This is a completely unofficial, unauthorized bootleg remix, so if Taylor Swift’s label ever objects I’ll have to take it down. The label have put the acapella for this song on YouTube though, so I thought I’d give it a go. You can download it for free from SoundCloud, and it’s also on YouTube.

On the surface this song is a story about a holiday love affair, but there’s something a bit deeper in there for me. It evokes the tension people often feel between their ties to the place where they grew up as a child, and their desire as an adult to make a life elsewhere. A sense of leaving but never quite being able to fully escape.

So making the remix I was guided in an intuitive way by this mix of belonging and not-belonging expressed in the vocal – a kind of torn, heartbroken feeling. I wonder whether this initial process, of establishing some sort of relationship to the material, is the most important part of doing a remix. It gives you, not a sense of direction exactly, but some kind of initial orientation to inform the aesthetic and technical aspects of crafting the track.

Having recorded the acapella into Logic, the next task was to adjust the tempo of the vocal. The melacholy in the lyrics suggested an ambient / atmospheric techno rework to accentuate that mood. The original song is 146bpm, which might have worked well for a dubstep / bass type remix but would be way too fast for what I was after. Half time would be 73bpm, which would be too slow for techno. So I did a timestretch on the vocal to slow it down a bit.

One cool aspect of remixing is you can use the parts that resonate and leave out the rest. So the next stage was to cut up the vocal and edit it down to some key fragments. For example, the main line from the title, tis the damn season, seemed too obvious to use, so that got cut. I ended up removing some parts that narrated the details of the love affair (e.g. the lines about “you could call me babe for the weekend” and “I’ll be missing your smile”) and keeping phrases that were resonant with that tension of leaving, loss and being pulled back.

Alongside editing the vocal I also wrote a new chord sequence and drums on my Digitakt, and then shifted the vocal fragments around in Logic to find the right arrangement. The chords came from a polysynth, chopped up to give them more of a rhythmic pulse using my modular synth. The polysynth went as a stereo signal into an AJH Gemini 2412 dual filter (this is a really lush sounding SEM style, 12 dB/octave state variable filter), and an Intellijel dual VCA (a basic, clean amplifier). The VCA level was modulated by an envelope from Make Noise Maths, triggered with a MIDI sequence from the Digitakt running through a MIDI to CV converter. I did a couple of versions with different types of modulation (e.g. using Pamela’s New Workout to do a sample and hold pattern on the filter cutoff), and some fx dubs on these parts.

The bassline was made using another Digitakt sequence of triggers, with the pitches created generatively in the modular using a stepped random generator run through a quantizer. The sound came from a straightforward analogue VCO-filter-VCA setup. After recording, I edited it heavily to keep the good bits and remove pitch sequences that sounded a bit off.

I designed and recorded in a couple more parts from the modular to add texture, e.g a fizzy high frequency rhythmic thing, and a sort of mutating pitched burst noise that works as a kind of punctuation at the end of every 4 bars.

This is typical of how I like to work at the moment, patching up sounds a small Eurorack modular system, and tracking them into the DAW as long takes, with fx dubs and tweaks to the patch all committed to audio. I’ll build up in layers like this, then once everything is recorded it becomes an editing and mixing job. So it’s quite a traditional workflow: sound design in the hardware domain, tracking each part with live dubs, then mixing everything at the end.

Obviously that’s a very simplified account – there was a lot of trial and error with the sound design and the mix, including various little tricks I’ve developed over the years.

Thanks for reading my blog. If you want to learn more about any of the production techniques used in this remix, I offer tuition via video calls. Or if you’d like to hire me to do remixing, mixing, mastering or other production work, just drop me a line using the form on my contact page.

Sacha Lord is the co-founder of a dance music club series in Manchester called the Warehouse Project, and of the music festival Parklife. The Warehouse Project has been running since 2006, and vast numbers of artists have performed at it over the years. It is an integral part of the UK’s dance music ecosystem. Lord is also politically active, and in 2018 was appointed as Night Time Economy Adviser for Greater Manchester by the city’s Labour mayor, Andy Burnham.

This blog piece is not intended as an ad hominem attack. Lord comes across as someone sincerely committed to music culture, to Manchester’s night time industries, and to helping hospitality through the pandemic. His track record in these areas is impressive. He is also far from the only figure in dance music to make anti-lockdown statements. There have been mass protests around this issue. What he has to say on the subject is worth taking seriously precisely because it can be read as an indicator of a widespread position in the dance music industry as a whole – the tip of an iceberg. His comments matter not so much as an expression of his personal views, but because of his profile, reputation and influence within the UK dance music industry and beyond.

During the pandemic, Lord has been vocal in lobbying for the re-opening of hospitality, including bringing legal cases against the government. He was a key figure in the UnitedWeStream Manchester initiative, running live streams to bring in donations to support night time economy businesses in Manchester during the lockdowns. He has previously campaigned on issues such as drug safety and the mental health of workers in hospitality. His account has over 125,000 followers on Twitter.

So his anti-lockdown statements can’t be dismissed as ‘just one person’s opinion’, because they form part of how the night time industries are being represented regionally and nationally. His words carry weight.

The overall gist of his position – looking both at the Tweet above and other statements he has made through the pandemic – is that the most recent UK lockdown was excessive, that it caused unnecessary harm to the hospitality and night time economy sectors, and that it should have been lifted earlier for these sectors. These claims have been made widely by campaigners for hospitality, including by bodies such as the Night Time Industries Association.

This position emphasises the core message “we need to reopen”, but does little to acknowledge concerns about reopening, or focus on what the sector can do (and is doing) to address those concerns. Looking at the Events Research Programme phase 1 report, as I noted in a previous post, there are well founded reasons for concern about reopening hospitality, particularly clubs. There are real world examples where problems have occurred. A music festival in the Netherlands in early July led to over 1000 COVID infections despite requiring a negative test or proof of vaccination before entry.

Looking in more detail at the specifics of the Tweet above, it starts by highlighting the daily drop in the recorded number of people testing positive for COVID. It notes that caution is needed in interpreting this figure, which makes sense given that daily fluctuations aren’t always indicative of longer term trends in the data.

This focus on data and caution then switches abruptly to a reference to “Lockdown fanatics”. The implication is that those who urged greater caution in lifting restrictions were obsessive, crazed or deluded. Etymologically, fanatic derives from the Latin fanum which means “temple”. A ‘fanatic’ was someone in the grip of a religious fervour or devotion, akin to a zealot.

Then the Tweet switches back to evidence and reason, with “All eyes on ONS figures on Friday.” This is a reference to the ONS Coronavirus Infection Survey, which is a more accurate indicator of levels of disease than the daily positive test statistics. Its methodology is fairly robust and described here.

The rhetorical effect of these switching statements is to position Lord as someone who values evidence, data and cautious interpretation. Those who supported lockdowns, by contrast, are portrayed as driven by irrational belief. The effect is a kind of ‘turning the tables’ – an inversion of positions, in which a dance music promoter and lockdown sceptic appears on the side of reason, while the scientists who called for lockdown are derided as delusional fanatics.

The scene is then set for a final line which rolls together two extremely problematic claims.

“If they are positive [i.e. if the ONS figures show a fall in COVID], these “Independent” Dr’s/scientists should publicly apologies (sic) for the widespread mental health problems they have created.”

