Awards and Reviews
Degrees
PhD in Composition, 2010
University of Aberdeen, ScotlandMasters of Music in Performance (Music Composition), 2001
Southwest Texas State UniversityBachelors of Music in Performance (Music Composition), 1998
Southwest Texas State University
Awards
2010 Aberdeen Visual Arts Award
2009 PRS for New Music Three Festival Commission
2008 CPD Research Grant, Scottish Arts Council
2008 STEIM Residency
2007 GAVAA (Grays Aberdeen Visual Arts Award)
2006 PRS ATOM Award for New Music0
2006 Research Grant, Dept. of Research and Commercialization, UoA
2006 US Speaking Tour Funded by Dept of Music, UoA
2004 Full Scholarship for PhD, University of Aberdeen
Composer Bill Thompson had created an electronic soundscape score which he performed live from a sound desk in the space. He was also accompanied by Leon Michiner who played an upturned upright piano. The music was integral to creating an atmosphere and landscape to the work. Thompson’s score enhanced moments of loneliness with long slow noises accompanying text, and at other times was frantic and urgent – using simple musical samples and interference from electronic equipment. The piano was played by directly hitting the hammers. Leon was able to get a great range from the instrument this way.
...Thompson was positioned in a corner of the space throughout the work along with all of his equipment. His artistry became a part of the work and from his vantage point he was able to interact with the work.
...All in all I felt that Bill Thompson’s music was pivotal to the work and, whilst not melodic or tuneful, was able to set the foundations of the work, creating a hypnotic sense of landscape, time, confusion, and drama.
-James MacGillivray, Creative Scotland Artistic Evaluation
I’m back in the Borders tapping away at the keyboard, having just been to Aberdeen for a few days, an experience that I find unsettling and comforting in equal measure. Because I was born and raised there (against my will of course and probably as a result of some residual bad karma – why would anyone choose to come from a cold grey fishing town on the North East Coast of Scotland?), I can say whatever I like about the place. I can’t be sure but I have a feeling that this is a common law right shared across all races, creeds and colours: whilst remaining reasonably respectful about the birthplace of others you can say what you like about your own. This can, however, lead to internecine strife; my father, an ex-Lord Provost, will tolerate no criticism of the ‘Deen. We frequently ‘enjoy’ a full and frank exchange of views.
Yes, Aberdeen has its faults. When I was a lad, it was a dour, dull, grey fishing town – then the oil came. Now its filled with the wrong type of people on the wrong sort of income. Redeeming features: the hinterland, the University music department, in particular Pete Stollery, one of the finest individuals (and composers) that you’re likely to meet, the light (north of Stonehaven you enter the Nordic climatic zone), and last but not least the SOUND festival where this year they had the good sense to let Bill Thompson curate and host three days of experimental music concerts. I want over the next few days to review three of these events.
Here’s what I know of the two artists. Bill Thompson, originally of Austin, Texas, is a close personal friend, a musical colleague and one of the most affable and charismatic musicians I know. He works very hard and covers all the angles. I’ve worked with him many times over the last few years and have been privileged to have intimate insights into his work, to understand the details of his ongoing practice, his commitment to what might be called the avant-garde, to free improvisation and to finding his niche and setting out his stall in the increasingly populated free improvisation village.
Prior to meeting Burkhard Beins and working closely with him and the other musicians I only knew what I had read online. Now resident in Berlin, he has a solid reputation and his CV tells us that as a ‘composer/performer, working in the non-academic fields of experimental music, he is known for his widely abstracted use of percussion instruments in combination with selected objects’
The venue, the Suttie Centre at Aberdeen’s Foresterhill Hospital, is ‘an award winning building’, though I doubt if the awards were handed out for acoustic design. The foyer is one of the noisiest I’ve ever experienced – the air conditioning experience was like having your head inside a washing machine. You must have to put in tons of effort and engineering skill to achieve this amount of noise. I’d have expected that a medical school would look into the issues surrounding acoustic design and health, but I am noted for naivety in my expectations. I’ll point the reader to the work of Australian sound artist and acoustic designer Ros Bandt for an example of what can be done. To be fair, the lecture hall/amphitheatre is painted a relaxing green, reminding me of the Pompidou Centre in Paris where I got thrown out for eating a sandwich in 1977.
-Beins_Thompson
As you can see from the (small) image above, the two performers had their instruments set out on two adjacent tables. This was mightily appropriate. Here, in the bowels of a famously historical Scottish Medical School, were two contemporary anatomists hovering over their dissecting tables, preparing to cut into and reveal the sonic guts of their subject with a performative flourish.
I noticed that Thompson hasn’t shed his laptop, but he usually has such a bewildering array of hacked toys and other gaffered tape modules that he’s perhaps become overwhelmed by matter. I noticed something resembling a vibrator – must have a word about that…. Beins’ operating table had, amongst other objects, two of those those clicking gas fire igniters, small oscillators, ebows, a small zither, percussion instruments and percussive objects, the insides of music boxes.
The audience consisted of a small crowd of aficionados (this is Aberdeen after all). I recognised professors, composers, students, artists. The sound reinforcement, a nice Mackie desk and two Genelec monitors the size of your fridge freezer, was handled by Aled Edwards who would be my first choice technician any day of the week, and of whom more later.
