This weekend Little Gem Records launched the physical release of my documentary series ‘Mad Scientists of Music‘. The series is available now from Little Gem‘s store (located off Parnell Square, just across from the Ambassador Theatre), on their awesome ‘little gem’ mp3 player format. It’s an extremely limited release – so pick up a copy from the shop (or from me in person) while you can.

To celebrate the launch, and as part of the Na Hailtiri series of location specific improvised performance events, a bunch of artists featured in the documentary performed this weekend in an incredible abandoned space on the outskirts of Dublin. Performers included FYED (Fionn Wallace A.K.A. Fyodor and Ed Devane, A.K.A. Withering Zithering), Deathness Injection, Luxury Mollusc, Caoimhe Lavelle and Glotchbot. Thanks a million to everyone who played and came along.

More videos from the event here. Videos courtesy of Sebastian Dooris.

Roger Gregg is a dramatist, poet, musician, actor and performer. Over a long career on radio and theatre, he’s had dozens of plays performed all over the world, and written and recorded numerous radio dramas as ‘Crazy Dog Audio Theatre‘.

Today Roger continues to record and perform, with his ‘Bee Loud Glade Cabaret’. Bee Loud shows fuse poetry and music, giving new life to verse, mythology and storytelling.

Roger appeared in episode one of Mad Scientists of Music, and this episode continues our discussion. Roger talks about everything from his radio influences, to his career in Irish theatre, to the inimitable power of sound.

Download: Mad Scientists of Music – Bonus Episode – Roger Gregg

Tracks Used

Crazy Dog Audio Theatre – Studio Cuts
Crazy Dog Audio Theatre – Time Out For Bill Lizard
Bee Loud Glade Cabaret – Up Yours (featuring the words of Gerry Murphy)
Bee Loud Glade Cabaret – Too Lovely for words (featuring the words of Gerry Murphy)
Bee Loud Glade Cabaret – The Boney (featuring the words of Iggy McGovern)
Bee Loud Glade Cabaret – Helen’s Kiss
Crazy Dog Audio Theatre – Infidel
Roger Gregg – We’re number one
Bee Loud Glade Cabaret – Night Start
Roger Gregg – The Hollow Men (featuring the words of T.S Elliot)

This recording is released under a non-commercial, no-derivatives Creative Commons Licence.

More photos below…

Acts featured on the night include Deathness Injection, KaraKara,
Luxury Mollusc, Siam Collective, MarQu Vr & The Trumpets of Time &
Glotchbot. We’ve cooked up a wee playlist to give you a taster!

And here’s a wee interview about the gig, from Near FM’s Art’s Show last week (interview starts 6 minutes in).

Awesome new poster for the Mad Scientists Gig next week, by Gamepaq founder and A4 Sound member Andrew Edgar.

So last night I was lucky enough to see the incredibly talented radio producer Roman Mars perform a live episode of his show 99% Invisible, at the ever creepy Freemasons Hall in Molesworth St. The event was a part of the inaugural Sounds Alive festival, which brought together a bunch of radio folks like legendary storytelling collective the Moth, and Belfast’s Sonic Arts Research Centre, as well as curating several rooms of world class radio around the bizarre magical landscape of the Freemason’s Dublin Command Centre.

I had genuinely forgotten that Sounds Alive was also running a competition, called ‘Your Story Your Sound‘, curated in part by Roman Mars himself. So it’s with enormously still disbelieving bejaysusment that I report that a segment from my recent doc series ‘Mad Scientists of Music‘ (created for Dublin community station Near FM) took home the award. The piece takes us on a musical journey into the hills above Brighton, where avant-garde music finds a home in an ancient landscape.

If you like what you hear, we’re running a live show to promote some of the artists featured in the documentary. It’s on 16th September in Dublin’s Twisted Pepper, and tickets are only 5 euro! You can also download or stream to the whole series at this website, or on itunes.

Update: Luke at Culturefile was kind enough to rebroadcast the piece yesterday.

Download: Hiding Music in the Mountains

Hiding Music in the Mountains

Irish electronic musician Ewan Hennelly (HERV / ZPG), has developed a way to combine his two passions; hiking and electronic music. Climbing the hills and valleys of the South Downs, Ewan takes part in geocaching. Tracking down geocaches (tiny boxes for marked on an online map) with his GPS, Ewan leaves cassettes of his experimental music albums for curious travellers to encounter.

