'A Thousand Fires' by Saeed Taji Farouky

I’ve recently finished the sound design for a new film, A Thousand Fires — by director Saeed Taji Farouky. It is a visceral, temporal portrayal of life in the Magway region of Myanmar — I have loved working with Saeed on it.

Here is a short excerpt from an article written by The Film Stage about the film following a viewing at the 2021 Locarno Film Festival, where it won the Marco Zucchi Award.

What makes A Thousand Fires stand out is Farouky’s ability to yoke the drama to the substance around which their lives gravitate. Underpinning the film is a Herzogian interest in the way oil drilling works, warts and all; time and again we watch Thein Shwe operate his makeshift derrick, scavenging for crude sixteen meters underground. In Farouky’s hands, the act itself acquires a certain nobility, a sacred beauty that’s amplified by Fatima Dunn’s score and Maxence Ciekawy and James Bulley’s sound design. Watching Thein Shwe pound the ground with his pole, I wondered if what I was looking at wasn’t a man digging, but plugging cables to a beating heart chugging somewhere below the Earth’s surface. Forsaking any vague, abstract statements on “the industry,” A Thousand Fires stays small, focusing instead on the connection between oil and the human body—the tactile, painful efforts to dig up the remnants of millions of years of sedimented histories. It’s a beguiling, epic journey.


More information will be available on the public release of A Thousand Fires soon.

'George III: The Man Behind the Myth' exhibition soundtrack at Kew Palace

Kew Palace, London

Kew Palace, London

A recent composition project that has just seen the light of day is a four room spatial soundtrack for the top floors of the Kew Palace exhibition George III: The Mind Behind the Myth. The composition is based on George Frideric Handel’s Keyboard suite in D minor ( HWV 437), which was a favourite of King George III. The work for Kew Palace unfolds across four rooms, with the audience progressing through the composition as they move through the exhibition.

The exhibition overall is a reconsideration of the story of George III’s mental illness from a contemporary standpoint, and asks how much attitudes to mental health have changed over the last two centuries – or more importantly, how much they haven’t.

Tickets are available online here and the exhibition runs from 10th June to 26 September 2021.
Thank you to Simon Hendry and Gregory White for their work on the sound system design and installation of this piece. Further thanks to KEF UK.

'George III: The Man Behind the Myth' exhibition at Kew Palace

'George III: The Man Behind the Myth' exhibition at Kew Palace

A soundscape to celebrate the launch of BFTK#4

I’ve put together a soundscape to celebrate the launch of Bricks from the Kiln #4. It’s now streaming on Wax Radio.

Bricks from the Kiln #4 Launch
Featuring: A soundscape / broadcast / playlist, compiled by BFTK and mixed by artist and composer James Bulley, to (belatedly) accompany / announce the release of Bricks from the Kiln #4: On Translation, Transmission & Transposition.

Fifty-four minutes of sounds, voices, readings and compositions from Hildegard of Bingen, Ursula K. Le Guin and Caroline Bergvall; through green hues of Hiroshi Yoshimura, Pink Floyd BBC sessions and Vangelis; to James Joyce and Hazel Felman in oral / aural translation, a 1960s Joy dishwashing liquid television commercial and Slapp Happy with Faust as a backing band.

BFTK#4 is edited by Natalie Ferris, Bryony Quinn, Matthew Stuart and Andrew Walsh-Lister, and published as event / publication, after programming in London, Chicago & Edinburgh. Printed in a green of ‘perpetual unrest’, it features contributions from: Helen Marten, Sophie Collins, Don Mee Choi, Kate Briggs, Phil Baber, Joyce Dixon, Florian Roithmayr, Jen Calleja, J.R. Carpenter, Edgar Wind, Rebecca Collins, Naomi Pearce, Karen Di Franco, James Bulley, Saki Mafundikwa, Natalie Ferris, Matthew Stuart, James Langdon, Bryony Quinn, Peter Nencini, Sophie Seita, Caroline Bergvall, Seb McLauchlan and Maria Fusco.

BFTK#4 is available to order at: www.b-f-t-k.info

bk4front.jpeg

Research: practice research in England – reports publication

Today marks the publication date, after nearly three years of work, of two reports, written as part of a collaborative post-doctorate with Dr Özden Şahin, on the subject of practice research in England, commissioned by the Practice Research Advisory Group UK (PRAG-UK) and funded by Research England. Published by PRAG-UK and the British Library.

The two Bulley-Şahin reports are published by the Practice Research Advisory Group UK (PRAG-UK) and are available Open Access here.

.pdf download here

Writing in the foreword to What is practice research?, Steven Hill, Director of Research at Research England says: “Practice research is a new way of thinking about and engaging in research and so needs new structures and systems to maximise its impact within and outside the academy.”

He adds: “These reports are a seminal contribution that draws together current thinking relating to practice research in all its diversity. They provide consistent language to talk about practice research across multiple disciplinary contexts and clarify the challenges that need to be addressed to ensure the full potential of practice research. Notably, the reports span and provide linkages between the theoretical and practical.” 

“This range is essential. If there are to be better tools for hosting and communicating practice research, they need to align with the ways practice researchers conceptualise their work.”

