Internet Archive's in-browser audio with external links "theater" requires JavaScript to be enabled. It appears your browser does not have it turned on. Please see your browser settings for this feature.

Falling Together (compilation no. 5)

by: Children of the Drone

Publication date: 2006-05-26

Usage: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

The fifth in a series of compilation CD's assembled from the recording archive of Children of the Drone, the Exeter, UK-based improvisational collective.

Notes

All sounds (apart from the brief linking segment in "The Lucid Dreamer") were entirely improvised by John, Henry, Matthew W, Richard, Keith, James T, Vaughan, Simon, James S, Philip, Rupert, and Mark (with Jim, Jo, Pete, Geoff, Jenny, Melski, Ale, Eleanor and Sarah) using balalaika, saz, bouzouki, acoustic and electric guitars and basses, voices, mandolin, mandola, autoharp, mediumwave radio, laptop, sampler, saxophones, khamak, piano, synthesiser, bells, whistles, assorted percussion (and probably some other things too) at Oblique House [6], Prospect Park [7,14], the Phoenix Arts Centre [12] and St. Stephens church [2,4,5,9,12,13] (Exeter), the Rainbow Studio [1,3,10,11] (Crediton) and a barn outside Sherwood Cottage [8] (near Newton St. Cyres).

Unintended sonic contributions were provided by (1) an anonymous Exeter City Council worker operating a stone-grinding machine outside the front door of St. Stephens Church, audible near the end of "COTD v. ECC", (2) various buses on the High Street, audible as 'wooshes' at the beginning of track 9 and on other St. Stephens recordings, (3) various people coughing and (4) Henry's daughter Nikki announcing that "...it is now off" at the end of the collection (she was actually referring to some aspect of the heating system in their house, Henry's unfamiliarity with which being the source of his partially-feigned embarrassment!).

"A New Genus of Deep Sea Worms" was recorded on the day the discovery of a new genus of deep sea worms, Osedax (meaning 'bone devourer'), was announced by scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. "Versenden Prognostiziert" features what appears to be the German shipping forecast, spontaneously picked up by Matthew W on a mediumwave radio (the title is an attempted German translation of "shipping forecast"). Track 5 features Jim Penny (from Red Dog Green Dog) on soprano sax. In "During the Night", James T reads titles from a series of small paintings by local artist Veronica Gosling. "Love In" is based on another one of James' 'found poems' - this time it's a list of titles from the Exeter University library catalogue which begin "Love in...". At the time he put this together, he was unaware of the piece "Love List" by Stan's Cafe Theatre Company (which is based on titles of British chart singles beginning "Love..."). Track 9 is one of two pieces here featuring members of Vaughan's improvised singing group - this one starts with Vaughan overtoning.

"The Lucid Dreamer" begins with an excerpt from a set we played in the bar at the Phoenix Arts Centre, as part of a Future Sound of Exeter event which Jah Wobble was headlining (a couple of pictures of us at this gig are visible here). If you listen carefully (headphones help) you can hear a young man describing his lucid dreaming experiences in great detail and finally announcing "The music's pretty good, actually. I'm going in the main room now, though, um... because...it's louder." A sound effects segment then takes us back to a session at St. Stephens a few weeks earlier - we were collaborating with a like-minded improv group from Bristol which Melski was part of at the time. The last piece of that session (which got accidentally mangled during an audio file conversion, giving rise to the thrash/noise feel) ended with a young man with exactly the same voice who'd just walked in apologising: "Sorry, um, wrong place..." to which Melski instantly responded "No, you're in the right place!" Could this be the same person? An instance of a Lucid Dreamer walking backwards through time down Gandy Street (Exeter's famous Saxon passageway linking the two buildings)?

Photo credit: Robert Graham