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Brighton Festival Fills A Church With The Eternal Howl Of Lou Reed's Guitars

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https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/brighton-festival-fills-a-church-with-the-eternal-howl-of-lou-reed-s-guitars-764295

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Approaching St Mark's Chapel, a 19th century church in the east end of Brighton, a low rumbling note begins to filter its way in among the noise of the busy hospital traffic nearby. As you head up the church drive, the frequency grows rapidly louder, increasing to a roar, as if St Mark's is possessed by an electric spirit from a 1970s horror movie.

In a sense, it is. For the fiftieth Brighton Festival, St Mark's (nowadays an arts venue, The Spire) is hosting the UK premiere of Lou Reed Drones, a cacophonous live installation of the late New York musician's guitars and amps, humming to themselves at enormous volume in the afterlife.

This year's Brighton Festival is curated by Reed's widow, the musician, artist and filmmaker Laurie Anderson, and the Drones installation was the idea of Stewart Hurwood, Reed's guitar technician in his later years.

Once inside the church, its windows covered in thick black drapes expect for the sunlight streaming through the stained glass window over the altar, the noise is overpowering. St Mark's has been emptied of pews and in the centre, on a low stage, six of Reed's guitars lean against a semi-circle of his amps, feeding back and droning. A glitterball sparkles overhead. In the centre, Hurwood, in shades and Lou Reed tour t-shirt, makes slow, careful adjustments to the din, increasing one amp's output, decreasing another, creating gradual changes to the immersive guitar hum.

Read More: Lou Reed - A Life In Pictures

Drones and feedback have featured in Reed's work since The Velvet Underground in the '60s, influenced by his early VU colleagues John Cale and Angus MacLise's participation in La Monte Young's Theatre Of Eternal Music Ensemble. While Reed's notorious 1975 album 'Metal Machine Music' consisted of an hour of dense, complex feedback, the sound of Lou Reed Drones is more meditative and hypnotic. Hurwood is presenting the performance for five hours solid, over five days. As Anderson states in the programme notes, it's, "The closest you can now get to Lou's work".

This afternoon when we stop by, there are around two dozen people inside, some standing, some sitting, taking photographs or taking notes, some laid flat on the floor, eyes closed, absorbed in the roar. Even with the essential use of the complimentary ear plugs handed out on the door, within five minutes my hearing is starting to buckle and crackle.

In recent years I've sat through consecutive nights of My Bloody Valentine at their most aggressive and seen a Sunn O))) show so loud my clothes flapped as the volume threatened to strip them from my body. Foolishly I didn't use hearing protection on those occasions, and each time it took several days for my ears to return to normal. Having dodged tinnitus on so many occasions, I'm taking no chances, even with ear plugs.

After 15 powerful minutes, I stumble outside where other attendees are now sprawled on the grass in the sunshine. At least the hospital's next door.

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Brighton Festival Fills A Church With The Eternal Howl Of Lou Reed's Guitars

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Approaching St Mark's Chapel, a 19th century church in the east end of Brighton, a low rumbling note begins to filter its way in among the noise of the busy hospital traffic nearby. As you head up the church drive, the frequency grows rapidly louder, increasing to a roar, as if St Mark's is possessed [...]

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Why Fuzz Face Silicon vs Germanium transistors ?

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Why Fuzz Face Silicon vs Germanium transistors ?

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I tried both types of fuzz faces  and and found the silicone version to be more responsive for my mission in this sound art project.

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"Hendrix himself: his dazzling technique combines with a use of feedback and fuzz to almost casually create music of stunning strength and inventiveness. His vocals are warm, wistful or lascivious on cue, and never less than engaging; what passes for banter between numbers is winningly self-effacing. This is peak Hendrixosity, a live performance that has probably never been bettered or was never recorded if it was."

(Lloyd Bradley, 2020)

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/lloydbradley

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One of the major British writers on black music from funk to reggae, Bradley began contributing to NME in the 1980s and then wrote for Q, MOJO and many other publications. His book Bass Culture, a history of reggae, was published in 2000

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"The Wall of Sound, or simply the Wall, would occupy only a blip on the long horizon of the Dead's history, though it remains a touchstone for sound systems of all shapes and sizes, from boutique disco PAs to the massive PAs deployed at any of today's mega festivals and at 61,500-seat stadiums like Soldier Field in Chicago, where the four surviving members of the Dead, including Weir and Lesh, wrapped up a string of farewell shows this weekend to commemorate the band's 50th anniversary."

(Brian Anderson, 2015)

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The untold story of the Grateful Dead's short-lived mega PA, arguably the largest, most technologically innovative sound system ever built.

