NOTES

Lisa Busby is a Scottish composer, vocalist and improviser, born in Paisley, based in London. Situated across experimental music, performance art and pop song, her practice often utilises the found and the prosaic, and manifests in various entangled modes; recorded composition, live improvisation for sound/body, performance video, non standard scoring and long duration works.

Instrumentally she works with voice, turntables, hardware, software and lap-steels. (A Lap-steel is a type of steel guitar that is traditionally played on the performers lap)

For the majority of her live performance Lisa explores the relationship of body, voice and sound through composition, improvisation and performance. For example the piece ‘Skin Meditations’ is built around her and fellow artist Lou Barnell reading short pre-written sentences then reacting to the words in a physical and sonic way. (This description is very vague as I’m still attempting to grasp this type of experimentation.)

Focusing on the improvisational aspect of Lisa’s performance, watching these from my laptop instead of occupying the same space as the artists offers a completely different perspective. Similar to Jessica Ekomanes work, which should really be listened quadraphonically, I feel witnessing Lisa’s work in person would take on a whole new meaning. As a spectator you would be able to hear every breath, click of the ankle, stretch, brush of hair etc thus adding to the whole sonic composition.

MY QUESTION FOR LISA :

• Focusing on ‘Shit I can DJ’, could you explain your thought process in selecting hardware/instruments etc for your work? Do you almost improvise in the selection of equipment’ leaving it to the subconscious?

(Note. SUBCONSCIOUS MUSIC; the dictionary description of the word reads “of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one’s actions and feelings.” How many sounds do we subconsciously take in?)

Inspired by Busby’s Shit I can DJ, I attempted a classic disc jokey trick of playing a record backwards. A balancing act, not only visually interesting the rewinded sounds and distortion morph the original track into something totally different. The DJ Ron Hardy would play this song ‘Its House’ by Chip-E backwards. The original vocal sample says ‘Its house’ repeatedly but in reverse it almost sounds like ‘watch me’. Maybe Ron noticed this change and wanted people to watch his skill. This is my intentionally distorted attempt.

How to play a record backwards the ‘old fashioned way’:

1. First remove the vinyl slip mat from the turntable.
2. Screw the counterweight so the tone arm hangs upwards.
3. Unscrew the cartridge and flip the other way round then attach back to the tone arm.
4. Find an object for the record to balance on. This should be a little smaller than the record center. I used a roll of medium sized tape to achieve this.
5. The song you want to play backwards must be facing down so the flipped cartridge and needle runs in reverse across the grooves of the record.
6. Hit play.

By slightly moving the record so it sits off-kilter with the object used to balance on creates an interesting distortion on top of the already reversed track. Playing with the pitch control also add’s a wobbliness to the sound.

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