2023

Spirit Communication / Negeseuon o’r Tu Draw

Spirit Communication extends a line of inquiry that began with the Noisome Spirits (2021) album. The latter is based upon my book entitled The Appearance of Evil: Apparitions of Spirits in Wales (2003). Unlike the previous releases in The Aural Bible series, Spirit Communication is not based upon a single coherent source.

The album addresses a range of audible apparitions drawn from a variety of paranormal, spiritual, and religious traditions and their acoustics cultures. The audible apparitions include phenomena associated with heaven, hell, the interaction of the immaterial and material worlds, and religious utterance. These varied anomalies share several features: first, spirits desire to be heard; and, secondly, their sounds can be communicated via, and documented by, technology.

The album is centred on several key themes. They include: accounts of self-playing musical instruments, witnessed at séances; the sound of angelic choirs, heard either above the hubbub of a worshipping congregation or high up in the air; the dreadful blasts of aerial apocalyptic trumpets; and unintelligible speech and incantation.

The Aural Bible series deals with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures as the written, spoken, and heard word. It explores the cultural articulations and adaptations of the Bible within Judeo-Christian and supernaturalist traditions. The works on the album embark upon a critical, responsive, and interpretive intervention with aspects of their sound culture. 

The project is a collaboration between the Screen & Sound Archive and the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.

National Library of Wales: Screen & Sound Archive, 2023.

A streamed release of the album is available at: sound.johnharvey.org.uk.

Sound Clips

Website and guide to compositions


2022

Penallta Colliery: Sound Pictures / Glofa Penallta: Llun Sain

Coalmining in Wales has been represented in engravings, drawings, and paintings ever since it emerged as a cottage industry in the early 13th century.  From the second half of the 19th century until its demise in the 1980s, what grew into a large and complex means of production became a significant genre in Welsh landscape art. However, little attention has been paid to the equally impressive and distinctive acoustic character of the industry. Until the development in the mid-1920s of electrical audio equipment able to record a reasonably broad range of frequencies in the sound spectrum, it was impossible to capture the collieries’ sonorities. 

The innovation enabled the British Movietone newsreel company to make South Wales Colliers Go Down the Mine, which was released in 1930. Its subject is Penallta Colliery, which was situated near Hengoed in the Rhymney Valley. The movie represented the ‘first sound pictures of a British coalmine’. (‘Sound pictures’ referred to a cine film with sound effects and dialogue recorded on it.) This source represents the primary material for a suite of sound-art composition entitled Penallta Colliery: Sound Pictures.

The Aural Bible series deals with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures as the written, spoken, and heard word. It explores the cultural articulations and adaptations of the Bible within Judeo-Christian and supernaturalist traditions. The works on the album embark upon a critical, responsive, and interpretive intervention with aspects of their sound culture. 

The project is a collaboration between the Screen & Sound Archive and the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.

National Library of Wales: Screen & Sound Archive, 2022 (GENCD007).

The album was made possible with funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales.

A streamed release and CD version of the album is available at: sound.johnharvey.org.uk.

CD booklet

Website and guide to compositions

Sound clips


2021

Seven Prayers for Stephen Chilton: Requiem / Saith Gweddi dros Stephen Chilton: Requiem

Stephen Chilton (1975–2014) was one of my tutees. I taught him painting when he was studying for a BA (Hons) degree and afterwards an MA degree in Fine Art at the School of Art, Aberystwyth University. During that time we became good friends. Two years after completing his education, Stephen took his own life at the Little Orme, Llandudno. This suite of sound works is dedicated to his memory and to all men who are challenged by mental health issues or who have chosen to leave this life prematurely.

The Aural Bible series deals with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures as the written, spoken, and heard word. It explores the cultural articulations and adaptations of the Bible within Judeo-Christian and supernaturalist traditions. The works on the album embark upon a critical, responsive, and interpretive intervention with aspects of their sound culture. 

The project is a collaboration between the Screen & Sound Archive and the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.