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Classic Single Coil Pick Ups as used in Fender Stratocaster Guitars

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WALL OF SOUND  :  WALL OF SILENCE                     The Experiment 

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WALL OF SOUND  :  WALL OF SILENCE                     The Experiment 

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https://youtu.be/nv9Qags1slw?si=6MOF_rZLKYmA5mGv

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Marshall 4x12” Cabinet (each cab contains 4x12” speakers 

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Marshall 4x12” Cabinet (each cab contains 4x12” speakers 

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https://youtu.be/4yxa3_ZSQn0?si=KLCno3P_LZPzZtiW

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https://youtu.be/-OprcP_SWv8?si=W-2q867etldWANbx

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Your truly in performance = Alberto De Luca

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Your truly in performance = Alberto De Luca

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https://youtu.be/LS_NMSnMOus?si=dia-b89sEKDy6tLH

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Jimi Hendrix in a classic demonstration of using the guitar with it’s pick ups facing the speakers along with the use of high volume = Feedback 

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Jimi Hendrix creating feedback at at the Monterey Pop festival 1967

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Jimi Hendrix creating feedback at at the Monterey Pop festival 1967

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The famous iconic guitar that belonged to Rory Gallagher 

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https://youtu.be/29W0AE_hfVw?si=nZyvEXApfdDy940s

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Wall Of Marshall Stacks by Jim Marshall
Marshall 100watt Amplifier heads using 4xEL34 Valves + Speakers in cabinets. Each Stack is comprised of 1 Amplifier 2 Marshall Cabinets containing 4x12” Marshall Celestian speakers. = 1 angled top cab + straight bottom cab (1960a)top
1960b = bottom

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https://youtu.be/JMyoT3kQMTg?si=MiK6wNgg7cbR0Nug

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https://youtu.be/8RW3_wiXpeU?si=SIvGhPcgE9WMYTKT

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https://youtu.be/x-pw_uqq4Ao?si=0ZA8wrarYh2d0MGu

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As used in guitar and JC800 Marshall 100 watt valve amp
https://youtu.be/G0NtdPhGZ7k?feature=shared

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This is a modern reproduction of The Jimi Hendrix Monterey Stratocaster 

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Fender Stratocaster 1960s  version as used by Jimi Hendrix 

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Fender Stratocaster 1960s  version as used by Jimi Hendrix 

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https://youtu.be/eq9H_nZK-Q4?si=K4mqWhATjyCgfH1h

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Wall Of Silence = wall of silent Projections

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Tape  echo unit by Charlie Watkins (WEM)

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https://youtu.be/C7inyUhMJPE?si=Jh_F7kaoDCo5stJz

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WALL OF SOUND : WALL OF SILENCE  :  THE EXPERIMENT

For this experiment I will be using various wall of sound techniques,

The original wall of sound used multiple layers of sound often repeating the same patterns of parts building up the sound along with reverberations and echo.
On researching the most influential well known pioneers of this technology,

I have decided to focus mainly on
The Wall Of Sound 1960s techniques used by the Grateful Dead, Phil Spector, Jimi Hendrix and going back in time to Mahler for my inspiration as a starting point in this experiment.
Also Laurie Anderson musician, artist, and filmmaker curated an installation that was the idea of Stewart Hurwood Lou Reeds guitar technician called Drones back in 2019 which was all about using Reeds guitars leaning up against his sound equipment to create feedback drones.
This is another area of Sound art that interested me. I wish to explore this technique further in my installation.
I  will be using long reverberation times and feedback control along with a dallas arbiter fuzz face guitar effect and a echoplex or wem copycat echo unit to create my own composition in Sound Art.

My aim is to harness the vibe of the psychedelic pop and art culture using powerful layered saturated sound to create a mass body wall of sound, so that it overlaps and merges into one Rock N Roll sound art structure to stir and evoke a reaction and emotional experience.
To my mind it will be almost like the atmosphere created in religious building structures such as cathedrals, and churches to create and give a spiritual experience or at least the feeling of going to see and hear a festival,concert, or last night of the proms.

Wall of silence:

I will be using various forms of film footage to write and create short narratives with different moods and atmospheres.

I will also be documenting every day life using a view from the same perspective everyday for a week using clouds, time-lapse photography and reportage imagery in a sonic fiction experimental fashion.

There will be cinematic themes showing on wall projections from which i can explore further my sonic live practice In performances during the installation and from which I will learn and develop my own future practice. I will be showing dramatic almost theatrical graphics storytelling along with a diary of an industrial urban landscape in a almost forensic investigative fashion from room 1 state 48
(The room with a view) 2 The sick caller, 3 sunrise, sunsets as well as use of white noise and statics to create an emotional and spiritual  experience for the viewer or listener.
There will be choice to experience all of this with or without headphones during the none live performances.

