Duncan Harrison

Duncan Harrison - Nothing’s Good.

Index Clean. IC-011. CD

Duncan Harrison - Preamble to Nihil

Cassette

Duncan Harrison - Life Is Not A Succession of Major Events

Cassette

Duncan Harrison - Something Approaching Zero

A5 zine.

I’ve never met, spoken to or otherwise had anything to do with Duncan Harrison but I still feel I know him. Not that I’m in constant contact via the DM’s or the PM’s. Such is the social media world we live him his name crops up all the time and I think I may have even seen him play live in a charity shop once as part of the Colour Out Of Space fringe. After visiting his Soundcloud page I can adjudge that he’s a vegetarian who works in a vegetarian restaurant in Brighton, this because the first two tracks on his Soundcloud page are of Harrison phoning his local radio station to talk e-coli in salad and how to spot when an avocado’s ripe. I’m making an assumption here, he may be a meat eater who works in a vegetarian restaurant, this is Brighton after all. Then again … no.

The fact that the fist two tracks on Harrison’s Soundcloud page are of him phoning his local radio station to discuss food related issues impresses me immensely. That another track on there is a drunken recording of himself and Dylan Nyoukis wandering the streets of London looking for alcohol is another ten pound sledge-hammer through the floor of common sense. Its saying ‘yes I have a Soundcloud page [and a Bandcamp one too obvs], doesn’t everybody, but the first things you’re going to hear is me and ultra charm local radio DJ talking e-coli in salad and then me having a good time in the Cafe Oto toilet with Mr Brotzmann. Not like that you’ll understand, just a little bit of good time gurgling and skronking. Put that in your organic pitta bread halloumi wrap with chia and cress and shove it where the monkey shoves its hickory smoked almonds.

The real dirt comes from the hands of the man himself; an A5 booklet containing prose and poetry, two cassettes and a CD that you could easily put into the hands of someone wanting to know more about where noise is at in 2019 and say ‘here you go, it’s all there, just apply brain and go enjoy yourself’. If I were to place these on an Olympic finishing podium ‘Life Is Not A Succession of Major Events’ would get bronze, ‘Preamble to Nihil’ the silver and the CD ‘Nothing’s Good’ the clear winner with the awardee reciting words from the ‘Something Approaching Zero’ while putting on all three gongs on a hopping about Harrison head.

In Harrison’s sound world ‘Life is Not a Succession …’ is the one where he records the Rupenus brothers taking his house apart while he sits at the top of the bare staircase throwing cricket balls through the front door and out into the street as seagulls squawk and cars go by. ‘Preamble to Nihil’ meanwhile is where things become a little more eclectic, where amongst a myriad of other sounds, he impersonates a dripping tap, skronks on a horn, blows wildly down a tenor recorder, chops up tape edits of his own voice, loops clanking noise and offers up field recordings of church bells and church organ music that had me in such a melancholic mood that I had to keep telling myself that this was the same person who started the tape. There was noise too, noise that sounded like it was recorded at an expensive, totally exclusive French recording studio with Iannis Xennakis at the controls.

By now we not only know that Harrison has intimate knowledge of e-coli in salad ['wash, wash and wash again'] and the toilet at Cafe Oto but that his world, his soundworld, encompasses everything from Dictaphone-iste gabber to full bore noise works. Thanks to these few tapes and his website [whose first page shows a photo of Harrison outside the gates of Strawberry Fields in Liverpool but turned 90 degrees left and chopped so that you only see half his head] we can also deduce that he’s quite happy listening to Sergeant Pepper as he is knocking up vegan wraps as he is getting drunk with Nyoukis while extolling the virtues of the sound glass marbles make while rolling them around the palm of your hand.

Which is what you get to hear on ‘Nothing’s Good’. Three very different tracks that feel like total compositions in their own right. The first of which involves the detail to be found in Dictaphone mouth squelch, the second, a lo-fi noise movement of sorts where a rusty bucket passes for a Tibetan drone bowl before all the crockery left over from the jumble sale gets smashed to pieces in it, and then all the keys on the keyboard held down while moaning a Brighton mantra before chipping out with a hacking cough. At times it sounds like Harrison is firing a high pressured jet of water into that rusty bucket while expertly manipulating the sounds so that they sound like mini stars exploding and reverberating into the English Channel, like TNB with a vegan vibe. The final, shorter track is book-ended by Harrison reading his poetry whilst in the middle of it all appears a gentle drone made from stuck stylus fluff and a gentle looping. All this thrown under the wheels of a microphone struggling to cope with the noise generated by a blizzard.   

Harrison is one of those people for whom sound is found everywhere. It’s the John Cage quote about the world having an abundance of free music, you just have to stop and listen to what’s around you to appreciate it. Harrison adds to this soundworld by recording himself moaning about his neighbours constant playing of Metallica, by recording marbles going around in his hand, by blowing wildly into a treble recorder, by listening intently to the barely audible click of a stuck needle in a run-off groove. I bet he makes a mean bean burger too.

https://www.duncanharrison.co.uk/