FOUND began life as an experimental arts collective putting on many weird and wonderful events in art galleries, warehouses and even storage containers.

Their most recent project, an emotional robot band called Cybraphon, captured the attention of the world’s press. Since its unveiling at the Edinburgh International Festival at the start of August, Cybraphon has been featured on national newspapers across the world (e.g. China, Brazil, Italy, Spain, UK), made the top story on the homepage of WIRED.com and has been covered by CNN and TV networks internationally including BBC’s primetime arts show The Culture Show.

FOUND made their American debut at SXSW in March 2009 and followed up with a string of performances at CMJ in October 2009 where Brooklyn Vegan picked them out as ones to watch. In the UK they have built up a strong fan base and highlights of their live career to date include the BBC Electric Proms, T in the Park, Triptych, Brighton’s Great Escape, the Fence Collective’s ‘Homegame’ festival and Hydro Connect Festival.

Their self-released debut ‘Found Can Move’ earned them an impressive amount of UK national radio play including support from BBC Radio 1 djs, Steve Lamaq, Rob Da Bank, Huw Stevens and Vic Galloway. They’ve recorded radio sessions for BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music and BBC Radio Scotland including a recording in John Peel’s studio at Maida Vale.  They also recorded an exclusive live session in the legendary ‘Beatles Studio’ at Abbey Road for US radio station U-Pop XM 29.

FOUND have a prolific output with two full-length albums and numerous singles / EPs in the last two years, with releases on Fence Records [UK], Creeping Bent [UK] and Aufgeladen Und Bereit [Germany]. The band have also become sought-after remixers and have recently applied their creative imaginations to reworking the music of King Creosote (Warner), Make Model (EMI), Attic Lights (Island) and Au Revoir Simone (Moshi Moshi).

SELECTED PRESS

“FOUND sound like a punch up between Paolo Nutini and Captain Beefheart.” The News Of The World

“their sound is so progressive, so completely unique, it’s demeaning to tie it to the stale confines of a label. Instead, we should be celebrating the euphoria created by their extraordinary kaleidoscopic soundscapes. 9/10″ Drowned in Sound

“Sampled sounds wrestle it out with jagged bursts of electronica across songs that lurch around like shouty drunks on a week-long bender.” Q Magazine

“Both band name and album title are spot on. Like musical beachcombers, Edinburgh quintet FOUND take full advantage of whatever washes up on their shore that’s capable of making a noise and build up a delightfully wonky collage of sound with their haul. It’s an approach that bears particularly juicy fruit – the combination of the experimental with a keen ear for a simple, to-the-quick melody making them sound not unlike their label boss King Creosote holed up in a studio with Brian Eno” Nige Tassell, WORD

LINE-UP: Ziggy Campbell, 26, lead vocals, guitar; Tommy Perman, 25, bass guitar, synths; Kev Sim, 28, sampler, melodica; Gavin Sutherland, 28, keys and backing vocals.

HOW DID YOU FORM? Kev, Tommy and Zig met in 2001 while studying art in Aberdeen. In 2005 we realised our true love was pop music so enlisted the musical talents of Gavin and formed a band.

RELEASED ANY RECORDS? About to release their debut single Mullokian on Tommy’s label Surface Pressure Records and their debut album Found Can Move will follow at the end of May.

SUPPORTED ANY MAJOR BANDS? Luke Vibert at the Sub Club last April.

WHAT MAKES YOU DIFFERENT? We make forward-thinking pop music, run our own label and put on art exhibitions.

INFLUENCES? Hip hop producer Jay Dee (RIP), Moondog and Ivor Cutler.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS? Recording a radio session in the legendary Beatles Studio at Abbey Road, appearing on BBC Scotland’s The Music Show, MTV Europe taking the video for our debut single.

Read this article on the Evening Times site.

Founded by brothers Tommy and Bobby Perman, Surface Pressure is an Edinburgh-based label home to a small but broad spectrum of pop, folk, hip-hop and electronica producers. Bobby’s productions as S-Type have earned him worldwide acclaim and collaborations with a plethora of well-known and up-and coming MCs, while Tommy’s band FOUND have also attracted their own share of attention; playlisted by MTV Europe and Radio 1. Their recent compilation, co-released by Glasgow label Gdansk, showcases the fine blend of electronic textures, out-there hip-hop beats and psychedelic pop of featured artists Vin Landers, Kev Sim and Ziggy Campbell, all of whom also play in FOUND. This home-grown label is a smoker’s delight of the rarest, choicest quality – distinctly Scottish, with its feet in the warm bass of the clubs, its soul wandering over rains-soaked hills, and its heart sitting drunk and high on the last bus home. Ziggy (FOUND’s singer) and Tommy met me in the graffiti-edged elegance of The Villager on George IV Bridge to talk about the label’s history and its future.