Live Performance :
I will perform live at least once or twice a daily.

Research :

I selected 20 people from different professions and walks of life in and around the ual: LCC campus and shared them various examples of my footage from Wall Of Sound : Wall Of Silence  I also included people from the arts and theatrical world, and BBC documentary makers. I also played back my sound art themes to several of my tutors to get their feedback.

The results were that they had the same overall reaction = they nearly all imagined what each filmed scene would sound like even though there was no audio track at that time.

In other words with the power of the imagination they made up their own film soundtrack with sonic soundscapes.

Can you hear Silence ?

I can hear Silence !

Let’s examine this as an example:

When watching a silent film in a scene where the audience witnessed an atomic mushroom cloud explosion. I asked them all the same question.

what can you hear ?

Do you have a vivid imagination?

What can you hear in your head?

Can you imagine that sound ?

Do you hear voices in your head?

I want to take my adventure into the unknown and test you my audience.

I am the dark composer, the magician, musician, and I’m going to conduct my experiments on the listener to see their reaction to my Wall Of Sound : Wall Of Silence.

My Wall Of Silence will be displayed on a wall using projectors and screens depicting tranquility and drama of excitement, euphoria, and calmness.

On researching various formulations I came up with these as my choices below.

To create my wall of sound I will be using reverberation. a Dallas arbiter fuzz face, echoplex echo and 100 Watt rms Marshall stack using Marshall amplification with EL 34 valves and 2 Marshall 4x12” speaker
cabinets using celestion speakers.

I will create my own feedback by using high gain volume and low frequency decibels, and then add some subsonic sonar sounds, along with enhancing guitar effects and use my feedback control skills and other magical abilities to bring the level and sonic frequency to the point of the edge of feedback reaching a resonance to visually as well as sonically vibrate the low frequencies to gather momentum, as to harness the sound to a powerful crescendo.
So by using power through my body and soul with controlled use of my hands placed against the guitar I will control and vibrate the guitar strings against the magnetic microphonic conductors (which are called guitar pick ups) against the guitar strings then through the wooden body of my instrument a guitar cable then connects to a 1/4” jack socket that is then connected to various electronic effects equipment (mainly guitar effect pedals) these are then connected  through various cables to a Marshall 100 watt rms rated valve amplifier which uses El34 valves that glow and distort all the more by my turning up the volume from 0 to infinity 1 to 10 or the classic spinal tap no 11 connects to my heart soul and brain as an extension of myself and is greatly enhanced by the the way that I express my consciousness and communication through my ability to be passionate and use the guitar as an extension of my soul.

I will communicate my feelings through the sound that will be playing to the projection on the screens. I will use silent soundscapes.

it will be almost like going back to the silent movie era where an accompanying pianist or Wurlitzer organ would have played live along to the moving film imagery.

I will also do several live performances by playing along creating a live soundtrack to my moving film snd graphics to create a more modern experience by incorporating my skill and extensive knowledge through 35+ professional years of guitar sound practice and production.

Marshall : About the EL34

Did you know that valves Can survive a nuclear fallout? Physically I find EL34 valves to be beautiful objects.To me they are interacting art sculptures that glow and respond to the guitarist, just the way they look, the light, almost like having a classic brain light bulb moment.

I love the way that valves work in Marshall amps they have a warm depth of sonic sound that cracks up at high gain level.
I find as art forms the valves themselves are very powerful objects glowing like a beacon, almost like a lighthouse of sound in my brain that can create a light bulb brain like spark of spiritual consciousness.

By connecting all of these components together I will be giving the listener an experience that can actually evoke various emotions.
if a person can see someone shouting through a soundproof room window,
can they hear the sound in their head ?
Can you imagine what they’re doing?
or saying?  Questions I’m asking myself. What is in my imagination? What sound am I hearing in my head ?

Using sound in torture:

In military, solitary confinement the power of silence is used.
Noise:
Continuous noise is used as a weapon to create sleep deprivation.
Creating such noise in interrogation to get people to crack.
All of these things I’m looking into investigate in for my practice in The Wall Of Sound. Wall Of Silence.

I shall be using short throw Casio projectors and headphones so
that the audience can listen on headphones.

It’s playing right now ? I can hear it !

It’s s deafening silence ?

Can you hear it ?

Can you see it?

Can you touch it?

Can you?

Can you?

Use your imagination! !!!

Conclusion:

I find feedback control in Sonic Art a very powerful tool for communication and creativity for myself it’s always been a source of inspiration. I remember going back to my time at The Royal College Of Music and bringing along a Fuzz Box guitar effects pedal and Wah Wah then playing through my Fender Stratocaster and creating what I thought of as interesting and inspiring sounds “stop making that noise “ I replied “that is my new feedback composition” I am so glad that Sound Art exists.

