Over the last few years, artist Chris Dooks has been working with vinyl and shellac records (and wind up gramophones) as he trawls eBay and markets for aural gems without a home – until now! With a project in line with Dooks’ recent PhD on working closely with vinyl, Chris unveils some of his rare 78rpm records and new vintage record players for Sanctuary 2015 for this hour-long performance.

On a recent trip to Moabit, Berlin, partly for Sanctuary, Dr Dooks visited Europe’s leading idiosyncratic dealer of rare shellac to complete an exclusive palette of sound for this performance. The store, open one day a week, and with an army of Berlin’s shellac devotees crammed into a very modest but highly organised shop, Dooks completed a collection of extremely rare 78s – which at the risk of a spoiler-alert will make for a thematically appropriate one-hour mix for The Dark Outside 2015.

This is not without risks – without control of volume, consistent playback speed and the risk of breaking springs – can Chris mix at least three gramophones together – ‘triangulating’ or creating a series of sonic layers from 78s as a mix? Bear in mind the sound is ‘unamplified’ other than from the boxes themselves, so could he make such a mix from these irritable machines?

There’s only one way to find out! Dooks is fond of limitations and this is a simple idea that could get quite complex and unpredictable live. Not to be missed for fans of Philip Jeck, lovers of field recordings and raw scratchy shellac aesthetics.

The first 25 people to attend will receive a copy of Chris’s vinyl 300 Square Miles of Upwards, an aural love-poem to Galloway Forest Park as well as pre-orders for a limited release of Schellackplatten Triangulated.

http://idioholism.com
http://drdooks.wordpress.com
http://chrisdooks.bandcamp.com
saturndooks@gmail.com