Behind the Scenes with producer, sound artist and musician Mark Vernon
Interview conducted by Julie Shapiro
> As a radio producer, maker of audio installations and sound art, and
musician in a touring band, your life seems to be surrounded by audio. What is
it about the medium of sound that draws you in so deeply, and have you always
been so interested?
I think my real attraction to sound is as a catalyst for the imagination. Sound
has the ability to transport you to another time or place at the drop of a hat,
to generate fabulous and fantastic sound images within your mind and all
through such simple means. It still fascinates me that through sound recording
we are able to capture the essence of a moment that we can recall or play back
at will, manipulate and combine with other moments. This, to me, is an amazing
thing.
My background is in the visual arts and it is only in the last six or seven
years that I became involved in sound production. Many of the works I produced
as a visual artist incorporated found objects and classification systems so It
was quite a natural transition from working with found objects to working with
found sounds and audio archives. Effectively it's a transposition of my visual
practice into the medium of sound, I find that I am using essentially the same
methods to collect, classify and arrange information except now I do it in a
computer or on tape rather than physically.
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> Many of your soundscapes are made from local field recordings—from
monster trucks in Savannah, Georgia to the alleys outside nightclubs in
Glasgow. In addition to being aural portraits of the locations they document,
do these pieces also tell specific stories?
For me it is unimportant for a sound piece to tell a story. What is of more
importance is that it provides enough of the elements that allow listeners to
make up their own stories. It is our nature to try and make sense of things, if
you play two sounds in proximity to each other they instantly form a
relationship in the listeners mind; to this extent I think it is enough to
experience the sound as its own story. |
As a general rule I prefer to think of my own work as a body of non-specific
stories—open-ended narratives. A listener has to bring their imagination to
bear on what they hear, I am merely providing guide posts along the way. It is
always interesting to hear other people's interpretations of these pieces as
their ideas can sometimes be wildly removed from my original intentions. This
often brings to light issues and themes that I hadn't even considered whilst
making the work but that are just as valid. For me this ambiguity is essential
as it provokes thought; it is the difference between asking questions and
giving answers.
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> You also work a lot with found audio material. Where do you find it,
and how does the process of envisioning and then creating a story with this
material take shape?
Most of the found material I use comes from old reel-to-reel and cassette tapes
found in charity shops, flea markets and car boot sales (think yard sale ...
held in the trunks of cars.) When tape recorders first became available it was
a huge novelty to be able to record and hear your own voice. Many people
recorded family holidays or important events and festivities such as weddings,
Christmas or birthdays, family sing-alongs, etc. There was a trend for sending
"letters on tape" or "voice letters" to family members in distant parts. As
tape technology becomes increasingly obsolescent these tapes are discarded by
their owners who often no longer even have the means to play them. |
I wouldn't really say that I "envision" a story in advance—I am usually lead by
the material; it's a process. Sometimes my response is emotional, sometimes
purely aesthetic. I look for relationships between the sounds and voices I am
working with and expand upon these relationships intuitively, augmenting them
with other recordings and sounds from my collection, processing and arranging
them in the computer to create a loose but tangible narrative. It is largely a
process of trial and error, trying different sounds together and judging the
results until a pleasing or effective arrangement is attained.
Radio, talking books, children's toys, television, films, records and C's are
all additional resources that provide audio material to be sampled and
incorporated into compositions not to mention field recordings which I consider
to be yet another type of found sound.
> One of the pieces we're featuring is made up entirely of recordings of
customers trying out different products in musical instrument shops. Where did
this idea come from?
From a number of visits to music shops at weekends, I became aware of this rich
and varied source of sounds that was there just for the taking: musicians of
all abilities and ages playing unselfconsciously with no intended audience.
There were some really quite amazing juxtapositions: Often you would find four
or five people in a room all playing at the same time but completely ignoring
what each other are doing. I really liked this free improvisation gone wrong
aspect to it. There were some moments of accidental synchronicity that are just
beautiful and the charm of the unintentional is always present. The idea of
using these audio scraps as a resource to create new imaginary bands and groups
was too much to resist. Through this process many musicians unwittingly became
involved in unlikely collaborations with each other.
