03'02
Click on this cover and access the ISIS Arts web site CHRIS DOOKS
To Look North - The Northern Region Film & Television Archive
Isis Arts/NRFTA 2002
20 Tracks. 57mins02secs.
The work presented on To Look North is the result of Chris Dooks’s six months residency at the University Of Teesside in Newcastle, in collaboration with the Northern Region Film & Television Archive and commissioned by ISIS Arts, an art agency based in North Tyneside. During this period, Dooks spent his time between Newcastle going through hundreds of hours of films recording a hundred years of culture in the North of England, and his recording studio in Edinburgh. The CD includes twenty five audio tracks built around excerpts of conversations, interviews and commentaries, as well as eleven short films.
To Look North is a very significant piece of work in Dooks’s career as it establishes a link between his years spent as a filmmaker and his most recent work as a digital musician. Here, he creates an abstract documentary of his native region, capturing fragments of lives and fit them in seemingly arbitrary order. Each track is built around one main sample of conversation, extracted from its context, on which Dooks applies digital alterations and textures to extract the core meaning of the element used, obliterating any perspective. These voices become integrant part of the sonic substance and define the true signification of this record that is, creating a chronicle of the life in the North over the last hundred years. This process allows Dooks to perfectly integrate the intrinsic abstraction of his music with these external components. If the complexity of compositions is still present here, the digital terrorism characterising some of Social Electrics has been replaced by a more insidious form of perverse alteration. Minimalist in essence, To Look North appears luxuriant by its constant change of ambiences. Dooks dissects his sonic sources and randomly reassembles elements of crime investigations, lunch time dance lessons, scientific discussions, political activism or meaningless everyday conversations to outline the volatile aspects of life. The eleven short films accompanying these recordings accentuate this  
Chris Dooks’s aim with this record was to present a more human and happy vision of the North of England than the epitomic image built by the media during the Thatcher years, when unemployment and poverty were affecting the region. To say that he achieves is an understatement.
The album is available to buy by contacting ISIS ARTS on their web site.
TRACK LISTING
01 Three Tons Of Onions 14 Lazarus Static
02 Things Like That 15 Little Angels
03 The Toupé & Glistening Teeth 16 +/-
04 No Men! (They've Been Banned) 17 Silver Buckles
05 Gravity & Friction 18 The Runaway Train
06 Gypsy Battle Cry 19 Anti Socialism
07 After The Horse Sale 20 Unity
08 Equine Days Soundtracks 21 An Outsider From Finland
09 Being Married I Have No Choice 22 An Outsider From Finland Speaks
10 Exhale 23 One's Own Physical Difficulties
11 Inhale 24 War Requiem
12 Jump Jump Jump Jump Jump 25 The Northumberland Buddha
13 05/09/58
11'01
Click on this cover and access the Bip-Hop web site BOVINE LIFE
Social Electrics
(BLEEP06) Bip-Hop 2001
20 Tracks. 57mins02secs.
Buy this CD on line now
Bovine Life: the interview here...
During the nineties, Chris Dooks became a respected filmmaker in the UK, thanks to his music documentaries, including a film on Scanner man Robin Rimbaud for the South Bank Show. In 1999, Dooks developed Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, a debilitating disease affecting energy levels and the nervous system. Bound to his Edinburgh flat, with his film making activities on hold, Chris’s computer became his lifeline with the outside world, and, as he started working on some music, he also developed friendships with a multitude of very different artists around the world. Collaborations took shape, although Dooks never met he’s musical partners, all work being done via exchange of MP3s, on which Dooks would work when his health would allow. Social Electrics collects some of these moments.
Despite the variety of collaborators present on this record, Social Electrics is an incredibly intense and homogene work. As collaborations alternate with solo efforts, it rapidly becomes difficult to discern between internal and external inputs. With elements of hip-hop, electro, field recordings or electronica confronting each other, this album is dense, complex and challenging. The tracks, very often made up of multiple elements juxtaposed, are short, rarely going over the four minutes mark, and held tightly together. Sounds come thick and fast, positioning themselves in the anarchic structures. Elements of voices, at times lacerated, plain at others, cohabite with bleeps, clicks, analogue noises and abrasive sounds. Out of this chaos, melodies sometimes emerge, and seem to bring some cohesion to the work. Dooks and his virtual guests, including Janeck Schaefer, Matt Elliot, of The Third Eye Foundation and Köhn, distort each other’s universe, challenge each component, recycle ideas, manipulate, experiment, and ultimately, create a most poetic symphony of promiscuous atmospheres, precarious beats and sonic interferences. Amongst the darkest and most uncomfortable moments of Social Electrics are found in the broken vocals of Ether Works Part 1 or the digital terrorism of Homeostasis, while Sevumpteen or Now We Are Light demonstrate a more human approach to the same basic concept. In between these extremes, Dooks and friends put their compositions through an incredibly intense process, eliminating any unnecessary element, to work at the core of the soundscapes, applying sharp and aggressive movie-like montage techniques to underpin the bare essentials of this record. To complement this release, No One Sees Black, a short film Chris Dooks shot shotly before becoming sick.
Social Electrics takes an effervescent and refreshing look at contemporary music, ignoring rules and concepts, transcending genres and influences, to offer a disarmingly touching poetic vision. Nothing comes between Dooks and his work, and this record becomes a poignant symbol of a man in fighting. Social Electric is the truly magnificent work of a man in love with life.
Bovine Life: the interview here...
Buy this CD on line now
TRACK LISTING
01 Bovine Life Tired But Wired 11 Bovine Life State Stone Glass Wind
02 Bovine Life Vs Nathaniel 'Chief' Forrest O.J. Simpson 12 Bovine Life Vs Octorock Atay Atae
03 Bovine Life Vs Nathaniel 'Chief' Forrest The Smiles Of God 13 Bovine Life Vs M.C. McCooch Dog Trigger Finger
04 Bovine Life Now We Are Traffic 14 Bovine Life Vs ? Ether Works Pt.3
05 Bovine Life Vs ? Ether Works Pt.1 15 Bovine Life Eats Alku Alku Heartbeat
06 Bovine Life Sweepea 16 Bovine Life Weak Latte Symphony
07 Bovine Life Vs Duodecimo Maeow 17 Bovine Life Vs Köhn Homeostasis
08 Bovine Life Vs ? Ether Works Pt.2 18 Bovine Life Vs Yituey Vida Torpe
09 Bovine Life Vs Köhn Sevumpteen 19 Bovine Life Vs Janek Schaefer Dog Day Cicada
10 Bovine Life Vs Smydlyssna Düsseldorf Girl 20 Bovine Life Now We Are Light
 