The Instrument of the Law‘ examined how changing technology and copyright laws are impacting music. This bonus episode fills in the blanks, addressing additional issues we didn’t get to talk about in detail, like creative commons, the legality of mashups, copyright as a promotional tool, and alternative business models at a time when music sales are in decline.

Download: Bonus Episode – Copyright

Issues Raised in the Programme

Great article on ‘The Economics of Girl Talk’, the mashup artist whose ostensibly illegal releases have somehow escaped the ire of the recording industry.

David Bowie’s predictions, a decade ago, on the future of the music industry.

More information on the proposed Irish Household Broadcast Charge.

Information on the work of the Irish Copyright Review Committee, including their final report, ‘Modernising copyright‘.

All the information publicly available on the secretive Trans-pacific partnership agreement, the new transnational agreement which will dictate which laws domestic governments can pass or amend to govern copyright.

If you’re interested in releasing or discovering work that uses a Creative Commons licence, here’s a link to the various Creative Commons Licences.

Article on recent Indian legal decisions relating to patents.

Eye opening article about the privatisation of Copyright Enforcement in Brazil.

Credits

Thanks to interviewees – Kieran Dold / Kara Kara, John Leech / Siam Collective, Dr Eoin O’Dell, MarQu VR, Ewan Hennelly, Meljoann, Simon Kenny (Bitwise Operator), Ed Devane, Andrew Edgar.

The final episode of the series looks at the future of Irish experimental music. We find out how techniques like ‘Live Coding’ (where computer programming during a concert, creates the music and visuals in real time), ‘Geocached Music’ (intrepid explorers following clues to discover hidden caches of music in the real world), and new interfaces like ‘Leap motion’ (which tracks users hands as they move through space) will change how audiences can interact with the music. This episode ties together the threads of the series, and offers a glimpse into the future of music, technology and creative collaboration.

Part 1 – Geocaching with Ewan Hennelly

Irish electronic musician Ewan Hennelly, formerly HERV, now known as ZPG, has combined his love of hiking and electronic music in an unexpected way. Climbing the hills and valleys of the South Downs, Ewan takes part in geocaching. Tracking down geocaches (tiny boxes for marked on an online map) with his GPS, Ewan leaves tapes of his experimental music for curious travellers to encounter.

Part 2 – Simon Kenny’s Inventions

Simon Kenny (Bitwise Operator) is a musician and inventor. He takes us on a whirlwind tour of his software experiments, working with a variety of groups like Galway Autism Project. Simon also shows off his cutting edge software synthesiser ‘Oscar‘.

Part 3 – Andrew Edgar’s Weather Machine

Andrew Edgar of Gamepak Collective has a dream. He wants to build a new kind of instrument, a ‘terrarium’ that can be teased into sonic life by musicians ‘like Gods of yore’.

Part 4 – Ed Devane’s Binaural Recordings

Electroacoustic musician Ed Devane has been experimenting with binaural recordings: Sending these hypnotic microphones out to vocalists all over the world. The results are beautiful and dreamlike.

Part 5 – Sebastian Heinz of Patchblocks

Patchblocks are a new invention, successfully kickstarted by Belfast based, German born Sebastian Heinz. Part synth, part midi instrument, they can be used alone or as a programmable effects pedal; with a huge library of community effects to download.

Epilogue – Success in music

Niamh De Barra and Roger Gregg talk about succeeding as an artist in the twenty first century.

Download:
Episode 6 – ‘Postcards from the Edge

About the Series

Mad Scientists of Music is a six part, BAI funded documentary series on Near FM. The show explores the world of Circuit Bending, Chip Tune, and Electroacoustic music in Ireland. Low cost technology, recycled instruments and a new attitude to tinkering embodied by the ‘maker movement’ are helping to reinvent music. A new generation of Irish musicians raised around computers, the internet and video gaming, see noise as something to be hacked, taken apart, and reconstructed. These artists build their own instruments, whether by recycling toy keyboards, modifying video game consoles, or attaching electronics to traditional stringed instruments. They often share their music online for free, and in doing so challenge our ideas about copyright and ownership. Their playful attitude to technology finds new uses for obsolete devices and brings the collaboration of musicianship to engineering and the arts.