Beins’ first set began with hand initiated iterations to the left and to the right, a deliberately chosen gestural flourish, I felt, to let us know that a performance is under way. Then the panning was repeated by playing into and across the microphones. The spaces and silences were deliberate, Beins’ comfortable body language reinforced a sense of mastery, and the work was utterly engaging from the start. The music built to a complex texture of iterations and pulses, all emerging from a sparse palette. I particularly enjoyed the clever use of purely acoustic sources. Loops came to the fore, never ostentatiously periodic. Textures were allowed to run, there was never any haste to effect rapid changes. The material therefore established itself in the ear and in the mind of the listener. I heard very little tonal material, save one subtly presented slightly downward glissando. In summary, the performance came over as as a very beautiful individual and highly musical statement, very tightly controlled in all departments.
-Thompson
Following a short break we had a performance by Bill Thompson in the foyer.
Thompson sat with his purple Fender Stratocaster, a bold move in my opinion, given the baggage that goes with the mother of all axes (was it a Texan who married his beloved strat?). Ebow at the ready, he had the guitar going through a ‘Geiger Counter’ effects module into a practice amp. Everyone sat down like an audience should, though I’d have preferred it if people had walked around and navigated the space a little more.
A series of pulses and clicks slowly came to the fore, at times reaching the frequency of pitch – the guitar as guitar was just recognisable at times. Ejaculative spurts led to a more continuous tonal texture – that delicious fuzzy narcotic, hairdresser’s-shaver-against-the-skull multi-harmonic sound, a sound which seems to follow Thompson everywhere he goes. I first heard him doing this at Leeds Metropolitan University where he filled a room with a living pulsing beating organism. At any time the whole texture threatened to break into feedback. I could hear Hendrix in there somewhere, as you’d expect with three single coil pickups plus electricity. At times a long Shepard tone seemed to move through the space, relaxing yet holding one’s attention as the accompaniment of the beating became perceptible.
My only comment is that I think an opportunity was missed to engage more with the space. I’d have liked to have heard some of the amplified sound bouncing off that fine interior smoothcast concrete wall. But Thompson is a consummate and confident performer, a fine showman. His performance made me think of another Austinite, Stevie Ray Vaughan, a guitarist’s guitarist who pushed the boundaries in his own playing, crafting a blues style of the finest calibre. He was also fond of jumping up and down on his whammy bar and doing that Texan gunslinger thang with his guitar strap, ending up playing it behind his back. What would he have thought? Southern Gentleman that he was, I imagine he’d have doffed his cap, smiled that toothy cocaine smile and said something with an ‘f’ word in it.
Back in the lecture theatre we were treated to Thompson and Beins playing together, thus offering us in total an overview of the two essential kinds of improvisation – solo, where you improvise with the material to hand, and improvisation with another where you do the first but have to take the other guy into account. The second of these brings into play several restrictions; despite Derek Bailey’s assertion that there are no rules, I think that some measure of respect is essential, though that needn’t necessarily imply spinelessness.
This was a first class set. A complex texture emerged slowly from a solitary sine wave, problematic for the man on the desk trying to eliminate unwanted feedback. I was very quickly itching for more of a walk in/chill-out space for this item. The sit down and watch model is too 20th/19th/18th century.
Here I should say more about the sound reinforcement. Initially I thought that the speakers were too far apart for a stereo spread. I’ve used these large Genelecs in the studio and they present you with an organic ‘thing’ that moves in, between and around the frontal panorama, exceeding any notion of simple ’stereo’. But here Aled Edwards had achieved the remarkable effect of making the music appear to emanate, amplified, from the actual original source of the sounds, that is, from the instruments themselves, for example when Beins rolled steel ball bearings around the inside of a Zen bowl. It was as if the large speakers were transparent. The panning gestures of Beins and the textural drift across the two players seemed to be localised or fixed on the actual sources. And I thought I knew it all. A fine piece of live sound reinforcement indeed.
Returning to the music, at slow/no tempo one player would urge the other to intensify a movement, to increase the friction of a passage. At times the resulting music became characterised by ground with very little figure. I enjoyed the pace of the entries, the pace of change. I even managed to construct a sci-fi space narrative at one point (me and my narratives).
What I really liked about this music is that it never lapsed into featureless dronality. Towards the end a sense of tension and anticipation built up – the feeling of intention became palpable, holding the energy but distilling methodically into a very restrained and subtle form, a pleasant change from the predictable ‘quiet/mayhem/quiet’ arch form that less adept players might adopt.
Some final reflections, somewhat random and perhaps academic. I began to entertain a comparison with two jazzers trading over a standard, having had little time to work up their set. Musicians in this field often choose not to work up a set in advance of a performance in order to avoid predictablity, and besides, they have the skills and ‘chops’ in abundance. I’d be interested to know more about what these chops might be – a fertile field for investigation at a later date.
