Dissonances

ET132 An Etched Traumas release August 2021

https://archive.org/details/et132_tn_and_ds_triangulation

4 tracks that started life as two tracks shared between two artists DS and TN as an Exquisite corpse experiment. Completed during the 2nd & 3rd UK lockdown.

Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver, is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed.

Part 1 - joint track composition

Preliminary guidelines were established between the two artists via messenger conversation 
One project file for each of the two tracks
Person who has worked on it last uploads new version & deletes old version
Add one minute & only alter ½ of previous minute (can break rules to allow reverb and delay tails to last longer than the minute)
Must over lap with last last piece (this rule can be broken if it benefits the composition)
Can copy and paste at will from any previous piece (eg if you feel an aspect of the previous minute needs to last longer, or it benefits the composition to revisit an earlier moment)
Other recorded material permissible.
Artists to continue exchanging 3x until length of track is around 6 mins


Part 2 - independent mixing of tracks.

Two track compositions to be taken by each artist. Both artists to develop their own mixes with permission to add elements, modify/repeat elements as they wish.
No other rules.
Final length of mixed tracks to be between 3.5 mins and approx 7 mins.
4 final tracks as a result.

TN and _DS - Triangulation

Improvisations recorded live and in the studio. All performances solo and all material created by Taylor Nuttall unless otherwise stated.

Photo credit: Laurence Campbell
FON 15th Anniversary Event.

Improvisations

My improvisation practice is constantly evolving, the key ideas is to produce evocative soundscapes with various sound design elements that include foraged sounds, pure noise, no input signals combined with layers of textures and pulses. Each performance begins with intent, but no formal arrangement or score. The intent may change over the duration of the performance.
I've been predominantly using iOS apps on an iPad including generative, random and evolving modular patterns.

Improvisations recorded live and in the studio. 
All performances solo and all material created by Taylor Nuttall unless otherwise stated.

Improvisations 2

Live improvised performances in dark spaces.
Performed alongside Sonic Labs 2025.

Dark Spaces

The core of the track is a motif taken from The Flight of the Bumblebee by Rimsky Korsokov. 
Melipona are stingless bees commonly found in the The Brazilian Rainforest. With the bee being very probably our singular lifeline to a future existence on this planet.

Thanks to Greenpeace / DJ's for Climate Action for the use of their Climate Action Pack field recordings as part of the production for this track.

https://www.worldbeeday.org/en/about/the-importance-of-bees.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melipona
https://www.djs4ca.com/

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stingless_bee_3,_f,_face,_peru_2014-07-30-13.12.18_ZS_PMax_(15835671131).jpg

Dissonance - Melipones

From the EP - Triangulations.

Produced in collaboration with @taylornuttall and released by @etchedtraumas

read about the production process, download the EP and artwork here: archive.org/details/et132_tn_and_ds_triangulation

Triangulations

Download

_DS - Exquisite Corpse 2 _DS Last Train mix

From the EP - Triangulations. 

Produced in collaboration with @taylornuttall and released by @etchedtraumas

read about the production process, download the EP and artwork here: https://archive.org/details/et132_tn_and_ds_triangulation

_DS - Exquisite Corpse 1 _DS Northern Gas mix

This is the 3rd of my Dissonance tracks
(Dissonance - Music. - a simultaneous combination of tones conventionally accepted as being in a state of unrest and needing completion. - an unresolved, discordant chord or interval.)
This track uses a lot of different percussive and foley sources with staccato mono syllable lyrics with little or no meaning. Enjoy.

Dissonance - Tu Ha

An improvised performance using iOS apps, Ableton Live and midi keyboards. Field recordings of young Barn Owls still in their nest have been combined with synth layers and granular synthesis to produce eerie textures and a sweeping ambient soundscape.

Improv Owls Variation 3

Live solo performance recorded at The Dougie Arms, Hidden Gems Festival, Dumfries on the 14th September, 2024.
An improvised performance using iOS apps, VCV Rack and midi keyboards. Field recordings of Swallows have been incorporated with with synth layers and modular generative sounds to produce evolving textures, rhythms and a sweeping ambient soundscape.

Improv Swallows Hidden Gems

An improvised performance using iOS apps, VCV Rack and midi keyboards. Field recordings of Swallows have been incorporated with with synth layers and modular generative sounds to produce evolving textures, rhythms and a sweeping ambient soundscape.

Improv Swallows Variation 1

Improv Owls Variation 2

An improvised performance using iOS apps, Ableton Live and midi keyboards. 

