From Friday July 1st 2011 my Chris Carter MySpace pages will no longer be updated or maintained. This includes MySpace mailing lists, Bulletins and Blogs - NO further mail-shots or newsletters will be sent using MySpace and emails and messages will NOT be read or answered. To subscribe to the combined Carter Tutti & CTI mailing lists please visit: http://chrisandcosey.com/mailinglist/mailinglist.html
For all the latest information on my activities please continue to use my official website right here.
Me and Cosey Fanni Tutti (left) will be performing our new Chris & Cosey set at the Wave Gothic Festival in Leipzig, Germany on 13th June - FESTIVAL LINK.
As exclusively reported by The Quietus earlier today I am excited to announce that anyone at the Primavera Festival or Chris Cunningham's Roundhouse extravaganza will be lucky enough to see two unique collaborations between myself and Factory Floor. Due to Factory Floor's electronics guru Dominic Butler being unavailable for the two dates, I will be temporarily taking over as the third part of their immovable pyramid.
Of course it's no secret that I am a fan of FF and this weekend at the Mute Short Circuit Festival will see Factory Floor return the favour as they lend guitarist/vocalist Nik Void to Carter Tutti for another one-off collaborative performance. FESTIVAL LINK
Factory Floor play the ATP Stage on the Thursday night of Primavera, and open for Chris Cunnigham's Roundhouse AV performance on June 1st. For information and tickets go here.
This is a short clip (actually it’s Part 6 of 8) from a live performance of Harmonic Coaction by myself and Cosey Fanni Tutti at the Avatarium Festival in St Etienne, France on 16th April 2011.
The visuals and some of the sounds you hear are edited and manipulated from field recordings and photos made at the location of the performance prior to the concert.
Throughout 2011 myself and Cosey Fanni Tutti will be performing together as Carter Tutti and Chris & Cosey and also collaborating with other artists and musicians. This page will be updated in the coming weeks with info regarding dates and locations of these performances. . See above... __________________________________________________ CARTER TUTTI - 'HARMONIC COACTION' Avatarium 12 Festival, St Etienne, France - 16th APRIL FESTIVAL LINK
CARTER TUTTI & YANN MARUSSICH - 'CRÉATION' Electron Festival, Geneva, Switzerland - 21st/22nd/23rd APRIL FESTIVAL LINK
CARTER TUTTI & NIK VOID Mute at Short Circuit, Roundhouse, London - 13th MAY FESTIVAL LINK
CARTER TUTTI PLAY CHRIS & COSEY Wave Gothic Festival, Leipzig, Germany - 13th June Festival LINK - ticket link soon...
CARTER TUTTI PLAY CHRIS & COSEY Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland - 25th June Tramway LINK
CARTER TUTTI PLAY CHRIS & COSEY MIMI Festival, Marsaille, France - 7th July Festival LINK - and HERE
To start the New Year off we have compiled a 90 minute ‘mix tape’ for The Quietus from some of our favourite tracks. You can listen to it on Mixcloud for free right now... right here > The Quietus Mix 008: Chris & Cosey
For the last week or so I’ve been head down, hard at work building a custom sound generator for Cosey to perform with at the upcoming Throbbing Gristle shows (details at throbbing-gristle.com).
Things started out well, if a little slowly as I haven’t put soldering iron to component for quite a while. Anyway by Monday we had an unfinished but functioning box of sonic tricks that sounded pretty good to us. The penultimate stage was mostly cosmetic, with Cosey choosing the colour of various LEDs, buttons and the type of control knobs. On Tuesday I was finishing it all off and finally putting the last few components in place.
So there I was in the kitchen - no I don’t have an underground lair or mountaintop laboratory... yet, though I do have a snazzy white lab coat. So I’m drilling a small 3mm hole in a nice piece of vintage 1970s’ copper covered circuit board while holding it in place when (and this all happened in a split second) the drill bit snapped, the drill jumped across the board and continued drilling through the nail of my middle finger with what was left of the broken drill bit.
I can’t remember exactly what happened immediately following this mishap, it seems I went into shock from the pain, then passed out. Weirdly I remember standing in the kitchen looking at my drilled and bloody finger then the next moment I was sitting in our car on my way to hospital wondering how on earth I’d got there. That oddly dislocated feeling is how I imagine one would feel when time travelling or teleporting - well apart from the searing pain.