When did Surface Pressure begin?

Tommy: Approximately three years ago. It was born by accident, I never intended to go into the music industry in that form. Bobby had been offered a release through somebody else, I was doing the artwork for it. They sent us this through this really crazy contract that had never seen a lawyer before – it was just a typed sheet of A4 with all this crap on it that we didn’t agree with. We asked them to change a couple of things and they were like: “Nah, nah, we’re not up for that,” so we thought we’d be much better releasing it ourselves. I’d had a record out myself before – the ‘Random Audio Therapy Unit’ by FOUND Collective (an early, art-school template for the band that would become simply FOUND – Ed.), so I thought: “Well, this is a doddle, I’ve put a record out before, this will be easy.” Then we thought why not do things properly: we’ll set up a record label, we’ll do all the promotion properly, we’ll get the design sorted… And I have kind of lived to regret that choice along the way, but it’s been a hell of a journey! The first release was actually a seven-inch by Wee Yo Nee, and then Bobby’s 12”. That was his first major release. Since then he’s been doing collaborations with heaps of folk, and he’s kind of taken off really, collaborated with lots of big London MCs like Logan, and he’s on loads of mixtapes at the moment. He has collaborated with Juice Aleem… that came about through DJ A’La Fu, he was the Big Dada tour DJ. He was part of Wee Yo Nee, that’s how that came about – we met in Aberdeen at university.

You have a wide range of artists on Surface Pressure, aside from the Perman brothers. How did you end up with such a broad range?

Tommy: It reflects mine and Bobby’s musical interests, really. Bobby is a true hip-hop thoroughbred, and my taste has evolved through so many styles. Hip-hop is definitely one of my true loves, but also a lot of song-based music… After Bobby’s first release, we had a single from Vin Landers, which very much reflected what I want to do with Surface Pressure: many different styles, many different flavours. No boundaries, really: just quality music from Scotland, and beyond. A recent realisation of mine is that I love pop music. It’s taken me a long time to admit that, and now I’ve come out of the closet, so to speak – I’m a pop music fan. I’m particularly impressed by bands that can make pop – as in music that a lot of people listen to – that pushes the boundaries. There’s so much that can still be done. I think a lot of the time people say: “Now we’ve had fifty years of pop music, there’s not actually that much left to do.” People have tried pretty much everything, but you can still combine elements that haven’t been brought together before. The experimental is what excites me, but with a pop edge, some nice lyrics, a wee hook.

There’s a preconception that experimental music has to be dark, that it has to be ‘OK Computer’ or Sigur Ros before you can take it seriously.

Tommy: Exactly – but there’s some way-out pop music out there, someone like Serge Gainsborough for example, he was trying some pretty bugged-out production methods! Even Phil Spector, if you think about someone like that – or some of the Motown productions – they were doing stuff for the first time and it was experimental, but people got it, it was popular. So it was pop music, you know?

FOUND have done very well in the popularity stakes so far. You recently recorded in Abbey Road, and are playing some festival dates this Summer. You obviously have quite broad ambitions for the band?

Ziggy: I’m hoping when the album drops in May, it will generate a lot more attention. I think it’s deserving of it, a lot of effort went into the recording, and we were also funded by the Scottish Arts Council, which is itself a vote of confidence. With it being picked up by national radio and MTV, it seems to be going pretty well.

Tommy: At the moment, we still need to play where people know us, but we’re getting booked up to play the more leftfield festivals like The Green Man, and some electronica festivals in nice estates and country houses… that’s my kind of thing! We’re playing at Fence Collective’s Home Game in Anstruther, and at Go North in Aberdeen.

The Electronica press have welcomed FOUND with open arms, was that intentional? Did you approach the songs with a dance music audience in mind?

