nik newark

777

Today's date is 07/07/07. In anticipation of this date, back in the early 90s I recorded a piece of music (with Messrs B & D Marriage) called 777 To Assist Mankind, which proposed to use the medium of audio to cure the ills of the modern time, and hence save mankind. It was a musical collage based around the concept of a live mix. The idea here was to obtain as many sound sources as possible, get them all running at once, and bring them in and out of the many available mixer channels. To this end, I spent a day making a number of independent sequences all looping with varying regularity, interacting with each other in interesting ways. Bee assembled several snippets of audio from various films and radio productions (Alien, Earthsearch etc.), and produced a tape loop consisting of a ringing phone, an alien noise, some beeps, someone saying “777”, and someone else saying “to assist mankind”. This was set up running on Bee's stereo reel to reel machine, though the tape actually took an elongated route passing over a headphone plug inserted into a DAT machine, so as to take up the slack. Other sound sources were brought in, including various orchestral tapes, a tape of Uncle Albert (??!) being interviewed about “the war”, some Russian folk music, Radio 4 news (live), the TV (miked up and modulated by the CS10 so as to sound like a dalek), a tape of Sentimental Things, and Dee playing the blues harp. By the time recording began, it was shortly before midnight, and it was deemed necessary that the mix must take place with the lights out, so the recording is made by the flicker of candlelight and the glare of the TV. All three collaborators spent the next half an hour dashing about this room (which also contained a microphone to pick up ambient sound of the mix in action) pulling faders, changing tapes, inserting CDs muting and unmuting tracks, and taking in the sound of a piece of music creating itself as a once only event. And coping with a cat's tail coming dangerously close to displacing the tape loop 2/3 of the way through the mix, prompting Dee (who was mid harmonica solo at the time) to say “Tape Loop!” very audibly.

Happy 7th July, everyone.