A one-off piece to celebrate the 11th November 2011. All sound in this piece was recorded on 11-11-11, either from radio broadcast randomly tuned into, or captured in the wild.
The sound was edited down into 11 second long samples, then built up into a piece 11 minutes 11 seconds long.
It is basically a piece of three parts - the first part is mainly made up of radio samples and domestic sounds from around Frankenstein Towers.
The middle part is a kind of poetry reading... we visited the local library, chose shelves at random and took the 11th book thereon. We opened it at page 11 and recorded the first 11 words to be found there. These random fragments were arranged into something resembling a narrative and recorded over loops of sound recorded in the library . Who was the guy with the bad cough ? - we didn't notice at the time. But he - and his cough - has now been immortalized.
The third part is mainly recorded on location - from the railway station, through the hell that is a shopping mall on a Friday afternoon to the post office.
The music in the piece is also made up of 11-second samples recorded randomly from the radio - no idea who any of the original artists were... they just happened to get airplay on 11-11-11 at the exact moment we randomly tuned-in.
This isn't a perfect piece, there's a fair amount of background noise that could have been edited out given time... and we might just have finished by 11-11-12. The idea was to do it fast, get it finished within a week , spontenaity over sound quality.
Released as a CD in a limited edition of 11 copies.
Here are the 11 random fragments culled from the library books...
At last we were ready,.
The tiny Englishman
Ran out to
The scene of the wreck,
Calvino reached down and
Picked up
Maignan !
I thought, shocked -
I did not
Give myself away by
Possessing a thorough
Knowledge of the reality
Behind it. But I
I lately received letter
from Philip Noakes,
Who has just moved
In at an angle,
Not quite pulled into
The driveway itself.
Had written a phrase,
Not very handily,
In enamel paint.
The
House were gutted
By a mob crying
No philosophers - church and
Every so often
You’d get a
Rotten one and
You’d shit
Room, slumped on the
Sofa which was
Definitely not one of
Of pit heaps.
You refuses the money
I offers, tha be
.