大象传媒

Alongside 大象传媒 Research and Development we're working with a bunch of broadcasters, bands and performers to test out a new way of broacasting live content over the internet.

The technology behind this project is called SOMA, which stands for Single Operator Mixing Application. This may sound complicated, and if we’re honest, the technology is. But in essence SOMA is a vision mixer like you would see in a TV shows gallery, but within an internet browser.

You can get a whole more detail about it

The reason why we’re featuring SOMA on Taster is to continue testing the performance of the technology with live broadcasts. 大象传媒 Research and Development have been using SOMA at the Edinburgh Festival for the past few years, but the trails have not been publically available. This year we all felt it was ready to broadcast live from the festival to people at home.

We’re doing 7 broadcasts in total that will all be available 大象传媒 Taster:

Janice Forsyth: Tuesday 8th August, 10am
Janice Forsyth: Wednesday 9th August, 10am
Late Junction: Wednesday 9th August, 11am
Poetry Slam: Sunday 13th August, 9:30pm
Jazz Now: Monday 14th August, 11pm
Global Beats: Wednesday 16th August, 8pm
Jazz Line Up: Saturday 19th August, 5pm

All about tonights performers:

Alasdair Roberts

Alasdair Roberts is a musician – primarily a beautiful guitarist and characterful singer –based in Glasgow. He has released music on Drag City since 1997, including the brilliant ‘Pangs’ from earlier this year. While his music is unmistakably immersed in traditional song, his interest, as he puts it, lies in making ‘new music’.

Reviewers have detected Christian elements in his music, and indeed Alasdair refers to himself as a ‘son of the manse’: his mother is a Presbyterian minister. His favourite singers are Sheila Stewart and her mother Belle, both members of the Traveller community; this fact surely belies his knowledge of Aberdeenshire folk song and customs. He’s admired by folk and avant-garde communities alike, and (half-) jokingly says that his work dried up after he was featured on the front cover of The Wire in 2010.

Aidan O’Rourke & James Robertson

Aidan O’Rourke is a Scottish fiddle player who has forged new paths for traditional music by using elements of jazz, classical, electronic and improvised styles in his music. Despite this boundary-pushing, he’s trad to the core: he says that while he used to listen to Dick Gaughan’s Capercaillie on the school bus, his classmates were getting to grips with Madonna and techno.

O’Rourke appears on Late Junction with Stirlingshire-born novelist James Robertson whose book 365 Stories (one story written for each day of the year) inspired Aidan O’Rourke to write a tune for every day on the calendar. Robertson is a co-founder and general editor of Scots language imprint ‘Itchy Coo’. which produces books in Scots for children and young people.

Raymond MacDonald & Friends

Raymond MacDonald is a saxophonist and composer who has released over 60 CDs and toured worldwide – he has also written music for film, TV, theatre, radio and gallery installations. From a jazz background, he explores the boundaries and ambiguities between what is conventionally seen as improvisation and composition. He is co-founder of the George Burt-Raymond MacDonald Quartet and a key player in the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO). He is also a Chartered Health Psychologist and an influential academic as Professor of Music Psychology and Improvisation at Edinburgh University. According to his bio on the university’s website, he teaches a module called ‘Inventing’ and co-wrote an essay in 2016 called ‘Billy Connolly, Daniel Barenboim, Willie Wonka, Jazz Bastards and the universality of improvisation’. Whatever that means.

He believes in the therapeutic aspects of music, and is currently involved in ‘Polyphony’, a music project providing access to musical activities for individuals with mental health problems. In an interview with ‘The Psychologist’ magazine, he claims that playing gamelan with children with learning disabilities was the ‘eureka’ moment that joined the dots between his work as musician and psychologist. He had the chance live out his adolescent dreams when he performed as a backing musician with Edwyn Collins in 2009.

Lauren Sarah Hayes

Lauren Sarah Hayes is a musician and sound artist from Scotland who builds and performs with hybrid analogue/digital instruments. Her music lies somewhere between free improv, experimental pop, techno, and noise. She also composes haptic music that can be experienced as vibration throughout the body and likes creating participatory site-responsive works in unusual locations. She is a member of the New 大象传媒 Radiophonic Workshop.

Her PhD explored the relationship between sound and touch within the context of live electronic performance - something she is particularly attuned given classical training in piano. The sensation of touch is also the site for her exploration of the performer’s physical
relationship with the digital realm. Her interest in performing in unique spaces was realized with a show at the Hamilton Mausoleum outside of Glasgow, which boasts a 15 second reverb tail. Her recent album ‘Manipulation’ is a collection of unedited improvisations performed on unpredictable analogue / digital / human systems; it’s not as lofty as it sounds – one track is called ‘WindUpMerchant’, while the cover features plastic toy animals mounting pieces of analogue gear.