As part of the "
A Thing About Machines" art festival, Pram did a show somewhere half-between a DJ and live set with a whole bunch of tape loops and ancient devices.
There's something about the sound of tape, and the organic quality that it lends to otherwise harsh electronics really came out in Pram's set, which was more textural than beaty or particularly melodic. Being improvised, it dragged here and there, but only occasionally. And for all the use of old techniques and electronics, it seemed much less dated than Mr 90s Drum And Bass Violin Player at Taylor John's later on, brrrr.
Gear spotting twat that I am, there were a couple of synths, an 8 track tape deck, a Roland Chorus Echo, a glockenspiel and - hope I'm not giving some sort of secret away here - this odd device on the middle right of the pic below, which is a jam jar mounted on a some sort of old industrial electric motor.
The operator takes a tape head (presumably plugged into the mixer) and wipes it along the tape as the jam jar rotates, quite ingenious. I'm not sure what sounds were coming from it, but I'm thinking that you could have a bunch of sustained notes from an organ set across the jam jar and play it like the bastard offspring of a Stylophone and a Mellotron.
Oh and and a celebratory packet of Tooty Frooties or some other retro sweet should go to Scott Johnston of
Film Ficciones for providing me and my sister with the retro-thrill of the evening, a tiny clip of Children's Film Foundation film "
Glitterball", we recognised it straightaway.
