SLIP

SLIP

SLIP was a series of live performances at Cafe OTO during a three day residency, and is a LP/CD/Digital release.

Interview

Interview with Fielding Hope, before the residency performances.

"[...] I'll be making the most of this amazing opportunity to work/play in this context by spending the wealth of time available to explore how things might feel, together or subjectively, what works and might not, what might balance or fall over ... and how we all contribute to that. It's a chance to go deeper or stretch out some of the ideas and sounds which grew out of other projects, other situations: to feel that stuff in a more spacious context, to see what it might mean."

"Specifically, like Tender Interval, the residency events will be "composed of recurring ingredients," this time: acoustic and 'hybrid' drum kits, algorithmic composition, body movement, some shuffling and likely numerous slips, various fictional characters and imaginary architectures.."

"During all this I will be trying to stick with and return to some basic 'ingredients' - simple movements, combinations of sounds, character behaviours - to see how the situation (audience, room, me) re-shapes these things and the music it produces."

Performance

Event description OTO website:

Title

SLIP: Paul Abbott 3 day residency

Details

Day 1 - FRX5 (n) Fish Glue Invitation Day 2 - FRX6 (n) Rubs, Doublings and Wrenches (Draped Frame) Day 3 - FRX7(n) *Live Oatflake Temptation.b

Cafe OTO presents SLIP, a three day residency with musician and drummer Paul Abbott.

SLIP is a series of three interrelated events across three evenings, developed especially for this residency, loosely and irreverently following on from Paul's Tender Interval 2015 Cafe OTO residency.

Following Paul's recent work, the residency will explore music as a complex ecology of the real and imaginary, physical and affective, improvised and written: through a number of fictional characters and dramatic environments.

Three interconnected, overlapping performances, across three evenings will focus on playing the drum kit as a specific, subjective way to experiment with and learn about the sounds, emotions and ideas which emerge through music making in general.

Introduction

SLIP is a liquid which dissolves performers.

The residency performances take place in this liquid. Among other things, this liquid-dramatic environment rejects novelty, encourages the pleasure of unstable edges and enhances a profound suspicion of what is fixed, limited.

The residency starts - soaked in this liquid - by responding to a Fish Glue Invitation written in (an unpublished) document called Gyri by the character Small, and others. The invitation proposes conditions for a live performance:

an alter-practice of ongoing unlearning, organic & synthetic movements: dissolving together somewhere between the truck joke and a heartbeat.

Version

“What you could be listening to, and what Slip might comprise, is a series of instructions for peculiarly named actors in a feature film, or resolutely unfamiliar participants in a strange dream of a documentary, or a soundscape for a series of cinematic sequences inclusive of sequential discontinuity. Or a theatrical event.”

•

The (LP, CD, Digital) SLIP release responds to a series of three solo performances, recorded during a three day residency (also called ‘SLIP’) at Cafe OTO, on 27, 28 and 29 June 2023.

I had developed a series of three interrelated performances across three evenings, especially for the cafe OTO residency. I have had a long relationship with OTO, but at the time was living in Europe. I had prepared some sounds, materials and compositional elements remotely, in my studio at the time, in Brussels. I travelled to London, taking these materials, ideas and myself in to Cafe OTO, during the residency days, and let the space modulate how everything grew.

I had developed (what I was calling) a cast of 'characters' and character ‘dances’: based on different feelings, or outlines of behaviours, to suggest/choreograph ways of moving (body, drums, sounds). I’d arranged these characters into three flexible compositions: one for each performance day.

Each composition featured various related layers of activity, sequencing suggested or possible behaviours: for moving around the room, playing drums, arranging materials, the development of synthetic sounds, algorithmic-aleatory compositional elements, lighting-conditions, and sound-spatial distribution.

These ‘open’ compositions were intended to be different and distinct each day, but interconnected and interrelated. The compositions were used to stimulate some potential activity/energy, but were flexible to adapt to the reality of the room.

