Gilbert is away for Easter, researching a documentary on 'The Hum' in the West Country, so we get to play the modular synth for a bit

Modular Maelstrom

"The Platonic Solids"

Johannes Kepler's "Mysterium Cosmographicum" (The Cosmographic Mystery), published in 1596, proposed a model of the solar system based on the five Platonic solids. Each of the five solids prescribes two spheres, one on the inside and one on the outside, each sphere describing the orbit of a planet. These solids and their corresponding planets are:

Octahedron - Mercury, Venus
Icosahedron - Venus, Earth
Dodecahedron - Earth, Mars
Tetrahedron - Mars, Jupiter
Cube - Jupiter, Saturn

Kepler's ideas were a stepping stone towards his later groundbreaking work culminating in his famous three laws of planetary motion. 

If you struggle with the Latin, have a look at a graphical representation of the concept at https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/KeplersMysteriumCosmographicum/

Five Platonic Solids 5

Gilbert ran a nice warm bath before bedtime. He liked it so much he ran eight more

Take a Nice Bath

Eigenpackage. Irene's been clearing out old artefacts and came across this which she rather liked, so suggested we put it out there again. You'll have notice that Gilbert has 'gone all modular' of recent, but this was before all that, more real instruments and bits of 1/4" tape and milk bottles rather than patch cables. Recorded originally using a process where a disc covered in lamp black (aka soot) was inscribed with a wooden stylus, or a feather quill, with the audio track. However, the video is new: it's the Hive installation at Kew Gardens - a massive, well, beehive but at human scale with a soundscape to match. Bees hum in the key of C, apparently. Probably quite a high C I imagine. #hive #kewgardens #goldenoldie

Eigenpackage

Electrophorus Jig. More in the series of live improve meditations. The image is soxsa's original Victorian mixing desk from Studio A in Clifton Hampden - all polished brass and wood. The faders use wire wound rheostats, but as you see only go up to 9, so had to be replaced with a modern desk in about 1963. Still, it was used to record albums such as Sock Puppet Symphony and The Kazoo Chronicles. Thank you to @molmod_igm for the original image.

I was thinking of a kind of 'jazz' in the sense of improvised around a theme but now I'm thinking a punk ethic in the sense of 'a band that can't play our instruments' and see what interesting things come from that. Of course, many of the punk legends were good musicians in fact, and had to learn to play with a different ethic. Not easy.

Electrophorus Jig

More in the 'Modular Jazz' series, improvisation using a single modular patch.

Orrery

"On the Beat". Fairly self-explanatory I would have thought, for a *real* soxsa fan. Sequencers, portmanto, analog sounds all that kind of thing. But no tape. I'm try to lean into it, give it time

On the Beat

Harmonica Studies 1

Harmonica Studies 3

Harmonica Studies 2

Harmonica Studies 4

Study for harmonica, modular, tape #2. All played live

Study for harmonica, modular, tape #2

Gilbert Bridge

A Little Walk in the Woods. The sounds of nature are deafening in Spring aren't they? Field recordings (actually wood recordings) run through the patented SoxsaGraph Type A machine
#forest #woodwalk #naturesounds #taperecorder #experimentalmusic #soundscape

A Little Walk in the Woods

More Sounds of the Forest. Here, the sound of tree roots (excerpt). Gilbert says it should be obvious from the audio, but we've included some photographs for those who might be unsure. As if true soxsa fans would mistake this for the sound of moss, leaves or fungi. But the lab's licence is coming up for renewal and we are obliged to demonstrate that we are widening our audience base. Accordingly, the traditional exhibits in the soxsa museum have been moved to the archive, replaced with colourful MDF info panels. The mighty soxsa auto-organ has been displaced by a new gift shop dedicated entirely to soxsa-branded fudge

Sounds of the Forest - Tree Roots

A delightful eight minutes in the company of Ethel, another of SOXSA Lab's experimental artificial birds.  Created to replace the real bird population in the event of war (I've explain this already in a previous post, where were you?). The committee ruled that the 'life-like bird sounds' were too scary and the project was cancelled. You may judge for yourself: calming or anxiety-inducing? These and other archive recordings can be heard on the album "Gilbert's Birds", shortly we'll put it out on bandcamp.
#bird #experimentalmusic #tape

Ethel

Manger and head archivist of SOXSA.  See all tracks on soxsa.bandcamp.com

South Oxon Sound Archive is tasked with conserving and bringing to light experimental audio created in the district during the C20th

The area includes regions that may have been in Berkshire at the time of recording, but are now in Oxfordshire.

None of this is strictly true.

South Oxon Sound Archive (SOXSA)

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