Janek Schaefer: 'Asleep At The Wheel'

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Windscreen View

It is of course, both a blessing and a curse of the Digital Age, that no single piece of information can any longer remain discrete or hermetically disconnected.  Each new item of interest is linked to a million others, and thus, our attention is quickly overwhelmed and shattered exponentially as we jump from link to link and topic to topic.  Never mind Ebola, information is the virus that will finally consume us all, I suspect.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', IF Milton Keynes International Festival,  2010

Thus it is that, whilst writing a supposedly brief synopsis of Janek Schaefer’s Sound Art piece, ‘Lay-By Lullaby’, (as a tangent to my own current artistic activities) [1.], I found myself also considering his far more ambitious, but clearly related, multi-media installation, ‘Asleep At The Wheel’ [2.].  All of that takes place in the context of several other half-written blog posts, all nested within one another in different ways.  There are just as many others laying around on my hard drive that just never made the cut, (so far).

Exterior View Of Venue For Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Milton Keynes, 2010

Yet, I want to consider ‘Asleep At The Wheel’ further  here, for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, because it appears, in itself, to have been a huge, multi-dimensional example of this viral quality of information and knowledge.  It was presented, at first glance, as a kind of immersive Ballardian riff on the thrillingly alienating effects of modern car culture, (as indeed is ‘Lay-By Lullaby’).  The venue, - a disused Sainsbury's supermarket, is a distinctly Ballard-like location and I'm struck by how images of the event capture a similar feel to David Cronenberg's film adaptation of Ballard's novel 'Crash' [4.].  However, further research quickly reveals a far more complex and politically engaged agenda, taking in environmentalism, geo-politics, economics. philosophy, sociology and, pretty much, the prospects for all life on the planet.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', IF Milton Keynes International Festival, 2014

Anyone visiting the installation, (which I didn’t), and spending just a little time absorbing some of the audio information piped into Schaefer’s ten assembled cars or available within the Library and Service Areas, would have left feeling they’d taken on enough mental cargo to last for years.  In fact, considering the existential, ‘big issues’ nature of it all, a lifetime would be nearer the mark.  There's food for thought here on a global scale, and critiques of so much of the way our society and economy are structured.  There are also suggestions about how change might be affected on a personal or local level, including the 10:10 campaign to cut carbon emissions.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Library Area

Having just downloaded and ploughed through the associated sound files [5.] from Schaeffer’s online archive, I can honestly say I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed myself.  And yet, I would recommend doing the same.  The sound element weaves together numerous sound sources, voices, addresses and radio broadcasts with Schaefer's own musical ambiences into a vast soup of information and ideas.  The general message of the unsustainability of modern industrial/consumer Capitalism, our dependence on rapidly squandered, finite reserves of fossil fuels, and the threat to both the planet’s survival, is hardly new, but becoming ever more urgent as the days go by.  Indeed, it can all seem so intimidating and all encompassing that the individual is left feeling impotent or apathetic.  Nevertheless, Schaefer has to be admired for his ambition and scope, and for presenting so much interrelated stuff in a sensually seductive and thought provoking manner.  It’s also worth noting how well he connects the issues with various insights into human motivations, and that he’s careful to include as many voices of optimism and advocates of constructive change, as he does prophets of doom.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Glovebox Mixtape.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Inspirational Rear View Mirror Message

Which leads me to my second point.  There’s no shortage of us, (Schaefer included, it seems), who get off on all the Post Ballard/Dystopian/Failed Modernism/Entropy-fixated stuff.  Let’s face it, there are real thrills to be had from hanging around under road intersections or abandoned factory buildings, cataloguing picturesque decay, trespassing into restricted tracts of infrastructure, or driving nowhere at night.  Such activities provide, to a greater or lesser extent, a frisson of transgression not available through the standard channels of consumption, just as they are themselves gradually accepted as new branches of mainstream culture.  Will all these rehearsals for the Apocalypse seem such fun once the sky actually starts to fall though?  Similarly, a fascination with the ways a life lived increasingly behind the wheel effects our perceptions of the world as an aesthetic exercise, [3.], can stand in for any deeper consideration of the real implications of all this dependence on the internal combustion engine and a petro-chemical economy.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Library Area.

