20260910-2000

0:00Fishes were tectonic plates, a slowly yawning apart, or around volcanic activity, hydrothermal vents, extreme heat. The water in the compost boiling fathoms down, molten of deer, seagulls, naked black, and the smoke itching raised in the pitch darkness for the adjunction such force as a quote from the deer that pushed a tsunami to the shore. Silence. Dores fall in from frames, dry brushweed in cracks, a small breeze through abandoned buildings. One woman still goes back into feed the cats, dole-icked roadblocks, shop shelves hanging empty, children's toys tipped on their sides, rusting bikes, rusting cars, the guide-accounts are ticking high in the grasses. One severt dose, radiation sickness, nausea, five severts, kill you within a month,

1:03ten severts, dead in weeks. The 73 severt tolerant robots they sent into Fukushima, just faltering malfunction. Hot concrete, hot metal, hot air, recent reactor levels there, reaching 530 severts per hour. Look away, look away, history, cowers, guilt, who gap when shows his tight jaw lines, jaws clenching now, no one saying anything, anything at all. My mother tells me my uncle had said, it bleeped on mind's muddy night. He used to pass through in the 1970s, nuclear scientists. They invited him on the way out to Japan, decided a darmatsun gizart, but they shouldn't build it there on a fault line. Back, black box, low you down,

2:04John, mankind, hands up, fade out, the sound of crystal clear running water. Back, black box, low you down, chance, mankind, hands up, fade out, the sound of crystal clear running water. Back, black box, low you down, John, mankind, hands up, fade out the sound of crystal clear. Running water. Back, black box, low you down, chance, mankind, hands up, fade out, the sound of crystal clear running water. Coming back to Glasgow, and started playing with Shane Connolly. We started doing improv duo, is actually, and I remember nuts and seeds put us on. And I think, I think Crippard put us on, but Crippard, that became,

3:05that basically became second or eventually with Stevie Jones. So Shane, me and Stevie Jones, started playing a sickamore, because it was basically, it was a trio, and we played a bunch of gigs, and we did these recordings, but they didn't feel like they were enough just the three of us. So then Stevie Jones took it off and did all the other arranging on it. So, so that, Rave wasn't on that one actually, but Georgie McGoon or White was on that, and Maria Bello was on that, which actually is the one I'd like to play, it's a song called New Cold, that's got Maria on it, and Daniel Paddon's playing, bass clarinet on it, and Georgie's on that. Rave Is Lishes

7:19So the second one started and then started to sing connolly with Tyco drums and Alison Roe who's on the Lisa Fanon track and that band eventually got called Isho which was had Georgie Ngun and Alison Roe and Shane and me and Lucy Surrell and that was that was that was fun we we played and I remember we played one of the early gigs we played was at the Captains Rest, Everganette Duke did a fun Razor Night and Kylie Minnoy's played and famously smashed his head open on the the low ceiling. Literally put the lights out and he had those things on his hands that generated sound somehow that he had sort of lights on them and the lights went out.

8:20Yeah but there were really strong lights in the lights in the room and he and he just jumped off a table to start his set and basically whacked his head on a on a beam or something you know what I mean but it's a small space. Yeah yeah yeah no I was proper like he needs an ambulance I think he was fine but you should play that and it was really fun to play big Tyco drums in a in a context played with Tyco drums which has been amazing after after you show them end up starting them doing other stuff with Tyco with peanut X-ray which we still play along with and so been playing with Tyco drums for about must be a bit 12 years or something like that and it's a really yeah it's a really singular thing to play to but anyway just to say that those original gigs yeah they were just like on noisy bills and to take Tyco drums into into those

