Afterwards - Arkiv and Addenda.
After 144 - Arkiv

Arkiv 15 - Perpetuum Mobile Live -
Lightning Strikes Thrice


Arkiv 15 - Perpetuum Mobile live - Lightning Strikes Thrice - a relic from my studio Archive. Self as ‘Perpetuum Mobile’ - my stage name as a Stage percussionist as a sideline to my Visual Art at a hundred fairs and shows. A PM Performance Live.

Lightning Strikes Thrice - Rh Arkiv - quite where I’m not sure now but I recorded it and it’s Early - I know that from the style. a display - a performance. That’s what makes it a Perpetuum piece - it is what I did as an exhibition performer - in Four Exhibition pieces. I deliberately haven’t cut them into four tracks simply because I hate that done to live music - it’s long - it’s indulgent - it’s a relic. I’m ‘Showing out’ to co-opt an old phrase. I was something of a Peacock - indulging the moment and I still do. It belongs to my earliest recording days. Not so very long after I - as Perpetuum Mobile & The Artist that I lived as - took the Big Stage at my home town’s University for a Evening’s recital. An event set in their seasons Arts Programme.

I persuaded them to let me do it and had proved to them that I could with a free lunch time recital a week or so before. There is a BBC recording of my promoting it with live to air music my first ever recording - preserved now on my second album.

It was a big move for me - sitting alone on a stage in front of several hundred people who had all paid to be there - entertaining them with Drum percussion alone - with table full of instruments but soloing with each in turn - my notion of a Drum music - and they liked it - I was a hit [pardon the pun]. I proved it could be done. My idea of a Drum music, where the drum itself provided the material Fabric of a notional music, was proven. Sadly this was not recorded - like thousands of hours of private playing it just went to the ether. I couldn’t book the sound recordist I knew I had left it too late. The idea though was to play not to record.


Afterwards a man in the audience, Takuni S. came up to me and said ‘I’ve got a recording studio - would you like to use it’. Well did I ever - an immortal phrase that would change my life. Days later we recorded my first album in one afternoon as Perpetuum Mobile’s first album now called DCM1 - Inventions for Shamanic Drum [a large American frame drum I had borrowed for the Big recital].

Now I had documented proof of my notion of a Drum music. We had two more sessions and started to records a second album. I started to feel I could do better.

Weeks later I have my own studio - small but perfectly formed - contact mikes and mobile didgi-recorders. Steeling a moment was easy - it went everywhere with me and became a big feature in my working life. I had now effectively left Art for Music. Drum music or Dm became my first Genre or tranche - the first of five - in notional sets I thought of as ‘albums.’ 20 or so I collected together and for safety gave a copy to a friend ‘Cherry’ as I called her Cheryl L. That unordered set of Albums I called Red Cherry.

Later I ordered them into blocks of my five Genres in order of their foundation. This I called ‘Blue Cherry’ and it became my First Group. So my First 7 albums are now Drum music - Dm Albums.

Somehow - somewhere, set this was recorded and rejected as - just a display of movement and timing and that it has in spades. A million moments to enjoy if you wish to - given what followed over the years - it was instructive - in its way. Ladies and Gentlemen - my early self.


At the end of my work, I am closing down my five Genres or Tranches. There remained though some lost pieces that needed to be included. So I felt each Genre should have an Arkiv of its own. Three of my five Genres needed such a space - hence Dm [Drum music] - Phm [Phase music] and Em [electronic music] have three, one and two albums respectively - to be placed after the Album 144 Summing for an end - set ‘on a shelf’ as it were - as kind of a last hurrah for those said Genres - which have served their purpose now. I delight in that German Spelling.

For my 113th Album I created a box of 14 Discs [by convention] of Arkiv pieces - with a yellow DCM cover. This is my central published Archive. So now at the very end of my work following all of the above there are Six Yellow jacketed Arkiv Discs, that number off from my Box of Delights - Hence 15 - 20, to be consistent with he 14 discs in the Box of Delights.


- Arkiv structure -

[] Album 113 - Arkiv - A Box of Delights (14 discs)


[] Album 144 - Summing for an end - Box A - C (9 discs)


[] Dm Arkiv 1 - Seven Early Studies

[] Dm Arkiv 2 - Seven Inventions for Mixed Percussion

[] Dm Arkiv 3 - Sometime Live (4 Discs)

[] Phm Arkiv 1 - Fonejackker

[] Em Arkiv 1 - What number added to one

[] Em Arkiv 2 - Electra Version B


[] Arkiv 15 - Perpetuum Mobile Live

[] Arkiv 16 - One Afternoon in April

[] Arkiv 17 - Ho Hum Studies

[] Arkiv 18 - Julian and Camilla - Close now

[] Arkiv 19 - Julian and Maria

[] Arkiv 20 - Day Floressent


So on this ‘shelf’ of my works, as it were : as my British Library Edition - we will have my 143 albums - the five working Genres though the five Chronological Groups including the Arkiv Box at 113. Then as Album 144 we have the 3 boxes ‘Summing for an end’. Following that are six blue jacketed Arkiv albums - the Dm, Phm and the Em Arkiv and 6 yellow jacketed Arkiv albums. Toping off all that are my 21 Collaborations and all their albums - indexed A - U. And that is my life. What anybody will ever make of it I can’t say - suffice to say it is.