A Gathering of like minded listeners and recordists who head out into industrial landscapes, wild areas, into add hoc conversations, picnics, under bridges at night, not searching for silence but for being in the moment.  Listening like this, affects the way we move as though in an act of meditation. 
The sound to speaks for itself, making choices of where to be and when to move or be still. 
The process is affected strongly by ones breath and that is affected by ones mind. So its this sort of thing I felt inspired by. Consideration of whether to ‘make’ a sound happen ‘throw a stone etc’ or to receive what is there without intervention. Of course in the very act of recording, we do ‘make’ the sound happen as well. So we can’t tread so lightly that we aren’t present at all, we are present and but receptive, so somehow it relates to the inner soul or what Yogis call atman, and the outer world nature or what in Indian philosophy is called prakrity.

Environmental Performance Playlist

This event forms part of a unique series of music / dance site-specific art works developed in 2012 - 2013 with Arts Council National Lottery Funding. 
Quarry-o-sion Salamanda Tandem takes you into one of Wirksworth’s ancient quarries, experimenting with the physical and auditory landscape. Experience this environment using radio headsets receiving live and prerecorded sound, awakening perceptions of what is there; heard, touched and seen in an evocative and sensory art experience. Follow the touch of a visually impaired dancer, the eye of a geologist and an audio describer, and the ear of soundart recordists.
Unfolding over a 4-hour period, you are invited to drop in and out, or stay all afternoon. Live dance and music performance, the audio journey of fossils, scattered rocks across the quarry amphitheater, singer audio describes, location recording, natural and processed sounds will all combine in experiments with the physical and auditory landscape.

Photographer/Technical Support: Geoffrey Fielding
Composers: Isabel Jones and Duncan Chapman
Dancer: Indra Slavena 
Sound Recordists: Robbie Fitton-Jones, Isabel Jones and Duncan Chapman
Project Manager: Stella Couloutbanis

Salamanda Tandem will take you into one of Wirksworth’s ancient quarries, experimenting with the physical and auditory landscape. Experience the transformation of this environment as Salamanda Tandem awaken your perception of what is there; heard, touched and seen in an evocative and sensory art experience. Unfolding over a 4 hour period, you are invited to drop in and out, or stay all afternoon. Live performance, movement, audio description, location recording, natural and processed sounds will all combine in experiments with the physical and auditory landscape.

Programme: 
12.45 - 13.15 	Tuning into the environs, a walk into the woods
13.15 - 13.45 	Acoustic and Natural Sounds around and about the trees
13.45 - 14.00 	Radio Headphone distribution at quarry entrance
14.00 - 14.30 	Dancer explores the Stone.  Singer audio describes
14.30 - 15.00 	Scattered rocks across the quarry amphitheater 
15.00 - 15.30 	Audio Journey of Fossils 
15.30 - 15.45 	Headphone collection at the quarry entrance
15.45 - 16.15 	Dance and wind humming lines up the path 
16.15 - 16.30 	Settling back with tea at the Stone Centre

This event forms part of a series of live sound art and dance performances that Salamanda Tandem have been developing in site specific environments involving; location recording, audio description, acousmatic as well as visual performance, voice, body, inhabitants, and a process of self reflection through sound.

Quarry-o-sion Salamanda Tandem 2013

Spending an extra-ordinary day in Shaws quarry, we met Geoff one of the geologists from the stone centre there in Wirksworth. He took us on a journey into the quarry's past, and we recorded our walk together. Here he describes the history and provenance of the quarry and the limestone layers. In September 2013 we took an audience into the quarry for a 5 hour durational piece with radio headphones and live transmission

Quarry-o-sion Salamanda Tandem The Geologist

Quarry-o-sion continues into 2014 with a several new works we are developing. 


Quarry-o-sion: Salamanda Tandem Fossil List and Long Notes 2014

…..PERFORMANCE & ARTISTIC RESEARCH INVITE…..
Salamanda Tandem UK White Cane
Firstsite Gallery, Colchester

13th January Open Artistic Research Session 3 – 5pm (Turn up and Find us)
Performance Events at First Site Next Week
14th January 2pm – 3pm (Free Public Performance 30 Headsets available)
14th January 7pm Sound and Music Experiment Session (15 - 25’s only)
click link: http://www.firstsite.uk.net/page/sound-and-music-experiment-sessions

WHITE CANE Salamanda Tandem: is a series of site-specific performances touring nationally throughout 2016, where audiences wearing wireless headphones are immersed in a sound world created by two blind performers exploring and navigating public space. As the long cane rolls across the surface of each space, we hear it’s sound, which is combined with live music and spoken and sung audio description to create a unique experience of ‘sonic vision’. Visit: salamandatandem.wordpress.com

Artists:
Isabel Jones: Composer/Performer         
Duncan Chapman: Composer/Performer
Takashi Kikuchi: Viola Player                              
 Mickel Smithen: Performer

This performance is presented by Salamanda Tandem and Firstsite Gallery Colchester, in collaboration with Sound and Music as part of the Composer-Curator programme 
Special Thanks to: Judith Merritt for making this event possible


White Cane Salamanda Tandem; A Child Stops

A short excerpt of White Cane in live performance, sung by Isabel Jones, here Natalie Speake one of our dancers picks up on the movements of a pigeon.

