This summer we had the great pleasure of meeting Sxip Shirey. Sxip is a performer, composer and sonic experimenter of some renown. He recently produced an album titled Sonic New York, and is currently gigging in the UK -you can find more on him and his workhere

In this little clip you get an ad-hoc taste of Sxip and Slade jamming by the kitchen sink. Incidentally its also a good illustration of how the suits work - with appreciative noises by Ophelia Bitz.

Some months back, carried by a wave of entusiasm Sonic Sideshow made a suddden, and rather unexpected foray into the world of magazine journalism.

An inspired conversation with photograher Gavin Mecaniques launched our exploration of the phenomenon of the musician-maker, inspired artists who create their own unusual instruments. The results featured in the August issue of Bizarre Magazine alongside photos by Gavin

circuit-bender extrordinaire, penguin wrangler and creater of the "Furbygurdy" David Cranmer,

theremin player, robotics genius and savant of the uncanny Sarah Angliss in collaboration with Chap-Hop sensation Professor Elemental,

In another turn up for the books Sonic Sideshow ventured into arts and technology education this spring, facilitated by the Creative Partnership department at the Royal Opera House.

In collaboration with the arts department at Shenfield High School in Essex  we lead 16 'gifted and talented' 11year olds through the creation of their very own sonic suits. Starting with an introduction to Sci-fi design, and some ways people in the past have imagined our futures might look, the students went on to discuss their own visions of the future, and designed costumes based on those. They then used their suits to create short performance dialogues between their futuristic alter-egos using triggered samples as well as spoken word. Their pieces were performed both at their school concert and as part of a Creative Partnership conference at Royal Opera House  in Thurrock

The futures proposed by the kids ranged from the fabulous, dystopian or hopeful to the downright tech-fetishistic. Spurring conversations on the necessity or otherwise of money -the likelihood we would all end up living under ground due to environmental devastation, the possibility of touch screen-wind-up mechanisms (!) and whether more torture might solve our crime problems!

You don’t visit Carnyville - it happens to you. At the edge of Bristol's dullest shopping precinct an occupied police station/ fire station/ court house and jail complex form the sides of a triangular courtyard. Stood in the centre watching the final preparations for the three night long escapade you can feel yourself being sucked into an alternate reality - for, with the Carnyville event, The Invisible Circus have made the thing that artists and performers get up for in the morning: they have created a coherent 'other-world', a circus of dreams. For the chance to be transported to a twisted, eerie and delightful place that feels like home a breathtaking array of talent and weirdness beats a path to the police station door. Aerialists, sideshow performers, magicians, musicians, pyrotechnic operatives, expert riggers, clowns, high wire walkers, fire spinners, freaks of nature - all turn out for the pleasure of seeing it happen. And pleasure creates a different kind of show - several million quid would not buy you something with the atmosphere of these artists volunteering their skills for an event they enjoy.  It is the triumph of something that present cynicism would have us disbelieve the existence of, and to perform there is to have your perceptions of what is possible gently rewritten through a haze of gin, paraffin smoke and silliness.

Sonic sideshow took out the old-faithful walkabout act - we strolled through the courtyard between the clowns and sideshows, recording the voices of whoever we met onto our bodies and playing silly tunes with them, sometimes letting the punters beat us with electric spoons, or wear our loud-speaker hats if the space got very noisy. 

 We also had international juggling pro David Bernbaum staying with us at the time, and had the pleasure of introducing him to Carnyville.  During a late night jam session Bernbaum resurrected his old juggling-as-percussion act, inspired by which Slade popped out the next morning, got some metal scouring pads and bits of wire, and did a quick modification of the suits so that juggling balls could trigger the samples.  You can see the results below. They're not bad for a hangover!

In September the Sonic Sideshow joined the House of Fairytales’ Travelling Art Circus once again for The Mayor’s Thames Festival - we used junk, water and electricity to make a moist and marvellous racket! Our venue was a beautiful little red and yellow small-top tent stood in the park by Gabriel's Wharf, on the south bank. There we set up our interactive junk sculpture - the Musical Mayhem Machine - and a Waterwheel Powered Beat Sequencer newly built for the event. The Beat Sequencer operates on a similar principle to Daphne Oram's 'Oramics Machine' and looks like a Heath Robinson contraption for making a really good cup of tea! It was built to interactively demonstrate the principle of renewable energy harnessed from the water cycle, and the concept of cyclical beat patterns in music. To create beats the audience draws onto a disk of card which is then read by light sensors as it spins on the waterwheel powered turntable. I addition to our machines, the boys from Noisy Toys built an excellent contraption of see-saws and water-shoots that amplified the dripping and sloshing sounds using under-water microphones. All together we produced quite a din!

Over two days a seemingly endless stream of punters filed through our tent including school-children, teachers, parents, grandparents, intrigued passers-by and an inquisitive dog. Visitors contributed so many drawings to be processed by our machine that we had to continually send out for new pens. Divine intervention struck midway through the weekend with a visitation from an entire Hari Krishna Orchestra - now that’s what I call fusion!

Find more information about the Waterwheel Powered Beat Sequencer here.

These are exiting times for Sonic Sideshow and the new year promises much more to come. Recent months have seen us entertaining the good folks of the Arts Council at Last Days of Decadence, doing a presentation at London College of Fashion and indulging in a satisfying sonic bust-up at The Resistance Gallery's Ab-Fab cabaret to mention some of our favorites. We are now fresh back from another appearance with the House of Fairytales, this time at Babington House in the beautiful Somerset countryside. We will be scanning the next issue of Vogue.....all too aware of the yawning expanse of the cutting-room floor!

Please come and join us in February as we unveil the all new and marvelous:
Professor Starmayr's Exposition of Wonders  at Volupte Lounge
-Get your weird science thrills here!
Womb-hysteria, mentalism, feats of derring-do and marvelous contraptions.
Starring reigning Alternative Miss World Fancy Chance, man of action AND mystery The Irrepressible Mr Flay,  freak of nature, cabaret crooner Mr HP Lovebox, and of course yours truly

Tues 9th Feb:  (Doors: 5pm. Showtime: 8pm, Seated tickets: £10, Standing: subject to availability)
Thurs 18th Feb: (Doors: 5pm. Showtime: 8pm, Seated tickets: £15,Standing: subject to availability)
Fri 19th Feb: (Doors: 5pm. Showtime: 8pm, Seated tickets: £15, Standing: subject to availability)
Sat 20th Feb:(Two shows: 7pm (£25) and 10pm (£30) Guests are asked to order at least two courses from the A La Carte Menu)

book tickets and/or table

Also:
Valentines Dorkbot,
17th of Feb  Royal College of Art 7pm-10pm
If you'd like to hear us talking about how and why we do what we do come along to the Valentines Dorkbot at Royal College of Art, were we will be doing a presentation along with some very interesting "people who do strange things with electricity"