Faster Than Sound - Part 1
Last Saturday in a deserted airbase in Suffolk, the second Faster Than Sound Festival took place. The event is part of the well established Aldeburgh Music Festival (8th-24th June)– which started in 1947 and has been running ever since. In fact, the first electronic music event was held in 1952, sadly we have been unable to locate any living witnesses to confirm what exactly was played there.. Joanna Seguro, ex Mute A+R , and ex-employee of Warp Records, has a pedigree in promoting electronic music and was approached by Aldeburgh Festival Director Johnathan Reekie to help programme and organize the event. It takes place in a remote corner of the Bentwater Airbase, scene of a mysterious UFO sighting in the 1980’s and home to a futuristic command bunker - aka The Star Wars Stage - clad in bomb-proof concrete. The surrounding giant hangars, runways and military buildings provide an atmospheric location, with stages and performance installations dotted around the site. For a full list of performers, check out the FTS site, we unfortunately couldn’t catch all of them but did get a chance to talk to Plaid, The Modified Toy Orchestra, Joby and also designer of this excellent installation – or more precisely instrument. Known simply as 'ONE', it consists of about 100m of taut wire, a pickup taken from old drum pads, some custom electronics and two bizarre-looking speakers from a 1930s cinema sound system. Its creator Mark Limbrick, told us that he’d no idea whether it would work or not the morning of his arrival, but work it certainly did! The sound it made was awesome - strangely beautiful, ominous, percussive and atmospheric.

• Fasterthansound.co.uk
• Aldeburgh Festival main festival site
• marklimbrick.co.uk

< More From: FTS07

• FTS07: Report #3 - Modified Toy Orchestra 21-Jun-07
• FTS07: Electronic Music Festival #2 19-Jun-07

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