John Wall (electronic composer)
Encyclopedia
John Wall is an autodidact electronic composer whose contribution to the field is widely noted by critics of new music. His work has moved from early plunderphonic
compositions - where he brought together unlikely combinations of musical genres to create fantastical new works – to large scale works composed of thousands of tiny fragments which create the impression of virtual orchestras. Critics have remarked on “his extraordinary feeling for musical narrative” which is achieved through a working method that has been described as “phenomenally painstaking”. According to one critic, Wall’s “releases sound like the most finely crafted audio sculptures, somewhere between the contemporary composition of Lachenmann
and the experiments of early laptop musicians
of the mid 90s.”
with very little memory – and used this in conjunction with an 8-track reel-to-reel
tape recorder to make his first plunderphoninc works which he released as Fear of Gravity on his own Utterpsalm imprint. Fear of Gravity uses long, often identifiable samples from other people’s works as well as looping and repetition – all features which would quickly disappear from his work.
running Cubase
) led to the release of Alterstill in 1995. Again Alterstill drew on material sampled from CDs by artists across a range of contrasting genres but critics were impressed with “the sheer ambition of the project” and Wall has said that the CD is “the first thing that represents what I was capable of doing artistically.”
Writing about Alterstill, The Wire
editor, Tony Herrington, described how Wall recontextualises sampled materials “to essay complex aural fictions, conjure vivid, large-cast phantasias, broker impossible (or at least unlikely) conferences and ‘collaborations’ (…) The tracks on Alterstill conjure moods and atmospheres that are predicated on the knowledge that they will be quickly shattered by an incoming musical event; a minimalist mantra of riffing violins punctuated by operatic whoops and hollers; then suddenly, images of a death metal concert with a free jazz saxophone bleeding in from the wings; a soundfield of unfathomable scrapes and drones, which is punctuated by a brass fanfare and maybe the sound of running water.” For Herrington, the compositions on Alterstill are “episodic, linear, but all the drama occurs in the horizontal, non-linear pile-up of multiple sound files; the layering and recontextualising of disparate sensations and experiences into a vivid hyperreality.”
. According to one reviewer:
“Out of such exacting, precise working methods he produces music of an often breathtaking spontaneity. There are passages throughout Fractuur which give the impression of being somehow improvised, if it were possible for several large chamber ensembles, a couple of jazz groups, and the odd electronics manipulator to jam with some kind of clarity or direction! It's this sense of spontaneity which adds to Wall's standing as one of the most original composers working in the last decade of the twentieth century, and Fractuur his most essential work to date.”
Fractuur is on the syllabus for the Christoph Cox's "Contemporary Music and Musical Discourse" course at Hampshire College
along with recordings by King Tubby
and Miles Davis
.
With Consctructions I-IV the composer’s own recordings of musicians took precedence over fragments sampled from CDs and the composer showed a preference for improvising musicians over musicians who specialise in interpreting written work. According to Marley: “He wanted to retain [free improvisation’s] key features – the feeling of spontanaeity, of unpredictability, and the music’s sheer raw intensity. He wanted to tweak each moment until it sang; even if that took countless hours to achieve.”
. Marley: "Like Parmegiani, Wall constructs transformative electroacoustic soundscapes of remarkable individuality. His is a muscular, energetic music that seems to contradict itself by being perpetually on the verge of doubt and disintegration (...) Even the most minimal of the soundscapes has, for example, an astonishing degree of inbuilt complexity, although it may consist of little more than the endlessly varied colouration, weight and placement of bumps and clicks."
and London Musicians Collective
(LMC)'s “New Aura” concert series at South Bank Centre in 1997 and Sonic Arts Network
’s “Cut & Splice” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
in London in 2006. Both of these were broadcast by BBC Radio 3
.
In 1997 Wall was challenged by the LMC to make a live realisation of his work which combined both tape playback and live performers. "Untitled #4" was commissioned by LMC and Goethe Institut and performed at the ICA in London in 1997. The featured musicians were Jörg Widmann (clarinet), Peter Skaervard-Sheppard
(violin) and John Edwards (double bass) and an excerpt from this performance was issued by LMC. A number of other live realisations of his works followed including at Instant Chavires in Paris in 2002.