Attn: WORK IN PROGRESS

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Remake Of Wall Of Sound : Wall Of Silence
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"Music has been studied for literally thousands of years – Pythagoras worked out a tuning system based on the perfect fifth, whose two notes have a frequency ratio of 3:2, and the octave, where the frequency ratio is 2:1. Over the last 70 years or so, there has been growing academic interest in the relationship between music and emotion."

(Zoe Nendick, 2022)

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/how-does-music-make-you-feel

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Music is a significant part of the everyday lives of many of us - whether you actively choose to listen to it while walking or cooking dinner, or you hear it on the radio, TV or in the background in shops or restaurants. Music can be very powerful. Many of us have put on our favourite song and immediately felt better, or heard a song that made us want to dance, relax, explore, or even cry. How do we choose what to listen to? Why do certain passages of music make us feel a certain way? Can music be inherently happy or sad? Does everyone feel the same when they listen to the same piece of music?

I began to ask these questions when I studied A-level music. I was taught how to harmonise chorales (short, hymn-like passages of music in four parts) in the style of Bach, following various 'rules' such as 'don't double the third' and 'the seventh must always be followed by the tonic'. An even more fundamental 'rule' I learned while growing up was that major music sounds happy and minor music sounds sad. This is probably familiar to you, and I took it for granted until I began to question it in school. I ended up following this curiosity and making music perception the subject of my Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) essay in sixth form, in which I asked to what extent our perception of music is determined by our culture (answer: probably quite a lot).

When I started my music degree, I applied this way of thinking about music - in terms of the emotions it evokes - to all of my work. In my first year, I chose to write an essay about how the music of two Radiohead songs reflected the emotional content of the lyrics, and in my second year I looked at the emotion and meaning behind Muse's album, Drones. (If you haven't listened to the title track of this album, I thoroughly recommend it - I wrote a 4000-word essay in my third year just about that song!)

It wasn't until my final year that I managed to really immerse myself in the field of music and emotion through my dissertation.

From theories to framework

I considered the role of individual differences in determining our emotional response to a piece of music. Most of us will have memories attached to some songs, perhaps of a specific event or period of time, or about a person or place, and these can have a strong impact on how a song makes us feel (Belfi et al., 2016). I also discussed the effects of the listening context on our emotional response - in particular, our mood at the time of listening (e.g. Hunter et al., 2011). I have since discovered that the enjoyment of music is associated with reward areas in the brain. For example, musical 'chills' - highly pleasurable responses to music - have been associated with activity in the ventral striatum, amygdala, and medial prefrontal cortex (Blood & Zatorre, 2001), and the nucleus accumbens (Salimpoor et al., 2011).

Music has been studied for literally thousands of years - Pythagoras worked out a tuning system based on the perfect fifth, whose two notes have a frequency ratio of 3:2, and the octave, where the frequency ratio is 2:1. Over the last 70 years or so, there has been growing academic interest in the relationship between music and emotion - one of the most significant earlier works being Leonard Meyer's book, Emotion and Meaning in Music (1956). Meyer proposed that we feel emotions in response to the harmonic progressions of the music, and to the extent each note or chord fulfils our expectations. A number of theories have since been proposed to explain how music induces emotions in the listener, and to develop Meyer's theory (e.g. Steinbeis et al., 2006). For my dissertation, I focused on the work of Patrik Juslin and his team, who have attempted to draw together a number of different theories in one framework.

Juslin is currently one of the leading researchers in the field of emotional responses to music, and I was particularly inspired by his work of the last 20 years or so. In his book Musical Emotions Explained (2019), he notes that, as well as generally focusing on Western classical music (Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2013), which does not necessarily represent the musical interests of most Western listeners, music psychologists have previously lacked a theoretical framework of psychological mechanisms underlying emotional responses to music, with which to guide empirical research. This has formed a key part of the research of Juslin and his colleagues, many of whom work at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. Music-induced emotions are thought to arise as a result of a complex interaction between the listener, the music, and the situation (Juslin, 2011), and a theoretical framework has now been developed by Juslin and colleagues to explain how music induces emotions, known as the BRECVEMA framework (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008; Juslin, 2013). BRECVEMA is an acronym for eight psychological mechanisms, in the order in which they are theorised to have developed throughout evolution (see box).

An evolving area

The study of music-induced emotions using the BRECVEMA framework is at a very early stage, and there is much scope for further research about these mechanisms and their interactions. There is also scope for research about emotional responses to music from the perspective of the personality and individual differences. For example, it is suggested that those higher in neuroticism are more prone to experiencing nostalgia when listening to music than those lower in this trait (Barrett et al., 2010).