National Library of Wales: Screen & Sound Archive, 2021 (GENCD8006).

The album was made possible with funding from the Stephen Chilton Trust.

A streamed and CD release of the album is available at: sound.johnharvey.org.uk.

CD booklet

Website and guide to compositions

Sound Clips


Noisome Spirits / Ffiaidd Ysbrydion

Edmund Jones (1702–93) was a Calvinistic Congregationalist minister, born in Penllwyn in the parish of Aberystruth, Monmouthshire.  This was a mountainous and forested landscape, popularly believed to be the abode of dark forces. He wrote two books dedicated to these agencies. The original was published in 1767, and a sequel, entitled A Relation of Apparitions of Spirits in the Principality of Wales, in 1780. They are collections of testimonies describing allegedly genuine encounters with spiritual entities, such as fairies, ghosts, devils, and witches. He classified apparitions as those that were either visible or invisible, perceptual or auditory, and evil or good.

The accounts were collected during his itinerancy around the parishes and counties of Wales, by word of mouth for the most part. In 2003, I published an edition that incorporated the testimonies from Jones’ two books, as well as those referred to in his A Geographical, Historical, and Religious Account of the Parish of Aberystruth (1779). Jones’s accounts deal with how the lower orders of society in particular conceived the spiritual world.  The narratives also preserve the peculiarities of the spirits’ noises, the hearers’ response to such, and the relationship of the sounds to the context. 

Noisome Spirits returns some of these narratives to a sonic experience. In so doing, it seeks to make the witnesses’ audition sensible, by presencing the sounds and – following Jones’ own determination – providing a ‘vivid account’ of apparitions … albeit acoustically. The objective, however, is not to present a simulacrum of the original sounds but, rather, to summon their sonic essence and the witnesses’ sense of the dread and otherness associated with them, imaginatively and abstractly. 

The Aural Bible series deals with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures as the written, spoken, and heard word. It explores the cultural articulations and adaptations of the Bible within Judeo-Christian and supernaturalist traditions. The works on the album embark upon a critical, responsive, and interpretive intervention with aspects of their sound culture. 

The project is a collaboration between the Screen & Sound Archive and the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.

National Library of Wales: Screen & Sound Archive of Wales, 2021 (GENCD8005).

The album was made possible with funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales.

A streamed and CD release of the album is available at: sound.johnharvey.org.uk.

CD booklet

CD website and guide to compositions

Sound clips


2019

The Biblical Record / Y Record Beiblaidd

In 1964 the American film, theatre, TV, and voice actor Alexander Scourby (1913–85) recorded all sixty-six books of the Authorized Version of the Bible. His reading was the first complete acoustic capture of the Scripture ever attempted. The recording was produced by the American Foundation for the Blind for their The Talking Book series, which aimed to give unsighted people access to important works of literature. The Talking Bible was released as five volumes of 10-inch, long-playing records, running at 16⅔ rpm. The sixty-seven records represent almost 170 hours of spoken text. The endeavour was all the more astonishing for having been completed in just one month.

In 2017 I obtained a rare complete set of the original discs. The challenge that confronted me at the outset was that of casting the whole Bible into the relatively small mould of a CD, in order to produce a series of sound compositions that were constrained and shaped by a delimiting set of ideas. To that end, I imposed thematic strictures on the source. These were determined by not only the text’s content but also the nature of the recording: its origin and intent, historical context, culture of listening, and associated apparatus for sound production.

To this end, the compositions are informed by concepts and processes related to: the commission and purpose of the recordings (a provision for the needs of the blind); some of the principal political, social, and scientific events that took place during the month of the recording (nuclear tests, race riots and Civil Rights demonstrations, and the launch of the Ranger 7 probe, which took the first close-up pictures of the moon); an inventory of listening by two previous owners of the record set (Beth and Bill from the USA); and the mechanics and machinery of vinyl recording and playback, as well as the intrinsic qualities and deficits of the medium (imperfections in the pressing and scratches and other blemishes that have accrued over time and through use). In this way, a text that was written thousands of years ago, a technology of audio recording that is over 140 years old, a recording that was made over half a century ago, and a contemporary creative intervention in all three histories, interpenetrate.