The first claim is implied by the scare quotes around “independent”. The implication of this sarcastic punctuation is that pro-lockdown doctors and scientists pretend to be independent, but in fact are advancing a hidden agenda.

That would be a serious allegation. Anyone with evidence of undue influence on scientists then they should pass it on to the institutions for which the scientists work. If not, making vague public statements questioning the integrity of un-named professionals is unhelpful. It risks sowing distrust, and fuelling the conspiracy theories already circulating in the anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine movement*.

Second, Lord makes the claim that doctors and scientists have ‘created’ mental health problems. He suggests that if ONS data show the pandemic to be receding in the UK, then these doctors and scientists should offer a public apology for the damage they have done.

It’s hard to know where to begin with this. At risk of stating the obvious, it is politicians who order lockdowns, not doctors or scientists. And in the UK, ministers have made so many egregious mistakes during the pandemic, it is difficult to understand how anyone could look seriously at the UK’s COVID response, and conclude that blame for the impact on mental health should be laid primarily at the door of doctors and scientists. It would be like booking a DJ who shows up late and off his head on pills, trainwrecks every mix, clears the dancefloor, and in response you decide to fire the sound engineer.

Doctors have worked tirelessly on the front lines of this pandemic. Many have experienced mental health problems themselves due to the stress. A survey in 2020 found that 43% reported worsening mental health during the pandemic. If people in the night time industries want to build solidarity around their cause rather than create division, one way would be to recognise that people across many different sectors have been more susceptible to mental health problems during the pandemic – hospitality workers, DJs, performers, promoters, but also doctors, nurses, teachers and many others.

As for the public health scientists to which Lord seems to be referring, they have also made a huge collective effort to help the country get through the pandemic, by gathering data and modelling the impacts of different scenarios in order to advise the UK government and devolved administrations.

Yet doctors and scientists have become targets of abuse from anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine trolls. It is this wider context that makes Lord’s remarks particularly troubling. The Chief Medical Officer for England, Chris Whitty, was recently verbally abused in public by a teenager who accused him of lying. And just days before Lord’s Tweet, the COVID denier and conspiracy theorist Kate Shemirani gave a speech at an anti-lockdown rally in Trafalgar Square, in which she made comments implying that UK doctors should face a similar fate to the Nazi doctors who were tried at Nuremberg after World War II.

Let’s be clear about what this comparison means, because again this is not just a view put forward by one person. References to Nuremberg circulate widely in anti-vaccine circles. The Nazi doctors put on trial at Nuremberg had experimented on humans in ways that constituted torture. They had also carried out programs of euthanasia, systematically killing people with disabilities, mental illnesses, old people, Jews and other ethnic minorities. To compare the doctors delivering COVID vaccines with these Nazi doctors is beyond disgraceful.

In a context where such comparisons are being made, particularly on social media, it seems irresponsible for someone in a position of cultural leadership to blame doctors and scientists for negative effects of the pandemic. Lord’s intention may simply be to support the night time industries, but to do so by aligning with the anti-lockdown movement and courting its support is dangerous. Does the dance music industry really want people like Shemirani, Piers Corbyn, David Icke and their followers as fellow travellers?

To sum up, the anti-lockdown strain within dance music is clearly a much bigger issue than public statements made by one person. The point of critically analysing these statements is to think about the wider implications, of someone so high profile making claims such as these without any apparent accountability beyond a few critical replies under a Tweet.

What are the values of the dance music industry, when one of its leaders is getting masses of retweets and likes for blaming mental health problems on doctors and scientists? Are dance music artists and fans happy to have these kinds of statements coming from someone who is representing our culture?

_{*I have used the terms ‘anti-lockdown’ and ‘anti-vaccine’ interchangeably in this post. Clearly these are two separate things, but in practice the movements advocating for them overlap to a large extent. The night time industries lobby might want to portray themselves as anti-lockdown but not anti-vaccine – but in that case, they would need to do a much better job of explicitly distancing themselves from the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists.}

The ERP aims to explore how mass events can resume safely despite the ongoing pandemic. Phase I involved nine music and sports events, including two club nights in Liverpool organised by the promoter Circus. These ‘pilot raves’ had 3400 and 3700 attendees, who were required to have a negative lateral flow test result before entry. Various methods were used to gather data from these events.

In a previous post, I raised some critical questions about the pilot raves, and there is some more critical coverage here. In this blog post, I’ll review some of the report’s key points, focussing on the relevance to clubs due to my interest in dance music. I’ll end with some speculation about where things might be heading for clubs after the lockdown ends in England on 19th July.

The full ERP Phase I report is available here.

Methods

Contrary to popular belief, the ERP doesn’t seem to have been designed primarily to find out if mass events would lead to increased COVID transmission. It appears to have been more about examining risks and possible mitigations. The ERP Phase I used three sets of methods:

1. Environment studies, to assess the risks of airborne and surface COVID transmission. For example, measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) were used to indicate levels of exhaled breath and ventilation, from which it is possible to gauge how likely events were likely to lead to airborne COVID transmission.

2. Behavioural studies, looking at how people reacted to the events. These included on site observations and video recordings, again focussing on risk factors such as overcrowding in particular areas. A survey and interviews were also carried out, but the nightclub pilots were not included in these methods.

3. Outbreak prevention and control studies . The aim here seems to have been to assess whether requiring negative lateral flow tests prior to entry was effective in reducing transmission risks. Methods included attempts to gather PCR tests (the most reliable COVID test available) from attendees before and after the events.

The ethics of these studies raise serious questions, as explored in depth here. For the purposes of this post, rather than go into those debates, I want to look at some key findings.

Key finding 1: (a lack of) evidence about transmission

The first point to emphasise is that the ERP has so far provided no robust information about whether the mass events led to increased COVID transmission. The outbreak prevention and control element has been inconclusive.

It’s worth labouring this point, because many of the headlines to date highlight the finding that only 28 attendees tested positive out of a total of 58,000. That figure is true, but also tells us nothing useful, because the percentage of attendees who took PCR tests was too small for any conclusions to be drawn.

The figure widely reported is that 15% of attendees took a PCR test after the events, which is a small sample, and there is no way of knowing if that sample is representative of attendees as a whole. For the two nightclub pilots, the figure was even lower: only 7% of night 1 attendees and 6% of night 2 attendees did PCR tests both before and after the events.

The report repeatedly makes this limitation clear:

“Phase I pilots were…insufficient in scale, scope and study designs to generate any direct evidence based on transmission data. Therefore, evidence on case numbers should be treated with caution.”

“these figures should be interpreted with extreme caution given the very low return rate of pre- and post-event PCR tests…the low prevalence at the time of the studies and the lack of a comparator group.”

When a scientific report advises “extreme caution” in interpreting its results, that is a polite way of saying: “these data can’t tell us much.”

It might be that the events led to no increase in cases, or a significant increase, or anything in between. We simply don’t know, based on the data. This basic point unfortunately seems to have been overlooked by much of the coverage in the dance music press. Journalists in the industry seem to have struggled to report accurately on the scientific dimension of the ERP – perhaps understandably, since their normal remit is predominantly cultural.

The report notes that no community outbreaks were traced to ERP events. It also states that exploratory modelling of transmission risks suggested that testing on the day could reduce COVID transmissions in nightclubs by between 37% and 71% depending on the scenario. These are encouraging signs that testing before entry can help to make clubs safer, but not firm evidence.