Tracks Used

ZPG – Conjunx Endura
ZPG – Slow Cell
HERV – It’s OK I’m a collage
Oscar, Leap Motion Demo, Graphic Score Cam – Sounds and music courtesy of Simon Kenny / Surface Tension
Patchblocks – Sounds and music courtesy of Patchblocks. Including patch blocks demo track by Box Cutter
Weather machine – Includes the following creative commons sounds:

This recording is released under a non-commercial, no-derivatives Creative Commons Licence.

Chuffed to be able to present my first piece for RTE Lyric FM’s ‘Culture File‘ programme. It’s a short on Chipzel, the Chiptune artist profiled in Episode 2 of Mad Scientists of Music. The piece features much of the same material from that report, but presented in a more straightforward way, which was an interesting challenge. I grew up religiously listening to the incredible BBC Radio 4 arts programme Kaleidoscope, and Luke Clancy’s Culture File is a sort of modern day descendent of that show.

Download: Chipzel

This episode looks at how innovative new ways of making and distributing music are coming into conflict with our legal system. Some argue that copyright and patent laws, created to encourage innovation, are no longer in touch with how artists remix and reinterpret our cultural landscape.

Part 1 – Piracy

We learn about copyright law, the ‘copy left’ movement and new licensing schemes like Creative Commons. Eoin O’Dell corrects some common copyright misapprehensions, Ed Devane and Simon Kenny discuss their experiences having their music pirated. Niamh Houston (Chipzel) discusses how small Chiptune artists are challenged by ubiquitous piracy and major label plagiarism alike.

Part 2 – Sampling

Ewan Hennelly and Meljoann talk about the culture of sharing. MarQu and Meljoann describe about how ready access to the internet enabled them to learn techniques and exposed them to niche scenes that would have been unavailable historically; and how our always on, connected society is reshaping music. MarQu VR discusses the endemic and transformative use of samples in VJing and parody.

Part 3 – Illegal Art

Karakara (Kieran Dold) and Siam Collective (John Leech) discuss the idea of remixing as a crime and illegal art as a wilfully provocative act.

Featured Interviewees:

Eoin O’Dell, Colm Olwill (DJ PCP), Seb & Emma of Deathness Injection, Niamh De Barra, Simon Kenny (aka Bitwise Operator), Ed Devane, Meljoann, Ewan Hennelly (also known as HERV / ZPG), MarQu VR, Andrew Edgar, Kieran Dold (Karakara), Niamh Houston (Chipzel), John Leech (Siam Collective).

Download:
Episode 5 – ‘The Instrument of the Law‘

About the Series

Mad Scientists of Music is a six part, BAI funded documentary series on Near FM. The show explores the world of Circuit Bending, Chip Tune, and Electroacoustic music in Ireland. Low cost technology, recycled instruments and a new attitude to tinkering embodied by the ‘maker movement’ are helping to reinvent music. A new generation of Irish musicians raised around computers, the internet and video gaming, see noise as something to be hacked, taken apart, and reconstructed. These artists build their own instruments, whether by recycling toy keyboards, modifying video game consoles, or attaching electronics to traditional stringed instruments. They often share their music online for free, and in doing so challenge our ideas about copyright and ownership. Their playful attitude to technology finds new uses for obsolete devices and brings the collaboration of musicianship to engineering and the arts.

Tracks used

Chipzel – Only Human Foilverb Remix (RoughSketch)
Karakara – Illeagle – Thesis Song
Karakara – Illeagle – You called it that
Karakara – Illeagle – God only knows
Karakara – Illeagle – Really
Karakara – Illeagle – In Light of your misleading

Lobat – my little droid needs a hand
Covox – Sunday – handheld electropop

Siam Collective – Melatronic Mission (unreleased rough mix)
Siam Collective – Meatloaf Madness (unreleased rough mix)
Siam Collective – Simpson Chemical (unreleased rough mix)

A stroll down Killiney beach last Saturday would have taken you on a dark ambient journey. Under the illustrated pier of the old icecream shop huddled a group of alternative sound tinkerers. This was the second ever ‘Seascape Soundscape‘, an occasional non-hierarchical collaboration facilitated by Sebastian Dooris, one half of ambient drone duo ‘Deathness Injection‘ (profiled in Episode 1 of ‘Mad Scientists of Music’). With a single battery powered practice amp, and a motley collection of distortion peddles, korg microsynths, tape loops, kaossilators and contact mics, we hammered away – our noises sheltered and reverberating under the victorian overhang. We were a mixed group, real musicians like Stewart Geelon of Luxury Mollusc, sonically feuding with enthusiastically tone deaf participants like me. Weather permitting, we will return, to sheer the beach of bathers and darken the glorious blue skies.