So, exhilaration and inspiration, then it all fell apart. Aberdeen had the last word, letting us know that experimental music is barely tolerated. The woman responsible for the building, this representative of the City of Aberdeen to these fine international musicians, made an announcement at 2155 hours that we were to have everything and everyone out of the building by 2200 hours or she would ‘get it in the neck’ (a prospect that became increasingly attractive by around 2020 hours). This spiteful individual will have been hiding behind a door, stopwatch in hand, bitterly frustrated at missing out on late night shopping (along with the rest of her ilk), or possibly at missing a thrilling installment of Holby City with a box of Quality Street to hand. Five minutes to clear all the cables, speakers, musician’s gear, etc, etc. Of course this mean spirited ‘wifie’ knew perfectly well that what she was demanding was impossible – she just wanted to make us all feel bad, to attract attention and to let us know who was in charge. Aberdeen is a haven for these types, from school janitors to employees at the train station. They all attend the same training school where they do the advanced course in contempt for the general public. The finest graduate of this training establishment was the bloke who stopped Alvin Lee (yes, the the very same lightning riffer from Woodstock) at His Majesty’s Theatre sometime in the ’70s by walking up to the stage at EXACTLY 2200 hours, just as Alvin came out of his last solo into the final chorus, tapping him on the foot, and, unhappy with almost having a Gibson 335 rammed down his throat, promptly switching off the PA.
And you wonder why I headed south at the first opportunity.
Review by James Wyness
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For Tripartite Collision/feb 23rd (2006) [released on state sanctioned records]
Resonance Magazine Issue 53: Resonancemag.com
Only a handful of current sonic pioneers-Animal Collective, Wolf Eyes, Iannis Xenakis-really explore the possibilities of isolated frequencies and their effect (usually an adverse one) on listeners. On Tripartite Collision, Bill Thompson crafts a difficult sound painting of radio buzzes, subharmonic frequencies, digital whistling, and relentless, unmitigated sine waves that recalls both underground noise nerds and scientists who treat sound as a medium. However, this album elicits less of a listening experience than a physical reaction, with certain tones generating headaches and eye twitches, and others inspiring euphoric new sensations in body parts that usually have no relationship with sound. The question could be asked: Does Thompson create music or alien massages? Ross Simonini
Bill Thompson is a former guitarist now moving in electro-acoustic improvisation circles, whose sound falls somewhere between Keith Rowe and the more ambient Arcane Device. Although his early professional career was with a number of ensembles in Austin, Texas, he moved to Scotland in 2004 to study with Pete Stollery. Since then, he has been active in a number of different aspects of the Scottish experimental music scene (check out the links from around Scotland on his web site). He has a number of releases on various mp3 and CD-r labels, and Tripartite Collision is the second release on a new label, State Sanctioned Records, released in an edition of 200.
The title track sets up a deep drone, with jerky, skittering short bursts, and a lead voice composed from quick static movements and feedback squalls. He adds another, harsher drone at the top, very raw sounding. The occasional voice in the mix recalls short waves. It eventually gives way to a rich, full drone, with a gradual elimination of all but the smallest events that might get in the way of a full appreciation.
The opening sound of Feb'23rd is voices, treated until they sound almost like sea birds, slowly evolving into a sound mass where the opening sounds are fast moving, almost a melody. I get a lot of avian and reptilian imagery, but a lot of serenity as well. Heavily manipulated voices appear from nowhere, the first sound that doesn't sound completely electronic in origin. After a long, very quiet section in the middle, a slow pulse, repeating about every eight seconds, becomes the first new layer, and is soon joined by another, even slower oscillation. The piece builds to a final high point around after nearly a half hour, then slowly fades away. Thompson has a video of a live performance of the piece on his web site, which is not the same performance as the one on the CD.
Thompson shares with Arcane Device a way to use a raw electronic sound without having it sound harsh. He sets a number of sounds into motion with different rates of change, and slowly evolves the texture over the course of the two fairly lengthy pieces. Tripartite Collision successfully treads a middle ground between ambience and noise and is an excellent set of analog electronic drones.
Review by Caleb Deupree
Sound323
The second release on this promising UK label features two extended pieces by Bill Thompson, a former jazz guitarist whose battle with tendonitis forced him to shift his focus to sound art and minimalist composition, with interesting results. He has spent the past ten years working in the improvised electronic sound scene, mainly in Austin, Texas (where he regularly performs with the GATES Ensemble) and Aberdeen, Scotland (Mickel Mass), using everything from prepared guitar, cd mixers, laptop, radio, DIY circuit-bent devices, and other noise-making devices to create mesmerizing drone epics driven by damaged electronics and lo-fi noise. The first piece, the title track, features a subdued hypno-bass pulse that gradually becomes enveloped in fried noise snippets, ring-modulator sounds, glitch electronics, and a looming cloud of electrodrone fog. The piece becomes thick (but not dense) with overmodulated and processed tones that interact in harmonic fashion with the bass pulse that eventually slows to more of a dark, throbbing drone. The second piece, "Feb'23rd," takes over half an hour to unfold and is an evolving collage of small audio files traded over the web with members of Edinburgh's FOUND ensemble. The musicians traded the audio snippets, altering them with each pass, and the final pieces were assembled into this exotic-sounding tapestry of unidentifiable noises, hums, and field recording snippets. The defiled audio bits play out over a bed of droning, shimmering harmonic feedback and hum, like a processed stream of alien audio consciousness speeding by in clouds of soothing drone. As with all SSR releases, this one is limited to 200 copies in understated but spiffy pressboard sleeves. Nice, and worth hearing.