The Aural Bible series deals with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures as the written, spoken, and heard word. It explores the cultural articulations and adaptations of the Bible within Judeo-Christian and supernaturalist traditions. The works on the album embark upon a critical, responsive, and interpretive intervention with aspects of their sound culture. 

The project is a collaboration between The National Screen & Sound Archive of Wales and the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.

National Library of Wales: National Screen & Sound Archive of Wales, 2019 (GENCD8004).

The album was made possible with funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales.

A streamsed and CD release of the album is available at: sound.johnharvey.org.uk.

CD booklet

CD website and Guide to compositions

Sound clips


2018

Nomine Numine

The composition is the second response to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales’ event entitled ‘Explore your Archive: Memory Archive’ (November 22, 2017). In contrast to the initial release, ‘I. Nothing. Lack.’ (2018), ‘Nomine Numine’ is not an attempt to sonify the effects of dementia. However, it does deploy one of the salient characteristics associated with the illness – a slowing of speech. This is to the end of reflecting upon, soberly, and celebrating the themes of friendship and providence. The source material is derived from my own sound archive, called the Aural Diary.

‘Nomine Numine’ is a quartet of hymns for four voices. The title conjoins two Latin words: ‘Nomine’ (name) and ‘Numine’ (variously used within the context of the Christian Church to denote providence, the divine will, and the power of God). ‘Name’ refers to the forenames of the two vocalists on the album. Their designations are the feminine and masculine equivalent of each other. In effect, they share the same name. ‘Numine’ evokes a sense of the foreordination, timeliness, and spiritual care that characterised the manner in which those vocalists had found one another.

The Aural Bible series deals with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures as the written, spoken, and heard word. It explores the cultural articulations and adaptations of the Bible within Judeo-Christian and supernaturalist traditions. The works on the album embark upon a critical, responsive, and interpretive intervention with aspects of their sound culture. 

The project is a collaboration between Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.

The streamed release of the EP is available at: sound.johnharvey.org.uk.


When the Morning Stars Sang Together (Job 38.7)

Job’s reference to ‘the morning stars’ may, some commentators believe, refer to the stars visible on the morning of creation. Others interpret them as being a metaphor for angels. My adaptation of the Jobian image is poetic rather than theological. I envisioned a choir of stars singing praise to their maker – a Judaic take on the musica universalis or Harmony of the Spheres, if you will. What would they’ve sounded like? Biblical astronomy has no term corresponding to ‘planet’. There are only stars, Sun, Moon, and Earth. Venus and Saturn are referred to in the Old Testament, but as stars. Therefore, in answering my question using planets, I was not straining the biblical vision (or audition) too greatly. But this was an intent that arose only after the composition had been completed.

Rather than mimic the source sounds, I turned to the most well-known and much-loved sonification of the celestial spheres: Gustav Holst’s suite, ‘The Planets’ (1914–16). My soundtrack (for want of a better word) derives from a recording of the music made in 1926. The suite’s movements, one for every planet (with the exception of the Earth) in the, then, known solar system, were stacked (superimposed) and mixed-down together. I extracted a small sample from the aggregate, which was, then, cleaned up, re-equalised, converted into a stereo signal and, finally, stretched twenty times its original length.

The Aural Bible series deals with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures as the written, spoken, and heard word. It explores the cultural articulations and adaptations of the Bible within Judeo-Christian and supernaturalist traditions. The works on the album embark upon a critical, responsive, and interpretive intervention with aspects of their sound culture. 

The project is a collaboration between The National Screen & Sound Archive of Wales and the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.

The streamed release of the single is available at: sound.johnharvey.org.uk.


I. Nothing. Lack (Psalm 23)

The suite of compositions arose from a trial project that explored the potential for sound to make the conditions of dementia audible. This was with a view to developing a more ambitious response to the idea in the future. My inquiry began as a modest contribution to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales’ ‘Explore Your Archive: Memory Archive’ event (November 22, 2017). This aimed to examine memory in relation to dementia. Accordingly, my sound-artwork addressed the themes of remembering and forgetting, principally.

