East End Review

Tag: Dominic Simpson

  • In Stormy Nights, Dream Maps, review: ‘an ambitious first record’

    Dominic Simpson
    Enigmatic sounds: Dream Maps is Dominic Simpson

    Despite many a shoegaze hallmark, Dream Maps is a far cry from any My Bloody Valentine impersonators you may have heard recently.

    The solo project of local musician Dominic Simpson, Dream Maps’ debut album, In Stormy Nights, is based around samples from the enigmatic radio station UVB-76, often referred to as ‘The Buzzer’. Since 1982 the station has broadcast a perpetually recurring buzz tone, occasionally intruded upon by ambiguous Russian voice transmissions.

    This is a dynamic that features heavily throughout, from the Russophone syllables spoken in the opening moments, to the tinnitus-inducing crackle and hum of final track ‘100 Bars In C Minor/UVB-76’.

    The ponderous ‘London’s Burning’ leaves drone and vocal barely distinguishable. It’s certainly the most mainstream track on the album, almost reminiscent of an Anton Newcombe original.

    The ‘In Stormy Nights’ triptych captures a cross-section of keening feedback, hissing vocals and subaquatic echoes, piano fragments and sepulchral chanting, bridging the gap between spaced-out guitar rock and experimental electronics.

    The record takes an abstract interlude on ‘Train Tracks’ and ‘To The Birds’, whose sparse, drone-heavy melees are overlaid with snatches of instrumental and found sounds, moments of which call to mind something of Fripp & Eno.

    Whilst the transition from ‘To The Birds’ into ‘Gakken Analogue Book’ is a sharp and not immediately pleasing contrast – from ambient drone back into tripped-out shoegaze – the displeasure is short-lived as the latter proves to be one of the album’s most insatiable tracks. With an instrumental constructed over an acid-house beat, Simpson’s vocals emerge from between the presets, delivering the lyrics with a lingering snarl.

    At 14 and a half minutes long, ‘Static On The Wire’ is more a suite than a song, swelling from intricate guitar lines into a cavalcade of modulated noise that drifts in and out of focus, enveloping and isolating like an outtake from Tim Hecker’s Norberg.

    With a sound that sits at the Y-junction between shoegaze, ambient and industrial, In Stormy Nights is an ambitious first record. Through 12 dense, challenging but undeniably affecting tracks, Simpson has built a paean to UVB-76’s cryptic radio broadcasts.

    Mirroring the experience of capturing an alien voice through the buzz, the erratic transmission of Simpson’s vocals materialises unexpectedly from droning interludes, giving them a rather discombobulating characteristic of being anticipated yet never fully expected, like a figure appearing through fog.

    Listen to Dream Maps at dreammaps1.bandcamp.com/releases

  • Last chance to catch Speakers’ Corner project at Bishopsgate Institute

    Doris the heckler at Speakers' Corner 1968. Photograph: Chris Kennett
    Doris the heckler at Speakers’ Corner 1968. Photograph: Chris Kennett

    Do you believe in the freedom to speak your mind in front of other people? Sounds From The Park (SFTP), currently at the Bishopsgate Institute, focuses on one small part of London where the principle of freedom of speech is held as sacrosanct: Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, a haven for left-wingers, right-wingers, Communists, weirdos, eccentrics, trade unionists, radical thinkers, religious fundamentalists, and all manner of in-between.

    More than just an exhibition, SFTP mixes photos and field recordings together to weave a beguiling and inspiring feel capturing those gathered at the podium. A number of black-and-white photos show a range of characters heckling the gathered crowds, from the 1970s right up to the present; one shows an intense debate between a Palestinian and a Jewish man. Meanwhile, an accompanying audio guide contains twenty-nine interviews with speakers, who recount their interest in taking the podiums, along with actual samples of the speakers in action.

    SFTP is culmination of a 14-month project commissioned by On The Record, a not-for-profit co-operative devoted to audio and historical samples of London life. Initiated by two oral historians, Rosa Vilbr and Laura Mitchinson, On The Record have uncovered a mountain of audio gems which paint a picture of London’s vibrant history just as compelling as photography and film on their own can do. Working with skilled volunteers, they have trained members of the public in oral history and techniques such as digital storytelling.