The One True Dead Angel
The second release on this promising UK label features two extended pieces by Bill Thompson, a former jazz guitarist whose battle with tendonitis forced him to shift his focus to sound art and minimalist composition, with interesting results. He has spent the past ten years working in the improvised electronic sound scene, mainly in Austin, Texas (where he regularly performs with the GATES Ensemble) and Aberdeen, Scotland (Mickel Mass), using everything from prepared guitar, cd mixers, laptop, radio, DIY circuit-bent devices, and other noise-making devices to create mesmerizing drone epics driven by damaged electronics and lo-fi noise. The first piece, the title track, features a subdued hypno-bass pulse that gradually becomes enveloped in fried noise snippets, ring-modulator sounds, glitch electronics, and a looming cloud of electrodrone fog. The piece becomes thick (but not dense) with overmodulated and processed tones that interact in harmonic fashion with the bass pulse that eventually slows to more of a dark, throbbing drone. The second piece, "Feb'23rd," takes over half an hour to unfold and is an evolving collage of small audio files traded over the web with members of Edinburgh's FOUND ensemble. The musicians traded the audio snippets, altering them with each pass, and the final pieces were assembled into this exotic-sounding tapestry of unidentifiable noises, hums, and field recording snippets. The defiled audio bits play out over a bed of droning, shimmering harmonic feedback and hum, like a processed stream of alien audio consciousness speeding by in clouds of soothing drone. As with all SSR releases, this one is limited to 200 copies in understated but spiffy pressboard sleeves. Nice, and worth hearing.
Free Noise
Second great release from home grown label belonging to Rob Hart aka Eaten By Children. Scotland based Thompson has been involved in 'sonic art' for ten years and has seen the inside of the BBC, Resonance FM and various. Here two contrasting live pieces demonstrate the slow build technique, similar to some of Hart's work. The title track running in at 11.52 left me wanting more even though it is almost entirely made up of a (quality) underlying sub bass drone and a few contemplative high and mid range fizzes. The quality of the audio is something that is paramount here and the material contrasts with examples in the similar vein, which are in their plenty. I got more in the second track but this time a longer (32.19) and even more introspective, especially after a grand first phase of 17 minutes, leaving it on to attend to a visit from my mother found it as a background conducive to chat even though on the surface slightly ominous and unsettling. Stoners will like this (after your mother's gone!) as there's plenty of imagination and colour after the central section; a single, wavering drone of some six minutes where time disappears. So not to worry you pacey types (!) as (uber-gradually) sizzly, meditative friends join in again to the end warp-out, leaving ( in the silence which is now anything but, as a passing car freaks out my state) an awareness of the live molecules in everything...
Perhaps I missed out on Bill Thompson somewhere along the line, but he has had releases on Spectral House, Bremsstrahlung and Autueach othermn Records, but yet this is my first encounter with his work. Originally Thompson was an aspiring jazz guitarist, but thought that composing was perhaps of more interest. He spends his time in Austin, Texas and Aberdeen, Scotland and in his work as an improviser he uses prepared guitar, CD mixers, laptop, radio, found objects and circuit-bent devices.
On this release two pieces, but if you didn't know, it would hard to hear, since they fade over into each other and might as well be one single piece. The title piece was created in 2005 as part of the See/Hear event in Inverurie in Scotland starts out with a low end bass hum, and some pitched crackles, but as the piece evolves more mid range sounds come in like a swirling dervish and makes a very fine piece of microsound. Very lush and ambient but also quite engaging.
In the second piece, 'Feb'23rd', Thompson composes a piece made out of small audio files made by the musicians of the Found Ensemble from Edinburgh. These pieces were traded over the web, and everybody altered whatever he or she thought was necessary.
In the end Thompson created this piece of music, which is, as said, quite similar to the first piece, but much longer. Thompson stretches out the material to quite an extend, and lets all the sound in there 'breath'. They slowly shift back and forth, going out of sync and certainly in the second part of the piece things turn quite microsound-ambient-glitch (you don't need to call like that if the term shocks you) in the best Taylor Deupree tradition.
Semtex MagazineState Sanctioned Records is a rather new English label focusing on unorthodox music. Its second release is one by Bill Thompson, a Texan composer and sound artist who migrated to Scotland. Among the instruments used in his pieces prepared guitar, radio transmitters, laptop, circuit-bend devices and found objects can be traced. The two tracks on the record can be situated in the field of electro acoustic improvisation; past collaborations with an artist like Keith Rowe are not accidental.
Tripartite Collision, the 11-minute opener of the album, was first premiered at the Sea/Hear event in Scotland. It starts out with a buzzing sub-bass tone where gradually an eclectic accumulation of noise, rustling and ultrasonic noises are added. In the middle of the piece the sub-bass pines away, clearing the way to the fizz and the fuzz, to sneak back in some minutes later and ending the piece solitary.
