Lace Tell to accompany Shane Waltener's Stairwell Weave-in - commissioned as part of Yan Tan Tethera: songs of textile folk curated by David Littler in partnership with English Folk Dance and Song Society. Performed at Museums at Night event 15 May 2014 at Cecil Sharp House. Lace Tell sung by Aimee Leonard, Sally Davies, Sarah Madden, Jenny Thompson, Ian Kennedy and Sarah Lloyd: members of Cecil Sharp House Choir and Dulwich Folk Choir.
Original Lace Tell collected from F G Crowsley from Bedfordshire by Fred Hamer.


Stairwell Weave - In Audio

Dawn Chorus (exc) Scotton Drive

Voice, Lace patterns for Music Box and hand bobbin lace makers.

An extract from a live performance at Nottingham Contemporary, March 2016, part of the opening event of the Simon Starling retrospective exhibition.  The performance - a celebration of textile making and song - was created especially for the evening, and was the first time Mann and Littler had collaborated. It featured a selection of textile work songs: lace tells, waulking songs, and luddite protest songs alongside field recordings of spanish bobbin lace makers, framework knitting machines; jacquard punch card lace patterns played through a music box and interwoven with all manner of curious homemade instruments.
O' Pello Pello - A rendition of the famous traditional Basque song "Oi Pello Pello". First collected in Cancionero Popular Vasco in 1918, the song was popularized by singer - songwriter Mikel Laboa, founder of "Ez Dok Amairu".

The song is about a tired spinster who asks "Pello", her cruel boss or husband, if she may stop working and go to bed. He keeps telling her to carry on with the next step in the spinning process, until the sun comes up and it is too late to go to sleep.

Nathaniel learned the song as part of a performance for the opening of the exhibition "The Margins of the Factory" by Iratxe Jaio and Klaas van Gorkum. Nathan sings it to a video showing men and women at work in the Lea Artibai region in Basque Country, where they trim rubber parts destined for the global automobile industry. While singing, he manually assembles a device which broadcasts his prerecorded voice to a transistor radio, with which he then performs a moving duet. You can see more of that performance here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l_42JrIn5o

Lace makers - recorded at the "Encuentro Nacional de Encaje de Bolillos" Roa Del Duero, Burgos Spain, 2008. 

With thanks to everyone at Nottingham Contemporary for inviting us to perform together.

O' Pello Pello (live) - Nathaniel Mann and David Littler

A sound collage exploring the linen industry in Belfast and the Lagan Valley, Northern Ireland. The soundscape follows the process of making a piece of linen cloth from growing the flax to the finishing processes such as beetling. It includes the sounds of the machines used in each stage mixed with interviews with people who worked in the Linen Industry, describing their work and the sounds of their work, reciting poems, singing songs from the mills and factories, and playing instruments, and sounds now lost as the industry disappeared such as the twice daily mill horn and the corncrakes in the flax fields. The piece was created during my residency "Is She Blew?" at R-Space, Lisburn supported by the Arts Council Northern Ireland. Oral History recordings courtesy of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum's Living Linen Archive.
The residency also included collaborations with digital artists Paul Moore and Jiann Hughes, traditional singer Maurice Leyden and writer and musicians Brendan Monaghan and Jason Singh. Live performances at R-Space and at University of Ulster Art & Design Festival. 2015.

"Is She Blew?" The Sound Of Linen - David Littler Sound Collage

In 2014 I was invited to run a weekly sound recording course with staff and users at Orb Community Arts in Knaresborough. North Yorkshire. It involved an introduction to listening, to the physics of sound, and learning about different microphones and recording and post production techniques. Each week we would visit a particular location around Knaresborough, including the River Nidd, Staveley Nature Reserve, the station, the ponds, and the participants would record the sounds we discovered there. This collage is a compilation of the sounds they recorded. 
With thanks to the participants: Andy B, Kath, Mark, Jon, Andy F
and to Leon and the staff at Orb.
Collage edited and compiled by David Littler.

OrbsinaField

Greylag Geese Flying in to roost. 7pm Sept 14 at Staveley Nature Reserve

At the end of June 2017, I was invited by Orb Community Arts to lead a one day sound recording session (a sonic perambulation around Knaresborough in North Yorkshire) with a wide range of people from creative arts charities based in York, Lewisham, Leeds and Knaresborough. The participants walked around the town, listening to the environment and recording a variety of sounds as they navigated their way through the narrow gunnels and streets, into key locations like the castle top, the station, a church and under the viaduct alongside the river Nidd. On returning we worked together to create collective consequence poems as a way of reflecting on the activity.You can here a selection of the participants’ recordings and their experiences of the day as part of this radio show broadcast the following day from Chapel FM in Leeds. In particular their reflections on the act of listening to a place.

IGEN - Sonic Perambulation, Knaresborough. Radio Edit

A recording of the garden pond at Orb Community Arts, spring 2014. using JRF hydrophones. I don't know what is/are making the various sounds. The pond has a variety of goldfish and the pops and clicks could be waterboatmen and other insects.

Pond Life

A chance recording as I walked through Berlin one day. This was a sound I had not heard for a long time. A flock of sparrows in a bush next to a busy Berlin road with traffic rushing past. Given that sparrows are in decline in many areas it was a great sound to hear and to capture.

Berlin Sparrows

Recording of the clock mechanism controlling the chimes at St.Swithun's Church. Worcester.

Chimes St Swithuns

Small plastic bedroom clock on round metal table. Recorded using Zoom H6 and Rode M3 mic.

Bedroom Clock

Storm Ali blowing through my garden - on the edge of Nidd Gorge, North Yorkshire. Trees sounding like traffic noise. Dog barking. Bird chirping.

Storm Ali Sept 2018

A new live version of The Doffing Mistress Takes A Stroll created especially for, and performed at, Lotto Zero in Prato Italy. March 2019. Part of my ongoing series: Travels With a Music Box started in 2008.
Created using paper punch cards containing two textile folk songs "The Doffing Mistress" and "Lace Tell - Nineteen Long Lines" and a lace pattern played through a music box mounted on a wooden box. Sampled and manipulated live with Ableton Live. Contact mic, violin bow, comb and metal ruler plus dissolvable Vitamin C Tablets, a glass and a hydrophone. Lace Pattern for a cuff punched into Tenori On to build the piano section in the middle of the piece. Greylag Geese field recording by David Littler.
With thanks to all the Lotto Zero Crew.
A version of this piece will feature on my first solo 3-Track CD "Scotton Drive" due out April 2019. Kindly supported by the Arts Council England through its Developing Your Creative Practice Grant Scheme.

La "Doffing Padrona" Va A Passeggio

sonic visual artist and curator. UK.
http://davidlittler.tumblr.com
sampler-cultureclash collective www.samplercultureclash.org.uk

David Littler

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