There is also a worrying (albeit unsurprising) detail buried in the data. PCR tests carried out prior to the events identified some positive cases where lateral flow tests had given a negative result. Extrapolating from that finding to the situation the UK will face when lockdown ends on July 19th, in which COVID will be much more prevalent in the community, clubs could require negative lateral flow tests prior to entry and still end up with infected people being admitted and causing outbreaks.

In summary, lateral flow tests are not a robust solution for keeping COVID out of clubs, and thus by extension neither is the NHS COVID Pass (see below).

Key finding 2: ventilation is crucial

One of the most relevant findings for night clubs comes from the environmental studies. CO2 monitors showed an area of concern in front of the stage in the Liverpool pilot raves:

“The area in front of the stage at the nightclub had a sustained CO2 reading of over 2000ppm (parts per million) on the first night and just under 2000ppm on the second. With attendees spending long periods of time in that area and doing aerobic activity, such a reading is a cause for concern and does not meet CIBSE COVID guidance.”

The guidance referred to here is from the Chartered Institution for Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), based on advice from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). It suggests that CO2 levels over 2000ppm “must be improved”, 1500-2000ppm would be a “priority for improvement”, 800-1000ppm would indicate “good air quality”, and that areas used for aerobic activity should aim for concentrations below 800ppm.

To summarise in simplified terms: clubs present a high risk of airborne transmission, but that can be significantly reduced by better ventilation. This finding echoes some points made in a recent article in DJ Mag about how clubs can reopen safely.

The ERP report adds the caveat that “there was only one nightclub pilot…in an atypical warehouse setting where ventilation improvements could be made, so only limited inferences about the sector can be reliably made.” But is that setting really so atypical? How many clubs can you think of that you would describe as well ventilated?

This finding is useful because it identifies a possible risk factor for nightclubs, and indicates a solution, with clear guidelines available on what clubs should aim for with CO2 levels. The report points out other ways to reduce risks, such as reducing length of time spent in the area and crowd density, but those are impractical in a nightclub. Ventilation is something that can be done without ruining the experience.

The ERP report doesn’t make specific recommendations about how to improve ventilation. Presumably holding more events outdoors would help, along with increasing airflow and installing better ventilation systems in venues. Anecdotally, some venues appear to have addressed this issue, but it seems a missed opportunity that ventilation hasn’t been a more prominent part of the debates around COVID and dance music.

For a sector that has a track record of working on harm reduction around drug use, improving ventilation seems achievable. It could be an issue around which to lobby for government assistance. Nightclubs usually understand that it is important to have a good sound system. Could the same logic be extended to ventilation systems?

Some thoughts on what might happen next

The ERP has a phase 2 and 3 still to report. But the approach taken, of trying to gather evidence about transmission risks to inform future planning, might be rendered largely redundant in England because of the political situation.

The UK government has announced the removal of almost all formal restrictions on July 19th. It’s important to note that this lifting applies only to England, as the devolved administrations are all taking more cautious and gradual approaches. In England, clubs will be able to reopen, with no capacity limits or social distancing requirements. With case numbers currently doubling every fortnight or so, this strategy is a pivot to herd immunity in all but name. Public health measures are giving way to vague messages about ‘personal responsibility’, the need to ‘go slowly’ and ‘be cautious’.

The lifting of restrictions will happen in a context where the night time economy is in dire straits and desperate to reopen. After well over a year of enforced closure, the dance music industry is increasingly aligning with anti-lockdown movements in calling for the ‘freedom to dance’ without regard for the consequences on virus transmission. If you want an indicator of how the pandemic has realigned UK politics, look at how Sacha Lord, the night time economy adviser for Manchester’s staunchly Labour mayor, recently went on the talk radio show of right wing commentator Julia Hartley-Brewer, agreeing with her about the need for lockdown to end.

In this situation, it seems likely that many nightclubs in England will see the lifting of restrictions as a green light to reopen. As for preventing transmission, the government has issued guidance advising businesses to assess and reduce risks, such as by cleaning high touch surfaces, improving airflow in poorly ventilated areas, ensuring that staff and customers who are unwell do not enter a venue, and communicating these measures to staff and customers. The guidance advises high risk settings such as nightclubs to use the NHS COVID Pass as a condition of entry. The COVID Pass is awarded based on vaccination status or a recent negative test result. The test result can come from a PCR or a lateral flow test, which gives some cause for concern based on the ERP data about the effectiveness of lateral flow tests (see above).

The ventilation aspect of the guidance is broadly aligned with the ERP’s findings, but lacks detail. In any case, these measures are advisory rather than legally mandated. There are already signs of push back against the NHS COVID Pass from the night time industries lobby. The government says that it “reserves the right to mandate certification in certain venues at a later date if necessary”, following a repeated pattern throughout the pandemic of waiting for problems to arise and then looking for solutions after the fact, rather than taking a preventative approach.

It would therefore be unsurprising if nightclubs became a source of COVID outbreaks in coming months, regardless of the ERP’s findings or the government’s guidance. Would such outbreaks really be a problem? In short, yes. If a club has an outbreak and staff have to isolate or take sick leave, it will have to close again. More broadly, though the link between cases and deaths has been greatly weakened by the vaccination programme, allowing case rates to rise creates other difficulties: the conditions for mutation and a vaccine resistant strain, long COVID, intergenerational injustice as young people suffer the burden of disease, and exacerbating disadvantage for the vulnerable. There is also a huge question mark over what happens to essential services if infection rates go so high, and so many have to isolate, that key workers become unable to do their jobs.

Politically, lifting restrictions at this point might make sense for a Conservative government, whose voters tend to be older (and thus more likely to be vaccinated) and more driven by self-interest (and thus more likely to want individual freedom at the expense of protecting the vulnerable). What seems less clear is whether this strategy will work well for the dance music sector. If case rates continue to rise unchecked, there are a number of possible scenarios in which nightclubs in England might face another shutdown.

Modular synthesis has become fashionable in recent years. There’s often a sense of excitement bordering on fetishisation in discussions about it – though sometimes accompanied by a bit of eye-rolling scepticism. So is modular all it’s made out to be? Will it take your productions to a new level, or just drain your bank balance in exchange for some nerdy gadgets?

In this post, I’ll examine a few ideas that circulate about modular, and discuss whether these hold true in practice. My observations are based on my experience of building a small Eurorack system over the last three years, which I’ve been using for making techno and ambient music. Before that I had a Nord G2 modular which I used for various musical projects for over ten years.

If you want something to listen to while reading, here are a couple of my productions that make use of modular.

In this techno track ‘Quantize’, most of the sounds came from my modular with the exception of the drums:

‘Keep Trying’ is a more ambient piece, using a generative sequence from my modular as the main part:

“Modular is the most advanced form of synthesis”

Synth enthusiasts sometimes present modular as a kind of elite pursuit, to which only the most advanced users will gravitate. The thinking here is that modular is technically more complex than all-in-one synths, but also more flexible and open-ended.

It’s certainly true that modular can be mind-bendingly complex if you have a large system and build intricate patches. Looking at synthesiser history, Moog switched from making modular systems to building the Minimoog because keyboard players often found modular too complicated. The Minimoog was deliberately designed to be much simpler to use, which is a large part of why it was so successful.

