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Staff Profile

Dr William Edmondes

Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Performance

Background

Introduction

William Thomas Gustav Edmondes is the full 'real' name of the artist and performer variously known as Gwilly Edmondez, Gustav Thomas, Copydex, Virginia Pipe and more. As a composer-performer his primary materials are voice, recorded media, sampling & sequencing; he also works with 8-bit Techno (Gameboy with Nanoloop),online video and drawing; his primary aesthetic is Wild Pop. He studied composition at Cardiff (with Anthony Powers; BMus), King's London (with Robert Keeley; MMus), and York (with William Brooks; PhD).

Will is one half of the duo YEAH YOU with Elvin Brandhi; he publishes (and posts on his Claws & Tongues page) extra-academic critical musicology and other writings as Gustav Thomas, his middle names and the first names of his grandfathers which also indicate his background as half-Welsh, half-Slovene.

At Newcastle Will teaches Contemporary Music Practice at all three stages alongside historical-cultural musicology options on Hip Hop, Jazz, Fringe Cultures and Underground/Experimental Popular Music.

Will has twice been degree programme director for the BA in Contemporary & Popular Music (W301); was DPD for the MMus between 2006 and 2011; and was head of postgraduate studies and postgraduate research 2012-2013.

Will is also a resident at Culture Lab's Digital Cultures studio where, among other things, he has overseen the Culture Lab Radio project which is currently on hiatus awaiting new funds.

In October 2017 Will formally established 'Wild Pop' as a research project heading under which to bring together a variety of ongoing strands in his research (Felt Beak, Yeah You etc.) and through which it is hoped various funded research initiatives might establish ICMUS as a centre for improvisation within commercial popular forms. 



Research

@gwillyedmondez

@ye_yu_fam

@wildpop_discipline

@feltbeak

@clawsandtongues


Performing, releasing and publishing as Gwilly Edmondez, Gustav Thomas, MYKL JAXN and Virginia Pipe, Will's work has consistently ploughed a rarely (at-)tended furrow at the intersection of free improvisation (free music) and commercial 'pop' - the term 'commercial pop' in this instance is meant broadly to cover all social music that sustains itself through its capacity to attract the interest of otherwise disinterested elements - not just music made expressly for 'chart success' what 'commercial' is too readily used to denote - as distinct from music reliant on state subsidy

In terms of more abstracted, broader discourses, Will's research comprises: (mostly) non-notated composition; improvised performance & recording (using voice alongside guitar, recorded media such as hardware samplers, turntables & dictaphones); digital dissemination and artist branding as micro-mythology. 

In 2017, along with former PhD supervisees Charlie Bramley and Craig Pollard, Will co-founded the Wild Pop research project as a vehicle for promoting, disseminating and making more visible the work at the work at this free music/pop intersection that the three of them, alongside numerous other performers and artists in the Northeast have been doing for many years.

Current, ongoing projects:

Felt Beak (online label-archive featuring daily-operation improv & experimental pop; multiple contributors & collaborators). 

Felt Beak Vimeo (video sister-site with broader base including archive footage of previous & related projects)

Yeah You (duo, performing as MYKL JAXN with Elvin Brandhi, totally improvised electro-pop recorded & filmed in ad hoc locations and concert settings):

Blue Moon Film Festival live score to Maya Deren's At Land (1944)

Incinerator - example 'car' video

Live At Blue Rinse (May 2014)

Yeah You on Vimeo

Yeah You Bandcamp

Yeah You at FMA

Gwilly Edmondez (improvising performer solo and in multiple collaborations):

UBU Web artist feature page (assorted archive releases)

E A V I [upcoming](collage & improvisation show with People Like Us, January 2015)

Live At Rhiz (solo show in Vienna, January 2011)

Pandæmonium (with Richard Bowers/Sound of Aircraft Attacking Britain, performance installation at Experimentica 2008)

VILEEVILVEIL (sampler & mandolin duo with b-cátt)

Live At Blue Rinse (September 2013)

Falco Subbuteo (as Gwilly Edmondez duo with Val Persona):

I Could Give You Names (digital release on Moscow's Clinical Archives)

Pigged Rubble (digital release on Moscow's Clinical Archives)

Live At Blue Rinse@Barkollo (five-minute concert clip from 2011)

Live At Blue Rinse@Bridge Hotel (two-minute concert clip from 2012)

Edmondez/D'Silva - duo with alo saxophonist Karl D'Silva:

36 Units Of Blazing Hash (album, 2009)

Cuts! (album, 2008)

Tape Womb (album, 2008)

"Rural Creep" video clip from Cuts! recording session

Copydex - plunderphonic collage:

Cash Price Champion 

Virginia Pipe - beat storm theory into praxis:

Bahnhof Zum Bahnhof (2006)

"Tesco Closes" - 7" vinyl (Kakutopia 2012)

