Some Morning by UNION WIRELESS

Union Wireless are releasing a new single, 'Some Morning', their first release since last year's 'Mid-Tonal Tracking' EP. The A-Side is taken from the group's forthcoming, as yet untitled, album and showcases their increasing moves towards using more orchestral instruments in a live band.

'Some Morning' has clarinet and viola swooping over an acoustic guitar and bass backing to create a smooth, lazy kind of feeling. It's the gentlest song Union Wireless have released so far, musically and lyrically describing a lethargic, blissfully wasted morning.
The b-side, 'Five Stories' is the result of a collaboration with a group of London-based performance artists. It includes five short songs, each based on different instruments that have been used as the soundtrack to a multi-media installation in galleries in London, and plans are being made to exhibit it in other galleries around the UK. One of the artists, Angelica Fernando, provided the front cover photograph.

This performance explores the theme of combining fragmented elements from different contexts into a coherent whole. It is a process that combines performance, sculpture and music to create a piece that uses familiar items in an unorthodox manner to demonstrate the re-assembling of elements in a visual, musical and linguistic sense.
The process revolves around combining a number of turntables in order to create a new instrument. Two operators place a record on each of the turntables and prepare cones made of different materials that incorporate text, each fixed with a needle and placed onto the rotating records. Arrays of cones are progressively built up on all the turntables creating a mixture of repetitive sound loops. These sound loops create a sound collage that in time will appear coherent, almost mantra-like, to the listener/viewer.

It is an open-ended piece that the audience are invited to interact with. The piece constitutes a number of individual tableaux that compliment each other: the cones placed on the turntables form distinct arrangements; the musical loops create an extra sound dimension; and descriptive text on the cones in turn emphasize the central theme of combining elements from different contexts into a coherent whole.

The piece was originally performed at Dalston Studios (October 1997) employing found music. This version of the piece is an extension that employs music specially written for the piece and pressed onto vinyl. Union Wireless composed a number of pieces (collectively called "Five Stories") that were intended to work on three distinct levels: as individual compositions; as a single piece of music involving five 'movements'; and as five complimentary sound excerpts that can be combined together in loops to create a layered sound effect.

Angelica Fernando has exhibited in the UK (including the Cut Gallery, the Barbican and the Alternative Arts Gallery), Poland and Japan. Much of her work has been based around the multi-layering of meaning and image, facilitated by progression through a series of media.