Feb'23rd came about by exchanging and treating small audio-files with the Scottish FOUND ensemble and Bill Thompson crystallized the piece in its definite form. Lasting over half an hour it has a slowly continuing structure of mysteriously hovering digital fuzz, rattlesnake resembling noises and other pit pat. Amidst Feb’23rd a ghostly harmonic tone horses around with silence, a few moments later the piece builds itself back up again.
Both pieces have a delicate and mesmeric feel and float between electro-acoustic improvisation and fine-drawn ambient. The record comes in a carefully edited rectangular cardboard and is limited to 200 pieces. Good stuff.
Excellent music from Bill Thompson, who started as a jazz guitarist but had to give up due to tendonitis; with all due respect, looks like the world of minimal electroacoustic music has gained from Thompson's loss. The two tracks presented here were conceived according to completely different settings and parameters. The title track is a droning minefield to be crossed with all aerials up, but indeed nothing explodes; it's a looming mass of subharmonics and flanged frequencies spiced by penetrating highs that rapidly catches our attention and, as soon as our brain adapts to its components, fades to black in all its galvanizing malevolence. "Feb'23rd" is a collaboration between Thompson and Edinburgh's Found Ensemble, the parts exchanging sound files via internet and setting their own modifications at work during the process. Clocking in at over 32 minutes, the piece offers more space for the ideas to evolve and achieve their self-determination. What sounds like vocal radioactivity is gradually replaced by protuberant discharges and hollow soulless emissions in a sort of heavenward invocation by a malfunctioning robot. Clouds of alluring resonances put our mind in solitary confinement for several minutes, only to be complemented by unhurried series of electronic waves and spiraliform networks that recall Nurse With Wound's "Soliloquy for Lilith". It's the most fascinating section of an overall brilliant record.
With this release, London's "State Sanctioned Records" (Label of Rob Hart from Noise-mongers Eaten By Children) releases its second album. The first being Eaten By Children's very own "Sword Swallower's Grave". Like its predecessor, this album is also limited to just 200 copies, this one being copy 68/200.
Bill has written both of these tracks for local exhibitions in his native Aberdeen, and according to the label page, he produces "prepared guitar, digital cd mixers, laptop, radio, and digital/analogue synthesizers, as well as found objects and DIY circuit-bent devices.". "Tripartite Collision", in its beautiful Cellulite cover, complete with etch-a-sketch scribbling, claims to be an Intense but Delicate journey, and if it's anything like the SSR release before it, it probably shouldn't be played in public. Ever.
It does in fact open with some intricate but impressing Power Electronics, the first few minutes of Tripartite Collision, are Pulsating loops of Electronic Bass, pretty low in the mix, as my speakers are on loud, and this is about half the volume it should be. I expect to find myself peeling myself off the wall any minute now. Actually a nice hypnotic track, and the Stoners amongst you will have a field day. The track goes into that bizare "Ambient Noise" territory, towards the end, and fuck the critics, It's excellent. The way it is done, the way the pulses and vibrations change and compliment each other, before turning into an Ambient nightmare is just incredible. On paper, this kind of sound is plain and dreary, but the underlying textures here just rewrite the way I view it. A track I will no doubt listen to again, and again.
At shortly over half an hour in length, "Feb'23rd" is dangerously close to becoming a laughing number, I never advise Ambient artists to exceed this point, unless the offering is very rich and original in sound. This track is more Vibrant, louder, more confident. Nothing happens as frantically, or as quickly, but the slow build ups leave the listener enough independence and space to reflect in their own time. Go downstairs. Make a Coffee. Come back, induce a trance-like state. This album won't hurt you. It will endear, comfort, and protect you as you slip into a lucid moment. If you want to simply listen to it, you can find yourself painting a portrait with many colours, the sound could be one of a million things, from an Icy morning trying to banish the Sun, to a Construction Site underground, boring into your skull.
It is with much pride and happiness, that after listening to this album, I have gone from expecting an interesting and chaotic mixture of Noise, to actually hearing and bookmarking this track as one of the best new artists of 2006. Not just that, but based on the strength of this, I urge every single reader of HH to visit the State Sanctioned website. This won't ever go down as an album to inspire artists, but for the second release of a brand new, independant, and obscure label, this will lift the veil right off the head, and quite possibly propel SSR into a much bigger, much more extreme world. They sure as hell deserve it. As does Bill Thompson.
The best thing to come out of Scotland since William Wallace? Or even Border Biscuits? You Decide. I know my answer.
