BIOGRAPHY:
Starting out from a bedroom in Brixton, Antenna Farm began its life in 1998, as a very primitive 'plunderphonic' DJ unit, we used multiple decks and CD players, a crappy KPM mixer with sampling function, and 4-track cassette mixer to improvise dense, messy, chaotic mixes using a wide range of other people's music. We played a bunch of shows with allies like V/Vm, Speedranch, Goodiepal, Diskono, etc., and toured Germany and Austria with Process, Transient Waves and DJ Alex Knight as part of a FatCat package.
Over time, some new kit (minidisc players, an Atari, a Zoom sampletrack unit, etc.) was organically integrated and the source material was pushed and manipulated to become less and less identifiable and more and more our own. We started folding field recordings made with the MDs into the mix, as well as using radio receivers and occassionally guitars. Around 2000, the sound and processes changed again with the introduction of powerbooks. We used these to compile our first album, chopping up piecing together a range of material we'd improvised and recorded down to DAT and MD. This was released as 'Early Mess' (or 'Fog / Splinter Tracks') on the US label, Phthalo in 2001. The same year, we spent a week living, recording and improvising with Main (our friend Robert Hampson) at Extrapool's little electronic studio in Nijmegen. The results were later edited together to form the 'AF_M' album, released that year on Staalplaat imprint, BromBron. Around this time, we played numerous shows at home and abroad with Main, V/vm, Diskono, Alejandra & Aeron, Janek Schaefer, Motion, Duplo Remote, Team Doyobi, etc. Alastiar played with V/Vm at the notorious Sonar Festival show in 2000.
In 2002, we put out four tracks on the Spanish OOze.bap label, on a CD shared with Artificial Memory Trace and Diskono's Gabriel Amato. This was heavily (processed) field recording-based and the process pretty influenced by tighter, more academic concrete stuff. We did an improvised live collaboration with Icelandic guitarist Petur Hallgrimsun at a Kitchen Motors / FatCat festival in Reykjavik, and also with Icelandic guitarists Skulli Sverisson and Hilmarr Jensen at the Smallfish shop in London.
Since 2003, we've played a lot fewer gigs and been a bit anal about not putting stuff out - either because we haven't had the time / space to properly piece a coherent release together, or not been fully happy with what we have been doing. We have continued to irregularly meet, improvise and record everything down onto MD. These recordings regularly get fed back into the playing, so there's a constant reworking and reappearance of lots of old stuff, which gets more and more mulched down. We do a fair amount of recording / processing / programming separately and get together when time allows to fire things together and see what sticks.
Working under the pseudonym, The Experience, Alastair put out some releases based on field recordings taken on various jobs he'd done working on installations for the Millenium Dome (released as 'One Amazing Day' on V/Vm), and others at various car shows, trade fairs and new museums. He studied Max MSP and has played live with the LMC Radio Orchestra, and collaborated live with Ivan Seal, Ben Drew, as well as numerous solo shows.
After a couple of years during which Alastair spent much time working in Japan and Dave became a father, we became a bit more active in 2006, doing a live improvised collaboration with Tujiko Noriko and Vibracathedral Orchestra, and breaking a long release-silence by producing a soundtrack for a Semiconductor film, 'Brilliant Noise'. In 2007, we started doing some laptop-based live A/V collaborations with Semiconductor, utilising their 'Sonic Inc.' live drawing software. We also did a live improvised collaboration with German prepared pianist, Hauschka, with whom we hope to do some recordings. We also hope to finally rework and release some of the last 6 years worth of recordings that have sat gathering dust.
DISCOGRAPHY:
- 'Copenhagen Mix' (Antenna Farm^Jansky Noise live) on 'Structure Decay' sampler CD, FatCat, 1998.
- 'Prowler Reconstruction' on 'Passageways' sampler CD, FatCat, 1999.
- 'Macro Collapse' remix of Goodiepal, 12", Hobby Industries, 1999.
- 'Ambush Emiliana' remix of Emiliana Torrini on E4, split 7" with Motion, FatCat, 2000.
- 'Cracked' on 'Fresh Fruit' compilation CD, Lo Recordings, 2000.
- 'Gallery Hack' on 'Naked & Alone on the Celebrity Circuit' compilation CD, Diskono, 2001.
- 'Rigged For Demolition' remix of Hrvatski on 'RKK13CD' compilation CD, Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge, 2001.
- 'Early Mess', CD album on Phthalo, 2001
- 'AF_M', Antenna Farm v Main, CD album on Staalplaat, 2001
- Antenna Farm / Artificial Memory Trace / Gabriel Amato split CD on Ooze.Bap, 2002
- 'Brilliant Noise' soundtrack on Semiconductor's 'Worlds In Flux' DVD, FatCat, 2007
WORDS:
'The 19 pieces here form a disordered, dystopian urban labyrinth of sound, constructed (demolished?) from a bewildering array of audio detritus... Chunky, abrasive blocks of sound and noise are placed in startlingly irregular configurations with all the depth and texture of ingrained filfth... full of obtuse bits of junk, sounding like the workings of a mind thinking ten things at once.'
[The Wire]
'Early Mess piles on the noise and snips through the urban melodies which found their way through hybrid analogue/digital methods into their Powerbooks. Extrapolating and remodelling their way from the early days of turntablism into yet further abstracted areas of sound manipulation, the ghost of Musique Concrete hovers everywhere in their machines it seems, even when the devices are being fucked over in real time without the direct aid of software. Linear rhythms are not really on the agenda here, though engrossing inside-out moments like the bassy "Prowler" or the gentle scissors-reverb-snippet of "Macro Collapse" dance around the fringe of more palpably defined agendas and genres.
If 'Early Mess' has a definining characteristic, it is probably to be found in a prowling sniff at just how much the disparate sounds can become unified in the dubspace between contact mic, environmental collage and digital studio abstraction... The real world remains a constant presence, at least as reference point, throughout most of the tracks - as heard bouncing off the crevices occupied by a woodlouse or termite gnawing on those tasty cables right up inside the warmly resonating machinery, and the occasionally consequent short circuits which result.'
[FREQ]
'Antenna Farm uses a skewed form of sampling in order to subvert old forms and to make abstract what was once concrete. They've gutted old reverb units, fucked with turntables, samplers, CD players, and minidisks, pulled in VLF signals and generally manipulated the means through which electronic signals pass. And, with all this detritus, they've managed to make something subtle, complex, and very worthwhile. Their music is rarely as chaotic as the instrument list may lead you to believe. They create beautiful, intuitive forms from these sounds, so that you get a coherent narrative flow, without the rhythmic and melodic baggage. Each track explores different densities and intensity levels, some jagged and noisy, some slow and evolving. It's good to hear a band with so much restraint that has only a handful of releases under their belt. Let's hope for more.'
[Ink19]
'...being a reworked scrapbook, it shifts its view dramatically... as an auditory experience it is exciting and absorbing as the generally short tracks skitter across your soundspace. Combining glitchy minimalism with an element of music concrete (through the obviously found sounds) it shifts between moody clicks and clattering movement, rapid change and supple stasis, assault and ambience, dark and light, complex and relatively simple... if you like the pulsing scraping of microwave laptop minimal experimenta, this is an excellent release.
[Ampersand Etc.]
'...Antenna farm are heavily influenced by and base their work around field recordings from their local South london environment. Listening to 'Early Mess' is akin to an electronic trawl around a night-time city centre as soothing waves of solitude washes collide violently with sudden rhythmical interruptions and violent broken spurts of infiltration. Not so much a journey into broken sounds as a trip into the realms of suburban paranoia and angst.'
[Terrorizer]