A number of attempts have been made to transcribe John Wall’s works for live performers. Most recently, in 2009 Maarten Altena’s MAE ensemble commissioned a transcription of John Wall’s “Fractuur” which was performed (alongside works from fellow electronic composers, John Oswald
and Francisco López
in a programme entitled “Organised Sound” at the Paradiso
in Amsterdam.
Performances have included solos and duos at Casa de Musica in Porto, the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, Brighton Expo, The Wire 25 at Finsbury Town Hall in London, Venn Festival in Bristol, Radiator Festival in Nottingham , the Fon Festival in Barrow in Furness , Presences Electronique at INA-GRM in Paris , the Arnolfini in Bristol and Soto Voce in London .
, 2002) CD and as producing the final edit for harpist Rhodri Davies' Over Shadows (Confront, 2006). He recorded the poetry series on the Stem label featuring Leslie Scalapino
, Maggie O'Sullivan
, Allen Fisher
and Peter Manson
. He also served as recording engineer for John Edwards solo album Volume (PSI, 2008).
Plunderphonics
Plunderphonics is a term coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative. It has since been applied to any music made by taking one or more existing audio recordings and altering them in some way to make a new composition...
compositions - where he brought together unlikely combinations of musical genres to create fantastical new works – to large scale works composed of thousands of tiny fragments which create the impression of virtual orchestras. Critics have remarked on “his extraordinary feeling for musical narrative” which is achieved through a working method that has been described as “phenomenally painstaking”. According to one critic, Wall’s “releases sound like the most finely crafted audio sculptures, somewhere between the contemporary composition of Lachenmann
Helmut Lachenmann
Helmut Lachenmann is a German composer associated with musique concrète instrumentale.-Life and works:...
and the experiments of early laptop musicians
Laptronica
Laptronica is a form of live electronic music in which laptops are used as musical instruments. The term is a portmanteau of "laptop computer" and "electronica"...
of the mid 90s.”
Early work
At the age of 40 Wall acquired an FZ1 – a mono samplerSampler (musical instrument)
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...
with very little memory – and used this in conjunction with an 8-track reel-to-reel
Reel-to-reel audio tape recording
Reel-to-reel, open reel tape recording is the form of magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording medium is held on a reel, rather than being securely contained within a cassette....
tape recorder to make his first plunderphoninc works which he released as Fear of Gravity on his own Utterpsalm imprint. Fear of Gravity uses long, often identifiable samples from other people’s works as well as looping and repetition – all features which would quickly disappear from his work.
Alterstill
The purchase of a computer in 1994 (an AtariAtari
Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA . The original Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in...
running Cubase
Steinberg Cubase
Cubase is a music software product developed by Steinberg for music recording, arranging and editing as part of a Digital Audio Workstation. It is one of the oldest DAWs to still enjoy widespread use...
) led to the release of Alterstill in 1995. Again Alterstill drew on material sampled from CDs by artists across a range of contrasting genres but critics were impressed with “the sheer ambition of the project” and Wall has said that the CD is “the first thing that represents what I was capable of doing artistically.”
Writing about Alterstill, The Wire
The Wire (magazine)
The Wire is a British avant garde music magazine, founded in 1982 by jazz promoter Anthony Wood and journalist Chrissie Murray. The magazine initially concentrated on contemporary jazz and improvised music, but branched out in the early 1990s to various types of experimental music...
editor, Tony Herrington, described how Wall recontextualises sampled materials “to essay complex aural fictions, conjure vivid, large-cast phantasias, broker impossible (or at least unlikely) conferences and ‘collaborations’ (…) The tracks on Alterstill conjure moods and atmospheres that are predicated on the knowledge that they will be quickly shattered by an incoming musical event; a minimalist mantra of riffing violins punctuated by operatic whoops and hollers; then suddenly, images of a death metal concert with a free jazz saxophone bleeding in from the wings; a soundfield of unfathomable scrapes and drones, which is punctuated by a brass fanfare and maybe the sound of running water.” For Herrington, the compositions on Alterstill are “episodic, linear, but all the drama occurs in the horizontal, non-linear pile-up of multiple sound files; the layering and recontextualising of disparate sensations and experiences into a vivid hyperreality.”
