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.

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…”

Contact Us for more detail, pricing and tech specs.

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.

Burning Bright – An Illuminated Bestiary
We are looking for partners and co-conspirators to help develop new work for processional performance. Burning Bright: an Illuminated Bestiary; is one such idea.
We envisage this project as ranging from small to large scale work:

• An intimate, touring show inside the mouth of a Leviathan: with live soundtrack and music, puppets, video and illuminations. Watch as the Ghost Zoo is born from the Belly of The Beast and join in a mini parade of animated detritus, as it emerges from the Leviathan’s nether regions…
• A grand street delirium summoning giants, creatures and beasts from the edges of science and the wild lands of the imagination… From the forests of the night and the sinews of the heart is forged a totemic menagerie: A Paleolithic Whale-Ark of Shadows; The Mudskipper Chorus; The Bioluminescent Ghost of an Elk; The Last Industrial Tyger in Britain; The Owl Carousel; A Constellation of Deep Sea Horns; and others yet unknown…

We want to engage directly, viscerally and generously with audiences, and have ideas we would like to research & explore around: high intensity animation and performance of beasts, puppets and devices; mobile sound sources and generation; LED, electro-luminescent and other low voltage lighting; integrating fire, pyrotechnics and special effects into parades and much more.

“it is vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves…it is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive in us, that inspires that dream” Henry Thoreau
 

“One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea monsters and mighty plants live in the bed rock of our spirits” Ben Okri

Welcome to the Isle of Noise: Tim Hill’s ongoing investigations into the history of noise, celebration, protest and outdoor music making.

It’s Wassail time, and Tim Hill’s been busy scaring evil spirits away from the Orchards of Somerset and Devon. He’s pictured above with the Big Noise street Band at a wassail in Taunton. All hail the Mighty Apple, and the golden alchemy of Cider! The orchard knows a thing or two…