Co-Composers Isabel Jones and Duncan Chapman
Viola player Takashi Kikuchi

White Cane Salamanda Tandem Pigeon Pigeon

January 2018 is the 15th Year or our Dark Januaries project. "Beards getting thicker, and hair a little thinner!". We meet again for 2 days, to rekindle energies spark off new ventures, and start the year with a piece of artistic research and reflection.
This year we arrived independently at the same idea; to revisit our 1st ever Dark January in 2004 which focused on voice and horn. At that stage we'd just emerged from the break up of E8, directed rather too much towards short, undeveloped vast ideas for us and we felt liberated by the joy of exploring 1 note for a 20 minute duration. Thus this year, we adopted a more performance mode of creating the work, and largely because now our new studio is completed we have a glorious acoustic to play with. This years play results in a series of improvisations with live voice, flugelhorn and live electronics, that have emerged into 6 pieces, totaling 45 minutes of music.
The Visible Breath ...... 14:55"
Skirr..................................7:04"
Mulch ...............................5:09"
In the Air..........................4:46"
Pithy Pithy Pear.............3:1"
Berry's Are Few .............5:37"

We have chosen 1 track to load up here, running out of souncloud space......  
Title: "Skirr" which means: to go into for the purposes of discovery. 

We are also trying to work out how to make all 6 parts available to anyone interested, and muse with the thought: could we make a bit of money out of it?!!  We always talk about what troubles us each year, and this year its the crushing affects of austerity. No work for artists. One sentence captures it all from 1 reluctant payer this year who'd given us £350 for 2 shows. "You've had enough!" Then other people of our age, with the difficulties inherent in a proper job; how many years to run before final salary pensions can be cashed in, eeking out redundancy pay outs, and the difficulty of managing 2nd and 3rd homes. We've laid down nothing there, only a life in sound; surely if we'd started a collection sooner we'd have pennies in the pot for next years marmalade!!
We ponder.......

January 2018. Part 2 Skirr ........7:04"

What is Dark Januarys......
well it happens in January! and now in its 20th year! 

A place for play, a location, an improvisation, a collection of thoughts, discarded sound files, field recordings, be together & organically grow a body of soundart work

The People
2022 onwards... The New Generation Dark Jans: 
Gwilym Jones, Paddy Fitton Jones, Robbie Fitton Jones, Blue Firth, Isabel Jones

2004 - 2019 The Original Dark Jans: Duncan Chapman, Isabel Jones 

Concept: Isabel Jones
Co-Produced by Salamanda Tandem

In the early years the annual gathering of two took place at Unstone Grange. Later when resources were scarce, we moved to our home studio in Nottingham, as a source for Dark Jans creativity. 

The January sessions are a process of re-generation, research, finding clarity, space, friendliness in a professional field of ever increasing complexity. An organic compositional process emerged which suited and the resulting works are composed collectively. Conversation is always a starting point, and a place: then working in isolation to collect material (sound, text, concepts, trawling through individual recordings made independently, preparing treatments, creating patches, sine waves etc) then composing the final track through playing together live, drawing materials together using various emerging computer software/individual live mixing, responding through improvisation, exploring the material in combination & juxtaposition, drawing on our roots as live acoustic musicians; horn, voice, viola, found objects, classical guitar, flugel horn, ekta....

History Behind Dark January's
In 1996 Isabel & Duncan, individually became part of a new collective music group: ‘Ensemble 8’: 8 band members included: Ray Lee, Biant Singh, Ben Dalgleash, Pete Shelton, Nikki Kate Hayes, Andrew Williams (e8 founder), Isabel Jones & Duncan Chapman. The first album produced was called: Ensemble 8.  By 2000 the ensemble had become a quartet of 4 musician/composers: Andrew Williams, Pete Shelton, Duncan Chapman & Isabel Jones who produced a new album called "Where Are We Now'. 

In 2002 ish, the band became rocky; the men faced eachother competitively in the arts/music industry, & it became impossible to continue the collaborative methodology that made E8 successful. 

In 2003 Isabel wrote….

“I've been away, then in-between a bit confused, I suppose the issues here are tricky, but rather than continue in limbo … can I make a last ditch attempt to get us together this January, as I can see we are slipping irrevocably apart. "Where Are We Now"

I know my proposed ‘8 January’s’ idea didn't exactly hit the mark, as Pete has pointed out ‘lets get tangible not live in false hope’, 
I continued: "for me 8 Dark January’s' are tangible. I've always been an optimist, lets remove all preconceptions: a band that gets together once a year to make a track?... it could be really cool. What about those visual artists we admire who stick to the same idea year & eventually they've photographed one particular tree for 20 years. Isn't our problem now something to do with expectations. This idea is a kind of acceptance that E8 pared down is still intrinsically interesting & worth having. 
How this could work? Dark January’s is easy to care take, a short punctuation in our lives, we’ve always made little documents, & those were interesting. In this way one starts to gather those materials / recordings or a series of snapshots that expose this falling apart phase: '8 dark January's' or 'E8 the Dark years' '8 tracks for 8 dark nights'. Could become a web site, an album, a new work eventually what ever or just a process for now. I could get excited about this kind of thing, it isn't really intense or complicated it’s just an essence, arising out of a need to make a mark once a year collectively" any thoughts? 
Is 
 
The band did break up. 

While the ‘8 Dark January's’, project long surpassed 8 years to become 16 and now 20! and still has a value. Initially prepared to call it a day, my family of 4 nephews, grown into accomplished musicians, have faith that Dark Jans is tangible and exciting. Let us continue!