Rob St John

There’s a new short documentary on our Concrete Antenna sound installation below.  You can read more about the project on our website.

Shirley Inspired is a 3CD release by Earth Recordings featuring reinterpretations of Shirley Collins songs by people like Will Oldham, Trembling Bells, Lee Ranaldo, Meg Baird, Angel Olsen, Stewart Lee, MV+EE, Belbury Poly, Bonnie Dobson and more.

I have a track ‘The Bold Fisherman’ on the album, recorded with Emily Scott and Pete Harvey, as part of the sessions for our collaborative LP as ‘Modern Studies’, which should come out later in the year.

Two Scottish shows next week.  Full band + new songs + new 10″ on sale:

Fri 29th in Edinburgh at Henry’s Cellar Bar. 7.30pm, £5 on the door.

Folklore Tapes Calendar Customs Vol.II: Merry May

Artists: Various Format: Embossed cassette box including screen printed cassette sleeve, research booklet, essay, maypole ribbon, download code. Release Date: 01/05/15 Edition: 250

Order here.

Tracklisting

Side A: Carl Turney & Brian Campbell – SumerIsIcumenIn The Blue Funz - Beltane, Isle of Mull: Need-Fire and Milking Cows Through Cake Arianne Churchman - Minehead Hobby Horse Rob St John - Bringing in the May

Side B: Ian Humberstone - The Hunting of the Earl of Rone Mary & David - Wish Before Sunrise (May Dewing) Children of Alice - Rite of the Maypole: An Unruly Procession Sam McLoughlin - I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think Malcolm Benzie - Hawthorne

Two upcoming talks, both on 14th May:

2-5pm: Creating in the Environmental Humanities

Discussion on: zoömusicology, creativity, birdsong, environmental arts practice, popular music

All welcome, admission free.

To book a place email Andrew Patrizio: [email protected]

Lecture Theatre O17, Hunter Building

Edinburgh College of Art, Lauriston Place, EH3 9DF

Presenters:

Hollis Taylor (violinist/composer, zoömusicologist, University of Technology, Sydney)

Jo Mango (singer-songwriter, lecturer, University of the West of Scotland)

Rob St. John (artist-composer, researcher, University of Glasgow)

Chorus:

Matt Brennan (Reid School of Music, University of Edinburgh)

Peter Nelson (Reid School of Music, University of Edinburgh)

Chair:

Andrew Patrizio (School of the History of Art, University of Edinburgh)

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7pm: Concrete Antenna Artist Talk

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Bill Scott Sculpture Centre, 21 Hawthornvale, Edinburgh, EH6 4JT

Tommy Perman, Professor Simon Kirby and Rob St John will discuss Concrete Antenna, a site-specific sound work in Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop’s Tower.

Booking advised by email to [email protected]

Commissioned by Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop for the opening of the Creative Laboratories,  “Concrete Antenna”, is a sound work created by Tommy Perman, Professor Simon Kirby and Rob St John, which explores the past, present and (potential) future of the Workshop’s site.

Sound gathered from audio archives and specially made field recordings rises, falls, breaks apart and splices back together across multiple speakers throughout the 20 metre tall triangular concrete tower, evoking the site’s various histories as a blacksmith, a railway siding close to the Newhaven docks and now a thriving creative workshop beside a wildlife rich cycle route.

Using a range of unusual production techniques derived from the tower itself, the recordings – foghorns, train whistles, gas work demolition, birdsong, construction work, wind in fishing boat sails and many more – are slowly reshaped in the piece, coalescing from their original form to something new, musical and celebratory.

The installation responds in subtle ways to the state of the tide at Granton, the prevailing weather conditions, and the movement of visitors in the tower, creating a unique experience for every listener.  In doing so, the tower becomes a concrete antenna, picking up impressions of the imagined sonic memory of the site, which mingle with the natural soundscape trickling in through a periscope-like gap at the top of the building.

Happy to announce that ‘Water Lives’, the animation I produced in 2012 has been selected for this year’s Green Film Festival and will be screened before the feature film H2OMX at cinemas across the UK between 3-10 May.

Water Lives was animated by Adam Proctor, with a soundtrack by Tommy Perman and haiku by John Barlow.  It was produced alongside Dr Paul Jepson as part of an interdisciplinary art-science project in collaboration with freshwater scientists Rick Battarbee from University College London, Ana Filipa Filipe from the University of Barcelona and Alistair Seddon from the University of Oxford Zoology department for the European Union BioFresh project.

Watch it here

The Surface Tension book+cds are here.  The first edition has sold out, but there’s around 50 copies of the second and final edition available here.

We’ve been slowly getting some coverage in the press and on the radio: Lauren Laverne and Gideon Coe have had the single on BBC 6 Music a bunch of times, John Mulvey wrote a nice piece in UNCUT on the project and Luke Turner reviewed the recent London live show on The Quietus.

Pre-order the Surface Tension book and CD for £6 (plus P&P) here.

Surface Tension Book, CD and Exhibition.

Surface Tension is a project I have been working on since last summer, exploring the River Lea in East London through sound, writing and photography.  Comissioned by the Thames21 charity's 'Love the Lea' campaign, Surface Tension uses field recordings, tape loops, analogue synth, 120 and pinhole film photography to creatively interpret water pollution.

Project website: surfacetension.org.uk

Pre-order Book / CD: surfacetensionriverlea.bandcamp.com/album/surface-tension

Exhibition of photographs at Stour Space, Hackney Wick, London throughout April. 

Young Sun || Trouble Comes

Split 10" with Woodpigeon.  Released in April.

Artwork by Jake Bee.

Very happy to announce that the Water of Life project with Tommy Perman has won the Creative Edinburgh Collaboration Award.