David Byrne with his 'controller'. © Richard Moss / Culture24
When David Byrne first visited the Roundhouse in London's Camden Town it was a very different experience to his latest appearance at the venue.
"I played here with my band Talking Heads in 1976 with the Stranglers and the Ramones," he says in characteristically hushed tones. "It was our first experience of gobbing. Anyway, I never forgot the space."
His return 31 years later is thankfully free of phlegm. He's here to launch his Playing the Building project, an ambitious interactive sound installation which has transformed the venue into a giant musical instrument.
An unassuming old pump organ sits in the middle of the Roundhouse's aptly titled Main Space. A spider's web of pipes emanates from its rear and disappears into the impressive domed roof of the building, which today seems like a mini industrial version of St Paul's Cathedral.
© Richard Moss / Culture24
"It's all mechanical, there are no speakers," says Byrne proudly, as he explains the mechanics and philosophy of his contraption with its monstrous collection of wires and pipes.
"There are no electronics, amplification, speakers or samples or any of that modern rubbish, it's all very old mechanical stuff."
He leans across and presses a few keys at random, causing a low shuddering sound, like something from the bowels of a vast old steam liner, to spread across the building's domed canopy. "Hmmm… that’s a nice one," he says.
Warming to the task he explains how the organ's "guts have been ripped out" so that the keys just function. "The largest number of keys blow air through kind of plumbing pipes, and…" after a pause for another brief tinkle of the ivories, "obviously they have different pitches - you can't play Bach."
Byrne found the old pump organ 10 years ago sitting in a printmaker's studio in the meatpacking district of New York. Offered it for free he hired a truck and moved it into his own downtown studio but "didn't do anything with it for years."
© Richard Moss / Culture24
Then, after occasional outings on Halloween "when somebody would play Phantom of the Opera" and a brief but unsuccessful attempt at using it in the studio, he hit upon the idea of turning it into an organ that can play the interior of buildings. A couple of years later Playing the Building was greeted with great acclaim at the Färgfabriken in Stockholm (2005) and in the New York Battery Maritime Building (2008).
The popular contraption, which Byrne refers to as 'the controller', works mainly by air which is pumped in through an air compressor, and then goes out again through a series of pipes attached to nozzles which disappear into the cavernous dome of the building. There are also solenoids that activate little hammers that randomly hit the building's metal girders and columns.
The resulting sound is a fugue of gently dissonant sounds punctuated by the random resonant tap of metal.
"This is a perfect space for this thing," says Byrne meditatively, "and it's incredible to imagine a performing space dedicating their main space to having more or less nothing in it.
"The performance doesn't consist of performers – the public has to make the thing work. If the public walk in and don't do anything, they won't hear it. And that's sort of the point."
© Richard Moss / Culture24
This democratisation of the experience of Playing the Building really appeals to Byrne. "I'm thrilled with that aspect of it," he says. "It's very democratic, it kind of levels the playing field - everyone's as good at it as anyone else.
"Kids in particular just jump all over the thing and have no hesitation in just banging on it and that sort of frees it up for adults who don't have to hesitate."
So after years as one of London’s most iconic rock 'n roll venues - the scene of gigs by everyone from Pink Floyd to the Byrds to Talking Heads - the Roundhouse now has a chance to be played itself. "But I warn you," adds Byrne, "the piano lessons you had as kid won't be of any use to you. A kid of four or five is just as good as I am."
Find out more at: www.davidbyrne.com/playingthebuilding and www.roundhouse.org.uk.