Fractuur
The release of Fractuur two years later marked a further creative leap. The samples continued to become shorter, and Wall’s own compositional stamp stronger. On Fractuur Wall starts to incorporate his own recordings of musicians - both improvisers and classical musicians who use extended technique - into the fabric of the work alongside samples from CDs. He also starts to process the material electronically and include the sounds of malfunctioning audio equipment, or “glitches”Glitch (music)
Glitch is a term used to describe a genre of electronic music that emerged in the mid to late 1990s. The glitch aesthetic is characterized by a deliberate use of glitch based sonic artifacts that would normally be viewed as unwanted disturbances reducing the overall sound quality and are thus...
. According to one reviewer:
“Out of such exacting, precise working methods he produces music of an often breathtaking spontaneity. There are passages throughout Fractuur which give the impression of being somehow improvised, if it were possible for several large chamber ensembles, a couple of jazz groups, and the odd electronics manipulator to jam with some kind of clarity or direction! It's this sense of spontaneity which adds to Wall's standing as one of the most original composers working in the last decade of the twentieth century, and Fractuur his most essential work to date.”
Fractuur is on the syllabus for the Christoph Cox's "Contemporary Music and Musical Discourse" course at Hampshire College
Hampshire College
Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1965 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts...
along with recordings by King Tubby
King Tubby
King Tubby was a Jamaican electronics and sound engineer, known primarily for his influence on the development of dub in the 1960s and 1970s...
and Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
.
Constructions I-IV & Constructions V-II
After Fractuur, the CDs and compositions have both become progressively shorter and the sense of grand narrative drops away. Writing in The Wire, Phil England noted that Constructions V-VII “develops his tendency towards the quiet, the sparse, the minimal. (...) Wall has largely dropped the tension and release, and the play between the real and the artificial (...) [Constructions provides] evidence that Wall’s considerable aural sensitivity allows him to feel increasingly at ease with a relatively unforced drama of pure sound.” Other commentators have however referred to “the edginess in his music, its restlessness, its often ambiguous nature, its rarely resolved tension.”With Consctructions I-IV the composer’s own recordings of musicians took precedence over fragments sampled from CDs and the composer showed a preference for improvising musicians over musicians who specialise in interpreting written work. According to Marley: “He wanted to retain [free improvisation’s] key features – the feeling of spontanaeity, of unpredictability, and the music’s sheer raw intensity. He wanted to tweak each moment until it sang; even if that took countless hours to achieve.”
Hylic
His most recent work includes very little sampling from CDs and Wall's work now has more in common with the meticulous tape constructions of composers like Bernard ParmegianiBernard Parmegiani
Bernard Parmegiani is a composer best known for his electronic or acousmatic music.-Biography:Between 1957 and 1961 he studied mime with Jacques Lecoq, a period he later regarded as important to his work as a composer...
. Marley: "Like Parmegiani, Wall constructs transformative electroacoustic soundscapes of remarkable individuality. His is a muscular, energetic music that seems to contradict itself by being perpetually on the verge of doubt and disintegration (...) Even the most minimal of the soundscapes has, for example, an astonishing degree of inbuilt complexity, although it may consist of little more than the endlessly varied colouration, weight and placement of bumps and clicks."