A long slow build, deep tones, sonic textures, synth layers and a drifting melodic beat.

Noise Improv Sequence 1

A live improvised performance using iOS apps, Ableton Live and midi keyboards. 

Recorded at The Stove, Dumfires, UK as part of Sound Lab Showcase, November 2024. (Some minor editing for upload)

A long slow build, deep tones, sonic textures, synth layers and a drifting melodic beat.

Noise Improv Sequence 1 Live

A live improvised performance using iOS apps, Ableton Live and midi keyboards. 

Recorded at The Stove, Dumfires, UK as part of Sound Lab Showcase, November 2024.

A more ad-hoc approach to composition. Occasional discordant sounds and quieter moments. In the perfomance the piece responsd to itself over time with differning lements having a conversation.,

Noise Improv Sequence 2 Live

Live performance at the Dark Space Planetarium, Kirkcudbright, as part of Sonic Labs, 23rd May 2025. Performed with iPad, Ableton Live and midi keyboards. Recorded via Ableton Live with minimal secondary mastering for upload. Darks Space Part 1 Live is an improvised, textural and ambient piece slowly evolving with found sounds and feedback distortion.

Image captured from live video footage from the event courtesy of Sonic Labs and Jamie Little.

Dark Space Part 1 Live

Live performance at the Dark Space Planetarium, Kirkcudbright, as part of Sonic Labs, 23rd May 2025. Performed with iPad, Ableton Live and midi keyboards. Recorded via Ableton Live with minimal secondary mastering for upload. Darks Space Part 2 Live is an improvised, textural and ambient piece slowly evolving with dark feedback, distortion, a rolling arpeggio and bassline.

Image captured from live video footage from the event courtesy of Sonic Labs and Jamie Little.

Dark Space Part 2 Live

Dark Space Part 2 live

COVID-19 and the subsequent societal lockdown has intensified our contact with our immediate surroundings and has heightened our appreciation of the local. This piece is a meditation on the passing of time here, and of our own overall lack of agency with change.
Using a map of the area near to Grasmere in the Lake District for reference, this experimental track creates an evolving ambient and multilayered soundscape experience.
Audio samples taken from the restricted daily walks around my home location are used alongside a musical composition informed by Frere Jaques, the traditional nursery rhyme, often sung as a round, plays with the futility of time and repetition.
Text to Audio software has been used to capture geographic related words that echo and repeat in different voices as all current contact with others is mediated through technology.
This experimental track may form the basis for a longer piece of work.
With acknowledgement to Emma Nuttall for word collaboration and shared ideas. @EmNuttall

Transition 2 - Frere Jaques

Commissioned by Aerial Festival 2020: Sounds & Words in the Lake District.
www.aerialfestival.com

Sounds of Silence Commission

Is This Just One Day? is an evolving ambient and multi-layered soundscape experience of a journey through the Lake District. The piece picks out locations around the Lake District, which have particular value to the authors. From these areas, field recordings from the landscape were taken and put to music to form a collection of sonic verses and words totaling 30 minutes. 

This piece is a meditation on the passing of time across in the Lake District, of the repetitions of our experience and of our overall lack of agency with how this space can change.

Music & composition - Taylor Nuttall
Words & video editing - Emma Nuttall
Images except below - Taylor Nuttall
Images courtesy of Andrew Locking (Skiddaw) & Tony West (Langdale Pikes)
Audio recordings except below - Taylor Nuttall
Skylark recording - Creative Commons - https://freesound.org/people/Benboncan/
Sheep recording - Creative Commons - https://freesound.org/people/felix.blume/
September 2020

Emma Nuttall grew up in the Lake District. She is a creative writer, producing stories and experiences for multiple mediums including audio, augmented-reality, virtual-reality, interactive stories, location-based digital experiences and film. She is currently working toward completing her PhD, which focuses on narrative perspective in digital fiction.
 
Taylor Nuttall lives in the Lake District. Trained as a visual artist, he has exhibited widely with painting, installation, and digital media. CEO and Director for the arts organisation Folly 2001-2011. Recent creative work is exploring sound art and electronic music. He is currently Chair of Festival of Noise.

Is This Just One Day?

The original recording that this track is derived from is from Newcastle Civic Centre Carillion Bells recorded on 1st December 1967. The tune is the well known traditional carol Silent Night. No other samples or instruments have been used. All sounds are various modifications and audio effects to samples from the original recording.

