Great Noises That Fill the Air. Bow Gamelan Ensemble (formed East London, 1983) - ACE194.4

Performance, including balloons and other whistling instruments, resined strings, springs. VO: "Let’s walk together through a great modern capital, with the ear more attentive than the eye, and we may vary the pleasures of our sensibilities by distinguishing among the gurglings of water, air and gas inside metallic pipes, the rumblings and rattlings of engines breathing with obvious animal spirits, the rising and falling of pistons, the stridency of mechanical saws, the loud jumping of trolleys on their rails, the snapping of whips, the whipping of flags. We will have fun, imagining our orchestration of department stores sliding doors, the hubbub of the crowd, the different roars of railway stations, iron foundries, textile mills, printing houses, power plants and subways." [from Luigi Russolo’s The Art of Noise/L’Arte dei Rumori]. The Ensemble working with students at Bretton Hall. Sounds produced include those made by a vacuum cleaner. VO Wilson saying that audiences like to get among the instruments after a performance. VO Burwell: their work is "dead against conservatism"; they’re looking for the unfamiliar. VO "I love Wagner, but the music I hope for is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window, trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws." [Charles Baudelaire]. Performance in the grounds of Bretton Hall, this time including steam whistles, and pyrotechnics. Credits.