Back in the day, in the early seventies, my first job was working as a Laboratory Technician, in a school in the Gorbals. Term time was understandably busy, however come the summer holidays it was a case of replacing and repairing kit, for the next term, and the tempo became far more relaxed. On one occasion, when my boss went off to sunnier climes, for a fortnight, I crammed all my scheduled tasks together, knuckled down and had seen them all off halfway through week one. This left a week and a half to slow down and take things easy (not really what the tax payer wants to hear).
One particular day, having given it some thought beforehand, I linked up sixteen signal generators and hooked them up to a stereo amplifier from the music department. This was eight machines, tuned to the notes in an octave, both left and right, and by changing volumes and frequencies ever so slightly I could have a surprising number of pulses beating off against one another and charging along simultaneously. In my head, I had become a one man Tangerine Dream. Not content with this (there was only myself and the janitor in the building for a fortnight- a situation probably illegal from Health and Safety aspects in modern times), the following day, I took it a step further and hooked up an O/H projector. Got two pieces of polythene, some coloured dye and suddenly I had a light show as well. These memories came flooding back to me at tonight’s performance in the theatre of the CCA.
Rose Kallal with her modular synth and 16mm projection loops put on a show so ‘trippy’ I was transported back to the closing scenes of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Very clever and enjoyable. This was impressive!
Prior to that was the ever charming John Cavanagh, as his aural prestidigitateur alter-ego Phosphene, accompanying Lamorisse’s La Ballon rouge. VCS3 burping and bleeping away, a chorus of rerecorded choral singing, what looked like soprano sax (it was dark), Tibetan singing bowls and Mellotron samples (go figure) on the Manetron iPhone app.
What’s not to like?
Lighthouse Beacon Straight Ahead 