Furthermore, a number of factors pertaining to the listening context may affect music-induced emotions. These include external factors relating to the social and physical environment, such as the social context (e.g. Egermann et al., 2011), and whether the music is self-selected (Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2013). There are also internal factors, such as the listener's emotional state (e.g. Hunter et al., 2011), their attentiveness to the music (e.g. Sagha et al., 2015), and listening motives (Juslin & Laukka, 2004).

As our means of music consumption continue to evolve, it will be interesting to see how research progresses. Think about how you primarily listen to music now compared to 10, 20, or 30 years ago - many of us now use streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music. These are full of playlists created for specific moods and genres or based on specific artists; the songs we listen to can be chosen for us. While this is not a new concept in the digital age - songs played on the radio have been chosen for us for decades - streaming services have made this process more personalised and automatic. Spotify even creates a playlist based on any one song. We can listen to a huge number of artists and songs, sometimes just once and never again. There is no longer the need to make a deliberate choice to purchase a specific CD by a specific artist. Listening to music in this way may impact how connected we feel to the artist. I have some playlists with hundreds of songs, and I would struggle to name the artists of some songs just by listening, even though I may have listened to them ten or so times. Of course, there are individual differences in how we choose what to listen to, but it is interesting to think about how this might have changed for you over time.

Applying music

The study of emotional responses to music is closely linked to the field of music therapy. The ability to predict the emotional effects of certain styles or features of music can inform the practice of music therapists. For example, major music seems to be more effective at relieving stress than minor music (Suda et al., 2008). Music's ability to evoke autobiographical memories has also been used in music therapy, for example to improve memory recall in people with Alzheimer's disease (Fraile et al., 2019). Music can also have pain-relieving effects for individuals recovering from surgery (see Finn & Fancourt, 2018, for a review).

There is also a less benign side to music and emotion research - its uses in consumer behaviour. There are the obvious uses of this research such as by Spotify to generate personalised playlists. But background music can affect consumption at the levels of cognition, emotion and behaviour (see Jain & Bagdare, 2011 for a review). Music is also used in advertising for several purposes, including to facilitate implicit learning of the advert (e.g. Alexomanolaki et al., 2007).

But music does not cause significant emotional responses in everyone. People who derive very little or no pleasure from listening to music are said to have music anhedonia. They can still perceive the fundamentals of the music, such as the key and harmonic progression (Satoh et al., 2011). Congenital music anhedonia is estimated to occur in approximately 5 per cent of the general population (Mas-Herrero et al., 2013), whereas acquired music anhedonia is limited to just a handful of case reports (e.g. Griffiths et al., 2004). At the other end of the scale is musicophilia, where people derive an unusually high amount of pleasure from listening to music (Mas-Herrero et al., 2013).

Now, over to you. Why not think about your music listening habits and choices as you go about your day. How do you choose what to listen to? What emotions or memories does it evoke? What is it about the music that makes you feel this way? Does a particular song always make you feel the same way? Perhaps you will notice something you hadn't before.
Zoe Nendick completed a MSc Psychology (conversion) at the University of Nottingham in 2021, and now works with London Youth Choirs.
References

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Zoe Nendick discusses the link between music and emotion.

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"His creative use of the tools at his disposal set a precedent for tone crafting and sonic texturing that countless numbers of players continue to pursue today. Hendrix was able to vary his tones in seemingly endless ways that fail to sound dated decades later. With equal parts sonic braggadocio and understated elegance, Hendrix used his hands, his instrument, his effects, and most importantly his ears to concoct a brilliant synergy of sound and song rarely, if ever, equaled.

...

With a Fuzz Face® Distortion, Hendrix could elicit an endless variety of tones by using different pickup combinations, manipulating his guitar’s volume control, and picking at different areas of a string. This unruly stompbox not only gave him a full-on primal howl with its burly, fat-sounding fuzz tones—it afforded him remarkably detailed clean textures as well."

(Dunlop, 2017)

https://lifestyle.jimdunlop.com/the-sonic-synergy-of-jimi-hendrix/

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With a Fuzz Face ® Distortion, Hendrix could elicit an endless variety of tones by using different pickup combinations, manipulating his guitar's volume control, and picking at different areas of a string. This unruly stompbox not only gave him a full-on primal howl with its burly, fat-sounding fuzz tones-it afforded him remarkably detailed clean textures as well.