In ‘I. Nothing. Lack.’, the deficits of dementia inform the processes by which the source material, derived from cassette-tape recordings of a quartet of sermons on Psalm 23, was reconfigured. The sermons had been delivered by the Rev. J. Douglas MacMillan (1933–91) – a minister in the Free Church of Scotland and former highland shepherd – on four consecutive mornings in August 1979, at Bethel Welsh Baptist Church, Aberystwyth. On the November 24, 2017, thirty-eight years later, the technological memory of his preaching was recalled in the place wherein it had been first formed.

The Aural Bible series deals with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures as the written, spoken, and heard word. It explores the cultural articulations and adaptations of the Bible within Judeo-Christian and supernaturalist traditions. The works on the album embark upon a critical, responsive, and interpretive intervention with aspects of their sound culture. 

The project is a collaboration between Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.

The streamed version of the EP is available at: sound.johnharvey.org.uk.


2017

The Remnant that Remaineth (Exodus 26​.​12)

‘The Remnant that Remaineth’ is the second in an occasional series of sonic encounters with abstract painting.

Siân Brophy introduced herself to me in 2017, out of the blue, around the time that she had begun her ‘Numinous Series’ of paintings. This was to be no chance encounter. To my mind, her paintings are spiritual and metaphysical metaphors for two mysteries, the one almost wholly occluded by the other. They are, too, the residual afterimage of a profoundly ‘visionary’ encounter with something, or someone, ‘ineffably sublime’ (to quote George J. Elvey’s hymn).

In her writings, she has spoken of the artworks as a ‘curtain’. More particularly, within the Christian framework that she now occupies, they summon a veil. In the Israelites’ places of worship – the Tabernacle and Temple of Solomon – a veil (Hebrew: יְרִיעָה [curtain]) separated two other mysteries, the one more sacred than the other: the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. The image of that veil (Greek: καταπέτασμα [veil or curtain]) is turned metaphor by the writer to the Hebrews to convey the unmediated access that believers have to God as a consequence of Christ’s atoning sacrifice (Hebrews 10.20). They can now pass ‘through’ (Greek: διά). The same word is used in Christ’s maxim: ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle’ (Matthew 19.24).

My sonic response to Siân’s painting involved, first, converting a digital image of her work into a sound output, using a rudimentary data-bending technique. From this, I extracted material with which to construct a set of chordal drones. In this way, she, through her work, makes a direct and collaborative contribution to the sound composition, albeit under my supervision. The drones’ sonorities were subsequently enlarged, both harmonically and spatially. Thereafter, I superimposed them, in acknowledgement of the manner by which Siân has overlaid the thin veils of pigment on her canvases. Thus, the completed composition is not only a sonic response to the painting but also a sonification of the painting by the painting.

The Aural Bible series deals with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures as the written, spoken, and heard word. It explores the cultural articulations and adaptations of the Bible within Judeo-Christian and supernaturalist traditions. The works on the album embark upon a critical, responsive, and interpretive intervention with aspects of their sound culture. 

The project is a collaboration between the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.

The streamed release of the single is available at: sound.johnharvey.org.uk.


2016

The Bible in Translation / Y Beibl Mewn Cyfieithiad

The works that comprise The Bible in Translation are designedly interpretive and responsive. Broadly speaking, they represent a hermeneutic enquiry that seeks to sympathically elucidate the sources’ semantic content, refocus the evident content, and reveal its subcutaneous significances. In so doing, the compositions intensify, identify, and clarify ideas contained therein, so that the original material may speak of more than its intended meaning. This is not with a view to evaluating, theorizing, or arriving at any conclusions (however they may be construed). Rather, the aim, in part, has been to develop a body of creative engagements with the Bible and its sonic cultures that might inform those disciplines, such as biblical studies and religious studies, which are dedicated to a systematic and deductive analysis.