Practice research has a history stretching as far back as the earliest human experiments: practice is a method of discovering and sharing new findings about the world that surrounds us. In recent years, scholarly communication has undergone a series of changes that have led to a broadening of the landscape of academic research, due in part to the emergence of practice research in the academy. The formulation and dissemination of practice research affords an important opportunity for researchers in England across all research disciplines, offering a research field that conveys ways of knowing from practice, operating within, across and beyond disciplines in manners that go far beyond traditional research types. In practice research, forms of sensory, tacit and embodied knowledge can be conveyed, and its sharing presents an opportunity for the modernising and revitalising of research communication, uncovering novel dissemination routes in the digital era.

(from an article about the reports found here)

Bulley, James and Şahin, Özden. 2021. Practice Research - Report 1: What is practice research? and Report 2: How can practice research be shared?. Practice Research Advisory Group UK (PRAG-UK), London. https://doi.org/10.23636/1347

'Ayouni' Guardian Review

A 4 star review for ‘Ayouni’ in the Guardian Newspaper today, written by Peter Bradshaw.
It is good to see the film getting the recognition it deserves:

Director Yasmin Fedda, who is from a Palestinian and Syrian background and lectures in film at Queen Mary University of London, has created a powerful and urgent documentary tribute to those who have been “forcibly disappeared” by the Assad regime in Syria, estimated to be around 150,000 since 2011.

To watch Ayouni please see the official website to find the platforms it is available on: https://ayounifilm.com/watch

'Island' now available online

Island is now available to download via iTunes, Vimeo, Google Play and Amazon Prime Video

Watch on demand via Vimeo

Across the water on the island, four individuals experience the year in which their lives will end. Illness progresses, relationships gently shift, and we are witness to rarely seen and intensely private moments. One person shares their acceptance of death, whilst another is surrounded by a community in shock. We observe bedside care and the rhythm of breathing. In a pathology lab, microscopic biopsies in close-up show the interior of bodies, our biology. Filmed over 12 months on the Isle of Wight, Island is a life-affirming reflection on the phenomena of dying, portraying the transition away from personhood and observing the last days and hours of life and the moment of death. Like the ferries cyclically arriving and departing in this an enigmatic landscape, the film appears buoyant, afloat. Death is shown to be natural and everyday but also unspeakable and strange.

★★★★★  – The Sunday Times
★★★★  – The Guardian

“Poetic; disarmingly intimate” – Sight & Sound

“Probes uncharted territory with great intelligence and sensitivity” – Little White Lies 

'Ayouni' online launch

Ayouni is now available to watch worldwide at www.ayounifilm.com

It was a great privilege to compose the score and sound design for the film, directed by Yasmin Fedda..

At a time when the dictatorship in Syria is still in power, and its position is being normalised, it feels crucial to respond to the crimes that have been committed in its name, and in the wake of the destruction it has created across the country. Since 2011, government forces, and other armed groups, have forcibly disappeared at least 100,000 people – making them absent, silenced, invisible.

Families and friends of the disappeared still face the difficult tasks of finding answers. In this context, it is essential to build and preserve a portfolio of war crimes that can be used for accountability and for eventual justice. Ayouni is a small contribution to this effort, bringing intimate stories and realities in focus.

'Ness' by Adam Scovell

Recently released is Ness, directed by Adam Scovell with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood. I loved doing the sound design and soundscore for Adam’s exploration of Orford Ness. The film features the haunted radiophonics of Drew Mulholland.

You can read Adam Scovell’s thoughts on the film here.

You can read more about Ness on Elsewhere Journal here.


Orford Ness Lighthouse in 1942

Contact: A Journal for Contemporary Music (1971-1990)

Very pleased to announce that the fully digitised archive of Contact: A Journal for Contemporary Music (1971-1990) is now openly available online, with all articles and issues free to access in perpetuity: https://www.contactjournal.gold.ac.uk/ – a huge thanks to everyone involved in this three year long project, in particular to Dr Fiorenzo Palermo and Gregory White who did so much work on making this all possible.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Photographic documentation from a recent trip to Yorkshire Sculpture Park.


Horniman x Goldsmiths, 21 March 2019

I am co-curating two installation pieces at the forthcoming Late at the Horniman Museum as part of my work as Research Associate in the Department of Music at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Firstly, there will be a spatial Longplayer Listening Post installed for the evening. Longplayer is a 1000-year long composition by Jem Finer, for which I am a trustee. More information here.

‘Longplayer Detail’ Copyright: Debbie Bragg

Secondly, I’ve been working with the artist Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom and Black Tower Projects on a new iteration of Boakye-Yiadom’s ‘Adaptive Rhythm’ spatial audiovisual work. We’ve been working with the Horniman Musical Instrument collection and the phenomenal Taiko drummer Aki Fujimoto in realising the project.

‘Before: Adaptive Rhythm, Black Tower Projects, 2018’ Copyright: Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom

More information on the whole event here, including a link to get hold of tickets.

The Horniman x Goldsmiths late event will take place from 6.30–11pm on 21 March 2019.

Talk: Daphne Oram and Optical Sound, Camden Arts Centre, 3 February 2018

Writer Frances Morgan talks with contemporary composers Tom Richards, James Bulley and Sarah Angliss about optical sound and its framing in history, considering the work of electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram (1925–2003).

Writer Frances Morgan talks with contemporary composers Tom Richards, James Bulley and Sarah Angliss about optical sound and its framing in history, considering the work of electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram (1925–2003).

Black Rock

Recent photographic documentation from a field recording trip to Snowdonia in Wales with David Shearing.
 

National Slate Museum, Llanberis, Wales.
 

Dinorwic Quarry, Llanberis, Wales.
 

Llyn Padarn, Snowdonia, Wales