But there is nothing intrinsically very complex about patching outputs and inputs together with cables. It’s perfectly possible to have a modestly sized system that isn’t overwhelming to use. A small case with, say, an oscillator, a filter, an amplifier and an envelope would be easier to program than an all-in-one synth with a more complex structure. Yamaha’s classic DX7, for instance, is notoriously tricky to program from the front panel. Some popular soft synths are also deep and complex – Omnisphere for example.

A key difference is that modular synths don’t have presets. You have to start from scratch and patch by hand, and you can’t save the patch. So if you want the convenience and speed of working with ready-made sounds, modular isn’t great. But if you like building your own sounds, manual patching is actually a fun and hands-on way to do that, compared to many all-in-one hardware and software synths I’ve used over the years. Compared to some modular software platforms like Max MSP, patching a small Eurorack system is relatively straightforward.

“Modular is cripplingly expensive”

It’s true that modular can cost vast amounts of money, particularly if you want to build a large system and buy everything new. 5U format modulars such as Moog and MOTM are particularly pricey. Eurorack is much more affordable, but the costs still mount up when you take into account cases, power supplies, MIDI to CV converters, patch cables and so on. It’s also true that some people get hooked on modular, and are then constantly looking to expand their system. That sort of habit can burn through money at an alarming rate.

So it can be expensive – but it doesn’t have to be outlandishly so. While building a modular system is never likely to be as cheap as buying a copy of Ableton Live or a Behringer clone, there are ways to reduce the outlay such as:

• keeping your system small (a smaller system is also easier to use)
• building gradually, so the cost is spread over time
• avoiding expensive modules
• buying second hand (there is a thriving used market on sites such as ModularGrid, Mod Wiggler, Gumtree and eBay)
• building modules from DIY kits, e.g. those sold by Thonk

A lot depends on what you’re comparing to. For example, a Doepfer SEM filter Eurorack module costs less than £100 new. The Oberheim SEM Pro module, from which that filter design is borrowed, typically sells for over £2000 second hand. Or if you want a real analogue 909 kick drum, Tip Top make a Eurorack version for £150, whereas an original TR-909 will set you back upwards of £4000. Obviously these vintage machines are complete instruments, so perhaps it’s not a fair comparison. But if you want to incorporate specific elements of classic machines into your production rig without using software emulations, Eurorack is often the cheapest way to do that.

“Modular sounds amazing”

This is another case of ‘not necessarily’. There is no shortage of modular noodling videos on YouTube, in which mostly middle aged men use large amounts of gear to produce some slightly disappointing bleeps. Modular clearly has massive potential for sound design, but (for me at least) it can take a bit of time and effort to get good results.

The amount of trial and error involved tends to be high, due to the open ended nature of a modular system. Spend 15 minutes tweaking an SH-101, and you’ll likely have a nice sounding synth line. Spend 15 minutes with a modular system, and unless you’re lucky (or very skilled) the results will probably be more rudimentary. But on the flipside, with a bit of persistence, eventually you’ll get into sonic territory far beyond what an SH-101 can do.

It’s difficult to make meaningful generalisations about how modular ‘sounds’ given the massive variety of different formats, modules and manufacturers. With my own system, over time I’ve found that it can have quite a wild, raw sound. Patching together multiple elements, all being modulated in different ways, often creates happy accidents and unexpected changes.

That unpredictability is a big part of the appeal, but it can also make modular parts more challenging to record and mix. Often there is lots of very low and high frequency content to deal with, big jumps in dynamic range, and sometimes the output can be noisy. I’ve found that having good EQ, compression and noise reduction plugins, together with some ruthless editing and detailed automation, is helpful for turning the results of a sprawling modular jam into something more listenable.

There are also challenges relating to aesthetic judgment. Assembling music using presets and samples can be more straightforward, insofar as it involves evaluating the suitability of sounds made by someone else, and that person’s ego usually isn’t in the room to influence the decision. By comparison, with modular, I find that after an hour or so building a patch, the attachment I have to it inevitably makes it harder to judge whether it’s sonically interesting or not.

In summary…

I hope this article has provided a brief insight into some of the strengths and weaknesses of modular synths. Obviously, these observations are all coming from my particular perspective; other people’s experiences will vary enormously depending on what type of sounds they’re trying to make, what mix of modules they choose, and how they go about using them.

Personally, what I find compelling about Eurorack modular is that it is a fun, hands-on way to explore the possibilities of synthesis. It’s enabled me to build a system that is well suited to producing the kind of evolving, modulating synth lines that I’m looking for, and for processing other sound sources in interesting ways. I also like how the inability to save a patch forces me to commit to audio. Tracks sometimes take shape a bit faster as a result.

Nevetheless, I’m not a fan of the elitism that sometimes seems to attach to modular. It’s not intrinsically superior to other approaches; it’s not a magic bullet for making amazing sounds or ‘unlocking your creativity’; at times it can be unwieldy and frustrating. Despite the flexibility and open-endedness of modular, it still has its own cliches and tropes, just like any other area of music production.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment below about your own experiences of modular. And if you’re interested in learning more about synthesis, modular or how to get the most out of your own system, I offer tutorials on these things. Details here.

The headline DJs were Sven Vath and Fatboy Slim, with a host of other well known names on the line ups, including the Blessed Madonna, Hot Since 82, Heidi, Jayda G. The events were promoted by Yousef, who also DJ’d. The 3000 attendees on each night were reportedly required to have a negative lateral flow COVID test result from that day or the day before, and were invited to take part in further PCR testing before and after. Once inside the venue, there was no requirement to wear masks or socially distance.

Looking at the reaction amongst the dance music accounts I follow on Twitter, many seemed emotional on catching a first glimpse of what could be the return of UK clubbing. Media coverage of the event was similarly upbeat, on both specialist dance music websites such as Mixmag and DJ Mag, and more mainstream outlets such as BBC News and Manchester Evening News.

Notably absent in this coverage was any critical analysis. If the pandemic created a situation in which searching questions about dance music have begun to be asked more openly – about egregious racism and sexual abuse within the scene for example – the implicit message around the pilot raves seemed to be that it is now time to put that stuff back in its box. No more awkward questions.

A closer look at what was being glossed over is revealing, however.

There has been very little scrutiny to date of the “scientific” dimension of these events. I have so far been unable to find anything in the public domain about the research design, methodology, ethics, or how the results will be made available (if anyone reading is aware of anything, please drop a comment or get in touch via the contact page and I will update this post accordingly). The terms of reference for the Events Research Programme briefly state that the governance of the programme will include a “Science Board with an independent chair [to] provide scientific assurance across the programme and ensure events are following ethical and scientific principles and will generate evidence of sufficient quality to inform decisions” which is considerably less detail than would be needed to achieve a pass in an undergraduate research assignment.

This absence of detail is particularly concerning given the UK government’s track record through the pandemic of claiming to be “following the science” whilst also regularly going against scientific advice, in ways that have created thousands of additional, avoidable deaths. So while some of the publicity around these events has referred to them by the bizarre term “science parties”, it would be more accurate to describe them as a temporary suspension of normal COVID infection control measures for 6000 people, with no serious public discussion of the rationale, risks or mitigating strategies.

On the subject of risks, a number of accounts on Twitter (e.g. here and here) pointed out with dismay that the headliner of the first Liverpool pilot rave, Sven Vath, recently toured India. He is one of many high profile DJs who have continued to play raves during the pandemic, regardless of the obvious transmission risks of large crowded events, and despite various pleas for such events to stop.

