Thursday, July 27, 2006

domestique electrique


Before Claire Thomas & Susan Vezey were defrocked so to speak there were plans afoot for a follow up tape to Reprint. Unlike Reprint which was largely tape delay based the new work was to employ small fragments of sound from the domestic interior amplified and then looped and re looped, speed changed, treated, re looped and so on. The sound sources ranged from the electrical hum of the kitchen fluorescent to the static crackle made by a pair of denier nylons. A number of long almost drone like recordings were produced in 1981 in my flat in Deptford indeed the bedroom at the time was missing a mattress but had a number of nails banged in the wall on which hung all the loops (I used to sleep on the sofa in the living room) . The project even had a couple of provisional working titles including domestique electrique and deshabille electronique (that’s electronic undress en francais of course).

Given Cherry Red’s reluctance to pursue further releases with Claire & Susan once their identities were revealed the project was eventually abandoned and the tapes lost or destroyed. However in going through the archives for the various snatch re-issues some small fragments from the original sound sources were found along with a few notes for the project and so it was possible to reconstruct many of the tracks.

Two of these reproductions were included on a bonus CDR released with the 25 copy limited edition Box set (as in a box) of the Seal pool Sounds CD last year.