Here's the full video for the improvised performance that I made at the Live Art Club held at VSSL in Deptford (first of every month, book via eventbrite). It probably looks better on YouTube than on this page, which insists on cropping it. The filming was by Nicola Woodham. Below are some stills from the event (all photos courtesy Live Art Club and photographer Henri T).
You can play it straight from here (player below), or it can be found here, with a load of other great stuff that Resonance puts out.
Doing the program in the way that I did was a good experience for me - allowing things to remain fairly ragged and trusting that "unfinished" or less-than-perfectly resolved is good enough - especially if that is all you can do, as is my case. I realised in the process that I have a pretty large amount of material with exactly that status, more than would fit into a 59 minute program. Therefore, I've resolved to make an album out of these remainders, and (probably) some brand, spanking new stuff, too. More will follow in the fulness of time. I'll post about it when it's ready (hopefully not too long) and it'll be available for a very nominal fee on my bandcamp.
In all of this, I haven't forgotten my podcast series, The Dumpcast, which last year reached the milestone of two whole episodes. I know that one or two people listened to and enjoyed it... then it stopped. This syncope was for no better reason than my feeling overwhelmed at the time by... well, the same shit that was overwhelming so many other people... the narrowness of everything and the feeling that one's own narrowness had little positive contribution to make towards understanding of what was happening. So, boredom (with myself) and frustration (with myself and everything else) played their part as well. This is all just to say that I'm fully anticipating resuming regular-ish forays into the Dumpcast pretty soon and hopefully in the process I'll work out what I want the Dumpcast to be, format and content-wise. I will announce when it happens.
This Friday, the 26th of February 2021, my programme "Untimely" will air on Resonance FM, 20:00-21:00hrs. It will be repeated at 10am on the following Monday.After that, I'm assuming it will be on Resonance's Mixcloud (will post a link when it's up).
To give you an idea of what it will be about, here's some text composed for me by the ever-brilliant Nicola Woodham:
Many people mention lack of concentration, disjointed thoughts, no motivation and anxiety when they are asked about how they’ve been effected by the Covid-19 pandemic. For Robin Bale, who has two learning difficulties: Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD) and dyspraxia, a condition that effects organising thoughts and memory, the pandemic has been a struggle to navigate through. A performance artist and experimental musician since the 80s, his practice went up in smoke in the last year. He felt he saw his making of unfinished fragments, shifting between styles, working on lots of ideas at once as awkward failures, not fitting for release or performance. He applied to to make a program for Clear Spot with the aim to make the show just about that not being able to focus and disordered textures of lockdown. He’s taking up his work on Benjamin’s constellations again.
The combination of the pandemic and two learning difficulties (ADHD and dyspraxia) has made Robin Bale’s experimental music and sound making even more constellated, unfinished, preposterous. The unfinshed album, the multi-genred EP, the untethered sample all collapse here, unfunctional, awkward, failed. A program designed to help you lack focus, drift, scan without feeling bad for it.
It will comprise of a whole load of unfinished/resolved pieces - sound and verbal - composed over the past plague year. Below is a brief taster - it's not all like that, but I like the chaotic raucousness of this one...