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> We've also posted some excerpts from a collection of audio you
stumbled across accidentally, which led you to some fascinating historical
research. Please explain more about what you found, and the tape club
phenomenon in the UK.
The little known phenomenon of tape recording clubs reached its peak in the 60s
and 70s, as tape recording technology became more widely available. I was
completely unaware of their existence until I happened across my find at a car
boot sale in Derby. Enthusiasts would meet regularly and present recorded
mixes, quizzes, documentaries and slide or cine shows to one another, swapping
tips and arranging activities such as group field recording trips. There were
once tape recording clubs all around the UK and in many other countries. |
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The original material comes from a bag of 50 or so reel-to-reel tapes
containing more than a hundred hours of audio ranging from the late 60s to the
early 80s as best I can tell. There is an astounding mixture of material all
recorded by one man—Bill Howard, whom it soon became apparent was one of the
most active members of The Derby Tape Recording Club. These recordings give us
an amazing insight into the lives of Bill and his wife Marjory, their family
and their friends; Bill's innocent enthusiasm, curiosity about sound and his
thirst for experimentation are always evident. |
These tapes and subsequent interviews with the few ex-members of the club I was
able to trace became the basis of a series of programmes for Resonance FM and a
programme on BBC Radio 4.
> Are there any current clubs meeting regularly, or are they a thing of
the past?
As far as I am aware there are no longer any tape recording clubs still in
operation. As cine cameras and then video cameras became popular the interest
in tape recording fell by the wayside though it seems that the Derby Tape
Recording Club was still going as late as 1993.
I have often toyed with the idea of trying to start up a tape recording club
since but I'm not sure there would be anything like the same level of interest
now.
> You also play in the band Hassle Hound. Do you approach this project
differently from the other sound-work you make, or is it an extension of your
other projects? (And where is the name Hassle Hound from?)
I find that these different audio activities all feed into one another. The
distinction between radio programmes, soundscapes and music at times becomes
somewhat blurred as I employ the techniques and methods I have learnt in one
field in another. In Hassle Hound the concerns are far more musical so the
approach is a little different but voice, narrative, found sounds and field
recordings are all still present to a greater or lesser extent. Many people say
they think of our tracks as short radio stories or soundtracks without films.
The name Hassle Hound came from two entries that were side by side in a
thesaurus.
> Can you compare the experience of performing in Hassle Hound, in front
of a crowd, to hearing a story you've made broadcast on the radio?
The great thing about a live performance is the immediacy of the reaction from
an audience, you know there and then what they do or don't like. When the
reaction is good it's a boost, it lifts you up and there's a level of
excitement involved in performance that you just don't get from listening back
to a recording. On the whole though I prefer the anonymity of a radio
broadcast, knowing that this work you have invested so much time and energy in
is being beamed into the homes of potentially thousands of listeners. It's far
nicer not knowing and being able to imagine who is out there. When listening to
a programme or feature I've produced broadcast on the radio I am in the same
position as the other listeners, you can be both producer and audience. A live
situation doesn't allow you this luxury, it is too chaotic, you're listening
from a different perspective and there is too much concentration involved to
impartially assess the whole sound. It is however far more difficult to get any
kind of feedback from a radio broadcast.
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> What are you working on now? What's next?
Currently I am working on a live radio play with Barry Burns to be performed at
Extrapool, Njimegen in the Netherlands in May and have just begun a short
residency at 'Recyclart', an art space come train station in Brussels which
will result in a performance, broadcast and a new sound installation that will
run for the next year.
The new Vernon & Burns LP The Tune The Old Cow Died Of, a collection of
solo and collaborative music and sound works, has just been released on Gagarin
records and is available from
Stora. |
A newly commissioned program for New Media Scotland's "Drift" festival of
Audio & Radio Art, "Evelyn's Request," will be broadcast on
Resonance FM and streamed from the N.M.S. website in April.
> Are Hassle Hound planning to tour in the US anytime soon?
We'd love to at some point but there are no plans at present, our singer and
violinist, Ela is now living in New York so who knows what the future may
bring?
More on Hassle
Hound
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