Occasional posts on subjects including field recording, London history and literature, other websites worth looking at, articles in the press, and news of sound-related events.
AS IAN TOLD you last week, the second series of Lost Steps has just begun on Resonance FM. Ian has kindly offered me the chance to elaborate on his post and to detail some of our upcoming shows. This may also read as a shameless plug.
Lost Steps was formed by Malcom Hopkins and myself around 18 months ago whilst walking, drinking and talking our way around central London as stragglers on a walk led by our friend Tony Gilles. I had previously made London-based radio and sound pieces with people like Iain Sinclair, Michael Parsons, Stewart Home, John Barker and Robin Bale. I had also contributed a lot of London field recordings to the initial Edible Landscapes project on Resonance FM in 2008. Malcom has worked in the book trade for many years and is currently manager of Housmans Bookshop on Caledonian Road where he has been steadily building up a really interesting selection of London themed books and pamphlets that reflect his cultural and artistic interests.
With a mutual respect for each other’s knowledge and tastes we decided that radio would be the ideal starting platform for the project which Malcom had dubbed Lost Steps. We set about creating our own Nurse With Wound-type list of people that we saw as producing, or having produced, work that contributed to our subjective vision of London. The list included writers, artists, musicians, photographers, bloggers, journalists, academics and film makers. The idea was to try to make an episode of Lost Steps either with or about each of the people on the list. We hoped that each episode would stand up on its own as well as contributing to an archive that would mean more than it’s constituent parts.
It’s perhaps unsurprising then that the list now seems naive and quite incomplete. Virtually everyone we’ve met has suggested someone else that would make a worthy addition to the project and we keep discovering new and forgotten works too, so it looks like a project that may run for quite a while.
So far the second series will feature:
* photographer Peter Marshall who set out to photograph every London street
* author Simon Wells explaining the London connections he unearthed while writing his 40th anniversary book on Charles Manson
* Scott Wood and Sarah Sparkes discussing Haunted London
* London Dreamtime and Nigel of Bermondsey discussing oral culture and folktales in London
* Phil Baker talking about the artist Austin Osman Spare
* artist Simon Terrill explains his latest project based in and around the Balfron Tower
* writer Catharine Arnott discusses her London trilogy
* sound artist Dan Scott talking us through his various London-specific works
* Mark Baxter and Darren Lock present their photo book on the history of Walworth
* Sisters Burn talk to us about their forthcoming ‘After London’ exhibition that meditates on post-London possibilities and strategies
* Vic Pratt from the BFI talks to us about the Flipside series of screenings and DVD’s that unearth London’s forgotten celluloid memories
* writer Paul Willetts discusses his biography of Paul ‘Revue Bar’ Raymond
* blogger Neil Transpontine talks us through his research around Deptford and New Cross
* film maker Marc Isaacs talks about his studies of the City
* artist Lottie Child presents her Campfire Conversations and Street Training practices
* writer James Bridle details his endeavour to catalogue, archive, and re-shoot Patrick Keiller’s ‘London’
* broadcaster and Blue Badge guide Diane Burstein gives us her take on London
* Stefan Dickers from the Bishopsgate institute shares details of a wonderful East End tale
All the shows are archived on our website the week after broadcast. As of this post we’ll be broadcasting on Thursdays at 10.30pm and then repeating on Wednesdays at 5.30pm. So far we’ve received a lot of positive support and met some fascinating people, including of course your very own Ian Rawes whose London Sound Survey added a welcome sonic dimension to the first series. We’re always keen to hear ideas and suggestions too so do let us know if you think of someone’s work we should know about.
The balloonist in the desert is dreaming
The Binaural Diaries of Ollie Hall
The Ragged Society of Antiquarian Ramblers
Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology
World Forum for Acoustic Ecology