and made some plans for a Spacedog show next summer.
Apart from that, I've been busy writing. More news on that shortly, I hope...
News: July 2011
I'm interviewed by Leila Johnston in this month's Wired UK magazine and will be appearing with my fellow Spacedogs at a Wired: The Future of Music on 20 July.
I've rounded up a bumper crop of links and soundclips for my BBC Radio 4 doc The Bird Fancyer's Delight, which is broadcast on 5 and 9 July and is also available on Listen Again. Thanks for all your cheery emails about the doc, to ProjectMoonbase for mentioning it in their podcast PMB038 and for the many national papers who gave the documentary such lovely reviews - I'm glad people enjoyed it! On Sunday 10 July, the doc was featured on Graham Seed's Pick of the Week (Radio 4). A good week!
My latest collaboration with Richard Wiseman is a free and fun magic trick for your iPhone. It's called Paranormality and it's been put together for the launch of his book by the same name in the US. Thanks to Phillis on Derrren Brown's blog for giving the app a mention - thousands of people have now downloaded it and are busy bamboozling their friends.
News: June 2011
Playing theremin for Louise Colborne's homage to Loie Fuller (pioneering cybernetic dancer c1900) and composing sounds for Sonus, an homage to the analogue age with Spacedog, ArtHertz, Rushes Soho Shorts Festival and Ridley Scott Associates. Discovering how easy (or difficult) it is to publicise events in 2011 without Twitter - will report back!
Getting ready for BEAM - a brand new festival of electronics and music at Brunel University (24-26 June). I'll be speaking, running a workshop on optical flow and performing live with my fellow Spacedogs. I'll also be playing a short theremin set at the Speaky Spokey, a new arts salon in Brighton (Wed 22 June).
Putting the finishing touches to a sonic-themed BBC Radio 4 documentary, with producer Neil McCarthy, due for transmission on 5 July 2011.
Presenting a workshop for Hack Circus at Interesting, in the Conway Hall, London, 18 June, and performing theremin at a family day at the Science Museum, 19 June.