CHRIS DOOKS EXPRESS INTERVIEW

Top Five best albums of all time?
Michael Nyman – The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.
Any Steve Reich album apart from The Cave or City Life
Kristen Hersh – Murder Misery Then Goodnight
Orbital – Orbital (1)
Bulgarian Voices – Can’t remember the title, but lovely…

Track you wish you had written?
Orbital - Chime

Best Chris Dooks work?
Still to come! But I am proud of all the stuff on everything I have released musically. I am proud of a documentary on Native American Rock Art, which I made in The USA in 1998. 

Best moment ever?
Seeing a mountain lion in California was pretty damn good.

Favourite web site?
Well, here’s a few..

1. This one shows my street on the opening page : http://www.bweb.co.uk/stockbridge/fshops.html
2. http://www.mylittletony.com is a lot of fun
3. http://www.touch.demon.co.uk is one of my faves
4. http://www.greenland-guide.gl/igloo/default.htm is lovely! And I wish I could stay there…
5. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mil.millington/things.html I quite enjoyed that.
Bovine Life: the interview here...
THE SURFER'S GUIDE TO BOVINE LIFE
BOVINE LIFE
Official Bovine Life site.
BIP -HOP
This young French label is starting to make a few waves with its excellent Bip-Hop Generation compilation. The label also edit an interesting webzine, with loads of interviews and features.
ISIS ARTS
ISIS is an organisation based in Tyne & Wear, which initiates and manages artists residencies and exhibitions in the North of England.