This episode takes us on a tour of workshops and hack spaces, and explores the relationship of outsider electronic music to the fine art establishment.

Teaser – Andrew Edgar takes us on a tour of the A4 Arts Collective.

Part 1 – Ed Devane talks about the relationship between self taught musicians, hackers, artists and the “new music” (contemporary classical music) establishment.

Part 2 – The Dublin Laptop Orchestra introduce us to their own unique take on electronic music. Performing using digital setups with midi controllers, the group focus on making a performance which combines physical movement with electronic collaboration.

Part 3 – Stewart Geelon of Luxury Mollusc & Primal Barber Quartet introduces us to the Dublin ‘harsh noise’ scene, where electronic improvisers taking their queue from industrial and early 20th century avant-garde music, create challenging dark soundscapes from found objects.

Part 4 – Artist Aine Belton, talks about combining language and musical sound to enhance the impact of poetry and creative writing. Aine, a trained musician and visual artist, became fascinated with combining music, language and visual media. This work has resulted in a practice which includes instrument making and zine culture alike.

Interjection – Ed Devane talks about sound as art, the different purposes behind experimental music, improvisation from a visual art / sound art background, and the creation of work that elicits a ‘sense of awe’.

Part 5 – Dublin postpunk-neokraut-nowave-neopsychadelic multi-instrumentalist improvisers No!, discuss collaborations at their open door Concrete Soup Experimental Music Afternoons in Twisted Pepper.

Download:
Episode 4 – ‘The Hacker in the Gallery‘

About the Series

Mad Scientists of Music is a six part, BAI funded documentary series on Near FM. The show explores the world of Circuit Bending, Chip Tune, and Electroacoustic music in Ireland. Low cost technology, recycled instruments and a new attitude to tinkering embodied by the ‘maker movement’ are helping to reinvent music. A new generation of Irish musicians raised around computers, the internet and video gaming, see noise as something to be hacked, taken apart, and reconstructed. These artists build their own instruments, whether by recycling toy keyboards, modifying video game consoles, or attaching electronics to traditional stringed instruments. They often share their music online for free, and in doing so challenge our ideas about copyright and ownership. Their playful attitude to technology finds new uses for obsolete devices and brings the collaboration of musicianship to engineering and the arts.

Tracks Used:

Ed Devane – Arcane
Ed Devane – Feedback
Dublin Laptop Orchestra – Wakey Wakey
Dublin Laptop Orchestra – Beater
Dublin Laptop Orchestra Live recording (Rehearsal, Trinity College School of Music)
The Primal Barber Trio – Live at Hunters Moon (curtesy of Deserted Village)
Luxury Mollusc – Live recording
Beets like – by Becca De La Rosa read by ESC Zine
Slinky – by Jessica Maybury via Craiglist read by ESC Zine
‘The Spoonwriter’ by Áine Belton and Sharon White (2010)
No! – Live recording (Twisted Pepper, Concrete Soup Music Afternoons)

The is the first web only bonus episode of Mad Scientists of Music. Focusing on interviews rather than sound, these episodes feature clips, topics and artists there wasn’t space to fit into the radio series.

We kick off with early experiences in technology, hearing from a host of folks about how early encounters with computers and electronics fuelled their interest in sound. A diverse collection of musicians, from Ewan Hennelly and Simon Kenny to MarQu VR of Gamepak Collective, give us their radically differing opinions of technology.

Moving on to influences we hear how artists like Auteker and Aphex Twin inspired a host of Irish experimental electronic musicians.

Ed Devane talks about moving from constructing his own instruments to collecting a unique set of sounds to manipulate electronically.

Niamh De Barra talks describes how composers like Stravinsky helped steer the course of electronic music and why contemporary virtuosity pushed her towards electronic composition and performance.

Meljoann talks about her diverse influences and combining classical and electronic composition.

Oswald Green and Sebastian Dooris speak about the pleasures of understanding the physics of sound. And there’s a special exclusive track from Oswald right at the end.