A review of a Vath performance in Goa from 20^th February offers the following description:

“Even during these unprecedented times, the dancefloor did not fail to fill up with a mixed crowd of Goa’s residential global urban nomads, old school hippies and excited Indian tourists, who flocked to Hilltop from all over India in big numbers, eager to see the evolution of electronic music.”

“Unprecedented times” is a mild-mannered euphemism for a pandemic that has, at the time of writing, killed at least 225,000 people in India. My overall impression reading about the dance scene in Goa during the pandemic is of a culture so addicted to its own hedonism that serious risk to life is simply ignored. We may never have the data that would be needed to conclusively demonstrate whether these raves contributed to the rapid escalation of the COVID crisis in India, but looking at the images of packed dancefloors, and based on what we know about COVID transmission, it seems highly likely.

For any DJ involved in that situation to then headline an event whose stated aim was to test whether club events could be made COVID-safe speaks volumes about the nature of dance music culture, and its almost complete lack of accountability. These events were the first proper legal raves in the UK since the start of lockdown, and as such were extremely high profile. Any competent DJs could have been booked and the events would likely have sold out, so it is instructive to look at the choices made, and the people to whom this opportunity was given.

It is hard to avoid the impression that a marker has been laid down, whether intentionally or not: that established big name artists will continue to be given preference, and that they will continue to be free, as the Ultra Naté song puts it, to do what they want to do.

These events were therefore tests in another sense, insofar as they can be read as a first indicator of what UK dance music culture might look like at the other side of lockdown. Based on this initial evidence, it would appear that dance music has no more been reformed by the pandemic than Boris Johnson was by his hospitalisation with COVID.

Dance music apparently continues to be a culture in which reckless and irresponsible behaviour can take place in plain sight, without raising much in the way of comment from the other artists on the bill, from the journalists covering the events, or from the government-backed scheme of which they were part. That complicity may not be intentional, but it surely can’t be accidental. Those of us who love dance music are embroiled within a culture that routinely avoids accountability, through a tacit agreement between many of its key players not to ask difficult questions of each other.

This absence of accountability means that the raver ethos of peace, love, unity and respect can be cited to provide a welcoming appearance, without addressing the more difficult issues of how to translate those ideas into reality. Thus Yousef is reported in Mixmag as saying about the Circus events, “I just want people to kind of feel connected to one another this weekend and have that kind of original rave ethos where it’s inclusive.” That is an aspiration to which many dance music fans will relate, but which means little without any discussion of what it would require in practice. As Frankie Hutchinson puts it (full article here):

There’s no better way to avoid accountability than by promoting platitudes that brand yourself as so full of love that you couldn’t possibly have space for hate.

Thanks to Mathys Rennela and Annabel Ross for conversations online that have helped inform this piece.

(To anticipate a criticism: I realise that for many people dance music is all about the music, and it’s seen as a waste of time to discuss it or theorise it. I would respectfully disagree. Any vibrant art form will generate critical thought and debate around it, and these things can contribute to the vibrancy of the art form in question.)

Ghost production is an arrangement where a producer is paid to produce tracks to be released under the name of another artist. The ghost producer may agree not to be named, or may be given a production credit, but will not be named as the main artist. They may create the entire track, or be employed to assist with specific elements. These practices are often frowned upon as a form of deceit, although some people see them simply as a pragmatic division of labour.

There are many other musical practices in which authorship is blurred: covers, tribute acts, sampling, etc. It’s also easy to think of parallels outside music. Marcus Boon’s book In Praise Of Copying (free pdf available here) is a recommended read on this bigger picture, but for this post I want to focus on ghost production.

The Twitter storm began when one DJ (I’ll avoid using names, in keeping with the ghost theme) posted a question: why do people in the dance music scene complain about ghost production, but won’t name anyone using ghost producers? If it’s so bad, why not expose it?

In response, and with a hint of mischief, another DJ and producer posted the name of a well-known label, which he said he’d heard used ghost producers.

Things then kicked off, with a pile on of views alternately rubbishing the idea that such a respected label would ever do this, and conversely slagging off the label in question for using ghost production.

The label boss – himself also a respected producer and DJ – weighed in to reject the rumour in no uncertain terms. Before long, the Tweet naming his label was deleted and an apology issued. Within a few days techno Twitter moved on, and the ghost production kerfuffle was buried under a much more politically charged discussion of racism (see here and here for good summaries of that).

But to stay with the ghost production furore and think about it a bit more, it did at least neatly answer the original question. Definitive claims about who uses ghost producers are difficult – perhaps impossible – to make, because the very nature of ghost production, and the stigma attached, demands a high level of uncertainty, creating a haze of rumours and unverifiable allegations. It’s a bit like crop circles: once you know who makes them, the whole thing doesn’t really work any more.

While people disagreed as to whether the label in question would ever use ghost producers, there seemed to be broad agreement across the debate that the practice was at best problematic, and at worst appallingly duplicitous.

That agreement looks to me like an instance of what Foucault called the ‘author function’. This term refers to the practices through which certain creative works are attributed to specific individuals, thereby naturalising the idea that such works emanate from a person (or persons), belong to them, and can be accounted for by them. Foucault was writing about texts and authors, but the controversy over ghost production suggests that his arguments also apply to music.

(At this point it is worth noting that for Foucault, subjects are always produced. So on this view authors, as subjects, do not precede their works. Rather, works are retrospectively attributed to the person through whom they came into being, whose subjectivity as an author – or artist, producer, whatever – is then formed by that attribution. This point is fundamental in understanding Foucault’s thought, but also quite counter-intuitive.)

Foucault’s essay “What is an author?” discusses the author function in far more detail than I can do justice to here (the full essay can be downloaded here). But his argument is driven by a question that might be worth asking about dance music: is the author function helpful, or are there instances where, as a regulatory principle, it might be limiting?

When it comes to economic issues, such as revenues from streaming and performing rights, it is easy to see an argument for clear lines of ownership, given how little money most dance music producers make from their work, and how much exploitation has taken place over the history of the music industry. But there is nothing inherently economically exploitative about ghost production; the fee earned might well be more than if the producer had released the track under his or her own name. So the economic argument for the author function is not so strong.

What seems to be driving the disdain for ghost production is more like a kind of morality based on notions of authenticity and artistic integrity: a conviction that the ties that bind works to individual artists have an ethical value.

In relation to this point, Foucault makes a provocative claim: that the social function of the author is to limit the danger posed by creative works, and hence to constrain their potential. Works are tied down, fixed in place, and held to account by mooring them to individual subjects, rather than allowing the possible meanings and functions of a work to proliferate free from such ties.

An attachment to this kind of author function seems particularly ironic in dance music, as cultural form that owes so much to black, working class and queer practices of liberation. Dance music arose from attempts to escape from, rather than conform to, dominant discourses and structures.

The attachment to the individualising author function is ironic also because dance music is such a collective enterprise. All music is collective of course, but some forms of musical culture thrive by emphasising aspects of individuality. Rock music appears to have absorbed the 18th century idea of the virtuoso, reshaping it into the role of the lead singer. This person tends to be portrayed as an individual creative genius, acting as a focal point for the attention of the audience, and the personalised narratives spun around the music.

