Early 2018 and I’m resting up in the Boneyard with a broken leg and broken shoulder. Looking for creative things to do whilst the bony splitters slowly glue themselves back together I re-visited an old design from years ago – an Osteoscope – a device designed to send artistic probes deep into a broken bone… Well, we turned it on, cranked up the Ossilator, primed the mythic confungulator and fired a series of Ortho-Sonic probes into the fractures before they fully healed.

We have the audio readings in & are now in a position to reveal some of the results. Specialists we consulted likened the recordings to:

1. The radio station playing on a fossilized car stereo half buried in a bone littered beach on the sea of dreams
2. The soundtrack to an imaginary film about phantom scientists driving dodgems on a giddy carousel
3. A plea for help from a submerged mythical village as it rises out of the mist once a year.

Well, another year and February has it’s cold damp filaments lurking around your extremities, the Accountants of Gloom are clattering away at their spreadsheets, there is a surplus of Grey and even the windows look like they want to pack up and go home early. The instinct to hibernate inside the Boneyard is strong; curl up under a pile of old rags and nestle in to the rusty treasure, pull a bin lid onto your head and style it out like a sleeping Clanger. While we’re here we’ll tidy up the Boneyard a little, throw out the rotting unidentified bits and buff up the precious things. You never know, if we save up enough old screws and nuts and bolts for the Iron Chicken, she might lay an egg for us in the Spring…

Below: Design for a Machine to Ward Off the Accountants of Gloom

Burning Bright is a night-time procession for street, town & festival sites. From the forests of the night and the sinews of the heart comes a scrapyard menagerie of illuminated beasts & creatures accompanied by musical towers, performers, lights, & pyrotechnics. Forged in the wild places of the human imagination, Burning Bright combines high intensity animation of beasts & puppets; live music and sound and dazzling, atmospheric pyrotechnics. This is a bestiary that roars out from the page and onto the streets in a constellation of energy and delight.

Contact Us for more detail, pricing and tech specs.

Tatterdemalion Grove is a world to wander in day and night, a wasteland garden of kinetic sculptures and animated detritus, for green or empty spaces, festival sites, abandoned car parks and urban wastelands. The installation features the Umbrella Tree, an absurd mechanical contraption of motor driven umbrellas and the Hurly Burly, a mobile sound sculpture, sonic amusement and junkyard delirium.

Inside the grove we will be a menagerie of small synthesizer and sound making devices; a collaboration with Farmer Glitch, creator of bespoke hand held electronic instruments. These will be hanging from carousels & structures and with both portable & static speakers we will create an ever changing live soundtrack & audio playground. The Grove will involve workshop and interactive elements, for example culminating in a noisy Wassail and communal performance every evening.

Contact us for more details, pricing & tech specs.

Skimmity is a processional delirium of wild music, mobile towers & sound sculptures, pyrotechnics and performers. Drawing on traditions of noise in ritual and celebration, free jazz, street music and sound art, Skimmity brings a right riotous racket to your streets.

“Strange noises fill the air: the skronk of the saxophone, the thunderous funk of percussion, the parping of horns, hooting of sirens, clanging of bells and wafting columns of coloured smoke announce the arrival of Skimmity…”

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Short video of our new mechanical sculpture/installation – The Umbrella Tree, available to hire now for festivals and events, in urban or landscape settings. Email us for more details.

UmbrellaTree from Rag and Bone on Vimeo.

New video footage of our Pandamonium Parade, filmed at Spare Parts, Fleetwood Festival of Transport in July 2015.

Rag & Bone – The Pandemonium Parade (Spare Parts Festival, Fleetwood – July 2015) from Rag and Bone on Vimeo.