Sophie Marritt is a Norwich based artist working with sound, video and painting. Paintings distil sparse landscapes with traces of urbanisation, industry or habitation. Videos capture passing moments, enhanced by temporal distortions and layered sound to create an extended contemplation of place.

For YARMONICS Marritt created the immersive installation ‘submarine’. Composed of a selection of recordings - both processed and in their raw form - from various sources of water in and around Great Yarmouth. The piece can be heard in the crew’s quarters of the extraordinary Lydia Eva; the last surviving steam drifter from Great Yarmouth’s herring fishing fleet. The piece, heard in this unique setting, submerges the listener into a place where thoughts of Great Yarmouth’s past, present and future swim around simultaneously.

For those that couldn’t make the finale of the exhibition, here are recordings from Lauren Doss and David Ross who performed two sets of new music made using samples and loops collected during the exhibition.

Lingering in the Golden Gleam. Heavy Lifting A new Open Music Archive project curated by originalprojects. The project collects, records, digitises, distributes and reanimates pre-1963 out-of-copyright sounds from Great Yarmouth’s pop music heyday. Launched with a special remix performance by Heavy Lifting as part of Yarmonics. Open Source structure for archive digitisation, broadcast and remix performance designed with 51 architecture was original created for Play it Again! Use it Together at Victoria Gallery & Museum in 2018. Reinstalled at Ex Marks The Spot in the former Marks and Spencer's building in the heart of Gt. Yarmouth Town Centre. Plinth, Broadcast Tower, Baffles, Listening Booth, Archiving Desk, Live Desk designed and made by Catherine du Toit, Peter Thomas, Anderson Inge, Ben White, Eileen Simpson, Daniel Thomas du Toit, Thomas Smethurst and Ben Weeks.

Lingering In The Golden Gleam is a project from originalprojects; which was launched alongside YARMONICS (2019) on the 21st September.

Lingering in the Golden Gleam is a project by Open Music Archive, exploring the musical heritage of Great Yarmouth around the limit of time when music is currently free from copyright (1962).

Open Music Archive will be digitising sounds from records from the era and also from musicians who played on them. These sounds will then be given to contemporary musicians to create new music from that will also be copyright free.

The first of the new music will be performed by Heavy Lifting as part of Yarmonics 2019 with further performances to be announced.

There will also be a display of memorabilia kindly loaned by Peter Jay from Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers.

Open Music Archive is a collaborative project, initiated by artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White, to source, digitise and distribute out-of-copyright sound recordings.

This project was made possible with funding from the National Heritage Lottery Fund and originalprojects; would like to thank National Lottery players and The National Lottery Heritage Fund for their support in this exciting project that will give some of the musical history of Great Yarmouth a new life.

Ear of the Edgeland Ep.2 / Breydonsound.

On the 7th May we visited a bird hide overlooking a resplendent Breydon Water to record author and curator, Sarah Lowndes in conversation with Yarmouth-based painter, Bruer Tidman.

The conversation is punctuated with glorious music from artist and musician, Jason Parr (whose sound sculpture 'Vibrational Smile Generator' was shown at last years Yarmonics). It also includes field recordings of Breydon Water, Burgh Castle and from under Breydon bridge, made by Richard Fair and Oliver Payne.

In contrast to Broadsound, the second episode in this series looks more toward the social history of Breydon Water and Great Yarmouth, through personal stories and ideas around artists working in rural environments.

Breydonsound was generously funded by Water, Mills and Marshes: the Broads Landscape Partnership and produced in partnership with originalprojects;

Breydonsound is the second in a series of podcasts taking an explorative and alternative look at the county of Norfolk. This second episode features Gorleston based painter, Bruer Tidman in conversation with artist and writer, Sarah Lowndes in a bird hide overlooking Breydon Water. The first part of Breydonsound focuses on the social history of the area, through stories and ideas emerging from Bruer's time spent living in and around Yarmouth, before the pair discuss the inherent magic and appeal of this landscape and the broads more widely. Breydonsound features a recording of 'Goodbye Dad' by Yarmouth based, Jason Parr (recorded in new Yarmouth galelry, Ex Marks the Spot) and a piece taken from his most recent release 'Bubble and Squeak'. Ear of the Edgeland Ep.2 / Breydonsound was produced by Oliver Payne for the Norfolk and Norwich Sonic Arts Collective in partnership with originalprojects;. Field Recordings of Burgh Castle made by Richard Fair, recordings from under Breydon flyover made by Oliver Payne. We are extremely grateful to the Broads Landscape Partnership's 'Water, Mills and Marshes' project for funding this project.

The Norfolk and Norwich Sonic Arts Collective are delighted to share ‘Broadsound’; the first in a series of podcasts called ‘Ear of the Edgeland’ that takes an explorative and alternative look at Norfolk.

This first episode features naturalist, Mark Cocker and writer, Jean McNeil as they observe the landscape whilst on the 12:36 train from Norwich to Great Yarmouth.

Also featured is new music by Surlingham based duo The Happy Couple (David Ross and Judith Goodman) which was recorded in Surlingham church. Accompanying the music are beautiful binaural field recordings made by Ollie Hall and Richard Fair.

We’re extremely grateful to Water, Mills and Marshes: the Broads Landscape Partnership for funding this wonderful project.

Colchester based experimental music ensemble, CLIP have released a video of the making of their glorious performance of In (the) C, premiered at YARMONICS.

https://www.facebook.com/clipsoundandmusic/videos/1006785252842206/

As well as producing the excellent ‘Yarcade’, sound artist Stuart Bowditch also recorded a selection of performances during YARMONICS.

Whole performances can be listened to at Stuart’s Soundcloud page here.

A selection of recordings made of some of the performances at Yarmonics sonic arts festival in Great Yarmouth 2018. The performances were either outside (beach, jetty, street) or in the minster and I placed my recorder (a Marantz PMD561) somewhere in the vicinity of the musicians whilst also enjoying the performances myself.