Dance music, by contrast, doesn’t require this cult of the individual in order to function. At its most basic, dance music brings disparate people and machines together, into a mass of dancing bodies. Likewise, the art of DJing is precisely to blend one work into another, creating a seamless flow in which the contributions of individual artists are less important than the whole. The DJ’s role is to select and mix music to facilitate dancing, not to be singled out as a focus of attention. The idea of the superstar DJ can be seen as a reassertion of conventions of rock and pop – to put it more bluntly, a colonisation of dance music by these conventions, rather than something intrinsically fundamental to dance music itself.

If I’m right that dance music is at root a form of culture in which individual creativity is subordinated to the functionality of dancing as a collective practice of liberation, then ghost production is not intrinsically problematic. Its undermining of the author function is actually quite apt.

To conclude: this blog post isn’t an argument in favour of ghost production. What I want to suggest is simply that it might not make sense to judge ghost production according to norms of authenticity that sit uneasily with core aspects of how dance music operates. Perhaps better questions would be things like: are ghost production arrangements fair or exploitative? Are the producers being remunerated adequately, compared to what the track might earn? And most importantly, is the music any good?

Eurorack is a modular synthesis format that has expanded enormously in the last five years or so. I started playing around with some modules about 18 months ago, initially as a way to get some more analogue filters into my home studio set up. Since then, I’ve become fascinated by Eurorack as a phenomenon comprising not only a set of technical standards and practices, but also a worldwide community of module producers and users, with its own terminology and cultural norms. Below is a recent production that makes extensive use of my own Eurorack set up.

With the straight to video disaster movie of the UK’s pre-Brexit meltdown consuming so much airspace, there is comfort to be had in a system that originated in continental Europe, which is profoundly internationalist, and which enables radically different elements to happily coexist and interact. The rise of Eurorack is also a good example of how technological change can move in surprising directions; a case study of how dead media can come back to life.

In the 1960s, when the first electronic voltage controlled sound synthesizers were developed by companies such as Moog, Buchla and EMS, most of these systems were modular. In a modular system, different audio generating and processing functions are performed by separate modules mounted in a rack. The user manually links these together into the desired order using patch cables. This type of design is extremely flexible, allowing for experimentation with non-standard signal routings and bespoke systems.

Back in the 1960s, the market for these unwieldy, complex, expensive systems was limited however. As synthesizer manufacturers sought commercial viability, they began to produce simpler, more portable and affordable instruments, designed around the needs of musicians. These machines hardwired synthesis elements into a fixed order, dispensing with the need for patch cables, and reducing the level of technical knowledge required to programme them. The Minimoog was the archetype of this shift, as documented in painstaking detail by Pinch and Rocco in their 2004 book Analog Days. A small, portable, all-in-one instrument, the Minimoog prioritised ease of use over the flexibility of Moog’s earlier modular systems. With its stable tuning and built-in keyboard, it fitted into Western musical conventions, and had wide appeal to musicians. Thousands of units were sold, and its basic design became the dominant form of the synthesizer from the 1970s onwards. Most classic machines follow its template: the Arp Odyssey, Sequential Prophet 5 and Pro 1, Roland’s SH series, Jupiters and Junos, and later classic digital synths such as the Yamaha DX7, Roland D50 and Korg M1 all have a keyboard attached to a more-or-less fixed sequence of sound generating and shaping elements. As Pinch and Rocco (1998, p.27) observe:

“The story of the analogue synthesizer is like that of many technologies. One meaning stabilises, and the other meanings slowly vanish or play a smaller role within niche markets.”

Thus by the mid 1980s, modular had been pushed to the margins of music technology. As the first generation of digital FM and PCM-based synths gave way to virtual analogue technologies in the 1990s, the dominance of keyboard-based synthesizers continued. Even with the introduction of Synthesis Technology’s ‘Mother Of The Modulars’ (MOTM) system in the mid 1990s, and the invention of Eurorack around the same time in the form of Doepfer’s A100 range, these systems were initially niche products aimed at a minority of devoted synthesis enthusiasts.

So why, against the grain of the stabilised form of the synthesizer, has Eurorack modular become so popular?

One factor appears to be how the format makes modular synthesis more accessible due to its efficiencies of size and cost. As a 2014 press release from NAMM (the US National Association of Music Manufacturers) puts it:

“Boutique Eurorack modular synthesizers were until recently considered ‘fringe’ but are now gaining traction in the mainstream as a relatively inexpensive way to pack a lot of functionality into a small space.” (NAMM, 2014)

It is worth noting that Eurorack is not the highest quality format available for modular synthesis. Its advantages are more prosaic: modest size, portability, and relatively low cost. Compared to full size modular systems, Eurorack enables even quite small systems to function as complex instruments. The techno producer Surgeon, for example, has recently been performing live sets using a Eurorack rig specifically designed to be small enough to fit into the dimensions of aircraft carry-on luggage.

In this respect, Eurorack has an uncanny echo of the Minimoog’s emphasis on portability and convenience. Modules are often rated in terms of size: valued for offering a lot of functionality in a small space, or criticised for being too bulky. Erica synths’ Pico range and the company 2hp make a virtue out of slimline dimensions, squeezing maximum synthesis out of minimum space. The small size and low cost of Eurorack has been aided by surface mount circuit production technology and automated production. The video below, of Mutable Instruments modules being assembled at a factory in France, is revealing.

Eurorack has also risen to prominence in the context of networked computation – somewhat ironically for a format in which analogue signals are so crucial. With consumption increasingly shifting online, Eurorack has the perfect form factor. Small modules are easy to send via postal services, as compared to bulky and heavy keyboard synths. Many retailers operate primarily or solely by mail order, reducing the costs of premises and staffing. A thriving second hand market makes use of online forums, trading sites and payment systems. As vintage analogue synthesizers have become increasingly rare, costly and fragile, Eurorack provides a much simpler, cheaper and less troublesome alternative.

So there seems to be a kind of double shift driving Eurorack: on one side, an infrastructure of networked computing, online forums, web stores and computer controlled manufacturing; and on the other, a resurgence of interest in analogue, hands-on and experimental designs for electronic instruments. To quote Pinch and Rocco again:

“The synthesizer’s stabilisation as a keyboard instrument, while an attempt to increase its versatility, and a major step in allowing wide distribution and maintaining its commercial viability, may have begun the process of delimiting its creative freedom.” (ibid.)

Creative freedom is where modular really comes into its own. Its resurgence, in the form of Eurorack, can be understood as a kind of rebellion against the dominant paradigm in music technology. With modular, the stabilised form of the synthesizer is pulled apart and folded  inside out – literally, with patch points pushing signals from the inside to the outside of the box – opening up more space for experimentation. The media theorist Wolfgang Ernst (2012, p.184) suggests that all media technologies have this kind of experimental potential:

“All such mass media as the phonograph, kinematograph, radio, and electronic television were first developed for experimental research. Media are measuring devices, and as such they are scientific, analytical apparatuses…The public-use “synthetic” mass media represent a step from such measuring devices to worlds of mass media, as we often approach them, but we are able to also analytically approach the reverse experience: to go back to the experimentality of such machines.”

The modular renaissance can be understood as precisely this: a return to the experimentality of synthesizers. Indeed, some of the most popular Eurorack modules have high levels of indeterminacy built into their design, such as the Make Noise Maths module, which can generate and process control voltages, mix and slew signals, act as a level comparator, an envelope follower, a complex LFO, perform logic operations, and serve as a makeshift oscillator. With these kinds of designs, a degree of experimentation is required to operate them.