    “We aim to create participatory projects that involve more people in uncovering previously overlooked aspects of heritage”, Vilbr says. “SFTP was our first major project and has been our greatest achievement – recording and sharing an important part of London’s social history and exploring a fascinating site of political, religious and eccentric discussion and performance. Because we are an oral history organisation, we were fascinated by collecting oral histories of what is essentially a diminished tradition – outdoor public oratory and debate”.

    The choice of Bishopsgate Institute as the venue to house SFTP was no accident: “We worked with Bishopsgate because it is dedicated to the history of free speech, labour movements, and progressive movement”, proclaims Vilbr. “The idea was to show the many meanings Speaker’s Corner has held for many diverse people over time. Another key theme is the dialogue and interaction that has historically taken place there – it’s not all about speakers shouting at people. Hecklers answer back, disrupt and question”.

    Meanwhile, Vilbr has been involved with projects in Hackney as part of a background in community development: she was involved with a project called the Hackney Housing History Project, which explored oral histories of the borough.

    “One of our directors lives in Hackney and we work here whenever we can”, she enthuses. Recalling last year, she remembers: “We ran digital storytelling workshops in May 2013 for adult learners from Hackney that were very popular”.

    In addition, they are currently developing a project later this year researching the history of Centerprise, once one of Hackney’s principal community centres. They are also working with Campaign Against Arms Trade on a separate project called Selling to Both Sides, in which the arms trade during the First World War will be documented, along with the accompanying resistance to it. Both should be essential viewing – and listening too.

    Sounds from the Park is at the Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, EC2M 4QH until 30 April.

  • Late At Night: Voices of Ordinary Madness – East London documentary to premiere at London Film Festival

    Xiaolu Guo credit Philippe Ciompi 009
    Xiaolu Guo: Photograph by Philippe Ciompi

     

    Prolific Chinese-British filmmaker and novelist Xiaolu Guo has been the central force behind no less than eleven films and nine novels, and was this year named one of Granta magazine’s twenty ‘Best of Young British Novelists’. She has lived in Paris, Berlin and Beijing, but now resides in East London.

    This month sees the première at the London Film Festival of the artist’s latest documentary film, Late At Night: Voices of Ordinary Madness.

    Capturing the human cost of capitalism, Late At Night… focuses on the stories of those who inhabit East London, many of them immigrants, and hints at the personal and physical struggles they face to reach these shores.

    A beguiling mixture of character study, archival material, old news reports, snippets of literary sources, and a surprising choice of soundtrack – from firebrand British-Jamaican ‘dub poet’ Linton Kwesi Johnson to the ubiquitous king of Nigerian Afrobeat, Fela Kuti – the documentary explores issues of alienation, a theme already touched on with her novel, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers.

    “The film is really an impressionistic mosaic of people from the area”, she says. “It is about those voices we barely listen to in day-to-day life, like street people, for instance. We live amongst them yet we barely talk to them”.

    Living in East London she describes as a “rough and complicated experience”: “I don’t find it easy to live around here,” Xiaolu admits, hinting at her own sense of alienation from her surroundings. She says: “I think urban environments in big cities are the most alienated spaces on Earth. I find it extremely unsettling in this country that people pay so much attention to the Royal Family’s wedding and big celebrities’ private life, yet have so little interest in looking at the vast underclass of society – street people, beggars, and working-class people who are everywhere in our neighbourhood.”

    Describing her ability to combine artistic disciplines as a filmmaker, producer, scriptwriter, poet, and novelist, Xiaolu says: “I cannot stay still. I do enjoy the differences between these media, but I cannot see myself as a professional filmmaker in the sense that I don’t trust the film industry these days at all. Too much fake stuff and bubbles. Vanity and media power seem to swallow the truth of cinema – when I say cinema, I don’t mean mono-cinema Hollywood.”

    Instead, Xiaolu’s work feels rooted in reality, away from the glamour and excess of the film industry. She remains a real outsider artist.

    Late at Night: Voices of Ordinary Madness is showing at Rich Mix on 10 October at 6.30pm as part of the BFI London Film Festival.