Peter Cusack (musician)
Peter Cusack is an artist and musician who is a member of CRiSAP, and is a research staff member and founding member of the London College of Communication in the University of the Arts London. He was a founding member and director of the London Musicians' Collective.
He is best known as a member of the avant garde musical quartet, Alterations, and the creator of field and wildlife recording-based albums including:
- Where Is the Green Parrot? with tracks like "Toy Shop " and "Siren", which are just as advertised.
- Day for Night, with Max Eastley. This features "duets" between Eastley's kinetic sculpture and Cusack's field recordings.
- Baikal Ice, featuring tracks like "Banging Holes In Ice" and "Floating Icicles Rocked By Waves" and "Falling In".
He is currently research fellow on the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's multidisciplinary 'Positive Soundscapes Project'.
Musical interests
Cusack is particularly interested in environmental sound and acoustic ecology. He has examined the sound properties of areas such as Lake Baikal, Siberia, and the Azerbaijan oil fields, and is interested in how sounds change as people migrate and as technology changes.In 1998, Cusack started the "Your Favorite London Sound" project. The goal is to find out what London noises are found appealing by people who live in London. This was so popular that it has been repeated in Chicago, Beijing, and other cities. He is involved in the "Sound & The City" art project using sounds from Beijing in October 2005.
Cusack's Sounds From Dangerous Places is a project to collect sounds from sites which have sustained major environmental damage. Sites that Cusack is working on include Chernobyl, the Azerbaijan oil fields, and areas around controversial dams on the Tigris and Euphrates river systems in south east Turkey.
Cusack's performances are a central part of the book Haunted Weather: Music, Silence, and Memory by his old collaborator and respected music critic and author, David Toop. Toop investigates the use of environmental sound and electronic instruments in experimental music in his book.
Other performances
With clarinetist Simon Mayo, he formed the duo known as "A Touch of the Sun". His first "major" recording was part of Fred Frith's 1974 record, "Guitar Solos".He was one of the first to play the bouzouki in England, which gained him the respect of London's musical avant garde.
As a musician, he has collaborated with artists such as Clive Bell, Nic Collins, Alterations, Chris Cutler, Max Eastley, Evan Parker, Hugh Davies, Annette Krebs and Eastern Mediterranean singer Viv Corringham.
A live performance with Nicolas Collins was released as "A Host, of Golden Daffodils" in 1999.
Selected Reviews
- Voila Enough! 1979–1981
- Baikal Ice
- Where is the Green Parrot?
- Day for Night
- Your Favourite London Sounds
Activities related to music
In 1975 Derek Bailey, Steve Beresford, Max Boucher, Paul Burwell, Jack Cooke, Peter Cusack, Hugh Davies, Madelaine and Martin Davidson, Richard Leigh, Evan Parker, John Russell, David Toop, Philipp Wachsmann and Colin Wood formed the journal MUSICS, later described as "an impromental experivisation arts magazine".
Cusack produces the monthly radio program "Vermilion Sounds" with Isobel Clouter. Vermilion Sounds explores environmental sounds and is broadcast by Resonance FM in London. John Levack Drever, writing in Soundscape, comments:
Other projects
- Soundlines: City of London Festival educational project on music and environmental sound in East London schools.
- Baku, 5 Quarters at the University of Baku, Azerbaijan. This was a collaboration with Swiss video artist Ursula Biemann in 2004.
- Urban Grime, exhibition at the Museum of London Sept 2003 to Jan 2004
- Send+Receive Festival performance & workshops, Winnipeg, Canada 2004:
- LMC Guitar Festival performances, Museum of Garden History, London 2004
- Frère Jacques et autres pièces à Francis: Expositions. 1997. Saint-Fons, with Ron Haselden, a British artist living in the French town of Brizard, in Brittany. This was a well-known interactive multimedia piece featuring the song Frère Jacques.
International collaborations
He also spent 2 years at the STEIM studio in Amsterdam, honing his electronic music skills.
Selected recordings
- Your Favourite London Sounds 1998–2001, Peter Cusack, Resonance
- The compilation of recordings from a 25-year collaboration.
- Interruptions, Terry Day, EMANEM 4125; Cusack plays on two tracks, recordings from 1978–1981.
- Voila Enough! 1979–1981 – CD release of the group Alterations
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- Ghosts & Monsters: Technology & Personality in Contemporary Music, Composer: Robert Ashley, Frieder Butzmann, John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Henning Christiansen, et al., Conductor: Christian von Borries, Guy Protheroe, Performers: Peter Cusack, Margaret Leng Tan, Jerry Hunt, Shelley Hirsch, Berliner Philharmoniker, Emf Media includes an extract from a Host, of Golden Daffodils – Nicolas Collins, Peter Cusack
- Haunted Weather, assorted artists, Staubgold Germany, 25 May 2004, includes "Flight Path Trace" by Peter Cusack
- Not Necessarily "English Music": A collection of experimental music from Great Britain, 1960–1977, curated by David Toop, Leonard Music Journal CD Series Volume 11, includes Geese recorded in 1974 by Peter Cusack and Simon Mayo, the companion CD to 2001 Volume of Leonardo Music Journal, MIT Press, 2001.
- Nightjars and Roe Deer, and Squabble included in ,, 9 to 18 September 1994, organised by Matthias Osterwold and Nicolas Collins in Podewil, Berlin
- , an album recorded at festival "music unlimited" at Alter Schlachthof Wels, Austria, 11 November 1995. The album features Peter Cusack playing "bousouki & interactive birds"
Curations
- accompanying the 2006 Volume of Leonardo Music Journal, Leonardo Music Journal Volume 16, MIT press, 2006.
Selected publications
- "Ghosts and Monsters": Contributors' Notes", Alexander Abramovitch Krejn, Christian von Borries, John Cage, Andrew Culver, John Tilbury, Paul de Marinis, Robert Ashley, Henning Christiansen, Alvin Lucier, Peter Cusack, Shelley Hirsch, Jerry Hunt, Michael Schell, Frieder Butzmann, Michael Snow, Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 8, Ghosts and Monsters: Technology and Personality in Contemporary Music, pp. 64–74, MIT Press, 1998.
- , Mags Adams, Angus Carlyle, Peter Cusack, Bill Davies, Ken Hume, Paul Jennings, Chris Plack, Research Proposal.
- Dialogue, Peter Cusack, Soundscape—The Journal of Acoustic Ecology 1 p8, 2000.