BENEDICT DREW

Nought to Sixty

The ICA’s six-month season Nought to Sixty was a large and ambitious programme that presented 60 emerging artists based in Britain and Ireland in week-long exhibitions, events and openings.

This catalogue represents the documentation, essays and discussions of Nought to Sixty, beginning with an introduction by Melissa Gronlund. With a full-colour section of all artists’ projects, the Nought to Sixty catalogue comprises of texts about each artist’s practice, extracts of the season’s salon discussions, and essays that address the networks that form and contribute to an emerging visual art scene.
The catalogue also contains a large directory of artist-run spaces and organisations in Britain and Ireland, written by each organisation in question.

Includes work by the following artists: Nina Beier and Marie Lund, Juliette Blightman, Brown Mountain College, Andrea Büttner, Aileen Campbell, Duncan Campbell, Nina Canell and Robin Watkins, Jeffrey Charles Henry Peacock, Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth with Boyle Family, Stephen Connolly, Mike Cooter, Matthew Darbyshire, Sean Edwards, ELECTRA, Redmond Entwistle, Ruth Ewan, Freee, Maria Fusco, Babak Ghazi, Guestroom, Seamus Harahan, Hardcore Is More Than Music, Emma Hart and Benedict Drew, Alexander Heim , Iain Hetherington, Will Holder, Andrew Hunt, The Hut Project, Fiona Jardine, Jesse Jones, Junior Aspirin Records, Anja Kirschner and David Panos, Thomas Kratz, Torsten Lauschmann, Lorna Macintyre, Alastair MacKinven, Ursula Mayer, Matthew Noel-Tod, Open Music Archive, David Osbaldeston, Garrett Phelan, Gail Pickering, Sarah Pierce, Clunie Reid, Hannah Rickards, James Richards, Ben Rivers, Giles Round, Alun Rowlands, Stephen Sutcliffe, Support Structure,Tris Vonna-Michell, Mark Aerial Waller, Andy Wake.
Institute of Contemporary Arts, 5 May - 2 November 2008
Edited by Mark Sladen, Richard Birkett and Isla Leaver-Yap
Essays by JJ Charlesworth, Melissa Gronlund, Pablo Lafuente, Lisa Le Feuvre, Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, Sarah Pierce andEmily Pethick.
978-1-900300-59-9
Hardback
280mm x 194mm

ICA SHOP LINK

Emily Richardson
Time Frames

Time Frames introduces three films by Emily Richardson and includes an audio CD of the soundtracks by Benedict Drew.
Redshift,Nocturne and Aspect are outlined in three essays by Nicky Hamlyn, Mark Edwards and Ed Baxter. They describe dark, haunted landscapes full of unsettling anticipation and engaging detail. The darkness, light, colours and texture of Richardson’s films are illustrated throughout by beautifully reproduced stills arranged filmstrip style. I have yet to see the films, but there is a revealing fascination to be had running the images together as flickering storyboards whilst absorbing the soundtracks. Pause to study, and there is an immediate tension which dominates these places and lures the viewer inside.
The night skies of Redshift demonstrate there really is something out there, and the audience is invited to look up and discover what whilst straining to catch the smallest detail across a deep yawning expanse where colours modulate with distance and time. Look, and you have to listen to the rhythmic communication intercepts and thrumming analogue overload tones of Drew’s accompaniment.
Nocturne abandons the observer in the industrial part of town after dark. Urban fox or lost human soul, they share the same perspective here, standing, waiting at one end of the street and looking into the middle distance. Is there baleful intent or beauty all around? Either way the suggestions posed by these street scapes are compelling and deeply suspicious. The atmosphere is richly processed and reminiscent of the nightmare sonic world Alan Splet created for ‘Eraserhead’ but Drew cannot hide the distant human reverberations of machinery and traffic that must surely be coming from the next street. There is no-one here, but, believe me, you are not alone.
Filmed on location in King’s Wood, Challock, Aspect squeezes a filtered view of daylight through a mixed coniferous/deciduous tapestry representing in nine minutes the annual forest cycle. This is one of my favourite habitats and there is something so special about seasonal woodlands around these latitudes. Temperature, humidity, acoustics, light, shade, pattern and chaos. Scan the images, extract the detail, is it day break? A sudden sonic down draft from the canopy marks the dawn chorus but there are no goldcrests or siskins singing here, not at least in our temporal plane. Acidic streams cascade and wobble unseen below a carpet of pine needles and gather in dark, non reflective pools created perhaps by the tyre ruts of huge harvesting machinery. This film, premiered in the forest, must cross a divide, projector beam scanning both reality and screen alike, commercial resource meets the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a family day out, but not into the wild wood. Our innate suspicion of where the wild things are follow just a few silent paces behind, perhaps just over your shoulder. Look out, and listen...
Reviewed by Chris Watson
A sound recordist with a particular and passionate interest in recording the wildlife sounds of animals, habitats and atmospheres from around the world. http://www.chriswatson.net/biography.html

