Monday 29 August
from 14:00 CEST until 12:00 noon on Tuesday 30 August
Ed Baxter
Forty Four Folk Tales
I've called this day of broadcasts Forty Four Folk Tales because I wanted to suggest types of activity that arrive out of semi-conscious or unconscious thought processes. That seems apposite for a medium where one's attention tends to drift. There are three kinds of broadcast here, presented in what one might consider a coherent post-expressionist Combine.
First, a series of monologues, sketches of mine which strive towards the creation of a psychological object through radio. In these narrative is secondary to an articulation of how the mind works, locale directs the traffic of mood in a digressive manner, and themes recur the way memory determines. Each voice featured has for me a timeless quality suited to the restlessness of the texts and each provides a still centre for what otherwise threatens to collapse in incoherence. Equally fantastical but formally traditional is, secondly, a long procedural or detective story, Sitzprobe, written by Dave Milton and read by the great Tam Dean Burn. This is characterised by grimly humorous mindless violence and anyone who sits through the whole vicious and absurd thing (an endurance piece certainly) may find in its spiky plot subtle echoes of themes and ideas heard elsewhere today, the subtlety buried beneath a thick layer of archness and an insistent loathing of humanity. Thirdly, an eight part series entitled Music without Precedent or Consequence: this presents unheard performances (never to be heard again) from the archives of Food & Sport, a band which miraculously managed almost entirely to escape the cultural trends of the last fifty years. It's naive art of the highest order and like a buried treasure has somehow survived being worn away by time. No artistic claims are made for it: it simply exists, suspended like the bee in Nabokov's room in Vyra. Thanks to the band for allowing me access to this music. A creature of my time and possessed of sadly limited skills, I must apologise for the fact that all this, as will soon become evident, is predominantly male in character, arising as it does from a late flowering of inexcusable self-indulgence tempered only by the influence of my kind-hearted collaborators. Repeats feature as this is discontinuous and I don't expect you to stay up all night and day. A little will go a long way and the listener is advised to dip in and out rather than wallow in the tub.
Photos by Daniela Gargiulo
44 Folk Tales
00:00:00 My Life as Doug Yule. Voice: Steffan Cennydd. Recording engineer: Michael Umney. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter. Additional recording by Trilby Baxter. Contains material some listeners may find disturbing.
00:26:12 Music without Precedent or Consequence, episode 1. Recordings direct to cassette, 1981-84, by Food & Sport. Series compiled and edited by Ed Baxter. Announcer: Piers Gibbon.
00:56:25 First Sketch for Larry Shipping (The DCI). Voice: Willie Carr. Recording engineer: Diarmuid McIntyre. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter.
01:27:04 Music without Precedent or Consequence, episode 2.
01:57:13 Cinquième esquisse pour l’ascension et la descente (Fifth Sketch for Ascent and Descent). Voice and recording: Jean-Philippe Renoult. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter. French translation: Henriette Gillerot.
02:26:16 Music without Precedent or Consequence, episode 3.
02:56:20 Ar y Mynydd (On the Mountain). Voice: Steffan Cennydd. Recording engineer: Michael Umney. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter. Welsh translation: Ffion Emyr.
03:16:13 Music without Precedent or Consequence, episode 4.
03:46:26 Heart Like a Duck part 1 (The Devil’s Gift) Voice: Willie Carr. Recording engineer: Diarmuid McIntyre. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter.
04:06:37 Music without Precedent or Consequence, episode 5.
04:36:41 Birdbrain. Voice: Steffan Cennydd. Baby’s voice: Ivor Forsyth-Lanceley. Recording engineer: Michael Umney. Additional recording by Peter Lanceley. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter. Contains material some listeners may find distasteful or offensive.
05:01:55 Music without Precedent or Consequence, episode 6.
05:31:57 Heart like a Duck part 2 (The Ghost of Prehen House). Voice: Willie Carr. Recording engineer: Diarmuid McIntyre. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter.
05:59:48 Music without Precedent or Consequence, episode 7.
06:29:56 The Deserter. Voice: Steffan Cennydd. Recording engineer: Michael Umney. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter.
06:56:51 Music without Precedent or Consequence, episode 8.
07:27:12 Heart like a Duck part 3 (Butch Cassidy in Paris). Voice: Steffan Cennydd. Recording engineer: Michael Umney. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter.
07:54:26 Sitzprobe. A thriller in 44 chapters. Written by Dave Milton. Adapted for the radio and edited by Ed Baxter. Read and recorded by Tam Dean Burn. Contains material some listeners may find distasteful or offensive.
14:38:00 Music without Precedent or Consequence. Compendium edition. Selected musical works of Food & Sport, recorded direct to cassette, 1981-84. Announcer: Piers Gibbon. Compiled and edited by Ed Baxter.
18:06:41 Birdbrain. Voice: Steffan Cennydd. Baby’s voice: Ivor Forsyth-Lanceley. Recording engineer: Michael Umney. Additional recording by Peter Lanceley. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter. Contains material some listeners may find distasteful or offensive.
18:31:58 Heart Like a Duck part 1 (The Devil’s Gift) Voice: Willie Carr. Recording engineer: Diarmuid McIntyre. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter.
18:52:10 Heart like a Duck part 3 (Butch Cassidy in Paris). Voice: Steffan Cennydd. Recording engineer: Michael Umney. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter. Contains material some listeners may find disturbing.
19:19:25 Heart like a Duck part 2 (The Ghost of Prehen House). Voice: Willie Carr. Recording engineer: Diarmuid McIntyre. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter.
19:47:17 Ar y Mynydd (On the Mountain). Voice: Steffan Cennydd. Recording engineer: Michael Umney. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter. Welsh translation: Ffion Emyr.
20:07:11 Cinquième esquisse pour l’ascension et la descente (Fifth Sketch for Ascent and Descent). Voice and recording: Jean-Philippe Renoult. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter. French translation: Henriette Gillerot.
20:36:15 The Deserter. Voice: Steffan Cennydd. Recording engineer: Michael Umney. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter.
21:03:09 First Sketch for Larry Shipping (The DCI). Voice: Willie Carr. Recording engineer: Diarmuid McIntyre. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter.
21:33:53 My Life as Doug Yule. Voice: Steffan Cennydd. Recording engineer: Michael Umney. Text, sound design, montage etc: Ed Baxter. Additional recording by Trilby Baxter.
Many thanks to all involved in these collaborations, as indicated above; to Knut, Sarah, Mathilde and Necef at RAZ; to Daniela Gargiulo; and, for their encouragement, Milo Thesiger-Meacham, Anthony Moore and Jim Whelton.
Born in 1960, Ed Baxter is creative director of Resonance FM in London, England, the radio station he co-founded in 2002. Artist, producer, lecturer, author, curator, researcher, critic, composer, performer, instigator, broadcaster, script-writer, and formerly promoter, record label boss, publisher, editor, typographer, book-seller and installation artist; Sony Award and PRSF New Music Award runner-up, and featured improbably in The Independent on Sunday's Happiness List as one of “100 people who have made Britain a better, happier place”. Ed is also an Associate Lecturer at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He shared a BASCA Composer of the Year (Sonic Arts) award with Chris Weaver for their work No Such Object, realised as part of NVA's son et lumiere project Speed of Light at Edinburgh International Festival in 2012.