2010 - NEWS
Another new year, and although no new year party this time, there is a brand new LP, released on the cusp of the year and available (in very limited numbers) from our brand new shop, along with several other Parking Non-Stop (and related) items.
2009 - RECORDINGS AND TRAVELS
Following the success of the previous year's event, 2009 kicked off with another January 2nd party at the Anglesey Arms Hotel in Menai Bridge, this time in the distinguished company of Factory Star, the new group formed by ex-Fall and Blue Orchids founder Martin Bramah, playing what was only their second ever gig. The new year party atmosphere was further enhanced by sets by Facefish, Duncan Black and Wrightoid.
The group were also very excited to learn that New York's most prestigious publication The Village Voice had voted 'Species Corridor' equal 776th best album of 2008 in their end of year poll, alongside such higher profile releases as Robert Plant & Alison Krauss's Raising Sand and Antony & the Johnsons' Another World!
The year proved to be yet another busy one for Parking Non-Stop, both collectively and individually. The group played five live events during the course of the year, including The Drones Club's 5th birthday party in London, a special Burst Couch event in a church in Chorlton, and a couple of dates in Germany. In addition, Dewi worked on several multi media projects, including composing and recording the soundtrack to Jacqueline Rice's film You and Your Sister... and collaborating with the dancer and choreographer Hannah Morris and musician and composer Sarah Anderson on Pearl and Dean... and Irene, which was premiered in July outside the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. Zoë travelled to Krakow and Ljubljana to work on her Metropoetica project, initiating collaborative responses to city space by international female poets, and gave many readings around the UK throughout the year. Zoë and Alan also gave further performances of Remains of a Future City at the Berlin Poetry Festival, Ars Poetica in Bratislava and at the AWEN International Festival of Poetry and Film in Cardiff.
The year ended with another release, a split vinyl LP on the German independant label Pure Pop For Now People. The record was pressed in a strictly limited edition of 100 individually numbered copies in handmade sleeves, and featured one long track on each side. The Cologne group Temple of the Beeheads take up one side with their piece Amiga Mandala, while Parking Non-Stop contribute a nineteen minute version of live favourite Cold Star, featuring a guest appearance by the Slovenian poet Gregor Podlogar.
2008 - RELEASE AND PERFORMANCE
2008 started off with Parking Non-Stop's first ever hometown concert. It took place at the Anglesey Arms Hotel in Menai Bridge on January 2nd, and also included live sets from Annalogue (the solo project of Ectogram's Ann Matthews), free-improv ensemble Koo and singer-songwriter Wrightoid, together with performance art and films from Wanda Zyborska. Wrightoid joined Parking Non-Stop on stage for a performance of his composition Yellow Blue, and poet Rhys Trimble joined them to perform his poem Aros.
The main event of the year is of course, the long awaited release of the Parking Non-Stop CD album Species Corridor. The CD contains 14 tracks constructed from recordings made by the group over the past 9 years and is released on the Klangbad label on August 15th. Full details can be found on the album page here. Reviews of the album can be found on the reviews page here.
In addition to these full PN-S activities, Alan and Zoë once again performed 'Remains of a Future City' in a couple of international festivals: In June they travelled up to the Arctic Circle to perform at the Nødutgang Festival in Bodø, Norway, where they were joined on stage by Norwegian sound artist Lasse Jensen, with Norwegian translations of Zoë's texts by Arne Østring read by our old friend Ronny Wærnes. In August, they appeared at the Dnevi Poezije in Vina festival in the small Slovenian town of Medana, this time with Slovenian translations and readings by the poet Gregor Podlogar. As always, these trips also yielded a wealth of field recordings which will no doubt form part of a basis for the next collection of PN-S recordings.
A full Parking Non-Stop version of 'Remains of a Future City' was also performed in Manchester on June 21st, as part of the Territories Reimagined: International Perspectives psychogeography festival. A composite recording of this performance and the Nødutgang performance is available here .
Species Corridor was launched on September 12th with the second hometown performance of the year, again at the Anglesey Arms Hotel, this time in the excellent company of Black Balloons, Mank and Pearl Necklace.
Our friend and collaborator Andy Wilson released the excellent The Grand Erector album in October. This unique project is comprised entirely of contributed sound recordings, manipulated and patchworked by Andy into an intricate and luminescent lattice of crystalline beauty. Parking Non-Stop contributed a selection of field recordings to the project and Zoë can also be heard reading a text prepared by Andy. The entire pressing of 100 heavy vinyl copies sold out immediately, but the album is still available as an mp3 download from Pure Pop For Now People.
2007 - PERFORMANCE AND FESTIVALS
The early part of 2007 was devoted to finishing off Parking Non-Stop's forthcoming album Species Corridor, to be released by Klangbad in 2008.
Dewi's project with performance artist / dancer Eddie Ladd, 'Cof y Corff/Muscle Memory' was performed Royal Opera House 2 in London. Zoë also had an operatic encounter on a Songlines project for Welsh National Opera in Cardiff.
One snowy day in February, Alan and Zoë joined the artists of the OIntment collective for a day of site-specific response in a secret underground location in Snowdonia. They made recordings in total darkness, where Alan found some interesting percussion sounds and Zoë improvised some vocals that formed the basis of a new song.
