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“To what extent does producer and beat maker culture intertwine with wider sound arts practice?”
As a child growing up my biggest influence in all realms of art was the Hip Hop beat scene, from a young age it captivated and held my imagination in a deep chokehold. Another artistic culture that also captivated my emotion and feeling was cinema and in particular the sound for cinema, this then led to me having a deep passion and enthusiasm for film soundtracks and collecting them online and on LP. Deep compositions like Mary’s Theme (Stelvio Cipriani, 1969) and Addio, amore mio (Piero Piccioni, 1969) where pivotal in my development as an artist as they gave me the same feeling I got from the Hip-Hop and Jazz records I knew and loved, but it opened my mind up as a producer as it showed me the ultimate free range of possibilities that could be accomplished when using sound as a tool and vessel to communicate in various different mediums. Another example of this wondrous, mind expanding sonic discovery I had as an inner-city London kid is when I went to the Venice Biennale as a young kid and saw the different interactive sound installations on display, one of which being BLK NWS (Khalil Joseph, 2016), this installation piece was pivotal to my development as an artist as it showed me how sound installation can be used to convey a clear political message, rather than a more abstract one synonymous with a lot of sound installation work. Joseph did this by creating a world within worlds, an afro-surrealist world running parallel to the one we live in, commentating upon ‘current affairs’ within the afro-diasporic world. I thought this concept was great as it was accessible for someone like me, who at the time wasn’t totally privy to the world of sound art installations. Although the installation could have been more immersive sonically, it showed how the power of message and meaning can quite often supersede the need for intricate sonic composition. Being that most of the soundtrack of this installation was based upon Hip-Hop convention, this further bolstered my vision of the potential of Hip Hop and producer culture operating in spaces outside of traditional commercial music consumption.

Here is the rough topics I will talk about in may essay

Research question 

“To what extent does Music producer & beatmaker culture intertwine with composing sound for screen & cinema’ 

Introduction.

Purpose of research

J Dilla 

Neptunes 

Pirate Radio 

Sound For screen practice

Ethnomusicology 

How does it all tie in , (come from a place of documenting feeling and emotion)

Conclusion

I found this lecture really cool as it was very interesting to see how Fari incorparated bother her Indian and classic music background into her practice.

This is interesting for me as I have roots in classical, jazz and hip hop and every time I enter the studio I am trying to make all of these elements come through, it was nice to hear in Fari’s work how she stays true to her roots but also seeks to expand her sonic pallete.

The primary question I believe my research will answer will be ‘How Afro futurist and surrealist sound art and culture is influential in the 21st century.

I hope to explore and uncover the roots of afro surrealism and see how it is being used today in popular culture and sound arts practices.

I choose this as I believe this area of art is far more influential than made out to be. I also chose this question as this topic is close to my heart in terms of my own art.

My intended approach to the organisation of my answer, is to  operate by beginning from a somewhat chronological history of Afro surrealism and then later relating it to art and culture practices outside of its direct artistic lineag

ntroduction : Spoken word, with an ambient, free jazz inspired sonic backdrop

Chapter One: Free Jazz, Will talk about free jazz and the visual art that came with it, and talk about the dawn of afro future/surrealism, with musical inspired pieces and clips from this generation of music.

Chapter Two: FutureNow, In this I will talk about how these concepts reflect in black artistic practice today, with excerpts and clips from TV’s shows and radio broadcasts, also I will begin talking about how attitudes towards technology in the free jazz movement influence attitudes now.

Chapter Three: Will be about how these movements have influenced art and culture as whole, outside of the afro-diasporic gaze.

Conclusion

I found this lecture really cool as Josephs work and it relating to his native culture in such a way that isn’t always completely obvious but is definitely prevalent is amazing. Also I relate to that school of thought as that idea is something I am trying to achieve within my work. Also his work at creatively manipulating field recordings and turning them into intricate and sometimes immersive noise pieces is incredible and he is very talented at doing so. Also I found his concept of subliminal recording really cool and interesting as he not only focuses on the main sound he is recording but also is keeping an ear out for what is going on in the background.

The thing I really respected the most about this lecture was when Felisha spoke about her electronic music equipment lending library, I think that is such an incredible concept to carry out and also a very honourable one to be tied to your name. This especially resonated with me as apart of my CISA project is all about making sound art and music production more intertwined and more readily available for young and less economically advantaged people. Also I found it interesting that she refers to her work as music not sound art due to the fact that other people called it music so she just ran with it.

Today I finalised main literature I will use for my essay and they are:

DILLA TIME – A biography about the greatest, J DILLA

Ethnomusicology- A handbook on ethnomusicology

Green, L. (2016) The Palgrave Handbook of Sound Design and Music in Screen Media

Bassanta, A. (2015) Organised Sound Extending Musical Form Outwards in Space and Time: Compositional strategies in sound art and audiovisual installations

Williams, P. (2005) SCRATCH. Scratch Magazine, Number 3

As a big part of this work relates to what and who we want to be in the future, within this blog post I am going to post a few things I have proud of in my career. and to look back in a few years and see how far I have come

• My Productions have over 100 million streams on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0F68Z1v18xiubRAYpqjzY6?si=86ab5919956747b1
• I just finished mixing recording and producing a project to come out on Ninja Tune records
• I’ve played some of the biggest festivals like Glastonbury, Leeds, we out here, love supreme
• I did my own sound art installation at gallery46 (shoutout LCC!)
• Just finished my first VR score
• I did a score for one of my fave magazines WILD MAG https://www.girlsinfilm.net/videos/at-dawn-you-leave
• I had my first song on the charts in 2021
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Szr5Dcwn4Y

I found this lecture not all that interesting as the way he articulated himself didn’t interest me that much and I have ADHD but I really like his work and his attitudes to using junk to create interesting performance art and I would love to go and see his work one day.

This lecture was really interesting to me as I was actually at his exhibition at the biennale in 2017 and it really blew me away as a 16 year old getting into art.

I liked how he elaborated on his processes that he goes through in making ‘music for the installation spaces’

I find it very interesting how he reflects upon the industrial revolution in Hong Kong within his work and how he reflects that within his work from a sonic perspective.

His works that incorporate animation are incredible, the way he incorporates political rhetoric combined with otherworldly and sometimes comedic sonic landscapes are brilliant.