A song made as a resident artist at Primary Studios, Nottingham, supported by a-n the artist's information company. 

My proposal is to re-interpret Brian Eno's classic ambient album, Music for Airports, for the budget airline experience. Songs made on a budget are sampled and over-inflated with digital sound elements, comparing the mixed joys of budget travel to lived experience of bipolar 2; from the manic grandiosity of the 'priority lane' to the depressive torpor of a delayed or cancelled flight. Accept the Voucher was inspired by a radio show about the frustration of budget airline passengers when their flights were cancelled after lockdown.

Accept the Voucher

I made this one on a Friday evening before going into Loughborough to meet with the gang. We had some interesting fungi to eat, went on a wander to the Carillion Park, stayed there a few hours then ambled back to the student halls of residence. On return I remembered that I had recorded a tape of ambient music, so we listened to this. It sounded other worldly. The track was made by playing with effects on the A3000 sampler. I'm not sure what I sampled - I think it was the ambient part at the start of a drum & bass track by PFM though - I had an ep of his on cd that was excellent - with The Western on, and another really dreamy rave nostalgic track, both excellently produced. I added a load of self-generating and morphing effects and let it roll. It suddenly started making this haunting choral sound that drifted and dived. I don't think I did much during the recording, just listened by the window. The drawing is part one of two from a sketchbook I made at the time. I played this music in my interview to study BFA Fine Art at the Ruskin School, Oxford University. We were set a drawing task with a series of interesting quotes to use as starting points. I got really into it and was ecstatic by the time I was called in to interview. I didn't think I had a chance because I had dropped out of Manchester Uni, but I was relieved when they said that that wasn't a problem at all. I recall saying I was reading The Sickness Unto Death by Kirekegard. Also I showed a VHS with photos I had taken on a digital camera - blurry low-shutter spread shots of drawings I had made on a PC art programme (Windows 95 no diggety). This track was playing in the background and we discussed how I made it - saving up for the sampler by working at the metal pressings factory and cinema. It felt like a good connection.

Ambientfoundation

Made in 1999. I made minidiscs full of loops of samples - tom waits, arto lindsay, 4 hero, debussy, alpha & omega, john coltrane, nucleus & paradox, my own samples of electronic noise, some weird percussion of an lp from a charity shop, grooves, ends of songs, bass lines, stabs, breaks... You can put track marks wherever you like on a minidisc and then press random repeat and it seemlessly shuffles through the samples. I had 100's on each disk. Here there are two playing at once through fx, and some other live ambient noises too. I had heard The Bribe by John Zorn around this time and thought it was great. I was listening to a lot of d&b off reinforced, 4 hero, sonar circle, metalheadz, certificate 18, juice box, photek, source direct, j majik, arto lindsay, dj spooky, sonic youth just had experimental jetset trash and no star I think. I was into Washing Machine too - the play between a groove and abstraction. Herbie Hancock - Sextet. Robery Wyatt - Rock Bottom, Shleep, Nothing Can Stop Us Now and Dondestan (the original one). The Wu Tang Forever double lp, Arkology boxset by Lee Scratch Perry, Bonnie Prince Billy was probably on Ease down the road round then, or i see a darkness. I had the album by Arthur Russell with Every Step is Moving me up on it. Sam Prekop and all the Tortoise and Sea and the Cake artists from Chicago. David Grubbs. Camoufleur by Gastr Del Sol. Jim O'Rourke's solo records with the weird cartoon covers. NYC Ghosts and Flowers by Sonic Youth - such a weird album. I was trying to push myself musically, and to see what the sampler could do. A lot of the work is textural, with sounds chosen for the sound of the sound - the grit of strange effect. I broadcast this track on Ruskin Radio when I was at Oxford Uni studying BFA Fine Art, in the 1st year. My tutors the artists Maria Chevska & Mark Dean set up a once-only broadcast from the studios at Bullingdon Road (Bully Rd as we called it). I thought  this track would be interesting to broadcast as it might suggest a person flicking through radio channels making a groove as they go along. The photo is a new drawing I am working on that revisits stuff I did 20 years ago when this music was made.