They also provided a blueprint for sound engineer Billy Steiger and me prepare initial conditions together (for some hours each day) for the room. We organised where drums and other material were placed, how and what was amplified, where speakers were situated and rough timings for certain performed actions. The performances all involved a combination of static and moving elements: drum kit drums, cymbals, synthetic sounds, microphones and the performer were all at different times fixed or in motion. During the three performances there were a number of ‘room zones’ focusing—through adjustments of amplification or visibility—on particular instrumentations, physical movements or concepts.

Each performance involved an exploration of the acoustic-digital hybrid drums setup I have been developing for some time through various projects. This 'setup' or 'instrument(ation)' involves drum kit and synthetic sounds combined closely—through an entanglement of limbs and cables—in an intimate but strange relationship with each other.

Alongside all this I also programmed a sort of adjunct-aleatory/algorithmic playback patch, called the 'SLIP-DRAPE Player,' which sequenced and played sounds through 8 discrete speakers arranged around the room (in a different configuration for each night: 'pile-dark'; 'angle-light'; 'circle-medium-dark').

SLIP DRAPE played pre-recorded sounds drawn from a few 'pools', in different moving or static speaker distribution patterns. The sounds included re-worked 'versions' of old(er) solo material, re-imagined drum sounds stretched and mutated, and unused computer-experiment 'spillage' offcuts. %% ('seeds,' 'recrystal,' tidal membranes,' 'tidal lo-nek,' 'vector kymear,' 'drom,' and 'lugz.') %%

The performances were multitrack-recorded (in detail, thanks to the skill and sensitivity of Billy Steiger). The result was 6 hours of recordings, split into (up to) 28 multitrack channels for each day. The performances happened in London in while I was mainly living in Brussels, in 2023. The recordings were edited and mixed over a period of time between July 2023 (in Brussels) and July 2024 (in London).

I wanted to approach this post-performance edit-mix phase in a way which was 'in the spirit' of the performances. In the hope of facilitating manifold future and divergent response(s) to the events, I took the edit as another opportunity to critically fictionalise what (might have) happened. Continuous live recordings were edited into discrete tracks, in dialogic response to what I heard 'in the room' and with the 'original' 'fish glue' compositions. The tracks were re-sequenced across LP and CD sides (the track list is different for each medium). The DIGITAL version features all the tracks, (mostly) in order of (edited) appearance.

Object

Duration, tracks, sequence:

DIGITAL 47 Tracks: 5 hours 4 mins CD 14 Tracks: 1 hours 13 mins LP: 21 Tracks: 1 hours 20 mins

The tracks are made available in three formats: DIGITAL, CD, VINYL. All versions start with the same part of the performance/track. Apart from this, each format features a different selection and sequencing of the tracks. The DIGITAL version features all the tracks in linear order of appearance. The CD and VINYL formats feature different non-linear selections of tracks.

Credits

The SLIP performances emerged out of the context of a research project hosted by Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp & Royal Conservatory Antwerp, called "WE GROW MUSIC!"

Abbott, Paul. 2025. SLIP. LP, CD, Digital. London, Antwerp: OTOroku.

Compositions and performance: Paul Abbott (acoustic drums, real and imaginary percussion, synthetic sounds, structures, microphones)

Live recording: Billy Steiger during the SLIP residency at Cafe OTO, London, 27–29 June 2023.

Mixing and Editing: Paul Abbott. Mastering: Amir Shoat.

This publication is part of We Grow Music! Paul Abbott’s 2022–24 research project at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (AP University of Applied Sciences and Arts) for Track Report, publishing house of the Royal Academy.

Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp OTOROKU, 18–22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL

Texts: Edward George, Paul Abbott Design: Will Holder

Thank you: Abby Thomas, Fielding Hope, Billy Steiger, Edward George, Will Holder, Keira Greene, Seymour Wright, Andrea di Serego Alighieri, Bas Rogiers

Publisher: OTOROKU/ Track Report ROKU041 / TR24/03