9:21content and we we spaces with like you know drums that fill every sort of crevice of the room with sound it was really fun and and that's also when I first started getting into doing stuff with dance I wrote I think called From Home which was a four guitar thing and ended up playing it live with Hubby, Haram Hubbert, Stevie Jones and Robert actually from Robert Johnson from Life Without Buildings Robert Dallas Gray as he is now and we so I I was the first time I could ever written all the parts for other people to play and it's not super complicated it's not like sound of Yale standard but it was the but yeah it's the first time I'd ever spent like six weeks kind of doing a composing thing and that ended up being a dance piece with an amazing dancer from Unicol d'Anne Lock

10:27and that was the first and that was another thing like the improv and bright and that was yeah another thing that I'd really wanted to into doing stuff with dance for a really long time and I just hadn't met people and then I met Annie three in Paxon that was talking about much and yeah I had a really amazing experience working with her and then also so that's the next big thing that happens who cares about my life or fuck say it's as tedious um not the next big thing that happens was was Luke Sutherland who didn't talk about previously he was in Longfinn Killie yeah who are another amazing band that were around Glasgow in the early 90s really unique band from Perkshire originally um again merging like various kinds of indiegatar music with like Bizukes and folk stuff um and yeah looks amazing voice

11:35so they were a really inspirational band and Dawson played quite a lot with them absolutely played so anyway we and Luke had seen each other very infrequently and I think 2008 or 2009 Luke had been asked to work on a dance project with Christine Davani dancer Nairn Bura and he was asked to bring another musician into the process so he asked me and that was that was in credo and and Christine's a sort of incredible hub for the dance world and in Scotland if a person can be a hub can a person be a hub she's a amazing um sort of facilitator of in the dance community in in Scotland is amazing anyway it's it's really supported it's really supportive I mean it's really supportive it's it's really no bullshit it's um it's small enough that when you meet somebody

12:40you can quite quickly meet a lot of other people and that's what happened to me I was really lucky that I was working with Christine and Christine you a lot of other dancers so I met a lot of other dancers and started um working with them brilliant dancer called Roslyn Mason um and and so and that was the first time actually that was the first time ever that I got a little bit of money from creative Scotland to do the from home dance piece um but that that was the first time that I had like I guess six weeks to make the show or eight weeks to make the show with Christine Davani and guy called Michael Sherin and look southernland um where I was paid like for like eight weeks work um which you know at that point I was like what age was and like nearly 40 do I mean that was the first time I'd had sort of a sustained paid gig um uh and makes me think actually that another thing

13:47that happened around that time is the adje that was in donkey had another band called the bent moustache and uh with uh they're the regular guitar player who plays in de kiff together called pin please not amazing band de kiff from from the Netherlands um uh pin can do this tour so adje asked me to come and do this ten week tour of america and think it was 2007 supporting sebedo going all around america for ten weeks which was yeah just an unbelievable experience so I suppose that in tandem with the with the christavani was the first time we could actually start to get some money and are be a bit supported by doing music um so and and the thing with look it was incredible to play with look and in the whole process of playing with the dancers and like I said many lots of other dancers was amazing and quite early on in the first I think it was the first or second week

14:52no that was the first week it was it was like the third or fourth day me and look had this idea to not stop playing all day so it's like an eight hour eight hour dance residency that we that we were working on ideas but but me and look we never stopped playing so even if we were talking through ideas we would just turn our volume down but we keep playing we keep playing and uh and from that me and look started to do things called long players where we would play for uh eight hours sometimes nine hours nonstop but the idea was not that it was a jam that it was the idea was always that if somebody came and saw half an hour of it that they'd feel that they'd seen something that was kind of substantial um and feel like they'd seen a gig but we tend to do it with we tend to do it as open sessions for dancers as well but um we did we did did one in Copenhagen we did one in Barcelona we did a couple in Edinburgh but that was that was also just like at the same time

