Our most recent gig was at the opening of Deep Wireless on May 1, 2010, and the above photos are from our previous outing at Mercer Union’s “Music in Alternative Spaces” in July 2009 (both locations in Toronto). Our set-up riffs on traditional radio listening (the big central radio around which the audience gathers), as well as my multi-channel tactics (in this case, an array of hanging radios, and speakers above the radios in the ceiling). 

Here’s how the official line on what we’re up to:

“The Lost and Found” is an ongoing collaboration between Anna Friz and E.C. Woodley to explore phenomenologies of recording, radio, and electricity, and the materiality of the transmission environment. Woodley uses three turntables to work with curious recordings, giving preference to these sounds as discrete entities, an audio equivalent to the approach Canadian visual artist Greg Curnoe used in his collages of the ‘60’s. Friz adds VLF, shortwave, interfrequency static, and live electronics to the mix, and spatializes the sound via multi-channel micro-radio transmission to an array of vintage receivers. “The Lost and Found” convenes a communal ritual of radio listening, and promises an evening lost and found voices heard in the dark corners of the radio dial.

Friz and Woodley met in 2005 over an impromptu collaboration on Woodley’s long-running radio program (also named “The Lost and Found”) on CKLN-FM in Toronto. Woodley has also written music for many films including Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” and his brother Aaron Woodley’s “Rhinoceros Eyes”, “Toronto Stories” and “Tennessee”.

I know, I know, another scene of sound artists pouring over gear on a table. At least we sit off to the side, so people can choose if they want to watch us twiddle our knobs or not. For the Deep Wireless gig we had the lighting adjusted better than in these photos, and I also replaced the Grundig Emergency radios in the array with a series of bigger transistor radios from the late 60s-early 70s (Nordmende Globetrotter, Transita, and Corvette; plus a Bel-Air and a Panasonic). 

I had the great pleasure to become a beast of the night last weekend, for this fun event: 

Saturday, June 27, 2009, in the window of La Centrale Galerie/Powerhouse, on St-Laurent Boulevard, in Montréal: watch and listen for Les bêtes nocturnes!

Sound artists project out on St Laurent the sounds that shift our quotidian experiences: they are repetitive, electronic, random, strange, and yet so distinctively animalistic. It’s dark in there but if you look closely, you might catch a glimpse of those rare mutated creatures of the night, through the window of the gallery-become-zoo.

The best time to hear the beasts is after sunset (10pm), before sunrise (5am). Bring your lawn chair and binoculars. Anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and field recorders are welcome to this rare opportunity to witness animals improvising with lo-fi poetics.

Sound beasts :

Magali Babin, Myléna Bergeron, Martine H. Crispo, Nicolas Dion, Chantal, Dumas, Nikki Forrest, Anna Friz, Jackie Gallant, Anne Françoise Jacques, Martin Tétreault, Nancy Tobin.