Tommy: Over the last year, particularly the last six months, our sound has really come together.
Ziggy: To let you in on a secret, when we started we were pretty much chancing it. Tommy had booked a gig and we didn’t have a set. We’re all bedroom producers, so we had to try and throw all our ideas together and try and form a set with some kind of thread of cohesion. Then we did Triptych.
Tommy: After only three months, we played Triptych, which was great, and from there it’s been a steep rise up.
Ziggy: It grew out of electronic productions, there’s lots of elements in there, but it’s really snowballing into something else, especially with the inclusion of a live drummer.
Tommy: I buy a lot of electronica stuff, and the LA instrumental hip-hop like Ammon Contact and Prefuse 73. I’m personally aware that if you position yourself between that kind of crowd and the indie crowd, there’s potentially a big crossover audience.

There’s a kind of sound I recognise in Surface Pressure and FOUND tunes that is polished and shambolic at the same time: I associate it with glitch and click house, messed-up hip-hop like Quasimoto, it’s hard to call it a scene or a movement, but I hear it everywhere. Is it just in the water?

Tommy: We use a lot of modern software like Ableton Live, and I think that has a lot to do with it. Software like that is very enabling, and allows people to interpret their ideas. Ziggy never used a computer until a couple of years ago, and he’s just excelled.
Ziggy: I think that kind of broken-melody sound does come down to modern software; people can just tap into an idea and so instantly break it up, mash it up, put it upside down…
Tommy: The idea of the song becomes all important.
Ziggy: You can take your idea from demo stage to finished production, but retain elements of the demo – you’re working on the same file all the way through. If there’s a certain charm in the demo, you can keep that in the finished production.

Do you think in some way the punk ethic is being brought to bear on modern music purely through technology? Less intentionally, but implicitly, because it’s just there, you can use it?

Ziggy: It’s very DIY. You can cut out the nonsense.
Tommy: We produced the forthcoming FOUND album ourselves, and it’s great: we’re really happy with it, and we did it on a shoestring budget. I’m still seeing bands who need to raise ten, maybe fifteen thousand pounds to produce an album, and we did it for a tenth of that (and a lot of hard work). You don’t have to go into a professional studio, you can produce at home and get something perfectly release-able.
Ziggy: I think it’s quite lucky that we are in this fragmented scene, alongside bands like Cocorosie, who can come with these really bizarre sounds that are really lo-fi (or no-fi as they say), and it has a complexity that, for me, just makes me want to get inside it and listen to it more.

Back to Surface Pressure – what are the plans for future releases?

Tommy: We are self-funded, so we work from one release to the next. This year’s been great- we got the FOUND single and album, then out of the blue Gdansk helped us to put out the Surface Pressure compilation. I have a friend in Paris who runs a label called Astrolab Recordings, and we’re planning a major compilation called The Auld Alliance. It won’t just be France and Scotland, also England, Germany, Switzerland, and some of those LA-based, instrumental hip-hop artists I mentioned earlier. It’s predominantly Surface Pressure artists and Parisian or Southern French artists, but so many people have agreed to be included. I’m incredibly excited about that. I had an idea that each Surface Pressure artist should release a ‘library’ record. They’re a bit of a thing for geek record-collectors, but not just them, any artist who uses a lot of samples is keen to pick up a ‘library’ record, because there’s often untapped resources on there – instrumentals, sketches, ideas, lots of different tempos. That’s the next plan. It’s quite achievable – all the SP artists are pretty much bursting at the seams with new material. S-Type writes a beat a day pretty much, and they’re outstanding, but he has so many he doesn’t know what to do with them.

With such a profusion of production skills bubbling away beneath the surface, the only pressure on Tommy and his brother is how fast they can release their tunes. Look out for the compilation in independent record stores in April, and catch FOUND’s sprawling live show (like a folkier Beach Boys covering Kraftwerk tunes – but with accordions) as soon as you can.

Surface Textures is out in April on Surface Pressure / Gdansk
FOUND’s single ‘Mullokian’ is out now on Surface Pressure

When the Edinburgh-based four-piece, Found, say they are going to put on an “experimental” live music performance, it’s impossible to predict what will happen.

Last month, a crowd of more than 200 fans gathered in the Royal Scottish Academy on the Mound to join in one of the band’s weird but generally wonderful musical experiences. Band member Tommy Perman asked the crowd to make paper aeroplanes, then chuck them at a laser beam. As gallery curators looked on in bewilderment, the slightly stunned spectators obediently complied.

Each time the laser beam was broken, an electronic sound pierced the air, which was then layered over live laptop beats, keyboard ditties and guitar samples. The result was a slightly frantic, but strangely melodic mish-mash of sounds. After ten minutes, the feeling in the room was nothing short of electric.