QUESTION99

an ambient one made using the a3000 sampler, in gotham, 1999

EPiCgothambientFlutejam

another track made using the autosyn effect on the A3000, round 1999. I used to listen to this on headphones a lot going back and forth on the bus to loughborough and at art school.

AUTOSYN2

Late 90's sometime, I was mad into the arkology boxset - three brilliantly curated reels of dub by the genie Lee Scratch Perry. Also Angelo Badalamenti's beautiful soundtrack for David Lynch's Lost Highway had a few perfect dub tracks on it. I had two approaches to making music with samplers, the first was to use the three-way fx unit as an instrument to jam with, and to try to push  sounds and effects as far as I could (plenty of that on this channel) or when I was alone making music I often started more deliberatively by trying to emulate music I liked listening to at the time, and to try to make something that I would enjoy on my headphones  on the endless journeys between home and school (on the No.1 South Notts bus)-  a good 30 minutes ride through the countryside between Gotham & Loughborough. I'd sit on the top deck of the bus near the back because I liked seeing the whole space move through the countryside and would imagine there was no lower deck, just the top hovering down the street. I'd always have my headphones on full blast, unless i was chatting to mates. That time and journey reminds me of Goldie's debut album which I found totally compelling/beautiful and inspiring and listened often. So this track is from that time, one of two dub tracks I made for myself and that I only ever shared with my sisters and a few friends until now. I think it's ok, a bit clunky, but then I quite like that. All the squelchy noises were done live by playing the sampler fx like an instrument, and I remember how much fun I had doing it. I would listen back amazed that I did that sound!

FReQDUBA300099

A recording I made of my family in 1999 when I was 21. I used to go out for walks around the village of Gotham where I grew up, with a mini disc player and a microphone. I would walk up Gotham hills and record the sound of the power lines humming. One summers day I returned home and kept recording a conversation in the kitchen between my grandma and my mum. I have edited it down to a monologue by my grandma and then my mum chimes in at the end. My sister Polly, who was about 10 at the time, made her own recordings on a dictaphone - completely unprompted by me. She was DJ Funky, and did some opera-style singing in the shower, then some drum beats on a set of pots and pans, played with cutlery. She was mocking me! I also recorded my 21st birthday party with all my family there. This was a rare occasion but at the time I was man of the hour... After school I went to Manchester to study Philosophy, but I dropped out after having a nervous breakdown. I stayed in the halls of residence for the remainder of the first year but didn't attend any lectures. I did a diploma at Manchester Midi School instead, which was great. Then I went back to live with my parents in Gotham, South Notts, and enrolled on the one year Art Foundation course at Loughborough University. This was the right move for me. I quickly made a good gang of friends with shared interests - for the first time in my life really - and had a great year. A high point was that just before Christmas after I had only been on the course for a term I was given an unconditional offer to study BFA Fine Art at Oxford University. So I had gone from being a bit of a black sheep having dropped out of Manchester to being the golden boy, destined for Oxford and three years at St John's College. My 21st birthday party then was a celebration of my offer from Oxford. It is quite excruciating to me to listen to this, and some of the family members have passed away recently, so it is a sensitive document for me, as well as being very humorous in parts. One gem is a track of my Dad coming into my room shortly after I had bought a Korg Electribe rhythm machine. I had a mic handy so I recorded him as he had a go on it. Everyone on the recordings was aware that they were being recorded to greater or lesser extent. Enjoy this responsibly though, with some respect please.

RAVENFAMILYALBUM

Start1

I went to the Church of the Big Lamp for High Mass this morning, suited and booted, incense hanging in the stoned cool air, a rousingly dull sermon, small choir, a manic kid running about, perfect homemade bakewell tart and black sugary instant coffee after. I took communion and thought good thoughts about family and people close to me. I zoned out during all the rest, reading a pamphlet about the history of the church. It is cobbled together from bits of other churches gone to ruin - for example, the organ was rescued from a church in Cheshire that was rapidly sinking into a salt mine. Saved from salt then. Preserved. I was tired having done a litter-pick of Elswick Park for a few hours beforehand in the baking heat, but keeping the park tidy for this hottest ever Bank Holiday weekend (in Newcastle, UK, 2019)

Simon Raven

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