Richard Orton
Hemlock Stone
UK PERSISTENCE OF SOUND PS010 CD (2023)
Jove – the Persistence Of Sound label are really being nice to us with this particular item. A compilation of electro-acoustic compositions by English maestro Richard Orton, including three vintage cuts ‘Kiss’, ‘Clock Farm’ and ‘For The Time Being’ which hitherto have only been available on the box set Electronic Music from York. This 1973 vinyl release, the second of a handful of releases on the York Electronic Studios label, has never been reissued (unless you include the Creel Pone CDR bootleg of it), and is a coveted – by me, anyway – collector’s item which can command a £200-300 price tag. Well, admittedly Clive Graham has done us a service by issuing Trevor Wishart’s Machine on CD in 2008, thus sweeping up sides 5 and 6 of the set, but now we’ve got all of side 3 and half of side 2 on official CD release. Of course, for other curious listeners, the whole box is streamable on YouTube also…
Well, so much for the drooling record-collector type-spiel. Richard Orton is an important figure in the history of this music in the UK; he himself established that electronic music studio in York University, the first of its kind in this country, and his pupils included Trevor Wishart, Denis Smalley, Jonty Harrison and others – all of whom became well-respected composers in their own right. I also see from Nicholas Melia’s excellent notes here that Orton staged multi-media events and performances in York in the mid-1970s, involving early mash-ups of sound art with experimental film, sound poetry, and dance; and he also published a book in 1981 aimed at passing on the knowledge and mystery of tape composition such that it could be taught in secondary schools. This is just skimming the surface of his many achievements; if there’s an underlying thread to his life’s work, it’s that he was a genuine enthusiast, advocate and evangelist for this musical form, a form which others may have perceived as “difficult”, or too conceptual, or otherwise unapproachable. Orton seems to have made it his task to remove these obstacles in his quest for democratisation. I always find it odd that Cornelius Cardew used to occupy a similar station in the 1960s, proselytising Stockhausen and other 20th century modernists, before he had his radical change of heart.
Delighted to have my years-long quest for that triple LP set fulfilled, I clicked straight on to track 3 to hear ‘Kiss’, originally composed in 1968. Right away I think how unassuming and simple this good-old magnetic tape music sounds, especially when I compare it with contemporary digital excursions, which are often trying to do too much, made by composers piling bytes on top of bytes in their elaborate workstations to produce gigantic anacondas of digital audio, when sometimes a simple grass snake is all we need. Thanks to Melia’s superb research into the Orton archives at the Borthwick, we now know that the York studio was actually pretty rough – Revox and Ferrograph tape machines, one Uher mixer, microphones, and a not-very-good editor. Turns out ‘Kiss’ was the piece to give the baptism of fire to this hand-knitted equipment array – so besides being a strong piece of work, it’s historically the first item to have passed through the York machines, and published in that context. Orton made it by applying human lips directly to the microphone (or the mic mesh), kissing it and breathing into it. But alongside these slobbering sounds, we’ve got fascinating tales of the use of a slinky toy (that coiled metal monster that could walk down the stairs), a bowed cymbal, and Orton getting truly hands-on – he ran the tapes over the machine heads manually, re-recording the results, to get different speeds and effects. More than just an assemblage of fruity noise, ‘Kiss’ is also very satisfying in its compositional structure and arrangement – a dynamic, miniature symphony in less than 7 minutes.
‘Clock Farm’ is dated 1973, and yes – it is recordings of clocks ticking and alarms ringing, overdubbed and edited and running at various speeds – a trope which may now seem something of a gaffe to contemporary readers. And may even baffle those of the younger generation who don’t believe that clocks can “tick” (they also doubt the existence of cassettes, payphones, and milk floats). But please recollect Orton was informed by sociology and philosophy, and intended to make a very serious point about “the terrifying monotony of contemporary life”, a theme which overlaps to some degree with those of the over-discussed pop album Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd, which happens to have been released the same year and also happens to feature recordings of clocks on one track, only in a manner that’s neither as imaginative nor as subtle as Orton’s vision. Besides making this veiled Marxist critique of English society – the work was performed in 1974 alongside an equally tendentious piece about a sideboard cabinet by fellow pinko Trevor Wishart – there’s also the “Clock Farm” sign which Orton saw on his drive to work from Howden, and which inspired him to fantasise about an imaginary branch of agriculture dedicated to farming clocks, where – not unlike battery chickens – the clocks would be kept in cages. And thereby adding another layer of critique to what is already a pessimistic take on society – we’re all being factory farmed, and penned in cages. Listen hard to hear the “interactive patterns” and admire the deft skill with which Orton makes his edit and applies his reverb, even managing to tell a little story where the dreamer awakes at the end.
‘For The Time Being’, dated 1972, is apparently very well-known and has been written about extensively. It seems to make use of simple domestic objects found in the kitchen – ceramics, posts, kettles, running water – which have been recorded and processed. Orton was inspired to do it after seeing the Gentle Fire improvising group playing and being amazed at the selections they were making; Orton himself founded this group with Graham Hearn and a bunch of students (Hugh Davies later joined them), and you can hear the Paradigm box set Explorations 1970-1973 to learn more about this part of the jigsaw. Equally, Orton had already come under the spell of John Cage and his I Ching experiments, learning the value of chance procedures, and by 1967 he was personally persuaded that the force of change was very significant not just for the whole world, but for him personally. Chance, change, intuition, and ordinary objects are the building blocks of this short piece, among the most puzzling ones of the set in that virtually no sound on it is recognisable and it projects a grey, misty, rather cold vibe. Even compositional structure is set aside in favour of chance; and unlike ‘Clock Farm’ it doesn’t tell a story, no indeed, and the piece fades out on an uncertain note, leaving us with odd impressions.
Well, there are two other examples of Orton genius on the CD, ‘Astorum Conscius’ from 1986 and ‘Three Monoliths: No 1 The Hemlock Stone’ from 2004, both of which I’d like to note in more detail but we’re running out of time. Sufficient to add that this is an essential release if you want to learn more about this moment in the history of England’s music, along with its radical experimentation and political resonances, and catch glimpses of a world which now seems all but vanished. Essential! From 7th February 2023.