Download:
Bonus Episode – ‘Beginnings‘

Episode three takes a journey into the underground world of circuit bending. Circuit benders hack children’s toys and dissect cheap archaic electronics, to produce strange new instruments. Circuit bending lies at the intersection of instrument building, grass roots activism and psychedelia. Listeners will learn about the history of circuit bending, a hobby that grew out of the the microprocessor and psychedelic revolutions in the 1960’s; and how these technological and cultural movements fused into a kind of activist musicianship.

From the work of Reed Ghazala (creator of Circuit Bending) on, musical tinkerers have been antiestablishment figures – taking technology beyond its intended uses and in the process becoming outsider artists.

Andrew Edgar explains how geographical differences in the history of consumerism influenced the musical cultures of different countries – and how he views taking toys apart as a sort of ‘sound archaeology’. Andrew introduces us to his collection of unique circuit bent instruments. Artist and VJ MarQu Vr situates circuit bending in the history of electronic music. John Leech gives us a live ‘cartridge ripping’ demo, which involves tricking a classic megadrive into producing chaotic musical sequences. We begin though, in Berlin, where writer and one time rock star Julian Gough, is making his own weird and wonderful instruments.

Download:
Episode 3 – ‘Toys‘

About the Series

Mad Scientists of Music is a six part, BAI funded documentary series on Near FM. The show explores the world of Circuit Bending, Chip Tune, and Electroacoustic music in Ireland. Low cost technology, recycled instruments and a new attitude to tinkering embodied by the ‘maker movement’ are helping to reinvent music. A new generation of Irish musicians raised around computers, the internet and video gaming, see noise as something to be hacked, taken apart, and reconstructed. These artists build their own instruments, whether by recycling toy keyboards, modifying video game consoles, or attaching electronics to traditional stringed instruments. They often share their music online for free, and in doing so challenge our ideas about copyright and ownership. Their playful attitude to technology finds new uses for obsolete devices and brings the collaboration of musicianship to engineering and the arts.

Credits

Sounds used from – Gamepak circuit bending bloof

Part 1 – Julian Gough in Berlin
Part 2 – Andrew Edgar & Gamepak collective
Part 3 – John Leech (of Siam Collective)

Also featuring MarQu Vr of Gamepak collective.

Tracks used: Cartridge rip by John Leech, improvised performance jam by MarQu Vr & Andrew Edgar.

Episode two explores the video game backgrounds of a variety of Irish experimental musicians – how video game culture and ready access to technology influenced their love of music and their aesthetic sensibilities. Chiptune music in particular reappropriates not only the machinery, but also the distinctive sounds of computer games of the 1980’s, and this helps to define its unique aesthetic. Kieran Dold (Karakara) discusses the aesthetic appeal of retro videogame music. Niamh Houston (Chipzel) explains how ‘home brew’ software like LSDJ, allows her to make music from classic Game Boy portable gaming consoles. Niamh talks about completing the loop – working with BAFTA award winning video game designer Terry Cavanagh to create retro video game inspired music for contemporary ‘indie’ computer games like Super Hexagon.

Download:
Episode 2 – ‘Growing Up Digital‘

About the Series

Mad Scientists of Music is a six part, BAI funded documentary series on Near FM. The show explores the world of Circuit Bending, Chip Tune, and Electroacoustic music in Ireland. Low cost technology, recycled instruments and a new attitude to tinkering embodied by the ‘maker movement’ are helping to reinvent music. A new generation of Irish musicians raised around computers, the internet and video gaming, see noise as something to be hacked, taken apart, and reconstructed. These artists build their own instruments, whether by recycling toy keyboards, modifying video game consoles, or attaching electronics to traditional stringed instruments. They often share their music online for free, and in doing so challenge our ideas about copyright and ownership. Their playful attitude to technology finds new uses for obsolete devices and brings the collaboration of musicianship to engineering and the arts.

Credits

Part 1 – Gaming

Game experience intro: Sebastian Dooris (Deathness Injection)
Montage of Gamers: Emma (of Deathness Injection), Andrew Edgar, Kieran Dold (Karakara), John Leech (Siam Collective), Ed Devane, Colm Olwill, Ed Devane, Meljoann.

Part 2 – Chiptune

Interviewees: Kieran Dold, Niamh Houston.