The Are You Experienced album remains a shining example of Hendrix's ingenious use of the effect. The song "Manic Depression," for example, has Hendrix veer in and out of grainy yet-almost-twangy tones during the verses only to go to full-on meltdown during the solo with howling sustain and thick-as-a-brick midrange. By backing down his guitar's volume control, Hendrix used the exaggerated treble bite and hyper-sensitive attack the Fuzz Face Distortion offers to enhance clean tones and make them really speak. Another example of this sonic yin-yang is, among others, "Third Stone from the Sun," as it features some amazingly jangly chordal work as well as the insane sonic equivalent of WWIII, all achieved with help from the Fuzz Face Distortion.

Over the course of '69 & '70, Jimi Hendrix played several famous shows using a particular Fuzz Face Distortion, red with white knobs, that sounded completely different from the others in his arsenal. Whereas standard Fuzz Face Distortions tend to sound smooth and girthy-to varying degrees, depending on the transistor, of course-this mysterious pedal was snarling and aggressive in character.

The song "Machine Gun" from Band of Gypsys and the rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" from Woodstock demonstrate the uniquely biting tones of this particular Fuzz Face Distortion. In both examples, Hendrix combined the fuzz effect with his Uni-Vibe Chorus/Vibrato to imbue his notes with an ethereal chainsaw quality.

That mysterious prototype has been lost to history, but our engineers pored tirelessly over all of the different customized circuit designs Jimi used over the years. They narrowed it down to a version of the Octavio® circuit that didn't have the octave up signal. After making a few tweaks, they nailed the elusive sound heard on the aforementioned live recordings. For this series, we have dubbed it the Gypsy ™ Fuzz.

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The Sonic Synergy of Jimi Hendrix - Lifestyle - Dunlop

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In 1967, the Jimi Hendrix Experience made its first major American appearance at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival. Jimi Hendrix demonstrated his almost supernatural mastery of the electric guitar, punctuating the performance by setting his guitar on fire, swinging it wildly around and smashing it on the stage floor.

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https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/brighton-festival-fills-a-church-with-the-eternal-howl-of-lou-reed-s-guitars-764295

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Brighton Festival Fills A Church With The Eternal Howl Of Lou Reed's Guitars

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Approaching St Mark's Chapel, a 19th century church in the east end of Brighton, a low rumbling note begins to filter its way in among the noise of the busy hospital traffic nearby. As you head up the church drive, the frequency grows rapidly louder, increasing to a roar, as if St Mark's is possessed by an electric spirit from a 1970s horror movie.

In a sense, it is. For the fiftieth Brighton Festival, St Mark's (nowadays an arts venue, The Spire) is hosting the UK premiere of Lou Reed Drones, a cacophonous live installation of the late New York musician's guitars and amps, humming to themselves at enormous volume in the afterlife.

This year's Brighton Festival is curated by Reed's widow, the musician, artist and filmmaker Laurie Anderson, and the Drones installation was the idea of Stewart Hurwood, Reed's guitar technician in his later years.

Once inside the church, its windows covered in thick black drapes expect for the sunlight streaming through the stained glass window over the altar, the noise is overpowering. St Mark's has been emptied of pews and in the centre, on a low stage, six of Reed's guitars lean against a semi-circle of his amps, feeding back and droning. A glitterball sparkles overhead. In the centre, Hurwood, in shades and Lou Reed tour t-shirt, makes slow, careful adjustments to the din, increasing one amp's output, decreasing another, creating gradual changes to the immersive guitar hum.

Read More: Lou Reed - A Life In Pictures

Drones and feedback have featured in Reed's work since The Velvet Underground in the '60s, influenced by his early VU colleagues John Cale and Angus MacLise's participation in La Monte Young's Theatre Of Eternal Music Ensemble. While Reed's notorious 1975 album 'Metal Machine Music' consisted of an hour of dense, complex feedback, the sound of Lou Reed Drones is more meditative and hypnotic. Hurwood is presenting the performance for five hours solid, over five days. As Anderson states in the programme notes, it's, "The closest you can now get to Lou's work".

This afternoon when we stop by, there are around two dozen people inside, some standing, some sitting, taking photographs or taking notes, some laid flat on the floor, eyes closed, absorbed in the roar. Even with the essential use of the complimentary ear plugs handed out on the door, within five minutes my hearing is starting to buckle and crackle.

In recent years I've sat through consecutive nights of My Bloody Valentine at their most aggressive and seen a Sunn O))) show so loud my clothes flapped as the volume threatened to strip them from my body. Foolishly I didn't use hearing protection on those occasions, and each time it took several days for my ears to return to normal. Having dodged tinnitus on so many occasions, I'm taking no chances, even with ear plugs.

After 15 powerful minutes, I stumble outside where other attendees are now sprawled on the grass in the sunshine. At least the hospital's next door.