Mark Wastell
Caressed on the brow by unseen hands
''In June 2003, discovering that several like-minded improvisers were all passing through London at the same time, Sound 323 boss Mark Wastell seized the opportunity to record an eleven-strong group. They’ve resisted the temptation to call themselves the Orchestra Of Lower Case Enlightenment, but it’s a rewarding experiment involving a fairly minimal music that is usually heard from far smaller ensembles. Wastell’s cello, Rhodri Davies’ harp and Michael Duch’s bass are joined by guitarists Tetuzi Akiyama, Annette Krebs and Nishide Takehiro, with Mattin and Benedict Drew on laptops, Graham Halliwell’s amplified sax and Paul Hood’s record player.
In spite of the numbers, the music never gets crowded, and an ensemble character successfully emerges right at the top of this single, thirty minute piece. Instead of the usual tight focus and close-up sound, this is a more diffuse recording in a larger room. So the scale opens up like a stormy vista of dark clouds - the ominous atmospherics alternate with hovering, shifting drones, from stratospheric sines and feedback to bone-rattling bass tones. It’s not all restrained reductionism, and moments of drama occur throughout, giving the piece a satisfying arc. Individual contributions are unsurprisingly hard to identify, and the aim is clearly to construct an ensemble sound.
Wastell’s mini-orchestra also performed live in the evening of that same June day. I saw them in Hackney in a condemned building, where I recall feeling that if the gaping floorboards didn’t get you, the thick dust would. In spite of the odd, not to say life-threatening, performing environment, the concentration and focus of the playing was memorable. By the end of the evening some feverish brows certainly needed caressing.''
Clive Bell, The Wire www.thewire.co.uk

FRESH FRUIT - VARIOUS ARTISTS LCD20

Insanely action packed compilation of all thats wild and wonderful inc. lots of tracks from forthcoming/recent releases plus exclusives and a couple of licensed tracks. feat. kid 606, remote viewer, ceephax, c-pij, johannes, antenna farm and lots, lots more.
1. KID 606 - Dandy
2. JOHANNES - My My Rock N Roll
3. HAIRY BUTTER - Office Tart
4. THE REMOTE VIEWER - Slowly in Waves
5. ALTERNATIVE 3 - Rockets in a Beautiful Sky
6. HRVATSKI - Short With Guitar
7. THEY CAME FROM THE STARS vs THE LONDON TOY ORCHESTRA - Sunshine Coach Episode 1
8. MAX TUNDRA - Runaround
9. IVAN SEAL & BENEDICT DREW - CACOPHONE
10. CEEPHAX - Polar
11. ADDIE BRIK & RICHARD THOMAS - ELEGANT FLOWER
12. CURSOR MINER - Never Been Seen play sample
13. ROTHKO - Old Folk Tunes
14. JEAN BAPTISTE - Montagut Mixtion Mixtilique (EXTRACT)
15. VL-TONE - When Deja Vu Becomes The Realisation that you keep on Doing the Same Shit Over and Over Again
16. LEIS- Aegina
17. ST - Wall of Heat
18. SANTA DOG - Theme From Camerwick Green
19. ANTENNA FARM - Cracked
20. C-PIJ OBSCURA - Ac Slide
21. SENSUM - Sub - ter - ene

Artificial Additives
Sonic Catering remix digipack CD album in an edition of 1000
The Sonic Catering Band - Supplementary Phase
Nish - Foie Gras
They came from the Stars; I Saw Them - Cosmic Seafood Fusion
Gregory Kurcewicz & Daniel Hayhurst - Composition No 1
Clear Spot - Flavour X
en-eye - Audio Noodles (Bombay Mix)
Nurse with Wound - Hindu Monastery Breakfast
Clare Connors - Grace.
recipe: leftovers from The First Supper series
released: July 2001 (Peripheral Conserve pH-06)
re-released: April 2002 (Peripheral Conserve pH-06)