A dynamic cross-cut panel of papers from co-founders of The Tenementals t for the Radical Film Network Conference in Madrid June 2024, platforming diverse and meaningful approaches to experimental documentary filmmaking, which is often referenced in the BDes Sound for Moving Image.

Argo's focus for the RFN was autoethnographic analysis of her creative practice research that explores gender/gestures and psycho-affective properties and cultural genealogy of a theremin and cello, and misogyny in music as well as dialectical analysis of fixed and reproducible texts of a rock band versus the ephemeral and disappearing nature of improvised music. Insights from this practice and the dialogues from the RFN are implemented in the School of Innovation and Technology's undergrate Elective Sonic Worlds: emotion in sound and experimental film, and so available to students across SIT.
(Argo authored: Section 1: Pentimento;
Section 2: fixed and reproducible texts (SONGS) of a rock band / ephemeral and disappearing improvised music; and
Section 3: Does cello queer a rock band? Gendering musical instruments / Rectifying power imbalance in sound")

The dynamic panel was arranged in a cross-cutting between Argo and three fellow academic researchers who also happen to be musicians, a recording engineer and a filmmaker:
• Professor David Archibald from University of Glasgow Film and Theatre department
• Dr. Robert Anderson a prolific drummer who published a PhD situated in Glasgow’s popular music scene
• GSA’s Ronan Breslin
Together we make up around half of the band The Tenementals. We are each presenting our own paper bringing to light the technically innovative methods, educational, and socio-cultural processes of composing, recording and publishing a History of Glasgow in 16 songs.

A key figure referenced in our album Glasgow: A History (Vol I of VI) featured in a song A Passion Flower’s Lament, is La Passionara Statue, one of Glasgow’s monuments for radical resistance of fascism during the Spanish Civil War. We sought to to immerse ourselves in the history of this war, by attending museums and researching with the community in Spain.

In this work, The Tenementals, a mix of experienced musicians and academics, are currently recording sixteen original songs that engage with philosophical approaches to the study of the past, and with the history of Glasgow itself. The plan is to release a double album, which through song, explores the radical side of Glasgow’s history, from militant Suffragettes, militant trades unionist and independence campaigners, famous Clydeside socialists and communists, celebrates the city’s culture of pleasure and excess, interrogates its ongoing entanglements with Empire and slavery, and speculates on where one might find hope in the city.

This paper examines the role of the cello in the recording of Glasgow: A History in 16 Songs. The songs reach across a varied range, from ballads to a glam-infused rock sound, and cello is a fundamental component, rather than merely providing short decorative flourishes or solos. The paper analyses the specific practices of how the cello part was developed from early “demo” fragments of original songs before morphing into a larger experimental sound design practice. Here, expanded techniques were used, such as rough scratching of the bow on the strings to emulate punk guitar riffs, or the building of multiple discordant layers of ghostly hovering on strings on a song about Glasgow’s slavery history. In the recording studio, the cello is even processed through virtual “plugins” charging it through an amplifier and at times imposing reverberant acoustics from real sites in Glasgow. The paper will situate this study within a wider exploration of how musicians such as David Bowie and Queen have combined the raw virility of amplified electric instruments (guitar, bass) and extravagant multitracked vocals across a wide frequency range, with the opulence of classical orchestra segments.

This panel consists of four papers related to an indisciplinary (Ranciere) artistic research project which interrogates the relationship between music and history. Walter Benjamin once suggested that the past does not break down into words but into images: this project asks the question, ‘What might the history of Glasgow sound, look and feel like if it broke down into song?’ In this work, a band of musicians and academics, are currently recording a series of songs that engage with philosophical approaches to the study of the past, and with the history of Glasgow itself. They have also been recording several classic anti-protest songs and creating associated artworks, including music videos (for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaCKKMDRnD0), photographs, creative essays, ephemera, and a feature-length film, thereby constructing an archive of their past-related present, in the interests of the future (Foucault). All four papers are presented by members of the band who take this project as departure points: Archibald theorises how their music might be understood as History; Anderson charts how photographers have documented the drummer figure in the city’s music scene; Argo reflects on the experimental use of the cello in the song-making and recording process; and Breslin offers a micro production study of the specific recording process for this project. As such, the panel reaches out from the songs to bring fresh auto-theoretical perspectives on the making of popular music and how a band can construct a transmedia history of a city.

• Author
• Publisher
• https://radar.gsa.ac.uk/10084/