Friday, July 07, 2017

Cars in the Arts Lab (*and a sad discovery while writing this post).

Multi-Disciplinary artist Mark Sheeky has a regular arts show on Redshift Radio featuring all new, all never previously released work. It's a fantastic concept and to be honest with you, I'm amazed he manages to make a whole hour long show each week of the work submitted, given the context, but I guess it just goes to show how much is happening out there.

Mark requested submissions on the subject of 'Cars' and I couldn't resist. I wanted to make sure the dark side of car culture was included. After all, some 1.3 million people are killed on the roads each year worldwide and car use is a major contributing factor in global warming, which threatens much of life on Earth, particularly coral reefs at the moment and ultimately all life which depends on a diverse eco-system, like humans. *As Heathcote Williams put it, cars represent "a humdrum holocaust, the third world war nobody bothered to declare" (In Autogeddon, 1991). 
*See bottom of post.

I knocked this up in a few hours. You can hear the original version on the 'listen-again' mixcloud of Mark's show (this is the 1st track on the show). Today, I have also added drums.
There are no synths here, the whooshing sound representing cars racing about is actually slide guitar of sorts, actually an empty beer bottle on my Firebird and shed-loads of reverb!

The plan is to make this a temporary download, so if you like this dark soundscape, then download it quick. As Mark says in his show, wear headphones to make the most of it.





Listen again to Mark's show below:


*Heathcote Williams, particularly his piece 'Autogeddon', has been enormously influential and inspiring for me. In researching a link for this blog post, I have just found out that he died, just a few days ago on July 1st.
Please read his outstanding works Whale Nation and Autogeddon.
RIP.

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