Gustav Thomas - Gameboy sequencing (Nanoloop, LSDJ):

Soul Anus (2009 multi-format release - new 10" vinyl album due Autumn 2012)

Randy Wormhole - duo with John Ferguson:

Shaming Of The True

Edmondes' work is published by Kakutopia and online at: 

UBUWEB (www.ubu.com/sound/edmondez.html)

FMA (freemusicarchive.org/label/Kakutopia/)


Video posts can be viewed at:

http://www.youtube.com/users/prducer [currently restocking]

http://www.vimeo.com/feltbeak

Gwilly Edmondez also has a regular radio show on Culture Lab Radio called 'Make Property History' (culturelabradio.ncl.ac.uk/)

Edmondes also managed the record label and collective Kakutopia, founded in 1998 around the activities of Radioactive Sparrow. He is currently digitizing the entire back catalogue of all Kakutopia artists (most notably Radioactive Sparrow, Tony Gage, Livestock and Gwilly Edmondez) to be made available for free download.

Other Expertise:

Hip Hop; Collage & improvisation; Noise, Funk & Extreme Metal; Situationism; Digital networking & Dissemination; drawing & painting.

Postgraduate Supervision

Current doctoral candidates:


Rob Blazey

Adam Soper

Mike Cook

Stuart Arnot

Kenny MacLean

Completed PhDs:

Craig Pollard

Gerry Richardson

Rod Sinclair

Kitty Porteous

John MacLean

Pete Dale

Paul Vandermast Bell

Merrie Snell

Craig Wells

Suade Bergmann

Jamie Thompson

Charlie Bramley

Mick Wright

Michael Blenkarn

Hannabiell Sanders

Kieran Rafferty

Phil Begg

Michael Bridgewater

Adam Potts

Helen Papaioannou



Teaching

Undergraduate & Postgraduate Teaching

I deliver provision in both creative practice (recorded/digital composition and contemporary performance) and popular musicology.

Undergraduate modules:

Elements of Hip Hop (rotating, honours-level critical musicology module)
Established in 2005, Roots of Hip Hop has consistently sought to develop critical perspectives around a contemporary tradition that has become probably the most influential popular music culture of all time. The module traces Hip Hop's origins and progenitors while exploring core socio-economic and political narratives and dimensions relating to the broader African-American and Afro-Diasporic context. In 2013, the module benefitted from a one-off appearance from visiting professor Tricia Rose. The module will next run in 2019-20

Contemporary Music Practice 1 & 2 (repeating modules, every year)

Previous/Dormant UG Modules

Freedom/Funk/Fusion (dormant honours-level critical musicology module)
Established in 2006 (as 'Rock N Roll Subcultures'), Freedom/Funk/Fusion (popularly known as F/F/F) seeks to provide students with a grounding in both the repertoire and critical perspectives of some of the vast array of popular music subcultures that have proliferated exponentially since the inception of Rock & Roll, especially since the late 1960s. In its most recent outing (2014-15), F/F/F covered club musics from Disco to House, the 'UK Hardcore Continuum' from Jungle to Grime, Black Metal, Progressive Rock and popular virtuosity through to Math Rock, Techno, Industrial, No Wave, DIY & US Hardcore (Craig Pollard, postgrad teaching assistant), Psychedelia (Phil Begg, postgrad teaching assistant) and a study of Tin Pan Alley as the foundation of commercial pop (Kieran Rafferty) postgrad teaching assistant).

Jazz Criticism (currently dormant honours-level critical musicology module)
Established in 2012, Jazz Criticism deals with traditions in Jazz music and culture which are generally overlooked and yet remain the most vital and influential strands within its many styles and traditions, while also remaining most true to the music's original purpose meaning. As such, much of the module is devoted to examining the ways in which African-American music as a whole has been relentlessly and consistently appropriated, reduced and reinvented in order to serve the interests of popular entertainment and dominant ideologies. Consequently, the lecture series focuses on key developments such as Bebop, Free Jazz, Afro-Futurism, the Black Arts Movement, Fusion and post-Bop since the Loft Scene of the early 1970s, all of which comprise music that most commentators and purveyors of 'Jazz' have consistently overlooked and marginalised. 

Supervising Undergraduate Dissertations
Every year I tend to supervise at least five final-year dissertations. Over the years I have supervised dissertations on subjects like Punk, Lo-Fi, DIY, Hip Hop, Reggae, Jazz, Heavy Metal subcultures, Techno, Disco and various other topics.

Masters Supervision

Since starting at ICMUS in 2004 I have regularly supervised masters students both for creative projects (composition and performance) and for dissertations. I have also regularly supervised MLitt candidates.

PhDs

To date I have supervised 12 doctoral candidates to successful completion. I currently supervise 10 doctoral candidates, for 9 of which I am primary supervisor.

For a list of past and present PhDs, please refer to the research tab on this page.

Publications