So after being administered the usual x-rays, bandages and meds in the A&E department, and endless waiting around, I was sent home with a diagnosis of “a nasty hole but no broken bones”. Next morning I got a worried phone call from the hospital - by a doctor who was supposed to have checked me over in A&E but for whatever reason didn’t - telling me to return immediately for more treatment as the x-rays showed my finger was broken. Well I could have bloody well told them that!
So fast forward to Thursday... I’m in full-on ‘clearing up’ mode vacuuming, putting away piles of odds n’ ends, spare parts, unused components and attempting to get our kitchen back to normal - basically with one and a half hands.
I have this very nice Italian folding desk that was given to me in the 1970s’, I use it regularly for projects as does Cosey, Nick and many house guests. And although it has a plastic worktop it’s heavy because the frame is made from chromed steel. I’ve unfolded/folded this desk a hundred times but with one hand, and half a hand, it is not so easy. To fold it involves a flipping action so that it goes from being a regular desk to being a completely flat frame you can tuck away anywhere. So I flipped it... but being too concerned about catching my drilled finger in the frame that I didn’t realise my little finger, my pinky, was lying somewhere between the two halves of the frame. With a dull snap and a loud shout my finger was crushed and in a split second it was broken, within 4 hours it was literally black and blue.
Apart from cracking a rib in the 70s I have never broken a bone in my body, then I break two fingers in two days, what are the chances? Well according to the three doctors and half a dozen nurses I’ve seen this week both injuries are apparently classic DIY mishaps and they see things like that all the time, though not usually twice in one week.
In future I’ll be more careful (much more) and even though these are not massive injuries they are bloody inconvenient!
To coincide with the re-release of ‘The Spaces Between’ vinyl album (see below) I’ve been doing quite a lot of interviews lately. Although be prepared for me repeating myself a little as some of the interviewees questions were quite similar. Anyway... as I get links to the online versions I’ll be posting them here.
My remastered ‘The Spaces Between’ vinyl LP is due for release on September 20th and now available for pre-order. Follow this link to order it: http://www.piccadillyrecords.com/
This is the Optimo press release: Originally recorded between 1974 and 1978 at Industrial Records studio in London ‘The Space Between’ album was first released as a 90 minute cassette in 1980 on Throbbing Gristle's Industrial Records label. It wasn't until 1991 that it was again released by Mute Records on CD. Although tracks from "The Space Between" have appeared on numerous compilations since its release, the album has never been available on vinyl until now. This new vinyl edition on Optimo Music, now retitled ‘The Spaces Between’, doesn't include all the tracks of the original album but has been enhanced and remastered from the original two-track master tapes and has new cover artwork especially for this release. JD Twitch has this to say about the release; 'The original release featured 15 tracks. As I wanted to have a reasonably loud vinyl pressing, I have picked my favourite six to appear here (not an easy task to narrow it down). In addition there is a bonus track ‘Climbing’ which was recorded around the same time that was released by Coil's Geoff Ruston on his ‘Men With Deadly Dreams’ cassette in 1981. One of the first ever recordings to use an 808 drum machine, it still sounds as if it is from tomorrow. In my opinion, these are some of the key recordings in the history of electronic music. They were made using very basic equipment at a time when there was no blueprint for what electronic music could and should be. There is a beauty, an emotion and an imagination present here that is lacking in a lot of modern machine music. This music is as vital and wondrous today as it was four decades ago.'
All tracks have been remastered by Chris Carter in 2009 for this release. Musically, it's an electronic soundtrack for a sleazy sci-fi movie, with moments of uplifting beauty combined with bits of claustrophobic mania. Amazing stuff.
Myself and Cosey Fanni Tutti will be performing a version of our new live audio/visual improvisational piece ‘Harmonic Coaction’ at the Acusmatiq festival in Ancona, Italy on the 31st July.
'Harmonic Coaction - Part Two' A live audio assimilation of person place and time. 'Harmonic Coaction' is a series of sound works constructed from audio field recordings relating to the performance site. The work is created live in situ using those recordings as key components, deconstructing and manipulating the sounds in juxtaposition and harmony. The accompanying visuals consist of images inspired by the site to create an audio visual continuum.