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Scarce advertising kills excellent music. That's why I don't excessively love downloadable releases, besides living in a commodity deprived area (no broadband internet). If the kind soul that belongs to “the artist also known as Professor LoFi” hadn't suggested him to send me this on a CDR, I'd have probably missed a great recording. Because this is great, no questions about it. Lasting just over half an hour, “...of memory and dreams” was commissioned by, and realized for, 7hings in the occasion of the 2007's Huddersfield's Contemporary Music Festival. As the author himself writes, this performance “blurs the boundaries between composition, improvisation and indeterminacy”. Yet, somehow it appears like a preconceived score, each element masterfully placed in a chain of happenings whose common denominator is something that could only be described as “vital flow”. With a few deviations, even less discharges and a mumbling-if-buzzing flux that affirms its gripping beauty in the transcendental final section of the piece, Thompson shows new alternatives to post Keith Rowe-ism, defining the limits of drone-based soundscaping with a pronounced tendency to implosion, withdrawing himself in the closet of the untold while caressing our neural apparatus with some of the most fascinating sounds that a man can muster for a solo exhibition. And he also managed to fit a few welcome birdsongs in there. Scintillating, bright-minded, helplessly questioning sound analysis functioning as therapy against the mental intumescences that daily stupidity systematically generates. After the remarkable “Tripartite Collision” on State Sanctioned, this outing confirms that this gentleman is for real, as one looks forward to discover what's boiling in his future's pot.
There is a trajectory that many improvised electro acoustic performances reach, which unique in every given context, often manage to transport you to a Zen like point where you become one with the signal and phase in and out of listening to the development of structure or dynamic of the work. This is not a comment on the given quality of a piece, rather it's ability to loll you into the necessary transcendental state in which to appreciate it. This is no more so than in Bill Thompsons recent work Of Memory and Dreams where tertiary structural form meet processed drones in a 32 minute piece, which is every bit as sonically suggestive as it's title.
Of the three key elements of processed signals, field recordings and frequency manipulation, it is the collaging of more distinct found field sound that gives this recording a certain audio visual quality. It places you within the mix, rather than on it's periphery and with excellent stereo imaging, it's hard not to let your senses travel along on this topographical soundscape. Having said that it is not always an easy listen but as a trait Thompson has always left that to others, preferring to reward the challenge with a sense of listener accomplishment. You really do have to put the time aside to listen to this and as a single track, it is difficult to pause and come back if you want the experience of the full journey.
No stranger to the pages of Furthernoise, Bill has been composing and performing as a sound artist for over ten years and Of Memory and Dreams demonstrates him honing his sound to completeness. While certain northern European noise influences are perceptible, Bill Thompson retains an indisputable originality in his sound that will enthuse many interested in this genre.
Review by Roger Mills
Enigmatic sound-sculptor Bill Thompson brings on the drone (and some eccentric noises) in this lengthy single track available by download only from UK label Seven Things. Approximately thirty minutes in length, the piece was commissioned by the label for their set in the 2007 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and features Thompson live using a combination of found objects, field recordings, electronic gadgets (including several electronic toothbrushes generously donated by AMM guitarist Keith Rowe just before playing; I defy anyone to tell me where they actually appear in the piece), a laptop, bent circuitry, and other enigmatic resources. The result is an ever-developing stretch of drone, cyclonic noise, and jumbled sounds, the audio equivalent of a swarm of tornadoes appearing far on the horizon and approaching steadily, inexorably, leaving a trail of chaos and dissolution in their wake. There's a heavy drone quotient courtesy of a high-pitching cycling drone that never really disappears (although it does recede into the background at times and is occasionally drowned out by other noises), and at times is the most prominent sound source, but there are also cryptic noises and sound textures. The tail end of the piece, in fact, is almost all drone with intermittent noises for sonic flavoring, and that drone is a good one. This is not a "heavy" noise piece -- it gets loud at times, yes, but it's less about audio terrorism than it is about exploring different sound textures within the confines of a deep drone -- but it's definitely engaging, despite the length. It's fitting that some of the materials came from Keith Rowe, because this is comparable in style and texture to some of the more freeform work of AMM. Excellent work, and certainly worth the minimal cost of the download. (The site also makes available a free sample and an interview with Thompson, which are worth checking out for those who may still be undecided.)
I haven't got a clue what composer/sound-artist Bill Thompson uses to produce the sound given off on "...Of Memory and Dreams". Could it be a broken CD that is fed through a laptop or perhaps prepared guitar that is amplified and processed through his home-made software? No matter, the half hour work begins with an elongated, high-pitched sound. This is one of these extreme high-pitches that makes the listeners grab their ears for relief, especially after more than ten minutes have gone by. All the while, that sound still persists. Past the ten minute mark, the pitch alters slightly. Then, the sound gets somewhat fatter. At the twenty minute point, the sound becomes more subdued. It then takes a gentle tumble downwards in intensity, while maintaining more or less the same speed. Certainly a very challenging listening session but one that pays off dividends during repeated listening sessions.
- Tom Sekowski
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For august/september: with Brent Fariss (2006) [released on Spectral House]
Working with new music ensembles such as ThomFariCraw, Austin New Music Co-op, Araxia Trio, and Gates Ensemble, American composer Brent Fariss has now joined forces with sound artist/composer Bill Thompson to produce a massive homage to the softer side of the drone. Made up of two elongated pieces [each one named after a summer month], the duo moves in creaky and mysterious ways to give us one of the more satisfying records of this year already. Polarizing the gritty elements with the more hushed ones, the pieces move between the tranquil to the more disturbing, head-shaking turns. Heavy electronic element is present throughout but what's more pleasing is the pacing these two adhere to. Neither rushed, nor done in a turtle's pace; their communal sound is that of mid tempo. Field recordings are used heavily as well. "August" features a thick plethora of crickets playing an off-tune melody. As the chorus grows weaker, it turns in on itself into a machine-like sound that permeates most of the remainder of the piece. Not unlike "August", "September" follows through with sounds of horse hoofs hitting the ground, amplified insect sounds and a bunch of animal sounds that I can't quite pinpoint. Over time, very slowly, metallic buzzing emerges out of nowhere. These fly around the stereo speakers from left to right and back again. Rougher, cricket-like sounds pop out. They are then accompanied by soft-footsteps-in-the-snow sounds. Both pieces are finished before you can fully immerse yourself in their glow. Time plays a secondary role as the mind is fooled by so many elements happening within each piece all at once. Elements of white noise, prepared guitars, laptops, synths and knob tweakings are evident. All of these are pure sounds of finding your own way through field of experimental sound. Bravo!