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Brighton Festival Fills A Church With The Eternal Howl Of Lou Reed's Guitars

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Approaching St Mark's Chapel, a 19th century church in the east end of Brighton, a low rumbling note begins to filter its way in among the noise of the busy hospital traffic nearby. As you head up the church drive, the frequency grows rapidly louder, increasing to a roar, as if St Mark's is possessed [...]

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Brighton Festival Fills A Church With The Eternal Howl Of Lou Reed's Guitars

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Approaching St Mark's Chapel, a 19th century church in the east end of Brighton, a low rumbling note begins to filter its way in among the noise of the busy hospital traffic nearby. As you head up the church drive, the frequency grows rapidly louder, increasing to a roar, as if St Mark's is possessed by an electric spirit from a 1970s horror movie.

In a sense, it is. For the fiftieth Brighton Festival, St Mark's (nowadays an arts venue, The Spire) is hosting the UK premiere of Lou Reed Drones, a cacophonous live installation of the late New York musician's guitars and amps, humming to themselves at enormous volume in the afterlife.

This year's Brighton Festival is curated by Reed's widow, the musician, artist and filmmaker Laurie Anderson, and the Drones installation was the idea of Stewart Hurwood, Reed's guitar technician in his later years.

Once inside the church, its windows covered in thick black drapes expect for the sunlight streaming through the stained glass window over the altar, the noise is overpowering. St Mark's has been emptied of pews and in the centre, on a low stage, six of Reed's guitars lean against a semi-circle of his amps, feeding back and droning. A glitterball sparkles overhead. In the centre, Hurwood, in shades and Lou Reed tour t-shirt, makes slow, careful adjustments to the din, increasing one amp's output, decreasing another, creating gradual changes to the immersive guitar hum.

Read More: Lou Reed - A Life In Pictures

Drones and feedback have featured in Reed's work since The Velvet Underground in the '60s, influenced by his early VU colleagues John Cale and Angus MacLise's participation in La Monte Young's Theatre Of Eternal Music Ensemble. While Reed's notorious 1975 album 'Metal Machine Music' consisted of an hour of dense, complex feedback, the sound of Lou Reed Drones is more meditative and hypnotic. Hurwood is presenting the performance for five hours solid, over five days. As Anderson states in the programme notes, it's, "The closest you can now get to Lou's work".

This afternoon when we stop by, there are around two dozen people inside, some standing, some sitting, taking photographs or taking notes, some laid flat on the floor, eyes closed, absorbed in the roar. Even with the essential use of the complimentary ear plugs handed out on the door, within five minutes my hearing is starting to buckle and crackle.

In recent years I've sat through consecutive nights of My Bloody Valentine at their most aggressive and seen a Sunn O))) show so loud my clothes flapped as the volume threatened to strip them from my body. Foolishly I didn't use hearing protection on those occasions, and each time it took several days for my ears to return to normal. Having dodged tinnitus on so many occasions, I'm taking no chances, even with ear plugs.

After 15 powerful minutes, I stumble outside where other attendees are now sprawled on the grass in the sunshine. At least the hospital's next door.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Brighton Festival Fills A Church With The Eternal Howl Of Lou Reed's Guitars

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Approaching St Mark's Chapel, a 19th century church in the east end of Brighton, a low rumbling note begins to filter its way in among the noise of the busy hospital traffic nearby. As you head up the church drive, the frequency grows rapidly louder, increasing to a roar, as if St Mark's is possessed [...]

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How did we get from the era of silent films to the stereo surround sound of today's cinemas? Ewan Grainger takes a whistle-stop tour of the history of sound in film.

Many of us are familiar with the sight of pianists and even entire orchestras at film screenings of the 'silent era' (1894-1927) that look so alien when compared to cinema technology today. But how did sound in cinema evolve from the sometimes-peculiar era of silent films to what we know today? In this post we will take you on a whistle-stop tour of the story of sound in film.

Muybridge and Edison

When attending a lecture utilising Eadweard Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope, Thomas Edison began pondering the idea of sound and film. You may be familiar with this Zoopraxiscope, a method of projection which allowed Muybridge and others to study complex and difficult to observe actions, like a horse running, fencing, dancing, or boxing.

Muybridge's experiments in moving images inspired Edison to consider marrying moving images with his existing phonogram sound technology. This technology, with its limited amplification of sound, provided more immersive audio experiences for a single viewer. But this was far from synchronisation as we know today.

By 1894, Edison-inspired by Muybridge's early successes-had placed much faith in his Kinetoscope. This was a personal viewing device that used a series of pulleys and gears to pull longer strips of film before a viewing port. And, while you won't likely see this on MTV, below is the only surviving footage of possibly the first-ever music video utilising a phonograph mechanism, allowing for the playback of sound in time with moving images.

