The Glasgow Music and Film Festival is in full swing and tonight, when Lucky Dragons roll into town, promises to be one of the highlights of the 11 day extravaganza.
“Independent promoters Cry Parrot and Glasgow Music & Film Festival are proud to present a special one-off conceptual event. Breaking down the traditional boundaries and hierarchies between performance and audience members, the event encourages full participation by audience members: You control the music. You control the film.
Lucky Dragons are an experimental music act from Los Angeles, California. Hailed for their original brand of mediative, world-infused, glitchy electronica, they are described as having the ability to make “everyday sounds become alluringly other”. In a live setting, they encourage ‘equal power-sharing relationships’ between audience members and themselves. By passing out touch sensitive wires and instrumentation, everyone is encouraged to participate and manipulate the sounds feeding from the speakers.
This event also invites YOU to submit films. During Lucky Dragon’s performance, numerous projectors will screen all the received submissions throughout the performance space. With no thematic, stylistic, narrative or picture quality requirements: the films can be about anything. The only requirements are that they are silent and no more than 10 minutes long.”
A 5 minute documentary on Luke Fishbeck’s “make a baby” project. The project uses a rug, audio converters, and a laptop to produce sounds/music through skin contact.
Also on the bill is Wounded Knee. Who wants you to sing along with him and be a “collaborative choir”.
MP3: Wounded Knee – Even The Dogs
Here’s his “Tones of the Universe” idea in full..
Tones of the Universe
“I thought it would be useful to say a wee bit about what I’m hoping for with this collaborative choir, so that you have an idea in advance and I’m not just springing something on you on the night. In short I would like to invite everyone attending the Lucky Dragons show to perform with me during my set as a big choir. In this way it won’t be a Wounded Knee set at all, it will be our set. It will be an acoustic affair, no mics and no PA necessary.
I want to try and keep this invitation as loose and open as possible so that we can all get involved in some way. Therefore I just want to propose a couple of basic principles:
- For the duration of the performance the group tries to maintain a constant tone
- We don’t worry about words or set songs and focus instead on making sounds
We can all sing, as surely as we can all speak. We all have our own voice. The key thing is to feel relaxed and enjoy the experience of singing. Here’s a wee exercise each of you can practice to help you warm up and find your tone.
- Take some deep breaths at a natural comfortable rhythm
- After a while, when exhaling, think about the way that you yawn and try to replicate this. This should warm up your soft palate.
- After a while when exhaling start to make an “mmmmmm” sound naturally and comfortably
- When you feel ready start to open your mouth so that the “mmmmmm” changes into a “mmmmmuuuuuuuuhhhhhhh” or something like that
- After a while experiment with the different vowel sounds as you exhale, either on their own or in combinations
I think it would be great to use this exercise as the foundation of the performance on the night. Group singing is a powerful thing. My own experience of it is very limited but as a solo singer I can tell you it’s a whole other level. And the more of us are doing it the more powerful I think it’ll be. Imagine all these tones coming together in one space all the microtonal variations, the natural harmonies and dissonances all merging together. Let’s create the tones of the universe!”
All attendees at the gig have also been invited to bring along their own vinyl records which will be played by Wavy Graves inbetween acts. This really is all set to be a night not to forget.
S.I.T Wolf X
Someones In The Wolf 