Disc 1
Image and Inscription is a response to the narrative presented in Exodus 19.1–34.45. It relates the Israelites’ arrival at Mount Sinai amid thunder, lightning, darkness, and earthquakes; the establishment of God’s covenant with his people; his delivery of the Decalogue, laws and ordinances, and repeated prohibition against image making; the Israelites’ fashioning and idolatrous worship of the golden calf; their repentance and God’s punishment of the sin; Moses’ and the elders’ visions of, and encounter with, God; the patriarch’s prolonger confrontation with him on the mount; and, finally, Moses’ radiant return to the people.

Disc 2
The works on the second disc were composed and recorded between 2010 and 2015. Like Image and Inscription, they are settings of written and spoken biblical texts. However, the material for the compositions is far broader, encompassing also aural recordings of scripture reading, teaching, preaching, ministry, radio interviews, music, and the paraphernalia of worship. The endeavour has been to collaborate with and redirect the material to create sound works that remain faithful to the source while extending the boundaries of its original intent.

The Bible in Translation project extends beyond the bounds of this album in four ways. The first is a 57-part sound suite entitled The Floating Bible: Miracle of the Risen Word. Seven hours long, the composition could not be contained within the frame of the double CD. The second is an exhibition of 23 paintings, drawings, and digital works – collectively entitled The Bible in Translation and the third project in The Pictorial Bible series – was first held at the School of Art Galleries, Aberystwyth University (February 16–March 20, 2015). In terms of ideation, process, and method, the exhibition is the visual analogue of the sound works. Thirdly, there is an album of bonus material. And, finally, there is a website describing the rationale for each sound work. (See ‘Guide to compositions’, below.)

The Aural Bible series deals with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures as the written, spoken, and heard word. It explores the cultural articulations and adaptations of the Bible within Judeo-Christian and supernaturalist traditions. The works on the album embark upon a critical, responsive, and interpretive intervention with aspects of their sound culture. 

The project is a collaboration between The National Screen & Sound Archive of Wales and the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.

National Library of Wales: National Screen & Sound Archive of Wales, 2016 (GENCD8003).

The album was made possible with funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales.

A streamed and CD release of the album is available at: sound.johnharvey.org.uk.

CD booklet

Guide to compositions

Sound clips


2015

R R B V E Ǝ T N Ƨ O A

In 2003, a wax cylinder containing a unique recording of a short speech by Evan Roberts, the charismatic figurehead of the Welsh religious revival of 1904-5, was deposited at the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, Aberystwyth. The cylinder had been broken into eleven extant pieces. After a painstaking restoration by an American dentist, it was able to be played during the centenary of the revival. Against the insistent noise of surface clicks and crackles and the rhythm of the stylus as it ploughs through the spinning furrows, the febrile voices of Roberts and a small choir of male singers are discernible. A digitized version of the recording was prepared by a sound studio in Pasadena, California and the British Library, London.

R R B V E Ǝ T N Ƨ O A is the first release in The Aural Bible series. It is a sonic art intervention into, and engagement with, this sound document. The work (divided into twelve pieces) further extends the process by which Roberts’ voice has been subjected to audio recording and playback technologies. The wax cylinder’s sound is re-recorded, recomposed, rearticulated, sampled, and transcribed. In this way, the audio material is fractured once again.

The Aural Bible series deals with the Judaeo-Christian scriptures as the written, spoken, and heard word. It explores the cultural articulations and adaptations of the Bible within Judeo-Christian and supernaturalist traditions. The works on the album embark upon a critical, responsive, and interpretive intervention with aspects of their sound culture. 

The project is a collaboration between The National Screen & Sound Archive of Wales and the School of Art, Aberystwyth University.

National Library of Wales: National Screen & Sound Archive of Wales, 2015 (GENCD8002).

The album was made possible with funding from the Arts Council of Wales.

A streamed and CD release of the album is available at: sound.johnharvey.org.uk.

CD booklet

Guide to compositions

Sound clips