Featured Artists

Chipzel – Knuckle Joe
ZPG – Malware Brigade
ZPG – Xai Unbound
Chipzel – Super Hexagon Soundtrack and Super Hexagon play through (courtesy of Terry Cavannah)
Menacing Wonders – Chipzel (feat Manami Matsumae)
Super Gammy Boy – Microsoft Excel Swag
Super Gammy Boy – I’d Have That Many Followers Too If I Dressed Like a Whore
Bitwise Operator – Hows That

Episode one explores how circuit benders, hackers and artists are building teaching and education into their practice. This is a culture as much about sharing as making, and all the artists interviewed run classes and workshops (often at no charge). Children and adults alike attend the ‘maker fairs’ and hacklabs where circuit benders share tips and show off their home brew projects. We look at how the history and technology involved are intimately connected to learning as a democratic horizontal practice, and how workshops facilitate access to these emerging technologies. We drop in on a circuit bending workshop at A4 Sounds with Andrew Edgar, and hear adults and children explore this new world of experimental sound. Roger Gregg takes us on a tour of his radio theatre laboratory, and tells the story of how he fell in love with the storytelling possibilities of sound. We join electroacoustic musician and instrument maker Ed Devane as he teaches musicians and non musicians alike how to improvise. Sebastian & Emma, of Dublin experimental duo ‘Deathness Injection‘ discuss their massively collaborative performance at Culture Night in Exchange Dublin.

Download:
Episode 1 – ‘Learning how to listen‘

About the Series

Mad Scientists of Music is a six part, BAI funded documentary series on Near FM. The show explores the world of Circuit Bending, Chip Tune, and Electroacoustic music in Ireland. Low cost technology, recycled instruments and a new attitude to tinkering embodied by the ‘maker movement’ are helping to reinvent music. A new generation of Irish musicians raised around computers, the internet and video gaming, see noise as something to be hacked, taken apart, and reconstructed. These artists build their own instruments, whether by recycling toy keyboards, modifying video game consoles, or attaching electronics to traditional stringed instruments. They often share their music online for free, and in doing so challenge our ideas about copyright and ownership. Their playful attitude to technology finds new uses for obsolete devices and brings the collaboration of musicianship to engineering and the arts.

So, after a very great while, but still much sooner than expected, my first documentary series ‘Mad Scientists of Music‘ is almost here.

Quick and dirty promo – featuring the music of Bitwise Operator

The final lineup of interviewees is ¡NO!, Deathness Injection, Andrew Edgar, John Leech Siam Collective, MarQu VR, Kieran Dold, Ed Devane (Withering Zithering), Patchblocks, Bitwise Operator, Ewan Hennelly (HERV / ZPG), Meljoann, Niamh de Barra, Luxury Mollusc, Primal Barbershop Trio, Colm Olwill (DJ PCP), Niamh Houston (Chipzel), Dr Eoin O’Dell, Roger Gregg (Crazy Dog Audio Theatre), Oswald Green, Julian Gough (Toasted Heretic) and The Dublin Laptop Orchestra.

I’ve been hard at work over the last few days creating the press packs which will dutifully be sent over the top to die tomorrow. When you make radio programmes, especially for community stations, you’ve got a problem. No matter how good or bad, your show is pretty unlikely to get reviewed and hence listened to. As I’ve been working on this series for a year, gradually falling in love with a whole host of largely unknown Irish artists, this time I decided to do something to catch el jaded journo’s attention. Hence, THE ULTIMATE PRESS PACK O’DOOM. Containing: 1 cassette tape copy of episodes 1 & 6 of the doc, 1 wax sealed creepy letter from a mysterious personage, 1 set of exclusive and mysterious photos, and for three lucky journocritters an actual walkman to play said tape on. Big thank you to Seb of Deathness Injection for lending his tape duplication machine, and to everyone who helped me find a place to buy cassette tapes in Dublin in 2014 (hint: it’s Tower Records). Look out for the series on this site, and on iTunes from next week. Before then I’ll be posting the first web only episodes – a series of interviews about first experiences with music and technology. Watch this space.