cphon
cphon features a single piece that ran to just over 20 minutes in length. Writing in The Wire, Julian Cowley described the work as follows: "Shrill needle points of sound, whisps and shadows, punctuating clicks, muted thuds and clangs edge to and from that pivotal centre where the keyboard briefly and equivocally asserts itself. It's austere rather than chaste, conveying a sense of cryptic narrative rather than pure abstracted shape. No invitation to relax is offered at any point; tension is Wall's forte. From the high pitch signal that initiates the piece's progression to the odd hobbling rhythm that draws it to a conclusion, the listening ear is kept at a pitch of alertness."Work 2006-2011
Wall returned in 2011 with a document of his collaboration with spoken word artist Alex Rodgers. Richard Pinnell interviewed the pairing for The Wire magazine and wrote in a separate review: "While Wall’s anger can be heard in the music, Rodgers’ spoken word parts are equally acerbic. He sounds constantly on edge, his voice slurs in places, growls in others and has a gruff bite to it that is only amplified by the cheap dictaphones used to record many of his parts. His words move between a bitterly spat-out stream of angry obscenity-ridden disgust and a carefully worked out and scripted sense of surrealism all wrapped up in a Beckettian verbal sensibility."Live realisations
John Wall has presented his work as tape playbacks at various events including at BBC Radio 3’s Mixing ItMixing It
Mixing It was a radio programme showcasing experimental music. Its original remit was to showcase "crossover" music that blurred the established boundaries between genres...
and London Musicians Collective
London Musicians Collective
The London Musicians' Collective is a cultural charity based in London, England devoted to the promotion of contemporary, experimental and improvised music...
(LMC)'s “New Aura” concert series at South Bank Centre in 1997 and Sonic Arts Network
Sonic Arts Network
Sonic Arts Network was a UK-based organisation, established in 1979, that aimed to enable both audiences and practitioners to engage with the art of sound through a programme of festivals, events, commissions and education projects...
’s “Cut & Splice” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
in London in 2006. Both of these were broadcast by BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...
.
In 1997 Wall was challenged by the LMC to make a live realisation of his work which combined both tape playback and live performers. "Untitled #4" was commissioned by LMC and Goethe Institut and performed at the ICA in London in 1997. The featured musicians were Jörg Widmann (clarinet), Peter Skaervard-Sheppard
Peter Skaervard-Sheppard
Violinist Peter Skaervard-Sheppard is the dedicatee of over 150 new works. He has collaborated with Nigel Clarke, David Matthews, Michael Finnissy, Hans Werner Henze, George Rochberg, William Bolcom, Dmitri Smirnov, Jorg Widman and John Wall....
(violin) and John Edwards (double bass) and an excerpt from this performance was issued by LMC. A number of other live realisations of his works followed including at Instant Chavires in Paris in 2002.
A number of attempts have been made to transcribe John Wall’s works for live performers. Most recently, in 2009 Maarten Altena’s MAE ensemble commissioned a transcription of John Wall’s “Fractuur” which was performed (alongside works from fellow electronic composers, John Oswald
John Oswald (composer)
John Oswald is a Canadian composer, saxophonist, media artist and dancer. His best known project is Plunderphonics, the practice of making new music out of previously existing recordings .-Philosophy:Oswald coined the term "plunderphonics" to describe his craft in a paper called which he...
and Francisco López
Francisco López (musician)
Francisco López is an avant-garde experimental musician and sound artist.He has released a large amount of sound pieces with record labels from more than fifty countries and realized hundreds of concerts and sound installations worldwide; including some of the main international museums, galleries...
in a programme entitled “Organised Sound” at the Paradiso
Paradiso (Amsterdam)
Paradiso is an iconic rock music venue and cultural center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.-History:It is housed in a converted former church building that dates from the nineteenth century and that was used until 1965 as the meeting hall for a liberal Dutch religious group known as the "Vrije...
in Amsterdam.
Improvised music
A couple of years after Wall apparently ceased issuing new recorded works, he started performing live improvisations using a laptop both solo and in combinations with performers including John Edwards (double bass), Mark Sanders (percussion), Lee Gamble (computer) and Mark Durgan (live electronics). Wall’s improvisations draw on previously prepared, self-generated sound files which he extracts and manipulates during the performance.Performances have included solos and duos at Casa de Musica in Porto, the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, Brighton Expo, The Wire 25 at Finsbury Town Hall in London, Venn Festival in Bristol, Radiator Festival in Nottingham , the Fon Festival in Barrow in Furness , Presences Electronique at INA-GRM in Paris , the Arnolfini in Bristol and Soto Voce in London .