15:56as as all this world was opening up around dance and the possibility of sound interacting with dance which is yeah there's so much to say about that uh it was also just doing those long players with look and really just diving in to the experience of it and of course they were improvising as well so it was like eight or nine hour improvised gigs sometimes sometimes with you know sometimes with the look going jamming so you can have a wee cup of tea yeah yeah so with the dance I'm interested and that's what it depends on the project but to what extent is it composed or improvised who kind of instigates um maybe maybe these questions are kind of but again it can be at all that perhaps yeah and just depending on the moment on the situation depends on depends on the depends on the project so

16:58for instance so around this time really importantly we can come back to winter cycle in a second button 2010 I when I was working with Chris Davani and Luke and Michael I met dancer Selene Vine actor and we started working together under the banner of collective endeavors and the first show we the first show we did was um was totally composed actually it was a duet but it was totally composed it's called Keren Gorn Snow it's about climate change and we took that to Italy and did it in Scotland but that but that was totally composed and uh and then and then Selene and myself because we didn't provide a lot before we composed we decided to try and do a larger improvised group I actually know we didn't we did a duo show with improvising first called around titles which was just picking titles up from a out from a hat and the the the big impetus was that was

18:03how do you build a relationship with sort of really direct political ideas through and dancer music and improvise dancer music what's the what's the place in relationship with of ideas and politics so yeah so that's so we were so that was almost like a that was like a structured improv we would pick out titles and that would that would shape the improv and then and then from that we wanted to do a bigger group um of improvisers music and dance and we worked with Luke again and that and Alex South joined us the Green Clarenette player and uh and then a bunch of dancers Joanne Clevealy, Nareia Gura-Chagga, I'm going to forget some names which is terrible isn't it uh actually written them all down but um anyway so just to say that that's where

19:06me and Selene that's where the work really started on on really getting into the mechanics of improvising with music and dance and so that so our whole approach to it was that we we felt that quite often improvise music and dance when I saw stuff didn't have well I became I became quite evangelical but dance like I totally love it I taught and I think it's really important I think in this culture that's like so terrified of the body that's so much in the head um I think I think I think it's really important and I became quite evangelical about it and I really wanted people to to see dance who didn't normally see dance and and I and I really was enjoying improvising so I wanted people and I was hoping that people would want to come and see some people who didn't think dances for them would come and see something that was not spectacular

20:08there was in you know mean-celented things in art galleries and in music festivals and town squares and I mean trying to take I mean I'm not I'm not seeing nobody else does that I mean a lot of people take dance to all kinds of places but in terms of trying to get people who don't think they're in a dance to see it is it's yeah you have to take it out of the theater I think so um so yeah we mean so I saw a lot of dance that and improvise music and dance that we thought was quite impenetrable for somebody who hasn't seen dance and and so then we started to build a methodology about how do we give shape to the improv because because it's so much information music and dance it's just like a massive amount of information to to take in especially if you're not used to dance and people feel so much like oh I don't understand this um and so you need to make space for people to to feel unsure about it and I think a good way to do that is to give the thing a really nice form to give it a really tight form which allows

21:13people to in terms of music and dance people will start to form narratives even just the number of people who are interacting on stage you know I mean well people will start to form narratives our ideas and narratives or you know snapshots um so so yes so then we really start to get into the mechanics of it we start to get into the mechanics of of group decision making of notions of structure or form all these words are really tricky a lot of people understandably can get put off by any of these words I think like structure or form or framework when you're improvising some people don't like that use of those terms at all but it's just the shape of the thing it's just to give the thing shape which is not is of course not the tradition in free improvising a lot you know free improvising is in musical terms is just is wide open and it'll the structure will just unfold from the from the material but we didn't we thought we thought music and dance improvisation

22:16need a different approach because because for two reasons there's a lot of information and there's a there's a lot of people who don't understand or feel they don't understand the dance so yeah so so we so we so we we we some through using mostly really simple tasks just started to really break down the mechanics of working as a group and and and then focusing on individual's decision making at different times um you know really zooming into the moment of when you're making a decision and sort of zooming in any closer so that you can start to break down your process of decision making in the moment which of course is just something that's is on is on going through time you're just you're making decision you're making just you're you're computing and making decisions in real time excuse me um and so to answer your question about uh who instigates what in in the music and dance improv that we do is collective endeavors it's just it's based on these tasks and

