Zero Point Three Recurring
So, there I am in full flow at the Modified Nationals show, when I meet these really strange people. Led by an arty type called David Henckel, who as well as being possessed of DJ skills, is Artist In Residence at the University of London in addition to being a freelance interactive public artist (his personal site is here check out the moans and groans edit of The Archers. link) and he gets involved in some really cool and odd stuff, including an installation at a gallery and art space called The Bluecoat in Liverpool, right next to the BBC Merseyside offices and beneath the massive Radio Tower. Henckel was bear-leading these two musician types, Dan Wilkinson and Leon Hardman, around the car show. Now I love ‘˜musos’ and wanted to mix bands in stadiums by ambition as a lad like my mate Big Mick does for Metallica and I worked in a fifty-bands-a-week five-room rehearsal complex as manager at the time Bros were becoming famous.
I KNEW their answer was, ‘About seven PM-ish next Tuesday, mate!’ The question was ‘When will I, will I be famous?’ Any Brossettes out there, Helen H?
So, I recognised their muso-ness. But they were in the grip of a condition even worse than being a muso, as they were tone poets, with dangerous synthesisers in their hands. A Korg Monotron Duo and another They had been very bravely permitted to plug these bonkers little battery-powered musical devices into a high power audio car belonging to the wonderful James Renshaw by description of his beard and roof box. And these tone poets had the look of emotional tumescence about them, with shining eyes and a hunger for MORE BASS!
I talked with David and as he explained almost-embarrassed-as-though-to-a-non-arts-person what he was doing there and why he needed three modified cars with sound systems and yet still with back seats to sit and film and record from.
The Event (bottom leftwrit small)
I ‘˜got’ the whole weird thing quite quick, after having a struggle with it and then let him have it, both barrels, with some crazy audio shit and how I might be able to help. Stuff about how my dad was a painter and so I even grasped how galleries work, showing off how he was in an exhibition in the West End recently. Henckel-San was delighted and took my contact. I meanwhile, pointed him off in the direction of the nutters from John Kleis, who have an astonishingly good PA car built as demo, to see if they would play ball. I gather they did.
After the Modified Nationals show, I got a call and was determined to help, to get the loan of three sets of Ground Zero speakers – two pairs of the 7x10s reviewed here: link as well as set of three way 6x9s, the Ground Zero model GZRF69X11.
The Zero Point Three Recurring guys, for that is their collective name, added amplification and built a box to house the speakers and installed the three loaned Corbeau Sportline RRX fully lever-reclinable bucket racing seats that the lovely folks at Corbeau immediately agreed to kindly send when I called. It was most strange.but a HUGE thanks to both companies for being so arty-aware and cool!
The Installation
I was so chuffed to help. It made the installation sound amazing in the concrete acoustics of the installation space.
Basically, as a butt sat down in each seat, a video would start, projected on to the opposite wall, to which the guys’ crazed Korg synth tones were appended, together with an altogether independent set of surround audio from Preston Bus Garage or some other street source, (I think!) ran from posh speakers up ion each corner of the room. It was controlled by a Mac laptop.
The Banner
David had asked at the car show if I would like to deliver a talk and I said, ‘Yes!’ like a fool, as the event was way out of my comfort zone, not my audience and I experienced Stage-Fright-In-Advance, in lumps with hair on. Which is really odd, as when it gets to it, I invariably want to just get right up in the audience’s grille.
In the event, it was a ‘˜select’ group, who had like four people in it who were into cars as well as music and knew David Henckel from Preston and numbered less than thirty altogether, including, slightly scarily, the really cool lady who is the curator there at the Bluecoat. Who stayed to hear it all and in the event, said lovely things about the installation and how people had engaged with it through its tenure at the gallery, settling back into the Corbeau Sportline RRX seats for twenty minutes at a time, taking in the whole tone thing, with its automotive throbular and bassalicious general feel and literally – as at different frequencies the seat rig vibrated in different places around your body, which was both fortuitous and cool.
Below is a two-clip video, just to show you a bit of Liverpoolness as well as the inside of the room at the Bluecoat. (With an intro where I stayed, including bonus points for spotting controversial previous review item in this clip!) You may well not be able to hear very much from me warbling on the sound track in the second part as the amazing shifting dynamics of the sound from an actual synthesiser is SO much wider than any recording format including CD that the normally effective compressor does not stand a chance it’s all really essence of how it happened, with folks having a go on the Korg synths that were brought in and connected to some badass small JBL PA speakers. Enjoy. This was a bit mad for me but I loved it and there is a DEADLY SERIOUS CONCLUSION!
…which is this That Korg make this madder than a bag of frogs synthesiser, the Monotron Duo, (seen here: link) for to sell at £30-odd, which can make crazier bass than you would believe and can be used as, like a thousand-times-more-processing-power bass generator, than anything we have seen before. The biggest, baddest system owners were too chicken to allow a mad tone poet with a synthesiser at their systems that day en masse but I think we aughta GET one and bloody try it! IMA gonna DO it! What’d be really cool would be to get Korg themselves horny for you guys.. after all, you are a community of possible punters they have never talked to and now, due to David and his boys, Dan Wilkinson and Leon Hardman, we KNOW about them! And I think I just found a new Cult Toy for Bad Boys
I was really energised to deliver my talk and covered all sorts of mad stuff about audio, cars, the extremes of bass and what it can do and even regaled a very middle class audience with details of the 33Hz Clitoral Resonance Frequency! I was applauded thrice and loved every minute of the event as it went down.
So a big thanks to David Henckel for a slightly bonkers gig and expect to hear more strange stuff in this direction in the not too distant future!
