Langham Research Centre - Britain’s leading musique concrète performing group - perform a selection of Cage’s rarely heard electronic works using obsolete analogue devices. And, with Peter Blegvad they’ll give the UK premiere of Eschatology, a radiophonic exploration of endings and decay.

The programme will include:

John Cage: Variations I (1958), Cartridge Music (1960)
Langham Research Centre & Peter Blegvad: Eschatology (2013)



LANGHAM RESEARCH CENTRE

Langham Research Centre formed in 2003, as producers at BBC Radio 3, based in London’s Langham Place. These were the last days that open-reel tape was used for broadcast. We loved the rich sound of tape, and the tangible personalities and imperfections of tape machines.

We wanted to keep working with tape, and recapture the spirit of the Radiophonic Workshop by making Radio 3 programmes featuring our tape experiments. An early example was Gateshead Multistorey Carpark, entirely made out of the sounds of the infamous Get Carter carpark, processed on tape.

Much like an Early Music group, but working instead with 20th century classic electronic repertoire, LRC specialise in performing works by John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Earle Browne and others, particularly repertoire which can only be performed with reel-to-reel tape and other now-obsolete devices.

We create new music from vintage analogue devices: open-reel tape, sine wave oscillators, phonograph cartridges and other discarded technology.

Our first release on Sub Rosa will be an LP, John Cage Early Electronic Music, featuring previously unreleased John Cage repertoire.

langhamresearch.co.uk


Film by Helen Petts

ESCHATOLOGY

Eschatology – featuring text performed live by Peter Blegvad - explores endings: the end of land where we take to ships, the end of radio contact where white noise fills the receiver; the end of individual sounds as they echo and decay in diverse locations. It explores historical doctrines of The End, from the physician Hermann von Helmholtz in 1854, to Ragnarök in Norse mythology.

“A liner at sea, heading for a port which no longer exists. Gradual realization among passengers that they’ve escaped a general devastation, but they might be the last human beings on earth.”

Home-made electronic instruments and vintage tape machines are deployed to develop the sonorities derived from field recordings made in Bergen, Norway. Eschatology is a contemplative work that encourages us to consider how it would feel to witness the end of the world.

PETER BLEGVAD

"Peter Blegvad's work contains some of the most oblique and poetic wordplay to ever make its way to song." Trouser Press Rock Guide

In Europe, during the 70's & 80's Peter co-founded the legendary Slapp Happy, recorded and toured with Faust, toured with the Art Bears, and worked with Henry Cow and Andy Partridge.

In America he was recording and touring with, amongst others, The Golden Palominos, John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, Jack Bruce, Andrew Cyrille and Carla Bley.

He made three solo LPs for virgin records during this period, and one for ReR.

Since then he has made four more solo CDs, including “Gonwards” with Andy Patridge (2012)

For the last 10 years he has recorded and presented a series of aural cartoons (Eartoons) under the title ‘Static in the Attic’ for BBC Radio 3.

He teaches at the University of Warwick and has lectured at The Royal College of Art, Norwich School of Art, The Ruskin School, Oxford University Hull (University of Humberside), and The British Council, Beograd. He has exhibited artworks in galleries on both sides of the Atlantic.