rehearsal for my performance at Give Us the Night's Culture Night gig in St. Nicholas's Church, Galway City on 17/09/2021. My first gig since the pandemic obliterated live cultural events, in which I tried out a new live set up for the first time. My run through of the set the night before in the studio went nicely, and is what's uploaded here. I had some technical issues on the night itself so that's not the best example of my sound...but I'm happy enough with how this turned out.

Looped zither, feedback matrix mixer, amplified motors and lots of space...

Culture Night 2021 (eve)

my warts-and-all set from Open Ear. I hadn't played this style of music in two years and it was great hearing these tunes out on a powerful rig, with people dancing and wooping. There's only so much ambient music a guy can make before the cravings for heaviness and groove get too much. 

Big thanks and respect to Dion and Chris and all the festival crew for doing it so right.


I wrote several of these tunes for the gig. Some are reworked versions of tunes written recently, and some are due for release this year on Earwiggle. 
Tracklist:

1. First Love (unreleased)
2. Open Ear (unreleased)
3. Form Finding (unreleased)
4. Scrabin (unreleased)
5. Diminution of Density (forthcoming on Earwiggle)
6. KulturNacht (unreleased)
7. Phase Transition, Dub Coat (unreleased)
8. Rise + Fall (forthcoming on Earwiggle)
9. Nonconformists Guild (forthcoming on Earwiggle)

Open Ear Set 4 - 06 - 16

Electric mechanical midi sequencable thumb piano

SolBeaterThumbPiano

A "conducted improvisation" workshop based around use of the Soniphorm SoundSniffer preamp by 8 undergraduate students in Magee / Ulster University, Derry, Northern Ireland. 

The performers were using coils to pick up a variety of sounds which were associated with hand gestures and signals, as a means to structuring the sound making processes into something musical.

The first part of this recording was based around amplified strings from three guitars that happened to be in the room. Two performers sat on either side of a table with the guitar laid flat in front of them, and use the coils to alternately pluck the high or low string, and move the coil closer to or further away from it to produce a slow swell and various modulations. See a short video of this in action:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3rtlQSHc5p/

SoundSniffer Group Improv

excerpt from the audio visual performance myself and Robin Parmar gave at this year's Irish Sound Science & Technology Association conference in Cork School of Music. Robin was generating projected visual material using feedback techniques, and I was generating sound using feedback instruments and a zither of my design.



http://emergence.eirehub.com/index.html

live

Devane / Parmar ISSTA Cork 2019

WitherZither, claves, and space...demo for an ensemble performance using architectural circulation as a structuring method for composition.

The Strolling Zither

Recorded live in The Yellow Yard record shop, Derry, Northern Ireland during Oscillations & Modulations

Oscillations & Modulations, record shop performance

A short recording of me playing my zither. BPM is 110 though the timing is "loose" in places no doubt. I have very limited time to play music at the moment so this was literally the first thing I played. There are various phrases and textures that could be sampled, or you could play an instrument over it and record. Up to you what you do with this material.

Free to use as you please, just let me know if you do as I'd love to hear it. Please credit if you do also!

Lockdown Zither 1

Layered and manipulated recordings of the Chime instrument pictured.

This was made with the intention of being used by other music makers in quick collaborative efforts to combat Lockdown Fear. If you make something with this please send me a copy and give credit where appropriate.

Lockdown Chimes

REWIRE_2

I am a music maker and designer based in Ireland. I have released broken genre dancefloor tunes on Touchin' Bass, Mantrap Recordings and several other labels over the years. For a long while I concentrated on making abstract ambient / noise music, under my own name and as Withering Zithering. Now when I make time for making music (which is not as regularly as it should be unfortunately) I tend towards making beats. 

Everything I do in one way or another references music or sound as a creative material. I like playing gigs, I like teaching children about how sound works, and I like making instruments that people can make their own music with. 

If you want to book me for a gig, get in touch here or through my website, www.eddevane.com.

:)


Ed Devane

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