23:21it's based on really clear decision making that has a knock on effect of clear decision making which creates a form that it's not that everybody can necessarily agree and where they're at in the form of the improv but but sometimes it really feels like the the the sort of path of the improv is like we're generating it and it's generating it itself you know or this this thing we're sitting in it even though we're creating it yeah um so so yes so I still do I still do stuff with dance that's really totally composed um but the collective endeavors was yeah that was quite it's also really that's really informed how I think about improv generally and when our cycle was 2010 December 2010 to to the start of January 2011 it came from came from a few things it came from

24:22um really despising how how midwinter feels in in in in capitalism and uh and just yeah I want to find some other way to mark midwinter that wasn't just people buying shite and and feeling down if the you know I mean if they if they don't feel like they have the people around them they want Christmas or feeling isolated or all that all that brutal stuff that happens to people around midwinter and uh so I can't remember the exact I think it was something like I wanted to I wanted to have winter solstice be the middle of the of the winter cycle and I think in that year I think it happened to be that the that it was like full moon or something like that on on on solstice on winter solstice and somehow that just seemed like a nice cycle to do so so I did

25:29the moon cycle I think that's what it was I think I did the 28 days of the moon cycle I don't think I did the 31 days of of a month I think I can't quite remember and maybe I did do a full month anyway the the full moon was on the solstice and that was that gave the shape of what I wanted to do and I just yeah I want I did a different dual every day for those I think it was 30 one days 30 or 30 one days and yeah I suppose it was that thing of I've been in backing Glasgow for about five years by that point and and already in that five years I'd I'd sort of reconnected to old friends and made new friends enough people that that I could do like 31 doers in a row it just seemed to illustrate that thing of how incredible the the scene is in Glasgow you know and I don't know about

26:34you but I and it's a lot of talk about you know there's a lot of conversation about notions of what home is but Glasgow kind of as a general thing as a general place to be doesn't particularly feel like home to me I don't feel like I belong in Glasgow but but I really belong in the in the creative world it's in Glasgow this the nobilshire DIY open-hearted politicised and sometimes that politics is just comes just from a sort of base level decency as as well as as well as good sharp analysis I mean I always say that thing of like all the all those all the famous bands from Glasgow all those people who you know I don't know them massively but I've kind of been around them just doing music for ages and they're all fucking lovely you know the the big indie bands they're all lovely they're

27:34all fucking help you the lowland gear they're all be supportive and so so so even so the you know the bigger more six you know whatever the bigger bands like that and then there's just like all the all the sort of vibrant DIY scene it's just like crackling with ideas and like I say politics but also just kindness um that's that's the reason I'm still in Glasgow and that and that's that was totally reflected in doing in doing winter cycle just like there was that much creativity around that I could easily find 30 people they weren't all from Glasgow actually there was a food from Edinburgh but I could easily find and I'm a fussy bastard I don't want to just play with anybody did you know I mean so those are people that I feel are really decent connection to and and so it was a real mix it was it was it was kind of old people that had done music with like

28:37hobby and uh folks like that and I then knew people uh which actually like Fritz Welsh did one and actually I think mean Fritz had been playing in a group called Eight Thumbs which was um the Shane Connelly, Dougal Morick and Alex South um if I remember correctly I think that's right so I played a bit with Fritz but he still had only known him for a couple of years and then yet a bunch of dancers Christa Vanny came and did one um um uh Monicad de Ioane who I did a trio with called Three Lines with Jenny Soup this is a great uh visual artist who's in Sweden now um so yeah musicians and dancers and so same place uh eleven a.m I think it was or midday maybe midday uh in stereo um apart from New

