This page contains a number of recordings and compositions spanning almost two decades  that were made using long wire instruments in a variety of locations. The recordings comprise compositions by Alan Lamb including one previously unreleased, WIRED Lab compositions, demos and short mixes of WIRED Lab events.

Alan Lamb – Beauty (1986)

Alan : “The Faraway Wind Organ was a kilometre of abandoned and forgotten telephone wires in the Great Southern outback. They were on the boundary of ‘Faraway Farm’ where my sister’s husband (Hilland Venn) created a farm out of nothing but outback wilderness. Naturally the whole district became an abandoned desert in time. But Liz and Hill didn’t know that could happen and they got ten good years before the climate change. The Faraway Wind Organ is still my first and only true love ( not counting certain human beings and cats and others). In 1985 The Faraway Wind Organ got zapped by lightning. From my vantage, having known the stuff of the work for 26 years, it is clear the composer is the wind. I collaborated with the wind and together we discovered the most beautiful instrument for the wind to play.”

Alan Lamb – Squeals for Cat (2003)

Alan : “Composed from recordings at the Baldivis Wind Organ Studio. In this piece the wind and I are co-composers. I played the wires in too many ways to tell, and the wind just played as it usually does. I purchased land in Baldivis, Western Australia in 1991, a thirteen acre horse paddock with four giant and ancient trees, I festooned the paddock with kilometres of fencing wire. It was my laboratory where we researched the music that the wires can give and that humans can hear and sing in resonance. We used to come, my friends and I, to play together, we would sing, shout, clap, and rattatatat. So this is just one tiny little piece of the music that we recorded on the Baldivis instrument. This piece makes me think of my dear friend Cat. “

Alan Lamb - Rape of Boorara (2002)

Currently unreleased. Rape of Boorara was triggered by Alan’s visit to the Karri/Jarrah forest at Northcliffe in south west WA sometime around 2000. The loggers had been through and left a trail of devastation in what was a beautiful virgin forest. Alan was so angry that he searched for the most violent recordings that he had ever made, and composed the work as an allegory for the outright state sanctioned vandalism that was going on.

WIRED Lab - WIRED Open Day Minimix (2009)

This is a little mini mix of the WIRED Open Day 2009 performances featuring Garry Bradbury, Alan Lamb, Dave Burraston, Oren Ambarchi and Robin Fox.

WIRED Lab - Flying V Tone Demo (2010)

A short excerpt of some Æolian tones on the Flying V wires. This recording is taken from the eastwest wire.

WIRED Lab - Weather Mix (2009)

A 5 minute weather sounds mix from the Wedding Wires and the Gully Wire. A multi-layered mix of natural weather pattern sonifications : rising and falling wind patterns, rain storms (heard as cracks and pops when water strikes the pickup, and as zaps/pings/crackles as the rain strikes the wire) and wire resonance tones induced by the wind.

WIRED Lab - Flying V Animal (2010)

This recording taken from the eastwest wire of the Flying V. This sound is most likely  a bird perching on the wire. It gives a good idea of the delay line / reverb effect from such a large scale single wire span.

WIRED Lab – Program Mix (2009)

A five minute WIRED Lab program selection :

0:00 – Polybox and Clangers : Alan Lamb & Dave Burraston
0:35 – Bowing on The Wires : Jeff Henderson
1:44 – Shell and Voice into The Wires : Colin Offord
2:35 – Acoustic Pole Recording : Garry Bradbury
3:23 – Dean Frenkel singing and playing at WIRED Open Day recorded by Ian Andrews
4:00 – Epiphany segment for LASER control research : Dave Burraston & Robin Fox

WIRED Lab - Wogarno Impulse Sequence (2008)

Some impulses and percussive effects played on the Wogarno Wires. Recorded by Dave Burraston and Alan Lamb during the Tura Sounds Outback Festival, Australia 2008

WIRED Lab – Thunderstorm-25-10-09 (2009)

Environmental sonification of thunderstorm event 25-10-09 (linear excerpt of 27:31 minutes from the Gully Wire).

WIRED Lab – Rainfall-29-10-09 (2009)

Dave Noyze – The Computational Beauty of Nature II (2009)

The Computational Beauty of Nature II is a mixture of various natural events : the Gully Wire instrument at WIRED Lab in heavy torrential rain, a tennis court fence in light afternoon rain and a series of field recordings by Chris Watson (ants, pistol shrimps, termites & wind in grass).

Dave Noyze - The Computational Beauty of Nature III (2011)

CBON-3 by dave@wiredlab

The Computational Beauty of Nature III is a reworking of part II in 5.1 surround for the Tin Sheds opening at Cootamundra Creative Arts & Cultural Centre 7-10-2011. In this piece there a sections of Aeolian tones mixed with very sparse rainfall on wires and a tennis court fence, and parts of the section of Chris Watsons field recordings: pistol shrimps and wind in grass. This is a stereo mix from the surround version.

Dave Noyze - Hybrid Rechner II (2008)

Dave : “Alan Lamb and I had talked quite extensively about the analogue nature of the brain, and so when the lecture notes arrived we took great delight in reading that von Neumann and his contemporaries were all well aware of this. Of particular interest to us was von Neumann’s critique of the McCulloch and Pitts neural network because it is entirely digital in its approach, and therefore is a tremendous abstraction from what is really going on in our heads… Back in 2006 Alan and I digitised a bunch of DAT recordings he had made of his long wire instrument, which we did in the early hours of the morning in a tiny caravan (much to the annoyance of the park owner who turned up several times telling us to be quiet, but he gave up around 3am). I spent a couple of years editing over 2 hours of this material down to about 1 hour and setup an analogue modular so that it would be controlled by the amplitude and frequency of the wire, the final edit of this material became Hybrid Rechner II – a purely analogue sound, a purely digital capture and edit, a hybrid composition.” The long wire instrument on Hybrid Rechner II is the Pindari Wire and was recorded during the unsound06 festival.