Sounds unusual
Ex-Flying Lizard is boxing clever with his experimental music
WACKY composer David Toop doesn’t just think outside the box – he uses one when he’s making music. Cardboard boxes will be among the array of unusual items the acclaimed sound artist will be using at Bangor Music Festival, along with components from hearing aids and old fashioned cassette players.
Toop will also be using more conventional instruments like a guitar and flute when he stars at the event, which takes place on February 17 and 18.
The theme for this year’s festival, now established as a highlight on Wales’s cultural calendar, is Improvisation.
According to co-founder and organiser Guto Pryderi Puw, there will be a host of workshops and educational projects as well as the usual concerts.
He said: “The 2023 festival promises to be an event that offers a wide variety of music with something for everyone. A prime example of this is David Toop’s concert and talk during the festival’s Improvisation Day on Friday, February 17.”
Since the early 1970s David Toop has been a significant presence on the British experimental and improvised music scene, playing guitar and flute in the duo, Rain In the Face.
During that time he has collaborated with many other musicians including Brian Eno and been a member of the experimental new wave band, the Flying Lizards, who had a top 10 hit in the summer of 1979 with their version of Money (That’s What I Want), which had also been recorded by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
In recent years David Toop was professor of audio culture and improvisation at the London College of Communication until his retirement in 2021.
Describing the forthcoming performance, he said: “I’m an artist who works with sounds in some way or another and as a category it’s very broad so it’s impossible to give a proper description but it’s someone whose primary material is sound or listening. I always include the listening bit because I think that’s really important. You’re not just thinking about the sound but about the way we listen.
“These days I’m working with a really odd collection of materials so it’s impossible to say what I might play on the day. It depends how I feel really.”
Information about the festival can be found online at www.bangormusicfestival.org.uk Tickets are available from Pontio Box Office at www. pontio.co.uk or ring 01248 382828.