Notes:
Newcastle Civic Centre is the main administrative and ceremonial centre for Newcastle City Council. It was designed by the city architect, George Kenyon and completed in 1967. It was formally opened by HM King Olav V of Norway on 14 November 1968. It is a Grade II listed building.
The recordings were made by the BBC on 1st December 1967 and it was the first time the carillon bells were heard by the public. The bells are in the main tower of the civic centre and can occasionally be heard today.
A Carillon is a musical instrument typically housed in a bell tower of a church or municipal building. The instrument usually consists of at least 23 cast bronze, cup-shaped bells, which are played serially to produce a melody, or together to play a chord. A traditional manual carillon is played by striking a keyboard—the stick-like keys of which are called batons—with the fists, and by pressing the keys of a pedal keyboard with the feet. The keys mechanically activate levers and wires connected to metal clappers which strike the bells.

See https://soundcloud.com/tynesidesounds

Image attribution: Stille Nacht - Franz Xaver Gruber, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Dissonance - Bells

No. 1 of 4 tracks that started life as two tracks shared between two artists DS and TN as an Exquisite Corpse experiment. Completed during 2nd & 3rd UK lockdown.

Tracks developed using Ableton Live.

With thanks to Dominic Smith
https://soundcloud.com/d-s_s-d

Released via Etched Traumas

Exquisite Corpse 1 - mix 1 - TN

No. 3 of 4 tracks that started life as two tracks shared between two artists DS and TN as an Exquisite Corpse experiment. Completed during 2nd & 3rd UK lockdown.

Tracks developed using Ableton Live.

With thanks to Dominic Smith
https://soundcloud.com/d-s_s-d

Released via Etched Traumas

Exquisite Corpse - mix2 - TN

Since moving to Dumfries and Galloway Taylor has  been focussed on improvisation, software based modular and iPad performance tools. Typically resulting in ambient and generative sound design. He is part of Sonic Labs, an improvisation group based at The Stove, Dumfries.

Taylor Nuttall is a composer, artist and sound designer. Seeking to avoid specific genres, his work is often a hybrid of influences that  incorporates found sounds and seemingly disparate though often very personal content. The environment, sustainability and climate change are a constant underlying thematic.

‘Is This Just One Day’, a 30 minute evocative soundscape was produced after winning a commission for the Sounds of Silence program by Aerial Festival, launched in September 2020. Taylor has been involved in a number of collaborative projects most recently working with artist and curator Dominic Smith to produce ‘Triangulation’ an EP released by Etched Traumas in August 2021.

After working extensively in the arts for many years leading multimedia arts organisation Folly and as a founding director of Abandon Normal Devices Festival, Taylor is currently a board member for Full of Noises, a sound art and new music organisation based in a public park on Cumbria’s Furness Peninsula.

Having recently moved from the Lake District to Dumfries and Galloway Taylor Nuttall lives on a small holding near Castle Douglas with a small flock of sheep. 

Taylor Nuttall trained as a visual artist and has an early exhibition career with artworks featuring painting, print, sculpture, photography and installation. In the late 80’s and early 90’s he began to explore the potential of creativity using computer technologies. As well as exhibiting these works in traditional gallery spaces this led to a number of pieces being designed to be experienced online as virtual artworks. These virtual artworks also began to explore the use of sound. Taylor is now working with sound, drawing upon composition and musical skills he learned from playing piano and classical guitar as well as re-learning more robustly about sound design, composition and music theory.

'Is this just One Day?' released September 2020, a new commision for Aerial Festival. https://aerialfestival.com/

Without Visual - April 2021 - https://www.instagram.com/surmise_collective/

EP - ‘Triangulation’ released by Etched Traumas -August 2021 - https://archive.org/details/et132_tn_and_ds_triangulation

The Stove Inprovisation showcase, Market of Possibilities, Dumfries 2023

Hidden Gems Festival, Dumfries 2024

FON 15th Anniversary Concert, Piel House, Barrow in Furness 2024

Sound Lab Showcase, The Stove, Dumfries 2024

Dark Space Planetarium, Kirkudbright 2025

Cryptic Nights, CCA, Glasgow 2025

Tracks played on:
BBC Radio Introducing - BBC Radio Cumbria
Breakfast Show on BBC Radio Cumbria
Space is the Place Radio Show - Cando FM - @SpaceisthePlac9
The Magic Window - MadWaspRadio - https://madwaspradio.com/
Hello Goodbye Radio Show - Resonance FM - https://hellogoodbyeshow.com/
Star & Shadow Radio https://soundcloud.com/tynesidesounds
Eagle Nest Radio - @eaglesmusicnest


@digitaylor

© 2025

Taylor Nuttall

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