Not that any of this signals any real change in my own agenda.  Indeed, a significant part of me still holds to the view that an artist’s real role is to respond to the world as they find it, as much as it is to seek to affect change.  Indeed, it’s all too easy to get tied up in an internal debate over whether one’s artistic concerns are a sub-set of bigger, global issues, or vice-versa.  In reality, it may be that for many of us, artistic practice is a manageable way of exerting some rationalising control over life in the face of all the stuff that just seems to big to influence.  I’d like to believe the two things aren’t mutually exclusive, though, and that one might be the thin end of the other.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Service Area

Mostly, I’m just glad that there are artists around like Janek Schaefer, with motives more noble or generous than my own, who are trying to prove it’s possible to produce thrilling, aesthetically resonant work, whilst still remaining seriously engaged.

Janek Schaefer

[1.]:  Janek Schaefer, ‘Lay-By Lullaby’, 12k, 2014.  Also Presented As A Sound Installation.

[2.]:  Janek Schaefer, ‘Asleep At The Wheel’, Multi-Media Interactive Installation, IF Milton Keynes International Festival, 2010.

[3.]:  David Cronenberg (Dir.), 'Crash', Canada/UK, Alliance Communication Corp./The Movie Network/Recorded Picture Company, 1997.

[4.]:  Or indeed, a kind of Post Modern relish for the Baroque excesses of custom car culture or the spectacular rituals of drag racing.  I'm aware of the irony.

[5.]:  These include the extensive audio elements played within the cars, along with Schaefer's accompanying 'Glovebox Mixtape'.  The latter is also presented as a cassette, designed to be kept in a car.  It is full of gorgeous drones and ambiences, and not unlike 'Lay-By Lullaby' in tone.  It omits the traffic noise of the latter for the most part though, which might, of course, be provided by one's journey in real time.

Janek Schaefer: 'Lay-By Lullaby'

On previous occasions, I’ve mentioned my fascination with the acoustic environment of many of the locations I find myself lurking around with my cameras.  This has become obvious again in the last few weeks, as I’ve been getting out and about in search of subject matter and footage for my proposed video collaboration with Andrew Smith.  Given my penchant for hard urban surfaces, subterranean features, and those strange territories beneath elevated roadways, it’s no surprise that the resonating sound events of passing traffic, fragments of distant voices, and the ever-present background ambiences of the modern, industrial world, have all impinged on my consciousness of late.

Which caused me to reach for my copy of Janek Schaefer’s album, ‘Lay-By Lullaby’ [1.], on returning from another stint of filming, the other night.  It’s a recent acquisition that had become somewhat overlooked amidst a stack of other ‘must-hears’.  As often happens though, it was just a case of waiting until it became properly relevant to a current train of thought, and naturally rose to the top of the pile of its own accord.

Janek Schaefer,  Multi-Media Guy

Schaefer is a London-based Sound Designer, Composer and Multi-Media Artist of Polish/Canadian origin, with an international reputation.  His work is more often heard in gallery or installation settings than in concert venues, and is generally very site-specific in both origin and playback.  Occupying a similar musical territory to artists like Philip Jeck, Christian Fennesz, so-called Isolationists like Biosphere or Scanner, and the wider ambient and electro-acoustic fields in general, he can be regarded as something of an established, Art Music star.  His chosen sound palette generally eschews beats, relying on atmospheres, evocative composed elements, electronic treatments, samples, field recordings, (and on occasion, an innovative, three-armed turntable), to achieve his sonic environments.

