The Noise and Vibration Council
Audible Edge
performed by Jameson Feakes, Josiah Padmanabham, Gracie Smith,
Alex Turner
2022
The Noise and Vibration Council was a commission for Audible Edge 2022
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Josten Myburgh: The Noise and Vibration Council is a research-based pop
organisation. What is research-based pop?
JW: Research-based pop is a loose set of strategies for
generating songs from some kind of research, often drawing from
an archive. In this case, we're using noise complaints from the
1970s and 80s in Perth to create songs about living nearby other
people.
Who’s in the band and what will they be doing?
The live-band wing of the N&VB is Jameson Feakes, Josiah
Padmanabham, Gracie Smith and Alex Turner. They will be
using noise complaints to recreate historical sounds.
What is the motivation behind using noise complaints from the
1970s and 1980s in Perth as source material?
I was looking for sounds that make a paper trail. When
local councils collect complaints they create these strange,
sort-of accidental archives of sounds, feelings, and uses of
space.
There’s also practical reasons for the timespan - it’s between
two pieces of legislation, when governmental departments were
being set up to address annoyance, and were actively encouraging
complaints. It was long enough ago that documents are available
through freedom of information requests and the State Records
Office.
What kinds of noise were folks complaining about the most in
suburban Perth back then?
Traffic, bands playing in pubs or practicing at home, house
parties, radios, amplified spruikers on Hay St, speedways,
church bells, animals, hoodlums.
There’s a lot of complaints about air conditioners. I get the
sense that people are just starting to install them at home, and
those who haven’t are complaining that they have to shut their
windows in Summer because of other people’s noisy AC.
Can you share a favourite noise complaint that you uncovered
in your research?
One of my favourites is a long account of someone walking around
the streets of Vic Park looking for loud radios. Often the music
stops before the complainant finds it, or the people playing
music are happy to turn it off, and then the complainant
dispassionately describes who’s there and where they're
standing. There’s no punctuation and they change subject
impulsively. It’s really poetic. Reading it you feel constantly
disoriented and unresolved. Is that how the writer felt? I can’t
tell.
Photo: Edwin Sitt