This week’s lecture from Jose was particularly hands-on, which I was very happy about. Sometimes, I disengage from classes if I am not particularly interested in the topic or don’t feel as involved as I’d like to be, so involving everyone in a performance where we thoughtfully engage with a set of instruments to build up a loop is exciting (especially since that is a lot of my practice in Noise anyway, slowly adding to junk loops and building a space out of flimsy bits and pieces). It also engages with something I mentioned in a previous entry about the utilisation/exploitation of the communal aspect of performance, engaging the audience as a member of the performing group and including the audience in the result, which is something that The Haters had done in the 80s in a way that I find beautiful, engaging the entire audience as the Band in various ways, either through encouragement or without knowledge (through amplified surfaces). It is to me the opposite of noise’s reputation for “transgression”, it is inclusion, it is an acknowledgement and celebration of sound.

Anyway, Jose also mentioned that I was expected to have had 1 to 1 sessions with him, which I was not aware of and the realisation has been pretty worrying, so we are going to set up a session next week so that I can get up to speed with what is expected of me and he can understand where I am at the moment. As for the project, I’ve gone through the project proposal form to try and articulate my ideas in the expected format while on the Coach to and from Liverpool to visit family (as well as doing some work on my research project). Doing it was kind of humbling as I have realised that I am way further behind than I should be, mostly just due to trying to get this research task done first, as the deadline for the first draft is a lot sooner and it’s more difficult to feel the pressure of this with that ongoing. I don’t feel like I can function as well when expected to juggle multiple large tasks simultaneously, so most of what I’ve been putting out over the past few weeks is Wall Noise stuff under Burning Air, which is dedicated to an esoteric subgenre of an already esoteric subgenre called DNW, which is an abstraction of Wall Noise to pure bass focus (as you can probably tell I’m having trouble focusing on actually important things.)

For the box set, I’ve only a few bits to show. As previously mentioned, I did some Guitar loops this week that sound quite nice, on top of the String loop from last week I did a jam with my friend Luc who plays piano, that I want to incorporate because of the varied instrumentation (on this recording, he plays piano, I play synth and sing) that I can add to with more layers in VCV rack. Stylistically, that track is coming along like a track I did for the Fox Box called Faux Comfort, which was made with adding Quantised Resonatorsa nd Harmonic Oscillators to a recording of me playing guitar in a game called Webfishing, which has a weirdly fully functional guitar mode, so I would like to bring that strategy to the realms of a “real” recording (also the recording we got of the session was pretty lo-fi so the extra material will subsidise that a little).

I kind of need to get the research project together as soon as possible for the time being, as I can feel the stress kind of mounting quickly on top of everything else happening surrounding my life, the main thing I can do to have these projects coexist in this time frame though is to cut out the other stuff, for some reason I have been having so much trouble focusing on Uni work that I have started another Wall Noise project and already put out like 5 things, such a headache. There feels like a barrier between me and this thing where there wasn’t one doing the Fox Box, that all came about so smoothly, I think because of there not being much of a need for it to be anything more than it was it was far more stream of consciousness, much like this other stuff I have been doing that is somewhat distracting me from working on this. Either I need to rethink what this project will be to push past this creative block or soldier through with it. I still feel like demonstrating my practices in Noise and Ambient for my two projects shows a good range of coverage, I’m just having a rough time conceptualising it as much more than sound I make because I enjoy making it, especially when it’s becoming more like a chore, and I am unconsciously avoiding doing it.