the counterfactual mixtape

Winter Notes

This mixtape is woven together from music sketches, recordings of quiet mornings in Bristol parks, sheltering from the rain under bridges in Ghent, being directed by the whistles of Greek traffic police, eye examinations, and anti-fascist protests. There are also some text fragments contributed by my long term collaborator Tineke De Meyer [https://tinekedemeyer.hotglue.me/], who you may heard on Radio 3’s Late Junction [https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002pm6d] recently as she’s just released her first album on Antibody records [https://antibodylabel.bandcamp.com/album/inland-island]. This will be the last mixtape I produce in this style, I have a new plan and approach for this year I’ll share soon. In light of this I’ve made a compilation of all the previous mixtapes available for sale as part of Bandcamp Friday - check it out here: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dspk.substack.com [https://dspk.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Summer Trilogy

The mixtapes took an unplanned summer holiday, so this one has three sections to make up for that. Normal service should resume shortly. This one is quite intense and fairly noisy in places, but this seems apt for the material it’s built from.. [ rough content guide ] 0'00s - 4'10s concrete triggers 4'10s - 9'20s nighttime strata 9'20s - 14'10s concrete triggers (cont.) 14'10s - 20'40s meat market Concrete Triggers I've rarely use completely generative or random processes in composition, but they can be a useful tool for moving away from learnt patterns or to trigger ideas. My favourite approach is to set up systems that force me to respond to them, to tame wildness or to coax out things the sounds start to reveal. I used this method for these parts of the mixtape but also restricted the tools, creating focus through creative limitations. I've been selling a lot of audio equipment recently, and this has given me the chance to re-evaluate some bits of kit I haven't fully explored. This section was constructed almost entirely on a Digitakt II [https://www.elektron.se/product/digitakt-ii] with generous use of modulation, resampling and its retro style timestretch. I set up a system where pressing one button would throw 8 layers of field recordings from my archive at me, all looping at random lengths (some so short they approached wavetable synthesis [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavetable_synthesis]). After some time reshaping them with filters and other distortions I would then launch a new set of recordings, these being processed by the same reshaping I had already applied for some continuity. The recordings were all selected from a small bank so often the same source would appear on multiple tracks but with different processing. I recorded a long set of improvising with this system and then sliced it up into the structure you hear. (I've been listening to a lot of music concréte [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concrète]recently and this definitely inspired me to be more vigorous with my cuts, letting the shape of the sounds guide my editing decisions.) Nighttime Strata This part is a work in progress for something more directly connected to my counterfactual sound research. Through a combination of electromagentic field [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_field] recordings (using the wonderful SOMA Ether [https://somasynths.com/ether/]), contact microphones and acoustic sound it imagines a more than human way of sonically sensing the city. I've worked with EMF recordings on and off over the years but rarely connected them to site. Inspired by Christina Kubisch's Electrical Walks [https://christinakubisch.de/electrical-walks] and KMRU's amazing Natur [https://kmru.bandcamp.com/album/natur] album I'm keen to explore a combination of the audible and inaudible sounds of one place at one time. What would a future be like where our range of hearing stretched up into the spectrum of wifi networks, security cameras and drone batteries? I'm in the early questions stage of this work, and this sketch was constructed from nighttime recordings made in Bristol where I captured EMF and acoustic sound at the same time. The composition combines these both as simultaneous layers, sometimes raw and sometimes using audio convolution [https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/the-basics-of-convolution-in-audio-production], where one sound is shaped by the other. Meat Market A family holiday in Burgundy led us to the cattle market at Saint-Christophe-En-Brionnais [https://www.burgundy-tourism.com/events-calendar/marche-aux-bovins]. This last section collects some sounds roughly captured on a handheld recorder of this intimate encounter with the meat industry. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dspk.substack.com [https://dspk.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Archived Expansion

As the exhibition of my audio augmented reality piece [https://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/13209/only-expansion]Only Expansion [https://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/13209/only-expansion] in Bristol closes next week this mixtape is collaged from field recordings and music extracts that were created in 2018/19 as part of the making process. To create Only Expansion I spent time touring locations displaying very tangible signifiers of climate change - rising sea levels, collapsing coastlines, wildfires and more. This is probably one of the noisiest mixtapes so far, as it leans into the viscerality, decay and collapse that I had tried to capture in the audio walk. It takes a cinematic approach, shifting perspectives from the intimate and below surface level up to grassy cliffs and sweeping charred landscapes. Along with some wonderful vocals and strings from Sarah Anderson you’ll find early music sketches from the piece combined with a mixture of hydrophone and other field recordings from the coasts of Norfolk, Devon, Bergen and the aftermath of Californian wildfires. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dspk.substack.com [https://dspk.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Ghost Duets

A more melancholic drift than usual, maybe a dream of a time when all the venues are closed and the festivals are bankrupt and we rely solely on the buskers. This mixtape includes multiple ‘duets’ created by combining captured fragments of buskers and street music performances (including some Holy Week processions as it seemed timely). I enjoy the idea that these performances were greatly separated by time and space and now hang together in one imagined moment. There’s also some extracts of small improvisations I recently recorded with my long time collaborator Sarah Anderson and some field recordings to build worlds around all of these sounds. No timeline for this one, but rather just a list of locations and material, but as ever it’s the space created by overlaps that really matters. Enjoy. April 2025 Contents - Bilbao Holy Week processions; Improvisations with Sarah Anderson, Walthamstow; Car boot sale, Lewes; Trumpet player, Mexico City; Arc welders, Mumbai; Acapella vocalist, Hong Kong; Oktoberfest choir, Berlin; Mahjong hall, Guangzhou; Muted bridge guitar sketches, Bristol.. and more. (and yes.. I did nearly name this episode Ghost Buskers) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dspk.substack.com [https://dspk.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Howling Architecture

This month’s mixtape is now online. Around the back of Temple Meads station in Bristol there are rows of newly built office and apartment blocks. Whether it was unpredictable or badly planned for, the shape and materials of these buildings seems to be responsible for incredibly loud and intense whistling tones that occur whenever the wind picks up a bit. This mixtape features a set of recordings of this soundmark, combined into duets with woodwind samples I’ve been playing with (courtesy of Spectres [https://slateandash.com/products/spectres] by Slate+Ash). There’s also some diary field recordings from Liverpool and more sketches from work in progress music, all rapidly and roughly woven together. The track listing below is only a set of pointers, it is the overlaps I’m really interested in, where the combination of existing places create other possible worlds. ( I’ve also written a short text expanding my thoughts on these counterfactual soundscapes which you can read here [https://dspk.substack.com/p/we-wouldnt-be-wet] ). Enjoy 0’00 wind/woodwind duet 2’30 historial marker 3’26 spectral rooms, Liverpool 3’50 rowesound / spectral birds 6’00 Catholic Cathedral, Liverpool 6’20 Anglican Cathedral, Liverpool 7’14 sketch 89 part 1 7’33 spectral birds, Crosby 9’29 papermakers above/below water 11’34 wind/synth duet 1 15’06 sketch 96 18’45 spectral waves, Ise city 19’34 slowect (sketch) 20’00 travel plans, between Crewe + Stafford 22’41 wind/synth duet 2 24’39 sketch 89 part 2 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dspk.substack.com [https://dspk.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]