In May, Alan and Zoë joined Martin Zet for a collaborative performance in Studio Rubin, Prague, in which Alan presented a composition made from the previous summer's recordings in Dul Mayrau while Zoe and Martin performed parts of Martin's text Weltrevolution and Martin showed a film. There was also a performance in which Alan manipulated urban field recordings along with Zoë's 'Remains of a Future City' texts in English, with Czech translations by Eva Klimentova. The Czech was read by Alexandra Büchler of Literature Across Frontiers, who organized the event. Alan and Zoë were especially delighted to be performing alongside two excellent sound (etc.) poets, Leevi Lehto from Finland and Eduard Escoffet from Catalonia.
In July, Zoë performed Remains of a Future City with Ronny Wærnes and Andy Wilson at Schiphorst Avant-Garde Festival, looping and treating her vocals in partly in English and partly in pre-recorded German translation by Monika Rinck & Nicholas Grindell performed (in advance) by Astrid Ensslin. Ronny and Andy made thunderous noise from contact-miked small objects and field recordings.
Staying in Germany, Zoë and Alan then met up with Dewi for Klangbad Festival, Scheer, in August, where Parking Non-Stop played their hottest gig yet (literally) in a sweltering tent in the early afternoon.
2006 - TRAVELS AND RECORDINGS
Much activity this year was focused on completing recordings for an album release but PN-S members also found time for continued explorations.
In June, Parking Non-Stop played at Allen Ginsberg's 80th birthday party in Llangoed Village Hall.
In August, Alan and Zoë visited the Czech artist Martin Zet, whom they first encountered at Ars Poetica in Bratislava. The launch of his exhibition 'Neighbourhood' in the disused mine at Dul Mayrau near Prague was an opportunity to explore the sonic potential of this crumbling industrial space through impromptu performance and recording.
Dewi spent some time in remotest Scotland working on a commission for the Royal Opera House.
Zoë made a brief visit to Montreal in November, where she performed poems at the annual Salon du Livre and made some recordings of city ambience.
2005 - COLLABORATIONS AND TRAVELS
Parking Non-Stop spent much of 2005 involved in collaboration with other artists. In April, Alan and Zoë visited Dutch writer Bas Kromhout at his home in Den Haag, where they recorded various household appliances in his flat. Recordings of Bas's refrigerator and gas fire were then interwoven with sounds from PN-S's own plumbing system to create an international domestic symphony. This was then overlaid with some of Dewi's most cinematic string arrangements, along with Bas's reading of J.C. Bloem's poem "Altjid November" and Zoë's responses to the poem. The resulting piece will appear on the forthcoming Parking Non-Stop album.
The following month, they headed off to Bosnia to appear at the Sarajevski Dani Poezije festival in Sarajevo. Here, Zoë's texts were translated into Bosnian by the poets Mario Hibert and Islada Sertovic and performed bilingually at the festival by the writer Zlatan Persic with Parking Non-Stop. Recordings of the extended work "Formula For A New City" read in Bosnian by Zlatan Persic were made later that week in the park immediately adjacent to the site where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on June 28th 1914.
Dewi, meanwhile was busy collaborating with performance artist Eddie Ladd in productions in Madrid, Montreal, Ljubljana and La Norville (near Paris), where he managed to slip in an extra Parking Non-Stop performance.
Back on home territory, the full 3-piece Parking Non-Stop continued their series of collaborations by improvising a live accompaniment to renowned Welsh poet Robert Minhinnick, as well as performing their own set, at Llandudno town hall on the 12th of July.
In a further ongoing collaboration, they continued working with Annie Stubbs from London wicca group Devotion. One completed piece took the form of an evocative homage to the mythical lorelai of Germanic folklore, featuring a quite otherworldly vocal performance from Annie, and is set to appear on a forthcoming album of her recent work. She is perhaps best known as a one-time member of pioneering industrialists SPK, and has also worked with Lustmord, The Long Decline, The Zuggs, 11th Hour, Blow By Blow, The Dekorators, Aquarelle, Pillow Talk and The Ominous Dr Cip-Clop (amongst others).
2004 - A YEAR OF LIVE PERFORMANCE
2004 was a surprisingly busy year on the live front for Parking Non-Stop. As well as supporting Einstürzende Neubauten at Dublin's Temple Bar Music Centre on 4th April, the group played at Camden People's Theatre in London, The Green Man festival in Baskerville Hall, Theatr Gwynedd in Bangor, the Ucheldre Cente in Holyhead, and Wrexham Nursing College before vemturing further afield for an appearance at the Ars Poetica festival & conference in Bratislava, Slovakia on the 1st of October. They took the opportunity to make some further Slovak field recordings before returning home to Anglesey for their third visit to Holyhead's Ucheldre Centre to take part in an event entitled "A Glimpse Of Ethania", curated by the enigmatic Johnny R and also featuring performances from Duncan Black, Nixon & Jarvis, Cut 23, Waxwane, Mank and others.
Alan and Zoë finished the year off by returning to Gloucester Guildhall as part of The Serpents to take part in the Ochre Ten festival on October 30th, before setting off to continental Europe to team up with Einstürzende Neubauten again, this time as part of their 200 piece choir, for a performance at Berlin's Palast der Republik (the ex-DDR parliament building) on November 3rd.
[ Intro | Current | Location | Performance | Sounds | Collaborators | Words | Links | Eating | Reviews | Shop ]
