Volume 1 of live recordings from the Clutter archive. This volume brings together 2 live sets from the Soundonation project.

Open Circuit – Lanternhouse, Ulverston (24 September 2010)

Frakture Alldayer – The Bombed Out Church, Liverpool (26 September 2010)

Some words I wrote at the start of the project:

Why start Soundonation?

After around 15 years of working with loops, field recordings, electroacoustics, doing remixes and the like and getting into improvisation more and more I’ve become increasingly aware and interested in the reasons we make the choices we do in creating music. Why do we choose a particular chord, why do those 2 sounds work together, why did I do that when they played that?

I improvise a lot in creating my music – improvise, edit, improvise around in circles, removing bits I don’t like till I arrive at a piece I suddenly think is ‘finished’. Repeat till you have something you feel is worth releasing. I wonder why I go down certain routes while others close themselves off. I find improvising a great way to getting tracks started. mmm starting points??

Starting points are always things of great interest, why does something jump out and evolve into a piece of music, it’s a quick process, we select the sounds we like in an instant and disregard those we don’t just as quickly. I often do a round of field recordings to start a project and edit out bits I like which become my building blocks. Do I have an aesthetic that makes me choose certain sounds? Probably…

And so I thought it would be interesting to try and bypass this starting point and throw it open to chance and ask people to donate sounds to me and build the album purely from donations. This in itself I find an interesting prospect – who will give me something for nothing? I’m asking for you to give me sounds so I can make an album to sell and keep the money for myself – why should you? Answers on a postcard to the usual address….. I’m hoping you will because the project is interesting, because you’re kind, generous, thought it might be fun to see what I do with it, you may even want to send a ‘curve ball’ and see if I will use it…

Soundonation at Open Circuit was originally featured on Phantom Circuit #52

Soundonation at The Bombed Out Church was originally released as Live at The Bombed Out Church by Sonic Oyster Records