Aino Tytti 'Millennium Mills' at Spiller's Mill
Friday 29th July 2016
Venue: ELAN
Category: Gigs & Live Music
Price Info: 6.60 adv / 7 door
Time Info: 7:30-9pm
With the restoration and redevelopment of Cambridge's Spillers Mill finally nearing completion at Cambridge Station, Cambridge sound art event series Hidden Channels presents a very rare live appearance by Aino Tytti. Aino Tytti is a musician and sound artist who recently spent a year gathering sounds from Spiller's huge and long-derelict Millennium Mills -- another Victorian flourmill in London docklands. While surrounding sites were redeveloped for many years the mills were left to decay, in use mainly as film and TV locations, including notably, for Derek Jarman's 'The Last of England' (1988). The resulting recordings were used to create 'Millennium Mills', an album and 17-page photographic essay, released by Touch in late 2015.
Granted full access to the mills and their surrounding area, Aino Tytti's obsessive approach to exploring the sonic character of the buildings and their surroundings. Techniques included ambient field recording techniques, placing hydrophones in the nearby dock, as well as recording PA systems and vocal performances staged in the mill's vast internal spaces. These recordings were then processed to reveal further accents and textures, and harmonics carefully respecting the source locations and materials. Combining this approach with musical influences from the likes of Popul Vuh, Arvo Pärt, Throbbing Gristle and William Basinski, the resulting work is part decaying, part arresting, part hypnotic, drawing particular inspiration from the points where hope meets melancholia.
Cambridge's Spiller's Mill is a rare (and only partial) survivor of the city's industrial past, with much of what had survived around the station of railyards and loco workshops until recently being completely erased by redevelopment in the last few years. The venue, ELAN studio, stands in one of the new buildings now surrounding the mill. ELAN (Experimental Local Area Network) is a project of artist-led group Aid & Abet. Bad Timing has worked with and alongside Aid & Abet over the past five years to host events and commissions capturing the sonic character of this fast-disappearing aspect of Cambridge history, including a commission for Lee Patterson to commemorate the closing of Aid & Abet's former artspace in the now-demolished Great Eastern Railway loco workshop.
Read more about the project:
http://thequietus.com/articles/19044-aino-tytti-interview
'Millennium Mills' download release on Touch:
https://touchshop.org/product_info.php?products_id=694
Hidden Channels sound and listening project (created by Bad Timing):
http://hiddenchannels.tumblr.com/
Error Reporting: Contact bad-timing, the publisher of this event.