BIKE CEMETERY VALEDICTION

A valedictory iteration of some of the - now sadly occluded - inscriptions on the Bike Cemetery wall. This video was taken at the Bike Cemetery on a Sunday in May 2017.
WOLF VANISH from robin bale on Vimeo.

AQUA TOPHANA

My performance from last December at the Dungeons of Polymorphous Pan. In case you are wondering, aqua tophana was a poison believed to work so insensibly slowly that it was indistinguishable from old age. It was also meant to be so virulent that a single drop could poison the entire sea. It actually does have some historical basis, in that there was a famous manufacturer of that  poison, Giulia Tofana - so it is in fact a brand name.  I've always enjoyed the idea that we have all been poisoned by it - which is why we don't live forever.

The stick that you can see me holding is an improvised bass - it had machine heads strung with fishing line, an empty can for a resonating chamber and a contact mic for amplification. It was rather microphonic, so you can hear my voice coming through it into the effects pedal it was attached to as well. Unfortunately, it didn't survive the night but mark II will make its appearance sometime soon I hope.

FUCK! ...IT'S A SPHINX!

Myself and the Bike Cemetery Big Band from the other year, performing the Sphinx Song. Bad news, those Sphinxes.

SOUTHWARK...SEARCHING FOR THE WORKHOUSE

A night drift around Southwark, digging for lost bones and shoes on the beach, paying respects to the unconsecrated dead, piecing together the syntax of lost streets

Thunder tube feedback machine and synthesiser

NEW SOUNDS

A piece made for the listening seminar at Goldsmiths on the evening of Tuesday 14 January 2014. It is composed of field and studio recordings, plus some programmed samples. It takes the form of the invocation I have frequently used to begin - to demarcate a space - in my performances, and then goes on a small tour of the underworld.

Kkkaaa

New vocal piece here:
An homage to the speech patterns of the place I grew up in. Glottals like hawking up phlegm or a kick in the balls, vowels like swinging on a rusty gate and consonants like ravens.

MOVING FOREST CODA - JULY 2012

We Owe the Future Nothing: Moving Forest Coda 2012 from robin bale on Vimeo.

FIRST TRACK ON BANDCAMP

My first track on bandcamp. It's by no means perfect, in terms of recording or execution (improvised in my front room) I've cleaned up the recording a bit, though not enough. There may be a remix in the pipeline, I've got a lot of fragments of similar ideas that may or may not fit - we'll see.

THE RAPTURE - ABJECT BLOC 21 MAY 2011

Performance in the arctic circle - part 1

Cracks/Tracks from robin bale on Vimeo.

Behind the town hall in Gallivare, Swedish Lapland July 23 2011. Part of Tomma Rum residency. Part 2 of this performance (unfortunately recorded on a laptop webcam due to battery issues with the camera used for this section) forthcoming.

THE BIKE CEMETERY INVOCATION

The imagery here is taken from the wall of incantations and tutelary animals in the Bike Cemetery, created by anonymous. The additions are Breakfast Raven, a chthonic deity alluded to, but not directly pictured on the wall, and the Weeping Surveyor - an avatar of Adam after the Fall and Expulsion, who obsessively measures and builds, but cannot face looking at his own work.


Untitled from robin bale on Vimeo.

The sound was recorded live at the JAM conference at Reading University on 6th May this year, my voice was looped digitally. The text is from the incantations/spells on the Bike Cemetery walls.

BEDFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY, LUTON

Invocation for "Red Wine Traces" Houseman's bookshop 05/08

Savage Messiah drift round the 2012 Olympic Zone

TATE BRITAIN 02/01/09