29:42Year's Day that was in the Flying Duck actually they gave because I was working as a sound engineer at the Flying Duck so they gave me the keys and uh allowed me to open up and uh and Graham Mac lovely Graham Mac came and played guitar so I found someone who was willing to get up on New Year's Day and did it um so oh actually Ian Finley Welsh did one of those too as well which was brilliant and uh yeah I think his record of last year I think was one of my favorite records it was totally amazing oh I did and did one with P6 as well that was a really special one

32:46um if you haven't talked you didn't really talk about stretchheads you didn't really talk about how incredible the band they were um and what an incredible force P6 was um it's that thing it I think it can still have power sort of people in bands jumping into the audience but but it really was P6 the way it was like confrontational and and playful and very much about connecting not like shocking your bourgeois values um it was really really special really special to to and to he he was saying recently he's like a sort of performance artist without a practice of performance art and I think I think that's true you know I totally incredible voice and incredible presence but you know a big cuddly queer guy in your face in early 90s noisy gigs you know I mean

33:58it was like a quite a unique thing and the whole band was absolutely fucking amazing all the players so anyway the P6 one at winter cycle was really special oh Drew Wright did one of the winter cycle so it was also like a really for me like Drew's like super important like mega important where he intersects with the the weirdo noise world and the in the folk world and he's thinking of say such a beautiful guy um but I remember I remember coming back to Scotland and wondering kind of wondering about those questions of place and folk culture and people like Ali Roberts and uh and Drew were kind of really important actually to to feel that there was people who were really actively engaged with folk culture and and discovering with it not just sort of

35:03sitting in uh causally with it or anything you know I mean so I was remembering actually when I was when I was doing I was looking at some stuff last night I forgot that me Drew and how he rieved one time went to Hamilton, Mozilla and then and had a had a saying it's actually up on Drew's when he was called Wendellney um it's actually up on his band camp thing but it's just as it was quite hilarious because we just yeah there's a guy to tour you can go in for Hamilton, Mozilla but we weren't excuse me we weren't remotely interested in anything that the guy had to say who just we're trying to we're trying to get to the point where we could get a sing in this incredible acoustic and that the other thing I was going to say actually that when I came back to Glasgow and I was doing sound engineering and that's just talking about those waves of people doing stuff in Glasgow it's it's doing sound just a really brilliant way to see who's doing what

36:07and and so you know I was doing sound for like uh it's stuff that Laurie Pitt was doing with Joe DeCave and Adam Campbell let's say Duncan yeah that was really amazing to just come back and be able to plug in and there again like I said there was just all this brilliant stuff happening and I don't really do live sound now but I feel like the last generation I saw of folks coming through starting doing stuff is the all the all the all the brilliant folks like Ailee and Kyle and Chrissie that are doing like Kapoo and uh Rapid Tan breakfast muff and Rapid Tan and Kapoo and Chrissie and it's kind of it's almost when they came through I mean I think all their I love all that stuff actually and I'm kind of tempted to play a Rapid Tan song

38:58oh I mean shopping obviously like shopping and sacred pause and all yeah all Rachel Ags stuff it's obviously totally brilliant or so look as it's totally amazing Glasgow improvisers orchestra yes actually it was Fritz Welch who doesn't doesn't do much with Joe now but he he and he I'd known about it for a while and kind of wondered how to get to play in it and and Fritz was playing already and he invited me along and the first thing we did actually was Norman McClannock you I could date it by the first thing we did was the Norman McClannock films in the art school yeah which was great um

40:01and yeah I mean that's another it's like I say that's another brilliant way to see to meet people who are doing stuff it's been it's been incredible for that just like I played quite a lot with Katrina McKay the amazing heart player with and me Katrina and Strew Brown had a residency up north so we got to play a chunk and we did some gigs and then Quartet came out of that which was Strew Brown and Raymond McDonald and Una McGlone and me who's called Drone to Water we did a bunch of gigs at yeah I also I did actually years ago when I came about 2008 I started doing a thing called Bar Head which was an idea was for Mully Guitar Improv group and Hubby played and Stevie Jones played and Joe Quimby played and Adam Campbell played