Other work
John Wall is credited as editing John Edwards and Mark Sanders Nisus Duets (Emanem RecordsEmanem Records
Emanem Records is an independent record label based in London specialising in free improvised music. The label was founded in 1974 by Martin Davidson assisted by Madelaine Davidson. The main purpose of the label was to document the London free improvisation scene...
, 2002) CD and as producing the final edit for harpist Rhodri Davies' Over Shadows (Confront, 2006). He recorded the poetry series on the Stem label featuring Leslie Scalapino
Leslie Scalapino
Leslie Scalapino was a United States poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist, and editor, sometimes grouped in with the Language poets, though she felt closely tied to the Beat poets. A longtime resident of California's Bay Area, she earned an M.A. in English from the University of...
, Maggie O'Sullivan
Maggie O'Sullivan
Maggie O'Sullivan is a British poet, performer and visual artist associated with the British Poetry Revival.O'Sullivan was born in Lincoln, England of Irish immigrant parents. She moved to London in 1971 and worked for the BBC until 1988. Her early work appeared in magazines such as Angel Exhaust...
, Allen Fisher
Allen Fisher
Allen Fisher is a poet, painter, publisher, teacher and performer associated with the British Poetry Revival.Fisher was born in London and started writing poetry in 1962. His early long project Place was published in a series of books and pamphlets in the 1970s. He worked on a project called...
and Peter Manson
Peter Manson
Peter Manson is a contemporary Scottish poet. His books include Between Cup and Lip . For the Good of Liars , Adjunct: an Undigest , Before and After Mallarmé , Two renga Peter Manson (born 1969) is a contemporary Scottish poet. His books include Between Cup and Lip (Miami University Press,...
. He also served as recording engineer for John Edwards solo album Volume (PSI, 2008).
Discography
- Fear of Gravity (1993), Utterpsalm
- Alterstill (1995), Utterpsalm
- Fractuur (1997), Utterpsalm
- Constructions I-IV (1999), Utterpsalm
- Constructions V-VII (2001), Utterpsalm
- Hylic (2003), Utterpsalm
- cphon (2005), Utterpsalm
- Work 2006–2011" (2011)" with Alex Rodgers, Entr'acte
External links
- Utterpsalm
- John Wall & Lee Gamble live at The Wire 25 (34 minute streaming audio file)
- John Wall & Lee Gamble Live at The Wire's Below the Radar festival, Porto, 2007 (streaming audiovisual document)
- “November 29th: MAE at the Witte Damezaal” (short video clip including extract of John Wall’s “Fractuur”)
- John Wall's Blog
- John Wall & Alex Rodgers live at The Foundry 2010 (10 minute youtube video)
Further reading
- Herrington, Tony (June 1995) “Against Nature” The Wire issue 136
- Glandien, Kersten (July 1998) “When Worlds Collide” Resonance, Volume 6 Number 2 (London Musicians’ Collective)
- Glandien, Kersten (1998) “Alterstill - A portrait of the London sampling composer John Wall” radio programme for Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk Leipzig
- Goldsmith, Kenneth (2–8 December 1998) “The Real London Underground – Experimental Music at the End of the 90s”, New York Press
- Grand, Fred (Spring, 1999) “John Wall: Weaver of Dreams”, Avant, Issue 11
- Montgomery, Will (March 2001) “Stress Fractures”, The Wire issue 205
- Marley, Brian (2006) “John Wall: The Rocky Road to cphon” in Blocks of Consciousness and the Unbroken Continuum (Sound323)
- Pinnell, Richard (2008) “John Wall Interview, London”, Paris Transatlantic
- Pinnell, Richard (2011) "Failing Better" The Wire issue 329