Janek Schaefer In Performance

As often occurs with this kind of stuff, one’s experience of the sound is greatly enhanced by an understanding of its context or conceptual framework.  I also find that Brian Eno’s [2.] original codification of Ambient Music as something integrated with an environment, that might be played quietly, or partially ignored as part of the furniture, doesn’t always work quite so well any more.  It’s not that it isn’t a perfectly valid idea, just that there’s so much of it now that any novelty has effectively left the form per se.  I listen to plenty of this sort of music, but do find that, once obvious structure, rhythm, lyrical content or melodic hooks are removed, a little more foregrounding or attention to detail are necessary if a piece is to avoid becoming just another pleasant, generic mulch of non-specific atmospherics [3.].  I have used ‘Lay-By Lullaby’ for the purpose its title suggests, falling asleep to it more than once, but actually find its nuances and distinguishing features are better appreciated once a little volume is applied.

Janek Schaefer, 'Lay-By Lullaby', Installation, 'Collecting Connections' Exhibition,
Agency Gallery, London, March 2013

In the event, ‘LL’ avoids this problem and has a pretty clear identity, derived primarily from Schaefer’s use of beautifully manipulated radio static and the sounds of passing vehicles as primary elements within his overall sound.  The road noises were apparently sourced late at night from a point, close to his own studio, where the M3 motorway passes the end of the road where author J G Ballard famously lived.  If this reference to Ballard seems like yet another case of ‘the usual suspects’, his ability to prefigure so much of the psychosis of modern life, (both good and bad), still feels pretty relevant even after we’ve learned to take so much of it for granted.  ‘Crash’ [4] and ‘Concrete Island’ [5.] both remain (in)famously arresting explorations of our psychic and existential relationship with cars and the infrastructure that supports them.  Seemingly, both were inspired, at least in part, by the construction of the motorway so close to his home.

J G Ballard, Outside His Shepperton Home (Photographer Unknown)

What Schaefer does, rather beautifully, is to evoke both the sense of passing traffic, witnessed in the depths of the night, from a stationary vehicle, and of a nocturnal car journey on sparsely populated roads.  The strange calm, hypnotic rhythms and insulated alienation of such situations are all things many of us will have experienced.  Indeed, for me, the disconnectedness of driving along such routes, alone in the still hours, has sometimes felt akin to being far out at sea.  The variety of Schaefer’s vehicle noises is complex and varied, (and something I’m becoming quite a connoisseur of, as already mentioned).  The sonic differences between a single idling engine, the distant, textural wash of traffic en masse, or the sudden explosion of a rapid vehicle passing a stationary point at close quarters, are marked and all evocatively employed here.

The Wonderful Footbridge Over The M3 Motorway, Close To J G Ballard's Home
(Photographer Unknown)

The use of static crackle is also really impressive.  It’s hardly a novel technique, (Burial being just one of numerous producers who have employed its emotional resonances and textural potential in recent years).  Schaefer is sophisticated in his manipulation of it, finding various sizes of audible ‘grain’ and employing it as veils of texture, multiple layers of environmental sound, and even as a variety of sonic substance which might be structured and sculpted, on occasions.  Most of the time, he avoids actual radio programme content, so that, when the occasional fragment of disconnected speech does intrude, it’s all the more effective, - implying that there is still a human world out there somewhere.  The occasional brief elements of implied melody that emerge might serve a similar purpose, but for me, they generally feel less like radio transmissions and more like part of Schaefer’s own mental soundtrack.

Again, this relationship between driving and radio is hardly a new idea, but it’s still a pretty resonant one.  Most drivers will know how much they come to rely on their car’s stereo to provide mental stimulation or as an aid in constructing some kind of soundtrack, particularly for a solitary journey.  I’m reminded again of Chris Petit’s wonderful and strange British road movie ‘Radio On’ [6.], - a film that explores similar ideas and is a masterpiece of road-bound alienation and evocation of the world as viewed through a windscreen.  I also recall a long journey, some years ago, when several work colleagues and I drove home from an exhibition installation job in London, in the early hours.  We were all physically and mentally shattered and it was my turn to drive.  One by one the car’s other occupants fell asleep and I was left alone with my thoughts, switching channels to stay awake as mile after mile of the unfamiliar and largely deserted M11 unfolded before me.  We made it home in one piece, but I’m still not quite sure how.

