Hive is my latest sound project, taking place in Norfolk on the weekend of 12th / 13th November 2011.  I am very pleased to be working with Sound And Music to present this installation, and rather than trying to think of a slightly different way of saying exactly the same thing, here is the blurb from the Sound And Music website:

"Following his 24-hour Theremin marathon on The Manhattan Bridge this summer, Nick Franglen’s latest sound installation will see the experimental musician holed up for 24 hours in a remote WW2 concrete gunnery dome in the company of fifty radios, each tuned to a different station.

Franglen is inspired by the urban landscape and other found spaces, from London and Manhattan Bridges to a submarine, a mine and jet engine test bed. His work contextualises its environment, providing an often spontaneous, improvised reaction to time and place. Sound and Music is delighted to support this latest work at Langham Dome. On Armistice weekend he uses this WWII anti-aircraft training dome as a unique place for his installation and testing site for his concept: ‘Hive’."

Hive is an open event in an unusual location, so the curious are more than welcome to attend to experience this piece for themselves.  Click here for location and times.  I will be recording the audio inside the Dome using moving microphones, and I'm going to stream some of that audio live so those that can't make the journey will be able to hear what is happening inside a concrete dome in North Norfolk.

Coming to this site very shortly is a full explanation of what I plan to do, and why.  It's all about filtering information.

I first met Mark Fry three years ago over a long lunch at my oldest friends’ house in Northern France. It turned out Mark was a cousin of theirs and lived only five minutes down the road, so it was a bit of a surprise I’d not met him earlier as I’d been visiting the house since I was a teenager.  We hit it off right away, fuelled by good food, my homemade mayonnaise and a shared horror of our hosts’ appalling wine. 

Mark is charming and great company, and we found we had quite a lot in common, not least our enjoyment of a long lunch – even one where people baulked at paying more than one euro a bottle. I was pleased when Mark got in touch once I was back in the UK to see if I was up for a collaboration, and so a few weeks later we met up in my studio to work on a new version of his song Dreaming With Alice.

Dreaming With Alice is the title song of Mark’s rare and astonishingly valuable psychedelic folk album (£2000 a copy - check your attics, everyone), recorded in 1971 when he was an art student in Rome. On the album the song appears as individual verses spaced between the other tracks – “Did you pass the glass mountain, where Salome opened her dress? Did you see the dolphin’s feather fountain, oh the King made a bloody mess…” – before wafting off into echoey bliss as the following track appears.

It’s a hypnotic mantra that threads the whole record together, and Mark’s idea was for us to make the first complete version of the song. As he put it, Alice has been on such a long journey, it’d be interesting to see where she led us once she was put back together. She was certainly going to lead us to some great long lunches and, as it turned out, long dinners too, with much better wine this time. Mark came laden with provisions, including cheeses and pate from Luneray market and a case of excellent Bandol.

The original multitracks had ended up who knows where so we started from scratch with new recordings, as well as sampling and twisting moments lifted from other tracks on the old album – The Witch, Song For Wilde and so on – a gentle modern nod to the song’s original partners. 

This was a lot of fun – Mark is a fine guitarist with a mesmerising voice, and the sampling fitted the mood perfectly.  Once it was finished the single was released on the Steve Krakow’s Fruits de Mer label in Chicago – purple vinyl of course.

Mark had only found out recently what an impact his first record had made, and a little like Vashti Bunyan the internet opened some long forgotten doors. While I was working with him he was contacted by Dorset alt folk musicians Michael Tanner and Nick Palmer, suggesting a collaboration. Michael and Nick were working together as the The A.Lords – a name so brilliantly wrong that it’s gone all the way round into the ‘great’ category – and these two excellent musicians are well worth checking out in their own right. They seem to be continually releasing music alone, together or with a circle of interesting people – beautifully crafted albums of organic, twisting folk, usually with handmade sleeves in limited runs. Directorsound, Plinth, United Bible Studies, Thalassing. I was thrilled when I was given a copy of Plinth’s Music For Smalls Lighthouse – packaging perfection with its handmade book, braille inlays and ribbons.

The A.Lords started sending Mark instrumental tracks to sing over, tracks with a great sense of timing – “the slowest music in the world” as Mark put it, and I can’t argue with that. It’s gentle psychedelic folk with hanging pauses, twists and turns, guitars, recorders and autoharps, and Mark’s lovely voice holding it all together. 

At first I had nothing to do with this apart from hearing the occasional track while staying with Mark, but once the record was ready they asked me if I’d mix it, so I did, with pleasure. It was a bit complicated compiling all the music as it had been recorded on very different systems in England and France, but once that was sorted the mixing was a breeze, just a question of not getting in the way and letting the music breathe. It will come as no surprise to hear that more lengthy lunches helped the record on its way, and now I Lived In Trees comes out on Second Language on 24th September. A limited edition in a beautiful quadruple gatefold sleeve by Iker Spozio, each album contains a packet of rowan tree seeds so those so inclined can grow their own rowan grove. It’s a lovely record. I’m really pleased to have been involved with it, and delighted to have made friends with Mark. I’m not sure what comes next, but Mark and I will certainly continue to work together, and have many more fine lunches too, I’m sure of that.