If the recent flurry of interest is anything to go by, Found has stumbled upon a winning formula. As well as packing out venues across Scotland with their live shows, their tracks have been getting airplay everywhere from Radio 1 and XFM to Glasgow-based music station Radio Magnetic and BBC 6.

The video of their new single, Mullokian — made with Edinburgh animator Joe Richardson — is currently showing on MTV Europe. And just last month, the group were asked to record tracks for an American radio station in the Abbey Road studios, where the Beatles performed.

“I think everyone in the band has been along to art gallery shows or music performances in the past that set out to be experimental,” says Perman, 25, “and normally it’s just a lot of pretentious crap. We like to do something light-hearted, and keep it accessible and fun for the audience.

“It’s been a really exciting year for us, and we have tons going on in the next few months too,” he adds, referring to upcoming dates at the Triptych festival, the launch of their debut album and a proposed visit to the South by Southwest festival in Texas next year.

Perman met his bandmates, Ziggy Campbell, 26, and Kev Sim, 28, in 2001, at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen. Although they were studying illustration, painting and sculpture, the three soon discovered that they shared a passion for experimental music.

“I think we were all doing our best to turn our art degrees into music degrees,” Perman says, sipping a green tea at his home in Edinburgh.

After adding new member Gavin Sutherland on keyboards, their music developed, blending modern electronica with lilting folk lyrics and bass-heavy beats. Their record sleeves tend to be hand-drawn and hand-printed and, for special events, they have called upon Campbell’s girlfriend to stitch pockets into the covers for the track listings.

Although their musical style has drawn comparisons with The Beta Band and Tom Waits, Perman prefers to describe it as “catchy electronic pop, with strong production values and a good sense of humour”.

When Perman is not creating music with Found, he runs a record label, Surface Pressure. “We work hard at what we do, and like to create something of a very high quality,” says Perman. “But the main thing is proving experimental doesn’t need to mean inaccessible.”

Mullokian is released on Surface Pressure Records on March 27. Found’s debut album, Found Can Move, is out on May 29. For more information, visit www.surfacepressurerecords.co.uk/found

Found will be playing at Mono (Kings Court, King Street, Glasgow, 0141 553 2400) Thursday, and the Bongo Club (Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, 0131 558 7604) Saturday.

Read this article on the Sunday Times site.

Monika Vykoukal: You are all showing individual work, work you have done together, and work with people outside of Found. What is your approach to collaboration? What are the differences between working together and individual approaches?

Tommy Perman: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts – the obvious benefits of collaboration are we work with each of our strengths and weaknesses. We all have different areas of interest – some crossover and some don’t. Basically, collaboration keeps things interesting. The creation of ‘fine art’ can sometimes be a lonely pursuit and having other people to bounce ideas off really stops it from getting too boring.

Ziggy Campbell: The problem with working alone is that your ideas can get really stale. It’s good to have a reference point for your ideas because you can go along thinking that something’s brilliant for ages but actually it’s pretty shit.

Kev Sim: It is in the nature of the areas that we work in to collaborate. Music is often about collaborating and sharing ideas.

MV: All of you have done participatory work. Does this inform your relationship to audiences, displays, performances, and, if so, how?

ZC: We look at audience participation as a reaction against the stuffy elements of the art world. I’d rather an exhibition was more like a gig, or had that kind of vibe to it.

KS: It’s more a kin to the other areas we work in; Djing, live music. It’s more inclusive and accessible.

MV: How do you go about the collection of found material?

ZC: There’s no one way of collecting found material. The thing I liked about the Random Audio Therapy project is that a dictaphone recording had as much importance as a recording that Kev produced in a fully equipped studio.

TP: And found sound was as important as a premeditated synth part or drum pattern. It’s like the title of that Wolfgang Tillmans show; ‘If One Thing Matters, Everything Matters’ – everything has the same importance, every sound is equal.

MV: What is your relationship with the gallery? What differences do you find between working in public spaces, outdoors, indoors, bars and galleries?

ZC: These are the spaces that we know; how long do you spend in a bar compared to how long you spend in a gallery?

TP: It’s also to do with the spaces that we’re offered to work in.

KS: Yeah, it comes down to necessity; we don’t have the opportunity to put on gallery shows often.

MV: Your work seems to be very much an exercise in cartography, documentation and research. How do you develop your explorations and how do you relate to your material?