The Vitaphone

Later patents, such as the Vitaphone used by Warner Bros., would enter into people's lives in the 1920s. The Vitaphone system was produced alongside Bell Telephone Company and Western Electric to gain a monopoly over film and sound technology in America. Expensive equipping costs for both industry and cinemas saw an initial rejection of this next great leap. But when sound burst into cinemas with the likes of Don Juan in 1926 and The Jazz Singer in 1927, it became clear the technology was here to stay.

However, even these bombshell productions were at times hemmed in by still having sound recorded onto a shellac disc that could only store five minutes at a time. This stifled the creative freedom of film-makers significantly; even technologically groundbreaking films like The Jazz Singer still contained many silent speech intertitles.

Sound on film

Eventually, derivatives from outside Edison's grasp and inspired by the shortcomings of the Vitaphone system emerged. This came in many forms such as the Fox-owned Movietone (1927) and RCA's Photophone (1927).

After much corporate espionage, personal competition, and sabotage to rival the greatest spy novels, the two systems were agreed upon as a standard for all the major American film studios. Europe would standardise on Tobis-Klangfilm and Tri-Ergon systems. This finally saw the leap to sound synchronisation on the physical film reels itself, as seen in the rare example of preserved Photophone film strips shown above.

This technology allowed for fluidity in film once again. From here, more complex and epic films emerged, such as King Kong in 1933.

The 1940s-50s: The television threat and multi-track sound

Early combinations of sound and projection technology existed in the 1930s, and by the 1940s, the issue of capturing sound synchronised footage onto film had been widely solved. By the late 1940s, this technology was widespread to the point that production could exist around the country. An example is the Gaumont-Kalee GK21 35mm cinema projector pictured to the right: manufactured by the Leeds-based company A Kershaw and Sons Ltd, it is now on display in Pictureville Bar at the National Science and Media Museum.

In the same period, however, the threat of TV emerged, and audiences needed to be stunned into going to the cinema. In terms of sound technology, this meant surround sound would again throw standardisation into disarray as the widening of screen aspect ratios called for more epic audio. One of the most popular processes, Cinerama, utilised a complex system of seven audio channels.

As screen sizes increased, so too did the need for deeper soundscapes. However, with this came a strange throwback to the earliest cinemas, in which a small army of personnel was needed in the theatre itself. Projectionists, sound controllers and engineers of all calibres were needed to bring widescreen and surround sound to life.

So, audiences were treated to epics like The Wizard of Oz as early as 1939 and the first Star Wars film as late as 1977. However, in this period of expanding auditory spectacle, those behind the scenes scrambled for standardisation amid a spiralling technological web. This is where Ray Dolby enters the story.

Dolby and the future

In 1938, the 'Academy curve' offered a crude solution to the question of how to standardise sound technology in cinemas. This is a method of chopping off the highs and lows of soundwave frequencies so that almost any cinema could project sound alongside film consistently. For many countries still struggling to bring film to rural areas, this technology was a miracle, allowing audio immersion only dreamt of before. But Ray Dolby knew better was possible.

In 1966, the noise reduction system Dolby A became standard in the recording industry. It eliminated the hissing sound that came with earlier standardisation efforts. This was achieved by having four channels all pressed onto the film strips themselves, which not only allowed more flexibility in the editing suite but also meant fewer people were needed on site to operate the technology.

From here, Dolby improved on the system to bring about Dolby Stereo, a revolutionary surround system of compression that allowed cinema designers to consider the acoustics of any given theatre. When Star Wars premiered in 1977, audiences in local village cinemas could enjoy a comparable audio experience to that of their big city counterparts.

But what next? Will the pandemic push personal viewing and virtual reality sales, further forcing audio engineers to create more intricate technology to meet demands? Will this spell out a decline in shared viewing, making audio on a grand scale a smaller part of our lives?

Nothing is certain, but what can be said is that artificial intelligence and remastered audio seem to have combined with a keen interest in nostalgia to bring about new editing possibilities in audio from home. So perhaps here lies the next great leap in sound in film.

Further reading and sources

A very short history of cinema, National Science and Media Museum

Science Museum Group Collection

Scott Eyman, The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930, 2009

Michael Hammond, 'The Battle of the Somme (1916): An Industrial Process Film that 'Wounds the Heart'', British Silent Cinema and the Great War, 2011, p19-38

David Sonnenschein, Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema, 2001

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How did we get from the era of silent films to the stereo surround sound of today's cinemas? Ewan Grainger takes a whistle-stop tour of the history of sound in film.

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Oxford Article:Silent Film