Indeed, the whole format of Eurorack can be seen as a form of experimentation that is proliferating difference. The number of module producers and the range of available modules has grown to dizzying proportions. There are numerous DIY kits and open source designs. Some of the larger and more established music tech companies have released semi-modular gear and equipment that can be patched into Eurorack systems, such as Moog’s Mother 32 and DFAM, and the Arturia Brute series. As a result, anyone building a Eurorack system can integrate elements from radically different electronic music traditions, approaches and design principles: mixing analogue and digital, west coast and east coast synthesis, modules from US, UK and European producers, classic and more experimental designs, factory produced and home made modules, and every conceivable mode of synthesis.

A few months ago I had the pleasure of discussing some of these issues with Matt Preston, who runs the Matttech modular online store. He drew my attention to another important dimension of difference, amongst modular users. Eurorack appeals to a range of different groups. Matt mentioned:

• maths-and-science nerds who are interested in analogue computing and signal processing;
• collectors;
• professional musicians and composers whose paid work involves finding new ways to generate and process sound;
• live performers who want to build portable, configurable and highly interactive self-contained instruments;
• creative artists who see modular as an open-ended means of experimentation;
• dance music producers looking for something beyond the standard sample packs and preset sounds.

The coexistence of these overlapping ‘tribes’, as Matt put it, is part of what has enabled the scene to thrive.

That said, all of these groups are notably dominated by one identity type: male, white, typically heterosexual, reflecting male dominance in music technology as a whole. An informal online self-complete survey of modular users carried out in 2018 (n = 249) had 90% of respondents identifying as male and 85% as not LGBTQ. The sample was not representative, but these percentages are big enough to make the overall picture fairly clear. At the same time, there are notable contemporary female artists using modular, such as Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Lady Starlight, and important historical figures such as Daphne Oram, Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros and Wendy Carlos. The contribution to electronic music of various black and multi-racial cultures is also hard to overstate: through funk, disco, hip hop, electro, techno, house, dub, dancehall, jungle, drum and bass, dubstep, grime, footwork and so on. Some of these subcultures have also been overtly LGBTQ, such as disco and house, while one of techno’s most well known hotspots, Berghain in Berlin, evolved from a gay fetish club.

This issue of diversity in electronic music is often debated at length, usually with trenchant views expressed on all sides. In Eurorack, the fact that the main forum for modular synth discussion is called Muff Wiggler can either be construed as a light hearted joke or as blatant sexism, depending on your perspective – see for example this article and the comments attached to it , and this article from FACT mag in which some of the artists featured discuss issues of diversity.

My own observation is that the Eurorack community is characterised primarily by non-dominant forms of masculinity. The tech-nerd aspect attracts men whose maleness is more aligned with stereotypes of tinkering DIY boffins than with misogynism and chauvenism. These non-dominant masculinities can still exclude people who don’t fit into them, but in ways that might be subtle; I’ve seen some people referring to modules using female pronouns for example.  Explicit sexism, whilst occasionally apparent, is increasingly being challenged, and is less of a widespread issue than more implicitly masculinist and heteronormative tendencies.

Emile Gillet, who runs Mutable Instruments, one of the most popular Eurorack producers, recently transitioned from male to female. As such, she has an interesting take on gender and sexuality in relation to the modular community:

“I have nightmares about being part of a “women in synthesis” panel, the growth of my company having benefited from the very male privilege that felt increasingly icky to me (and I could write reams about how uncomfortable I have been with some events, attitudes, MW posts, aesthetic decisions from other brands…).” (via Reddit)

The Eurorack community’s response to Emile’s transition appears to have been overwhelmingly positive, however (e.g. the Reddit thread quoted above), showing that the scene is capable of welcoming social difference, despite being majority male. When it comes to the technical and creative side of things, modular is strongly non-conformist, open-ended, exploratory and radically pluralistic, so one would hope that this attitude could be extended into other aspects of life. If there is such a thing as a queer or trans approach to synthesis, Eurorack is surely the place to find it.

Further information

There are a number of online modular synth enthusiast sites:

https://www.muffwiggler.com

https://www.modulargrid.net

https://www.reddit.com/r/modular/

The number of Eurorack module producers is vast. Some of the more well-known ones include:

http://www.doepfer.de/

http://www.makenoisemusic.com/

http://busycircuits.com/

https://mutable-instruments.net/

http://www.synthtech.com/

https://www.studioelectronics.com/products/synths/boomstar-modular/

http://tiptopaudio.com/

https://intellijel.com/

Some UK Eurorack retailers include:

https://matttechmodular.co.uk/

https://www.rubadub.co.uk/

https://postmodular.co.uk/

https://elevatorsound.com/

https://cymrubeats.com/

https://www.signalsounds.com/

https://londonmodular.co.uk/

One of the coolest places I have been for modular is CTRL in New York, a small shop packed with modular gear. The staff there were extremely knowledgeable and helpful:

https://www.ctrl-mod.com/

Worldwide, other notable outlets include:

Germany: https://www.schneidersladen.de/en/

France: https://www.modularsquare.com/

Norway: https://www.pyramidsounds.com/

USA: http://www.analoguehaven.com/

USA: https://www.controlvoltage.net/

Australia: https://www.patchcable.com.au/

Japan: http://www.clockfacemodular.com/

For DIY stuff, there are lots of sites. I recently built a Music Thing Turing Machine from a kit from Thonk, and based on that experience I would recommend their kits:

https://www.thonk.co.uk/

https://musicthing.co.uk/index.html

I’m also a big fan of DIY site Kassutronics: https://kassu2000.blogspot.com/

Finally, Oakley deserves a mention here – they don’t do many Eurorack modules, but they are highly regarded. Tony Allgood, who runs the company, is a super helpful synth expert:

http://www.oakleysound.com/index.htm

Tuned City in Ancient Messene, Greece, 1st-3rd June 2018

I will be presenting about an audio drift I made for the ruins of Kilmahew and St. Peter’s Seminary. Ancient Messene is a collection of ruins, so hopefully this work will fit with the place.

I will be playing examples of how sound art methods, such as working with binaural recording and portable audio players, can disrupt the conventional heritage approach to history. The heritage industry promotes the idea that history is a fixed, linear chronological narrative, confined to the past, which should be clearly and unambiguously represented to people to help them learn about history, e.g. through the audio guides that give factual information to visitors at heritage tourist attractions.

My presentation will be about how can audio be used in more playful and generative ways to reconfigure places. By using techniques such as binaural recording to create spatial illusions, and overlapping multiple sounds and voices, audio can remind us that history is ongoing, that places are always happening in the here-and-now, that events are multiple and messy, and that there is no single ‘correct’ version of what a place ‘is’.

Audio also physically moves bodies – pushing ears and skin and from there hooking into the nervous system. With my audio drift people reported feeling compelled to slow down at points, or to hurry away from certain areas of the site. One woman was drawn by some watery audio to a stream – and then slipped and fell in (disclaimer: no one was hurt. Thankfully.) So narrating a place through audio is not just about representing facts to people. It can be a visceral experience, in which learning happens in an embodied way. In ruins, there is particular potential for using audio to amplify uncanny and haunted atmospheres.