Some shots from the trip are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_carter_/4863343486/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_carter_/4862721407/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/coseyfannitutti/4853056618/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/coseyfannitutti/4853069554/
Me and Cosey have been rushed off our feet for the last few months - remixes, my Dirty-Carter project, Cosey Complex, numerous exhibitions, Cosey’s Tate Modern solo performance and our up-coming audio/art performance in Brescia, where Cosey is also exhibiting new works and doing an ‘in conversation’ in Faenza. More details on the CARTER TUTTI site
When we return to the UK next week we are taking a few days off before completing some other outstanding projects, which includes remastering some of our early Chris & Cosey back catalogue for vinyl reissue later this year.
I’ve semi-permanently fixed the previous blog entry problems on this site (and TG's and Cosey's sites). We (well me, the plug-in developer and a few tech chums) couldn’t actually trace (or fix) the route of the problem but the most likely culprit seems to be some recent undocumented changes that happened with Google’s Blogger backend. So for now I’ve moved my blog entries on www.chriscarter.co.uk over to a non-Blogger system and all is well again, it just takes me a little longer to sync up the pages.
We've recently discovered a technical glitch with this blog page on www.chriscarter.co.uk where visitors see the raw HTML code... while on its Blogspot mirror page it's business as usual. We are attempting to track down the problem asap but in the meantime please bear with us. If you are viewing this on www.chriscarter.co.uk please use the Blogspot link above to view a clean version of this page. We are also experiencing similar problems with Cosey's site and the TG site.
When I was in Leicester for the Dirty-Carter project I recorded two live tracks while killing time in my hotel room. They're not Dirty-Carter tracks, although they are related somewhat - it's just me improvising using some of the gear I later used for the Dirty-Carter performance. The voice and ambience on 'This Train...' is from a nearby train station and was recorded out of the hotel window and played back on my iPhone. The inclusion of the Tannoy station announcements on the same piece was partly inspired by listening to the album 'Music For Real Airports' on the journey to Leicester. This Train... by chris_carter
OOPS... I've just realised these audio clips are in Flash format- my apologies. As soon as it's technically possible I will try to replace them with a mobile iFriendly format. See above
Our first Dirty-Carter performance took place in Leicester on the 28th April and went exceptionally well. We played - we being myself, John Richards and the twenty-five piece Dirty Electronics Ensemble - six challenging experimental pieces to an appreciative full-house. Though in fact I only actually played in three of the sections, well I improvised if being pedantic. I have to say how enthusiastic and knowledgeable the ensemble were, without exception. It makes a refreshing change to come across such a disparate range of artists, musicians and technicians who can work together (and with an 'outsider' such as myself) with such a positive attitude. John and myself will be participating in another Dirty-Carter workshop and performance at STEIM in Amsterdam between June 01 and 03 and if enough interest can be found we will stage the project at other locations later this year.
Tomorrow I'm teaming up with the twenty-five piece group Dirty Electronics Ensemble, led by noise doctor John Richards, to perform our piece for the 'Experimental Sound Generating Instrument' (E.S.G.I.). As you may already know the instrument also features an copper etching artwork designed by me... expect random sequences, distortion with noise coalescing in a hand-held instrument the size of a postcard. The performance takes place at Phoenix Square in Leicester on Wednesday April 28th.
I have a new 'Guest Mix' now available for all to hear at VESSEL. The 40 minute mix includes 20 disparate tracks from various sources and time periods that you may (or may not) have heard me DJ with before. Enjoy... www.vesselmusic.com
In a collaboration project with John Richards Dirty Electronics Ensemble I will be participating in two experimental electronic music workshops and performances in April and June this year.
The first is at De Montfort University, Leicester in the UK - April 27-30 and the second is at STEIM in Amsterdam, Holland - June 01- 03.
The workshop project is to build a specially designed DIY Dirty Electronics experimental music instrument and perform with it as an ensemble. The instrument will feature an original copper etching artwork and circuit concept by me and has been designed and built by John. Expect random sequences, distortion and noise coalesce in a unique hand-held instrument the size of a postcard. Anti-Social noise for all!
More details and some photos soon... but in the meantime follow these links:
Posts