- Tom Sekowski
This is my first encounter with both Spectral House as well as Brent Fariss and Bill Thompson. The first plays 'prepared contrabass, electronics, field recordings' and Thompson plays 'electronics, amplified percussion and field recordings'. Both studied composition at Texas State University in the mid 90s, and they cross lines of modern composition, electronics, noise and free improvisation. As far as i understand both pieces on this release were commissioned by an arts organization to be played live but the result were thus nice that they decided to go into the studied to do a full, good studio recording of it. Rightly so, because this is music that deserves to be heard. In 'August' things start at the long drone end, with a wall of electronics, but gradually over the course of this piece, things move towards letting the instruments be heard as such and even ends with a desolate bowed string. The second piece, 'September' works along less well defined lines, and is more an open ended collage form piece of music, moving through various textures, both electronically and acoustically. Both pieces are great works from the world where composing and improvising meet up. No doubt we'll be hearing more from them. (FdW) Address: http://www.spectralhouse.com
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For untitled (mcalpine) (2005) [released and available for download on bremsstrahlung records]
"Chance favors the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur
"This work of stunning beauty presents itself more like a masterwork of compositional restraint and focused exploration of timbre than the enhanced field recording it is. Thompson's prepared mind allowed him to capture one of the most moving pieces of sound you are likely to experience this year. It must be heard to be believed…"
"Bill Thompson exterminates hunting for the grotesque WEB of a chemical anthropoid brain universe of the terror fear cytoplasm that jointed to the insanity medium of the hyperreal HIV scanners gene-dub of the corpse city."
- Kenji Siratori, author of Blood Electric
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For Liminal Passage (for Aberdeen Sound Festival 2006)
"...These fascinating pieces from the early Spanish school were followed by the first of the evening's’electroacoustic works, Bill Thompson’s Liminal Passage. In this piece and later too in Claire Singer’s a’fàs soilleir I was reminded of some of Ligeti’s compositions where rhythm and melody have largely been purged from music in order for the attention to be concentrated instead on constantly evolving shades of harmonic colour. It has to be said of course that this is solely my personal reaction to the music and it is possible that Ligeti’s music was the last thing on the minds of either composer. Interestingly enough, in Bill Thompson’s piece in particular, rhythm had not really been abolished at all. The clashing of different sound wave patterns created a throbbing of rhythm that ran all through this music. The dimming of the lights in the Chapel for this performance concentrated the mind on the sounds alone and this was entirely beneficial for this piece." University of Aberdeen Music Review 2006
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For resonare/in absentia (for Marischall Museum 2006)
"... Composer Bill Thompson directed us to the display of Greek pottery in a glass case in that section of the Marischal College Museum, which is on the right hand side on approach to the Picture Gallery. Thompson had been permitted to place microphones against or inside the exhibits to record the ambient sounds coming from the jars at a very high level of recording. The composer's input to these sounds seemed to have been comparatively minimal. This in itself was interesting, since it raised the question of how much alteration had been applied to the generic sound sources by the other six composer/performers whose work we heard on Thursday." University of Aberdeen Music Review 2005
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With The Gates Ensemble
The Gates Ensemble is an electro-acoustic ensemble formed in September 2001 to realize the piece Gates, for which the ensemble was eventually named. The piece involved free improvisation within the context of strict entrance and exit times. Since its inception, Gates has had a somewhat fluid membership. As of the time of this recording, Gates consisted of Brent Fariss, Jacob Green, Holland Hopson, Bill Thompson, Josh Ronsen, and Travis Weller. Past members have included David Drew, Afshar Kharat, Clark Crawford, and others.