TP: The work is about the documentation and creative process. Sometimes, it’s more about the documentation.

ZC: I always think that if there is not a guaranteed outcome – if we are introducing a lot of variables and chance elements – then it is really important to gather the material while making it.

TP: You are minimising the chance of failure.

KS: The cartography and documentation is the work.

MV: Your working methods are between extremes of high concept planning and chance, arguably with a playful, game-like element. In the description of Rootes Ziggy and Susan actually write about ‘the right amount of chaos’. Could you describe this attitude a little more?

KS: Take an example of an area we work in. Electronic music, can be sterile, repetitive, dull music – and we don’t want that, we want to keep it interesting for ourselves – even if it isn’t always interesting for the people who are encountering our work!

TP: It’s about allowing mistakes. In a lot of my individual work, I won’t allow mistakes. If you consider my canvases – I plan them meticulously and then I try and execute them as accurately as possible. If I make a mistake then I work really hard to try to undo that mistake.

ZC: So is Found like your tonic?

TP: It’s a release. It keeps me sane. How about the ‘right amount of chaos’?

ZC: The right amount of chaos? It goes back to what I was saying earlier on about collaboration. For me, whenever I try to plan something and get it right, it always turns out pretty rubbish, contrived and obvious. But if you just start to let things open up to other factors, then it starts to really colour the work – really make it come alive – in everything I do, music, art � I think if you just start to let yourself lose control but still maintain some authorship.

TP: So you have to make some decisions?

ZC: Yeah, but you have to find a balance – the whole challenge of art or creativity for me is finding that balance.

MV: How did you come to start working with manipulated recording equipment?

TP: To some extent, we’ve all always been working with recording equipment.

KS: 1993, Casio SK1.

TP: What’s a Casio SK1?

KS: It was my first sampler. It’s a keyboard sampler, I still have it. You can pitch stuff and you can loop stuff.

TP: You’ve still got it!

ZC: Why are you not still using it?

KS: It’s kind of broken.

TP: How many samples can you put in it?

KS: Just one! But there’s a two and a half octave range, so you can tape down the bottom octave and then tape down the top octave over that and it produces drones. It’s fully polyphonic.

TP: Wow.

MV: What musical / experimental work influences you?

TP: I went to see a great show at the Hayward Gallery called Sonic Boom – there was work there by loads of sound artists – it was great to see this kind of work in a gallery context. Other obvious influences are John Cage, Steve Reich, Mathew Herbert, a lot of hiphop and electronica – I tend to be more interested in experimental music / sound art that is also listenable. Concept is import, but ultimately I enjoy a good tune! That’s why I am so into Herbert.

ZC: What about Eno?

KS: Sure . . . and Rolf Harris.

ZC: DJ Spooky.

TP: And latterly Scott Heren aka Prefuse, Savath + Savalas, Piano Overlord . . .

KS: Daybre!

ZC: Gavin Bryars – the composer that used a tramp loop. He made a whole orchestral piece using one found loop of a singing tramp as a starting point.

MV: All of you, to varying degrees, work in pop/electronic music as well as the more narrowly defined contemporary art area. How do deal with creating work in these two separate contexts?

KS: They’re all the same!

TP: For me it’s all about diversity.

KS: Yeah, me too.

ZC: What I love about art is that it is forgiving of your interests. It’s really cool that I can bring my live music interests as well as any other sonic pursuits into my art. I love art as an umbrella for everything that I’m involved in.

TP: We do sometimes keep work separate. You might think, right, I’m working on a music piece, or, I’m working on a sound art piece, and you think about them differently, but it’s much better to share ideas across disciplines. I think that producing more populist work helps to keep you grounded – it’s much more interesting to work in a variety of circles – or on the fringes of scenes so that you can move between them and pick the best bits from each scene. If you do this, you can take the best elements from pop music and the best elements from making contemporary art and you don’t have to . . .

ZC: . . . buy right into it?

TP: Yeah, because I think that buying right into either of those scenes isn’t desirable for us.

KS: As opposed to seeing art as the umbrella, maybe the umbrella is something else – perhaps ���creativity��� – and art is under it?

ZC: Sure – but I’ve always thought that I’m a musician first and foremost, but I’ve never felt that music is that accepting of some of my interests – whereas art is all about appropriation; you’re able to take snippets – sample from everything and bring it all together.