Broadcast dates: Thursday May 29th @ 5pm, June 5th, 12th, 19th & 26th, July 3rd @ 5pm

It’s April and I’m closing in on a final shape for the show. It’s been almost a year since I started preliminary research and interviews for ‘Mad Scientists‘, an enormously self indulgent amount of time to work on a radio documentary series. And yet, I feel I’ve hardly scratched the surface of the Irish experimental music scene. Creativity is a process of continuous curation, in fiction and especially in documentary, where research and footage accretes into a melange of gooey information that threatens to overwhelm you. Several years ago I embarked on an ill fated project to document the experience of Irish refugees at the hands of immigration services. Ultimately I had to abandon the project. I was simply unprepared to deal with the responsibility of capturing the experiences of people who’d been so cruelly treated, made so invisible by our state, by our indifference.

Maybe that’s why I switched to writing comedy. While the stakes are the same – failing or succeeding on the public stage, the consequences are purely personal. I’ve grown up a lot in the years since the documentary film flatlined. I find one of the positive aspects of getting older is an increase in organisational capacity – the ability to plan, to anticipate how long a task will take, to reassess a project as it develops. I’m still a disorganised shambles, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but these days I get the things I start done.

With that in mind, here’s where I’m at with the doc. I’ve got four thirty minute episodes almost finished, with two further episodes about half done. I’ve also pulled together a bunch of bonus content – four additional web only episodes, that will flesh out the musicians featured in the show, and focus on topics (like musical influences, nerd culture and so on), that the series doesn’t have time to fit in.

Episode 1 ‘Learning How to Listen‘, will take you on a tour of educational music projects. Starting at a circuit bending workshop in the Northside Shopping Centre, we stop by Roger Gregg’s eclectic home studio, before calling in on an instrument building workshop led by Ed Devane. We finish up with a visit to noise duo Deathness Injection’s incredible Culture Night mass collaboration, where hundreds of visitors to Exchange Dublin experienced the thrill of performing together.

Episode 2, ‘Growing Up Digital‘ will examine the impact of videogames on contemporary electronic music through the childhood anecdotes of a variety of performers. We’ll introduce you to chiptune – music made with retro consoles and home brew software, and take a tutorial in gameboy synthesiser ‘Little Sound DJ‘ in the capable hands of chiptune diva Chipzel (Niamh Houston).

Episode 3, ‘Taking Toys Apart‘, starts off in Germany, in the home ‘laboratory’ of author and musician Julian Gough (Toasted Heretic). Then we’ll hear about the impact of the geography of consumerism on toy hacking, from Gamepak Collective founder Andrew Edgar. Andrew, MarQu VR, and John Leech will explain the genesis of Dublin’s first chiptune collective. Finally, John demonstrates the dark art of cartridge ripping.

Episode 4, ‘The Hacker In the Gallery‘, is still a work in progress. This episode will example the relationship between hackers, musicians and the world of fine art audio.

Episode 5, ‘The Instrument of the Law‘, tackles copyright, sampling, and illegal art, introducing two fantastic unauthorised albums from Kieran Dold (Karakara), and John Leech (Siam Collective); and featuring the legal wit and wisdom of Trinity College’s Dr Eoin O’Dell.

Episode 6, ‘Postcards from the Edge‘, is still to be finalised. This episode will bring listeners some of the latest developments in electronic music, including a geocaching tour of Brighton and the South downs from Ewan Hennelly (HERV, ZPG), and an astonishing new software synthesiser under development from Dublin musician / programmer Bitwise Operator (Simon Kenny).

That’s it for the radio series. For web listeners, four additional interview based episodes will be released during and just after broadcast of the radio series. ‘Beginnings‘ covers the early musical influences and development of musicians like Meljoann, Oswald Green, Kieran Dold and Niamh De Barra. ‘Copyrights & Copywrongs‘ delves deeper into Creative Commons and the much needed reform of Irish copyright law, and touches on the patenting of music technology. ‘Irish Electronic Scenes‘, examines a variety of recent underground music scenes, through the eyes of Colm Olwill (DJ PCP), the Gamepak Collective, and Ewan Hennelly. Finally, ‘Nerds vs Chicks‘, collects two fascinating conversations, around the role of nerd culture and gender respectively, in electronic music. These bonus episodes are pretty rough at the moment, and will likely consist simply of voices, without music or on location recordings, but they include some of the best anecdotes and most fascinating characters of the series.

I can’t wait to get the show out there, and introduce new listeners to the incredible artists featured. I’d like to thank everyone who participated in the show so far – Ewan Hennelly, Andrew Edgar, John Leech, MarQu VR, Niamh DeBarra, Niamh Houston, Meljoann, Colm Olwill, Simon Kenny, Kieran Dold, Seb & Emma of Deathness Injection, Roger Gregg, Ben Gaulon, Stephen Mcloughlin, Ed Devane an Eoin O’Dell.