"...fluent and imaginative, sustained electronic drones and whines weaving among dramatic instrumental clusters." - The Wire
"...these six improvisers are great musicians who are able to produce some cohesive music in their explorations of pure sound." - Vital Weekly
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With Michel Mass
"Finally we turn to Lost Conversations, a far more experimental, free-form collection that features the talents of Mike Napier, Andy Da Kipp, Duncan Hart, Bill Thompson, and Alan Davidson, who together have created some wonderfully abstract soundscapes, full of raindrop melodies and creaking electronics. Half-fool Optimist demonstrates this blend of acoustic and electronics perfectly, the piece slowly turning to chaos and disorder before Lost Conversation repeats the trick, the softly picked guitar and soothing cello being slowly engulfed by a swarm of electronic insects. On For Lol (A Doffing Of The Cap), I presume that would be Lol Coxhill, the formula is reversed as some free-jazz noise is slowly lightened by a drifting cloud of echoed piano. The best, however, is saved until last with a 40 minute live improvisation recorded at The Tunnels (Aberdeen), which shows the band in fine form, with chattering electronics and acoustic melodies being infused into a cello led drone, that breaks down into free noise, before the band get seriously psychedelic with some deep-space explorations that have a west-coast feel to them. Finally the stutter of the electronics take over again as the piece disintegrates with a flurry of white noise and feedback sounding like a long-lost kraut rock classic." (Simon Lewis)
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With Brekekekexkoaxkoax
BREKEKEKEXKOAXKOAX - We used to be such good friends (Hushroom)
This impossibly named collective - founded in 1996 - recognizes its leader in Josh Ronsen, a Texas-based sound and mail artist who also happens to be an active force in the outflow of unadulterated music and writing (he publishes an online webzine, Monk Mink Pink Punk, and an email newsletter, Austinnitus). The record contains about 73 minutes of music divided in four tracks. "Haifa Hi-Fi" features Ronsen on electric guitar and clarinet, Jacob Green on oboe, organ, "misc instr" and electronics, Glen Nuckolls on acoustic guitar, banjo and violin and Genevieve Walsh on flute and snare drum. It's pure improvisation, that which many are convinced to be playing but don't even get close: approximate shapes, detuned strings and unpretentious approaches to a collective imagination that lasts the space of a moment allow the music to fluctuate in search of a definition that never materializes. The four parties look for critical tresholds and hidden places, from which they seem to observe their reciprocal self-response to the complete lack of a so-called "style". Moments exist when the creature tries to spread the wings and learn to fly without success, due to an undescribable frailty that is also the true, essential beauty of the piece. "Figure or failure II" is a short solo work for turntable, voice, electronics and computer - all by Ronsen - boiling with discreet electronic possibilities and subterranean interferences under a fixed droning hum that stabilizes the matter in an engrossing self-replicating cycle, unfortunately ending too soon. "Tuesday on Sunday" is a quartet of electronics, oboe/organ, electric guitar and computer (respectively by Vanessa Arn, Green, Ronsen and Bill Thompson). Uncertain guitar arpeggios nourish a growingly tense layering of acute dissonant frequencies that generate a distressing sense of unexpected and untold; the repetition of selected patterns renders the music a little more permanent in memory, but the feeling remains one of decay and forgetfulness, reinforced by a pretty murky equalization, until the whole fuses into a final ejaculation of stridency. "For I.D. II" is a solo for bowed bass guitar that closes the show with the most frictional music of the whole CD, a roaring upheaval of granular harmonics and harsh resonances accompanying a bad trip through minimal hopelessness.
"...the four players take the time to actually pay attention to what the other is playing and meditate on it good n' long until they decide to sneak in with their own contribution..."
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"...John Cage performances tend to demonstrate that there's no such thing as true randomness in human endeavour: however independently the performers may operate, there's no escaping the human facility for pattern recognition and amplification, and at the times when there was the most activity in the performance, with the performers utterly focused in on what they were doing, it felt more and more like a complex system operating as a whole. At these times, questions of meaning or meaninglessness became irrelevant, and it felt like being in a hive of alien activity - elegant, strange, occasionally disquieting but fascinating and oddly soothing. Even though the voices and electronic sounds being made may have created discord, it was a purposeful, living discord that felt good to be a part of..."
"...John Cage's Song Books were performed by Exaudi directed by James Weeks in an open session electronically moderated by students from the University of East Anglia's Music and Electronics degree course and sound artist Bill Thompson. During the sixty minute performance the Song Books were performed simultaneously at different "sound docks" around the Britten Studio with the audience free to move around during the performance in Jonathan Harvey approved fashion. We live in an age where friction-free music (aka smooth classics and smooth jazz) flows effortlessly from composer to performer and then, via various digital networks, to listener and on further into equally effortless oblivion. So what a revelation to hear a live performance of sticky music that forces the listener, as John Cage intended, to discipline themself and/or free themself of their likes and dislike..."
"...another stunning evening at snape maltings - EXAUDI working with Bill Thompson explored John Cage’s Song Books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_Books_(Cage) EXAUDI are so wonderful – i love it as they retune themselves throughout the evening – like the tuning of a machine – constantly navigating their sound within a specific band width. the graphic scores and set ups for the creation of the sound were exquisite and mind expanding. My favourite has to be Solo for Voice 5 (SE) “Wander” over a provided portrait of Thoreau, such that the path resembles a melodic line. Each of eight parts is given a set of time units, ie length of which is determined by the speed with which Part 2 can be performed. The texts are letters and syllable from Thoreau. Electronics should change with the facial features. Accompaniment may include sounds of wind, rain, thunder, etc. http://vorlon.case.edu/~zwb2/songbooks.htm the idea made me think about Eno’s Oblique Strategies – check out the on-line version http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html overall it was an evening that makes one think how marvellous snape is – anybody who complains about the fact that nothing interesting happens in suffolk is just wrong..."