41:08and a few other folks and and Luke Sutherland played of course and then and and and laterally I did a couple of gigs of Bar Head expanded which was for guitars and with a bunch of sacks and stuff and uh and the you know that's one of those groups that came out of Joe and and knowing knowing folks from Joe so Strew Brown was in that group and Raymond was in that group and Tony Bevin was played one time as well and actually the it might be a nice thing to play is that it ties in and I remember I remember saying to everybody on that group that the the starting point was Broatsman's machine gun was the was the star and and that and that ties in because that CD was given to me by Craig Flanagan from God is my co-pilot back in the mid-90s that I've done so much with and and also obviously there's people on that CD that I've

42:13got to play on stage with like Evan Parker and Han Benning through through you I've got to play with all those amazing people yeah they get yeah it really is it really is and and loads of fucking killer players in the group as well getting to play with George Bar I'm like I'm I'm always going on with people like they just do not realize how good George Bar is and I'm always saying that in 20 years time people will be like what you got to play with George Bar you know these fucking amazing you did that you did a solo gig at the old downstairs I think it was at the old tear dressers we had that I think I think so yeah I think so yeah I'm fucking amazing totally fucking amazing and his him oh yeah so much so getting to play with George Bar it's just like and Raymond and Una you know Pierre Nicholson Neil Davidson all all these great players Maggie

43:19Nichols get into play with Maggie Nichols and is is really it's really fucking special and is just just the fact that the thing still goes is is incredible because you know the mute whatever the music's been generated at any given time it's it's a massive part of the kind of ecology of the improv scene and people are coming in all the time people are making connections and obviously over the over the COVID time there's that's all been online and so there's been people like great players like Laurie Friedman and and in Canada there's been on the sessions and anyway just to say that it's a it's a it's a it's a crucial part of the ecology of of of improvising so it's just

44:20amazing that it still goes and and the other the other thing yeah it'd be nice to talk about from from the improvisers orchestra is what is well actually we could play a little bit of of me and Raymond from our our duo CD we did came out in 2018 we're going to play a track called in between

47:05and yeah the other thing we're to talk about geo is geo dynamics which is the which is the open sessions that I facilitate for for the improvisers orchestra which is as it sounds it's basically it was in the physical space until COVID and now it's online and it's open to anybody who wants to make sounds of any description it's a really brilliant mix of people you know some people trained some people extremely untrained people who are into folk music and songs people who are into more noise and buttons and glitches and guitars and yeah so the night is it's a small group

48:09open improv night that I put people into groups and then you get to meet people you and meet them through the music so that's been that's during COVID time that's been really incredible actually it's it never fails to amaze me that you can actually feel connected to people through the screen doing doing improv which is playing to the strings of improv yeah I'd like to one of the most recent things I did was um been working with a filmmaker called Corinne Sworn who wanted to start doing stuff with dancers and yeah also yeah from doing music and sort of sound design for dance I started doing dramaturgie which is basically just for fools who don't know just an assistant to the choreo or director it's really just about being a other set of ice

49:10over all the components of the show so so we did work with that and from that I Corinne wanted to do stuff with that and knew that I was connected to doing stuff with dancers so she asked me to start working with her so we think we've made she's made three films I think so far excuse me the last one was called Habits of Assembly and yeah it was just kind of different sounds from what I don't need to do when I get to her so I did two soundtracks for two films that were being played at the same time you've been listening to Jair Reed on radical Scotland I'm your host Jair Smith and this is

50:10repeated radio next up we have a mix by Jair and Mary Amruzai so crack open and I am rude tuck into your tonics t-cakes and bug out we'll be back in two weeks time with a Scottish election special featuring Rory Scothar in the meantime