Mad Scientists of Music will be out June 2014, on Near FM, and online at this site.

I’ve just kicked off production on my new radio series, my first documentary. It’s a 6 * 30 minute show about experimental music in Ireland, entitled ‘Mad Scientists of Music’. Experimental music is a pretty big topic, covering everything from bedroom tinkering with Fruity Loops to technically and aesthetically sophisticated electronic ‘noise’  to Harry Partch style microtonal music. Clearly, I can’t cover everything, and this won’t be an effort to comprehensively catalogue the field. Instead I’ll be focusing primarily on participatory music – chiptune, circuit bending, music apps and other techniques and technologies which allow untrained musicians to take part in creating music.

For a number of years I was involved in the day to day activities of Exchange Dublin. Exchange was at that point a consensus based arts institution in Temple Bar Dublin; more recently the centre has moved away from total democracy, for better and worse, and apparently plans are afoot to leave its Temple Bar HQ for less contentious surroundings. When Exchange kicked off, the initial idea was to let open groups  co-ordinate creative projects in different mediums. Exchange Focus (founded by Dr. Jason McCandless) let enthusiast photographers and complete novices alike learn the intricacies of DSLR photography. My pet project, Exchange Words, ran workshops, lectures, and collaboratively organised spoken word performances. No Signal, a group organised by Dublin based artists like Jonah King, Daniel O’Donovan, Patrick Hough, Aine Belton, and Sebastian Dooris, fooled around with experimental audio video production and performance. No Signal was great fun, I used to head along as an interested if utterly unqualified observer. This was 2009, and demonstrations of 3D digital projection, live coding, and circuit bending seemed to come from a different world, a sizzling technoutopia where devices could be opened up, rejigged and tickled to reveal their secrets.  This open access mixture of mad scientists laboratory, artists workshop and technofetishists basement encouraged a playful attitude to technology, a million miles away from the intimidating math heavy culture of academic engineering and computer science. It was the purest expression of the hacker-artist culture I used to read about in Bruce Sterling think pieces for Wired Magazine or hear breathlessly described in The Net in the early 90’s. Talented amateurs using prosumer technology in interesting and innovative ways to make art, just for the love of it. Around the same time I took part in one of Ben Gaulon‘s ‘Sound Dig’ workshops, learning the very basics of circuit bending and hacking my first kiddie keyboard.

Later I got to know the guys behind Gamepak, a loose knit Dublin chiptune / circuit bending collective. Gampaq run chiptune gigs at festivals like KnockanStockan, and circuit bending workshops in association with Harold’s Cross based A4 Sounds. Taking part in these unstructured peer learning workshops helped inform the ideas behind Open Learning Ireland. Most recently, MarQu and Andrew Edgar of Gamepak helped organise the Open Learning hacklab at our week long festival of learning.

Bitwise Operator, one of the acts interviewed for the series.

I’m no musician. I took piano lessons as a kid, and wrote some awful singer songwriter music after leaving school, but I can’t play any instrument with any degree of competence. What I like about these technologies, and the folks who play with them in an inclusive way, is that my lack of ability doesn’t matter as much as my desire to participate. This isn’t just fiddling about with a ‘my first musak’ toy either. Participative electronic music, like gamelan and other traditional forms of non-expert collaborative music making, let non-musicians take part in producing real music: Improvising with ambient noise duo Deathness Injection, fiddling with Andrew Edgar’s homemade keyboards, or jamming on Bitwise Operator‘s upcoming iPad app. That’s the feeling I’m trying to convey with this series.  The experience of playing with things beautiful, unsettling and deliriously novel. In my next post I’ll talk about some of the folks I’ve interviewed so far, and the techniques and radio series that have influenced the approach I’m taking with  ‘Mad Scientists of Music’. For now check out this collaborative performance curated by Na Hailtiri in association with Deathness Injection. 1000 members of the public converged on Exchange Dublin, to join in in the spontaneous performance – noodling on theremins, effects pedals and chaos pads.

Mad Scientists Of Music should be done by early – mid 2014. If you’d like to be interviewed for the series get in touch. If you’d like to follow production, check it us on Facebook.