Symposium on ‘Sound and space: theory and methods in sonic geographical research’ at Cardiff University, 5th-6th June 2018

This event is free to attend, although places are limited. There is more information here:

http://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/geographyandplanning/2018/03/26/sound-and-space-theory-and-methods-in-sonic-geographical-research-symposium/

My sonic geography collaborator Jonathan Prior is organising this, together with urban cultural geographer Mark Jayne. Day one will be presentations from invited speakers including me. Day two will be a more hands-on sonic geography methods workshop led by Jonathan.

My presentation will be about working with voice audio as research data rather than only as a precursor to textual transcription. Voice audio can be used to productively disrupt dominant paradigms of voice: by propagating voices as vibration, experimenting with the machinic media ecologies that constitute voice, and rewiring the relations between voice, space and place. I will be presenting some examples of experimental styles of voice audio, again drawing on my Kilmahew audio drift, to illustrate creative ways of editing voices and using contrapuntal polyphony (to borrow the term used by Glen Gould to describe his solitude trilogy of radio documentaries).

You can read more about my audio drift for Kilmahew and St. Peter’s Seminary in this paper here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1474474014542745

The paper is open access so you don’t need a university subscription to read it.

Voices are machinic from the very beginning. They arise from vibrational systems, as lungs, vocal cords, throats, tongues and ears get hooked up to architectural spaces, bodies of air, microphones and amplifiers, telephones and answerphones, audio and video recording, headsets, headphones and loudspeakers, scripts and autocues. From the first moment that Bell spoke to Watson on the telephone, from the earliest etchings of Edison’s words into phonograph foil, sound machines have pulled apart the humanist subject, reminding the voice of its humble origins amongst vibrating body parts. Not only does listening to the technologized voice tell us as much about contemporary existence as the classic interpersonal interview encounter, but that encounter itself must be rethought to recognize the voice recorder as a key actant.

In its restless movements through multiple machines, voice can never completely express the self as a conscious, contained, definable identity. It may present an illusion of rational self-possession and self-presence; it may be eloquent, articulate and clipped, with received pronunciation; the machines may black box its body out of sight and out of mind; and yet still the voice fails.

Take the Scottish radio presenter Jim Naughtie. For over two decades his voice was a regular feature of the Today programme, BBC Radio 4’s flagship morning news and current affairs show. Naughtie’s voice, like most official BBC voices, produces a sense of effortless rationality. It’s male Scottish accent achieves perfect clarity of enunciation, authoritative without ever being overbearing. Vocal apparatus combines with large diaphragm condenser microphones, pre-prepared scripts, acoustically treated studios and carefully optimised dynamic range compression to produce the most articulate and comprehensible of utterances. Phonemes roll out fully formed. Cadences rise and fall properly. And yet on one memorable occasion in 2010, when introducing Conservative minister Jeremy Hunt the Culture Secretary, Naughtie’s voice accidentally swapped the ‘H’ of Hunt and the ‘C’ of Culture to shocking and hilarious effect.

Whether this incident was simple Spoonerism or Freudian slip was of less interest to me than how Naughtie’s voice broke down in the immediate aftermath, like a tower block crumbling following the dynamite blast of demolition. Valiantly continuing to read out the headlines, the voice starts choking on its words, beset by dry coughs and awkward pauses. Utterances are spat out, forced through hoarseness, vocal cords seizing up. In this thickened, viscous tone, veering between laughter and tears, mundane lines about high speed broadband networks and Egyptian shark attacks take on a strangely gasping, almost morbid quality. The rational voice-from-the-ether suddenly acquires a body, which intrudes noisily, all-too-human in its frailty and fallibility. “Excuse me,” Naughtie eventually splutters, “coughing fit” – an excuse whose obvious inadequacy compounds matters. Such is the desperation of a man struggling with his own mouth, or words struggling to be voiced.

Such incidents, where the body trips up the voice, are not uncommon. Broadcasters, presenters, actors and singers routinely experience voices misfiring, script lines being forgotten, communication lines going dead, bouts of laryngitis, guests who say too much or not enough. There is a whole programme genre based on outtakes and bloopers, exploiting the humour that bubbles out when gaffes and fluffed lines puncture the performance of voice. If vocal breakdown can happen to trained, experienced, rehearsed voices surrounded by sophisticated technologies, it can happen to anyone.

Take Paris Brown, a 17 year old appointed in 2013 as the UK’s first youth crime commissioner. Her remit was to represent young people’s views to the police in Kent, and she invited them to use social media to do so. But social media came back to bite her. The tabloid press dredged up offensive posts from her Twitter account, including ill-advised racist, homophobic and violent comments, probably written whilst drunk. Her reputation was trashed, and a few days later she resigned.

Taken literally, the Tweets are lewd and unpleasant. Thinking about the context, however, it looks like this was just an adolescent seeking attention, perhaps showing off to her friends, expressing anger and confusion in a clumsy and foolish way, and pushing social boundaries to see what would happen. So – normal teenager stuff. For my generation growing up, you could say and do stupid stuff to get a reaction, cause a bit of outrage, and it was rarely recorded. That has all changed.

I also talked to my students about the UK government’s monitoring of communications through GCHQ. Afterwards, the question came up: is this sort of surveillance really such a bad thing? One student pointed out that GCHQ came out of Alan Turing’s work at Bletchley Park, including cracking the Enigma code during World War II, which helped defeat the Nazis. GCHQ’s current work involves foiling terrorist plots, saving lives. What’s wrong with that?

Clearly it is too simplistic to suggest that surveillance systems are driven by malice, like a bunch of Bond villains trawling people’s emails in a secret underground lair. Surveillance is more rational than that: the state is threatened by actions such as terrorism, and the production of knowledge is a crucial way of exercising of power to regulate these threatening actions.

But in any kind of rationality, there is always an irrationality. The power exercised by GCHQ doesn’t just block terrorism. It helps to produce terrorism as a definable thing – a set of ideas and subjectivities that can be monitored, documented and regulated.

Mass surveillance also has unintended consequences, like the unpleasant side effects of a medical treatment. Storing all electronic communication in the name of counter terrorism compromises the privacy of entire populations. That changes the nature of social life, in ways that may be hard to perceive but which are nonetheless pervasive. Autonomy is inevitably curtailed. An email, for instance, might look like communication between two people, but it isn’t. Other people can examine it, log it, store it. It could be used in a court of law at a later date in some way that is impossible to foresee.

We don’t have to look hard to find examples of such powers being used abusively. I imagine many of those who helped gather information for the East German Stasi believed that they were doing good, protecting their state from dangerous ideologies. The power they exercised no doubt enabled certain things, protected certain values – but it also crushed people and ideas that didn’t fit with the dominant view. It is all too easy for power to slip into violence.

Foucault poses the question of how to let power flow whilst avoiding it solidifying into authoritarian forms of domination. There are no easy answers. But we have to at least keep asking the question. It may well be that many of those working in surveillance wrestle with this on a daily basis. However, if you believe Edward Snowden’s description of America’s National Security Agency, the employees there were definitely not questioning what they were doing enough, or even at all – and that is when power becomes dangerous.

Alan Turing’s groundbreaking role in surveillance may have helped to win WWII, but look what happened to him: suicide, following persecution for his sexuality. The state monitored his private activities, criminalised him and subjected him to enforced medical castration. Government interference in the most intimate of matters caused him irreparable harm. It is an unfortunate irony that the machines he dreamt up are now being used to insert surveillance ever deeper into people’s lives.