The individual sections of ‘LL’ flow together pretty smoothly, but they are numbered as a separate implied radio transmission, and careful listening reveals that each indeed has its own distinguishable identity.  ‘Radio 101 FM’ opens with some dramatic vehicle sounds before embarking on a sonorous passage of profoundly melancholy organ tones, which alternate with some distinctly disturbing, transmitted white noise.  ‘Radio 103 FM’ introduces what sounds like some distinctly Baroque chamber music, as traffic hisses gently in the background.  ‘In Radio 104 FM’, the passing vehicles once more burst into our world at close quarters whilst a repeatedly strummed arpeggio and gently brushed snare calls to mind a David Lynch/Angelo Badalamenti movie soundtrack.  The foreboding melody that replaces it is even more emotively Lynchian but is itself replaced by a handful of plucked harp strings, a general wash of undulating road noise, and what may be rain on the windscreen.

And so, the album unfolds.  The guitar arpeggios return in ‘Radio 106 FM’, accompanied by the tinkling of crystalline chimes, whilst the fluctuating drones of ‘Radio 107 FM’ remind me of KLF’s wonderful, ambient ‘Chill Out’ album [7.].  A distant suggestion of jazz trumpet weaves its way though ‘Radio 109 FM’ and the snares and harp strings re-emerge to punctuate the following track.  If there is a noticeable quickening of the traffic noise towards the end of the album, during ‘Radio 112 FM’, it might suggest a world re-awakening around dawn, but there’s nothing as obvious as an implied through narrative in ‘Lay-by Lullaby’ overall.

Janek Schaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Multi-Media Installation, IF Milton Keynes International
Festival, 2010

Film Still From:  Janek Scaefer, 'Asleep At The Wheel', Multi-Media Installation,  IF
Milton Keynes International Festival, 2010

In conclusion, it’s worth noting that ‘Lay-By Lullaby’ appears to be something of a more reflective companion piece to the ambitious multi-media installation, ‘Asleep At The Wheel’ [8.], that Schaefer constructed for Milton Keynes International Festival, in 2010.  That project contained a more didactic, sociological and ecological agenda, and comprised sound, film, interractive elements, (in the form of cars), light, literary resources and a highly immersive, atmospheric staging.  It appears to have featured at least some of the same sounds that re-emerged on this later album.  It was also staged in a disused Sainsbury’s supermarket, something that echoes one of my own photographic stamping grounds.

Supermarket Car Park, Belgrave Road, Leicester, December 2012

The ‘Lullaby’ itself has also been presented via a small installation on more than one occasion [9.].  In these situations, it is played back, on a loop, through speakers embedded in a pair of recumbent traffic cones and connected to a car stereo in a small carrying case.

Janek Schaefer, 'Lay-By Lullaby',  Installation, Ace Hotel, London, 2014

[1.]:  Janek Schaefer, ‘Lay-By Lullaby’, 12K, 2014

[2.]:  Or, should that be Erik Satie’s?

[3.]:  In fairness, this may be as much to do with my own over-saturated perceptions as with the intrinsic qualities of any particular piece.

[4.]:  J.G. Ballard, ‘Crash’, London, Jonathan Cape, 1973

[5.]:  J.G. Ballard, ‘Concrete Island’, London, Jonathan Cape, 1974

[6.]:  Chris Petit (Dir.), ‘Radio On’, UK/West Germany, BFI/Road Movies Filmproduktion/NFFC, 1979

[7.]:  KLF, ‘Chill Out’ KLF Communications, 1990

[8.]:  Janek Schaefer, ‘Asleep At The Wheel’, Site-Specific, Multi Media Installation, IF Milton Keynes International Festival, 2010

[9.]:  Including:  Janek Schaefer, ‘Collecting Connections’, Exhibition, Agency Gallery, London, March 2013