Ted Hughes described talking on the telephone as a virtual reality – film-maker Eoghan Kidney discussed the more tangible version of data-rendered universes reaching critical mass thanks to Palmer Lucky's Oculus Rift and the various ethical and economic controversies that have come with it. Kidney presented a DIY VR headset workshop (featuring many toilet roll tubes and plenty of sellotape)at Darklight Festival 2014 shortly after our interview. 

Originally broadcast on the Totally Dublin Show, TXFM 1052, on April 18th 2014.

The Oculus Rift and Ethics of Virtual Reality - Interview with Eoghan Kidney

I interviewed director and film critic Mark Cousins ahead of the release of his expansive, extraordinary collage A Story of Children and Film and a curated season in the Irish Film Institute. In his peerless Belfast lilt he discusses performativity, believability and devil children.

Originally broadcast on the Totally Dublin Show, TXFM 1052, on  April 5th 2014.

Act Normal - Director Mark Cousins on A Story of Children and Film

Mr Whippy

This week’s announcement of a TV adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle brought to mind one of first attempts at home-recording, which I still have an intact version of. Borne from my first encounters with krautrock (via Julian Cope and a Wire magazine Primer) and the Christmas present of a tiny digital Boss 4-track, I recorded this in my East Wall teen pad before turning 19. 

Aside from an Argos catalogue electric guitar, most of the equipment I used was inherited or stolen. I hadn’t yet blown an ill-advised amount of money on a sampler, so I improvised by ramming a Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood 7″ through a borrowed loop pedal for a drum-beat. 

My one-thing-I’d-grab-if-my-house-was-on fire Casiotone, gifted to the 10-year-old me by my godfather, drones along the low end for most of the track, and I’ve triple layered guitar for the bit that’s supposed to be bass, the bit that’s supposed to be rhythm and the beat that’s supposed to be lead with the 4-track’s gammy on-board effects module trying to parse them out from each other. 

The vocal sample was gleaned from one of the treasury of BBC sound effects tapes my grandfather kept in a knackered brown leather suitcase. After reversing it through the loop pedal in an attempt to approximate Damo Suzuki’s absurdo yelps, I decided it sounded like “Aspirin! Bokumaru!”. It doesn’t, but I had just read Vonnegut’s novel for the first time, and was an impressionable young thing.

I’d like to excuse the painfully overdriven mix to my utter greenness at production, but even after learning the rudiments of equalising and compression pretty much everything I’ve ever recorded sounds like it’s being played out of shit-heap cassette player. 

I rarely make music anymore. The recordings I have that don’t make my brain turn a gag reflex are those where complete amateurishness dominates: my first time recording vocals, first drum machine beats and first forays into Ableton. As I became more furtive in my efforts and pissed away money on barely-used gear in my 20s, process became more plastic, studied, and it became less like catharsis and more like filling out sudokus.

Whenever I do get around to dicking about with MIDI files now, I try to get back to that adolescent hyperreflexia. Maybe I just need to start reading Kurt Vonnegut again.

thepramsheds