Chameleon-like musical magpies, the Dead Rat Orchestra set out to plunder the music of other acts, amalgamating all within their own particular aesthetic. Uniquely able to play the entire venue as a sound source, they equate concert violins with wineglasses, air vents with copper records, mammoth organ pipes with eskimo kisses. Muttering, shuffling and searching for those moments when it all just seems to fit.
Broken melodies, fragments of noise, sounds found at the back of their throats. For every event a new set
is crafted, worked and sculpted. !
The physicality of feet stomping, instrument breaking and voices cracking and laughing. Creating with
anything they can draw a sound from: guitar, accordion, balloons, cattle grids, harmoniums, dansette
record players, bowed saws, sine waves, feedback, celeste, tubular bells, singing bowls, music boxes, toy birds and what-ever they just found in the street outside the venue.
The exploration of these instruments creates a music of constantly varying form. They seek to make music with resonance: joyous, beautiful, sad. Improvisation is key and no matter what structure they create, every time they perform they are free to stray.
During these performances the definitions were blurred, sometimes the beauty of a musical moment exists or is magnified by the preceding processes, or by the physical acts or physical objects which
produce the sounds.
So the performance becomes as important as the music itself. A fragile and precarious balance.
The dead rat orchestra do not claim to push musical boundaries, they simply allow themselves to fully explore an exhaustive palette of sound that is already accepted and understood; exposure to cinema, radio and television
provides us all with a complex framework of sonic references; increasingly (although commonly unconsciously) the average observer is as fluent in sonic aesthetics as they are visual. - If we already recognise a sound contextually,
sonically or emotionally, it becomes even more relevant and useful within amusical discourse than many abstract musical devices.
Although the rats celebrate and exploit the diversification of musical fodder, they also see the problems that technology brings: With the advent of recording, and the subsequent removal of the performer, came the creation
of “the perfect moment”.
Audio production, multi-tracking, retakes, editing, digital processing, the condensation of hours or days or weeks of thoughts, feelings and adjustments, compiled to form a meticulously perfect package of emotions, an unattainable state that borders on the sublime; the perfect moment.
So now listeners have come to expect nothing less; concerts strive to synthesis it with dazzling lights and exaggerated volume, turning the idea of fidelity on its head as desperate attempts are made to faithfully reproduce
recordings!
And this is what people find shocking about the dead rat orchestra; they don’t present a pre-packaged, perfectly rehearsed product, and although experimental, their aims are not new and abstract forms of expression, the sheer concrete enjoyment of sound, or even the display of virtuosity or ingenuity within their improvisations: instead they present their search for ‘perfect moments’, within familiar (though perhaps unorthodox) musical discourses – which will be different for each and every performance.
This of course, exposes them to the possibility that everything may just fall apart, but simultaneously leaves all opportunities open. An event by dead rat orchestra is as much process as it is performance, the audience is invited
to witness the development of these moments – with the hope that when they are reached, they will signify much more…
As such the audience too must re-adjust: re-evaluate their expectations, reconsider their role; empathy and camaraderie.
Broken melodies, fragments of noise, sounds found at the back of their throats. For every event a new set
is crafted, worked and sculpted. !
The physicality of feet stomping, instrument breaking and voices cracking and laughing. Creating with
anything they can draw a sound from: guitar, accordion, balloons, cattle grids, harmoniums, dansette
record players, bowed saws, sine waves, feedback, celeste, tubular bells, singing bowls, music boxes, toy birds and what-ever they just found in the street outside the venue.
The exploration of these instruments creates a music of constantly varying form. They seek to make music with resonance: joyous, beautiful, sad. Improvisation is key and no matter what structure they create, every time they perform they are free to stray.
During these performances the definitions were blurred, sometimes the beauty of a musical moment exists or is magnified by the preceding processes, or by the physical acts or physical objects which
produce the sounds.
So the performance becomes as important as the music itself. A fragile and precarious balance.
The dead rat orchestra do not claim to push musical boundaries, they simply allow themselves to fully explore an exhaustive palette of sound that is already accepted and understood; exposure to cinema, radio and television
provides us all with a complex framework of sonic references; increasingly (although commonly unconsciously) the average observer is as fluent in sonic aesthetics as they are visual. - If we already recognise a sound contextually,
sonically or emotionally, it becomes even more relevant and useful within amusical discourse than many abstract musical devices.
Although the rats celebrate and exploit the diversification of musical fodder, they also see the problems that technology brings: With the advent of recording, and the subsequent removal of the performer, came the creation
of “the perfect moment”.
Audio production, multi-tracking, retakes, editing, digital processing, the condensation of hours or days or weeks of thoughts, feelings and adjustments, compiled to form a meticulously perfect package of emotions, an unattainable state that borders on the sublime; the perfect moment.
So now listeners have come to expect nothing less; concerts strive to synthesis it with dazzling lights and exaggerated volume, turning the idea of fidelity on its head as desperate attempts are made to faithfully reproduce
recordings!
And this is what people find shocking about the dead rat orchestra; they don’t present a pre-packaged, perfectly rehearsed product, and although experimental, their aims are not new and abstract forms of expression, the sheer concrete enjoyment of sound, or even the display of virtuosity or ingenuity within their improvisations: instead they present their search for ‘perfect moments’, within familiar (though perhaps unorthodox) musical discourses – which will be different for each and every performance.
This of course, exposes them to the possibility that everything may just fall apart, but simultaneously leaves all opportunities open. An event by dead rat orchestra is as much process as it is performance, the audience is invited
to witness the development of these moments – with the hope that when they are reached, they will signify much more…
As such the audience too must re-adjust: re-evaluate their expectations, reconsider their role; empathy and camaraderie.