Live performance recorded at The Gold Room / Centre for Science and Art, Stroud, March 2023

CYGNET At The Gold Room [Bounce 1]

Cygnet Live At The Plough Arts Center March 2023

Skylarks recorded 5:30am Easter morning 2023
DMX drum machine
guitar foot pedals

The genesis for the this piece was back in the 1990’s. As a young 20 something leaving London for the countryside to spend weekends dancing in a field, evading police and experiencing what to me felt like a broad and unknown world… It wasn’t like I was a city kid, it was more that visiting the English countryside on my own terms was new to me… it was great, and in my head it was always sunny.

On one occasion – don’t remember exactly where or when, I was caught by the skylark. I remember a ploughed field near the top of a broad hill. I think I sat and listened for a good few hours, utterly captivated. Then came up with the idea of a song. Take the rhythmic patterns of the skylarks song as the basis for a Jungalist drum pattern. The song should open with the first few bars of ‘Aint No Mountain Higher Enough’ then catch a leading root note in Dianas vocal part, and loop it as an unwavering synthesised drone… bring in the drums and just go from there.

I ended up back in London and remember trying to persuade my friend Henry (Back to the Planet, D.A.V.E the Drummer) to help write and release the track, to which he said “No fucking way”. We’d never get clearance, and if we put it out and they (Universal/Capitol) found out about it, we’d be well screwed…

Oh well.

Earlier this year I remembered my idea. I asked my lovely girlfriend Isa to help me record some Skylarks up on the common.

We got up to Minchinhampton common on Easter morning just before dawn. It was cold but calm(ish) under a clear sky. The skylarks were already starting to sing. We tried a few spots. At one point a Skylark lead us across the common just a few meters in front. It felt like a welcome, an acceptance. I set up my recorder. There were at least two birds, could have been more, it was hard to tell, partly because the sound seemed to come from everywhere, but also because they weren’t really going full bore… it felt like a rehearsal or warm up. After an hour, just as the sun began to peak over the horizon, a choir started to sing to the dawn from the other side of the common. Their voices drifting towards us on the breeze, accompanied by a groundsman tending to the golfing greens in a little petrol buggy.

In the studio I cleaned up the audio, slowed it down to 25% and split the signal through a four way crossover onto separate tracks and used Reaper plugins to convert the signal into midi.

For Skylarks this midi file is played alongside the original recording but via an original Oberheim DMX drum machine. This drum part in turn is filtered through guitar effects pedals. Through manipulating the drum sound I try to synthesise the song of the Skylarks.

This process of transformation is almost like a painter painting a landscape from photos – its heavily mediated and more about the technology and technique than about the subject. The subject becomes subjugated, that is to say it and its landscape become virtual or heavily conceptualised. A mere idea, a theoretical place holder for that thing that is, that was, a Skylark.

Cygnet

Skylarks

Yamaha PSR 6
Guitar effects pedals
Looped phone recording

A Single Repeated Moment

Noise off the 8 channel mixer.
onboard effects and eq sweeps
off-set L/R start points 
+ SSL eq/cop/rev

Alesis Multimix8

24 arbitrary guitar chords with found sounds and percussive elements.

Wires, Old Wires

accoustic guitar
ambient feild recording
oak tree
early summer

Candyland Oak

Recorded live at Psychedelic Sundae. 15th December 2024

If paranoia and forgetfulness are genres then CYGNET and Count Zero lead the way. Hunched over and kneeling, CYGNET invites you into a deeply personal, shaman-like journey. While Count Zero scratches and bends, layering textured sound into unconventional forms.

Count Zero joined forces with CYGNET, at the invitation of Psychedelic Sundae, for this minimal, stripped-down bespoke performance at the Green Door Store. Reviving memories of their distinctive contributions to modern noise performance through their use of vintage equipment, including tapes, guitars, field recordings, and valve amplification.

CYGNET is an artist based in Stroud, Gloucestershire, creating music that blends an eclectic mix of instruments, including a DMX drum machine, bass, guitar, foot pedals, percussion, sampled loops, and voice. The music draws inspiration from the raw energy of arcane blues and psychedelia, with references to artists like Hapshash and the Multi Coloured Coat, Bukka White, and Count Ossie & the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari. The result is a distinctive sound that has been described as aggressive, dark ambient, early DIY techno, sound art, and "post-everything, improvised industrial and ambient noise with beats."

Brighton-based Count Zero, resident DJ at Brightons now legendary Psychedelic Sundae club and a founding member of '90's noise installation Oubliette, a related project known for long-duration, multi-source noise performances in unconventional and often abandoned locations throughout London. Oubliette created a 'Difficult-Listening' experience by blending sound sources such as record decks, CD players, tape machines, and radios through their own sound system made from found objects and abandoned hi-fi equipment. These performances were more like flash-installations or “happenings” rather than traditional performances. The name 'Oubliette,' meaning a place to be forgotten, reflects the group's underground and forgotten nature.

CYGNET v Zer0 live @ Green Door Store Dec '24

Post-everything, improvised industrial and ambient noise with beats

CYGNET

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