01.03.08
DOWNLOAD “SUPER EXPRESS TO OSAKA” SESSION
DOWNLOAD “ENVIRONMENTS” SESSION
DOWNLOAD “THE GREAT ALBERTA OIL RUSH” SESSION
Huw “Bunf” Bunford of the Super Furry Animals fame has been adventuring in his own productions of experimentation as of late, and dublab is stoked to bring you the first five soundscapes from his arsenal of environments. Airport departure lounges, atmospheric noise in backstage areas, train/bus journeys and walking around differents cities from San Fransico to Taiwan – Berlin to Tokyo serve as the “straight from micro-cassette” field recording criteria. A host of oddball instrumentation and processing arrive as a sweet kiss in the mingling of sound and space. Dulcimer, Zither, Lapsteel, and various “drone boxes” appear in one form or another, and a zaney collection of archived television library music and worldwide collected vinyl tastefully complement and transform the many elements to an ultimately brand new setting. Enjoy a world expanding series at your leisure, and be sure to catch other many soundstories at world-wide live performances as they continually arise (England, Japan, and European touring).
for all the info in the world on more of this: superfurry.com
here are the words straight from Bunf about these sessions:
“Hello to everyone at dublab, thank you for your interest in the soundscapes . Here are some of the answers to your questions and some of the reasons behind making the work. Lets start with creating a track, because It’s always a good place to begin. So every soundscape always has the same two elements, which make up the ˜bedrock” of each track. First one down is a track of field recordings made on a tape recorder (old-school), this is a bit like a hand held tape recorder ( a favourite of many music magazine interviewers over the years) . It’s really handy for quick spontaneious recordings, I also love its lo-fi sound. These tapes consist mostly of my experiences touring with the band, SFA, which allows me the amazing opportunity of recording things I would never get to do. There are recordings of various places e.g airport departure lounges, atmospheric noise in backstage areas, train/bus journeys and walking around different cities from Berlin to Tokyo, San fransisco to Taiwan etc. by now I have boxes of cassete tapes of various recorded stuff.
Then the second element which I use are two Riyaz sound boxes, made in India, which are a simple drone box and a Tambura machine [The Tambura box is faulty wired after trying to do a home made repair job, it now makes bleep bleep noises and has radically changed the sound] I use these for the rythm tracks.
After this process, I’ll listen to what I’ve got and start enhancing the soundscape, maybe I do more than enhancing the sound, because its my own source recordings, I feel I have carte blanche when it comes to arranging, structure and instrumentation. This to me is make or break time where the tracks somehow begin to work as imagined pieces of environmental soundscapes.
I now begin to incorporate my own imput and take it somewhere other than a soundbite from a Toyko street for example.
There are a host of different instruments I can use. Over the years I’ve collected one or to strange and wonderful instruments such as a Dolcimer, Zither, Lapsteel, drone boxes (various) and recently I’ve just got my hands on an electric Saz. All of these will appear on a track in some form or another. I also have an extensive collection of old television library music and some bizarre vinyl from across America comprising of lectures on early USA history, wild life documentaries from the 70’s, and evangelical rantings from crazy preachers, for example Final Flight which depicts a scene where one is waiting in an airport departure lounge to go to heaven.
Answering your questions of whether this work is different to working with SFA..yes it is , as far as the recording and playing goes,thats because i’ts just me.There’s no restrictions as such,where as a pop song requires some form of structure these fantasy soundscapes can end-up as sound-stories.It doesn’t follow the criteria of producing a pop-song.But having said that, the spirit of experimentation,unpredictability and humour that you get with SFA is still hopefully there with this work.
Finally ,I hope to bring it out on vinyl,we are looking at ways of doing this but I can’t say much more until we get clearance ,I’m crossing my fingers !!!!!!
Well that’s it ,for now.There are more soundstories in production including a new Japanese,british and European tour with lot’s of exciting material ;until then ciao and diolch.. ” — Huw bunf Bunford. aka L7 .