TP: That’s like hiphop – it’s actually really conceptual without even knowing that it is and that’s the beauty of pop culture. It can be very clever, self-referential and boundary breaking without dwelling on it. It just does it effortlessly.

KS: It’s someone else’s job to conceptualise it.

MV: Most of your work appears open-ended, to be potentially continued, or remain in progress – Tommy’s prints and Kev’s sticker pieces for example, are variations of the visual remix constructed from basic building blocks. How do you map out stations in the development of these projects?

ZC: Each project is just a stage in development – each project builds on what has come before.

TP: I like the open-ended nature of our projects. I like the fact that we have the option to return to one a year after we have done it.

KS: Well, that’s the thing – the majority of them are based on this idea of building blocks, which can then be put together or taken apart not necessarily by us. For example The Three Sounds, has rules that anyone can follow. They are quite humble projects really – I don’t think we are suggesting that we are any better than anyone else who wants to try it.

MV: What is the attraction of the remix for you? Why do you want people to remix your poster?

TP: I’m fascinated by the fact that you can achieve very different outcomes from the same building blocks. It’s exciting to see what someone else will make from my work.

KS: It’s not static; it’s fluid.

ZC: Nothing’s sacred in what we do.

TP: We’re challenging people to think creatively.

ZC: I think it’s something that’s always been in our work, we’ve always felt it really important to explain the projects, or break it right down and say, this is how the trick is done.

TP: What like Penn and Teller?

ZC: I hate the thought of somebody saying, I didn’t understand that piece. That really gets me more than anything else.

KS: ‘Ambiguous-Unititled no. 23′

ZC: . . . yeah, I hate that, and I don’t the thought of someone saying ‘I just dinnae get it man’. I’d rather it was ‘I understood it, and I didn’t like it’.

KS: ‘I understood it, and it was rubbish’.

ZC: I don’t want to try and trick anybody. I don’t think any of us are into confusing anyone.

TP: No, I’m definitely not into confusing people, but I’d have to say that personally I’m quite into showing people that I have a level of skill.

ZC: Yeah, but if you’re showing people the process . . .

TP: It’s a bit of a challenge. I see the remix projects as competitive, not aggressively, because we’re not aggressive – well, maybe Ziggy.

KS: But that’s the game element, and we’re all into that.

MV: Your work seems to be in and about pop forms (graphic design, stickers, DJing, the ‘road movie’). Are you creating an image, a brand-identity with FOUND and the consistency of your graphic design?

TP: When we set up the FOUND catalogue we decided that each project would have its own logo so it would be in a sense ‘anti-branding’.

KS: Each catalogue number has it’s own identity.

TP: But at the same time it has a similar identity to the other catalogue entries and there is an overall look. Part of that for me comes out of working as a graphic designer and having to do crappy corporate IDs for people that I’m not really interested in. So with FOUND I have the opportunity to do something that I am interested in. It’s a treat for me because I love designing and here I have the opportunity to design for a group of projects that I care about. We’ve all put effort into making FOUND look interesting and accessible. These days everybody understands a brand. It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek but also a salute to how creative brand identities are. Some of my favourite designs are brand logos.

KS: We’ve all grown up with pop culture so it has had an inevitable influence on our work.

MV: How did you come to adopt this simple, sleek look for your creative output?

TP: If you keep the design around the work
really clean, then the work can speak for itself.

KS: As a printmaker, that style is relevant – in the workshops we taught, we made clear the benefit of creating a design that can be output easily as a print, or a stencil for a t-shirt, or a sticker, anything. When you get down to the actual mechanics of making a piece of work �Ķ

TP: so it’s almost a technical issue? That’s like when I’ve have been building the website, to some extent, the design has been dictated by my technical ability. My attitude is, let’s keep it simple, so that we can do it ourselves.

KS: Sure, you don’t want to have to rely on other people, so if you can do it in-house then you can retain control.

MV: What do the frog and key mean in your project symbols?

TP: As I said, each catalogue number gets it’s own logo. The actual relevance of the frog and the key are fairly insignificant. The key was my door key at the time . . .

ZC: and the frog was?

KS: The frog was from the frog CD.

TP: Ah yes, the North American Frog Call CD that my friend Roel gave me and I sampled for the Random Audio project. So the frog is relevant and Kev did a great drawing of a toad . . .

KS: Quite close to when we first started working together, you gave me a copy of that CD and we tried to make a beat out of it.

TP: Oh yeah, the ‘New Frog Chorus’ it could still happen . . .

KS: FND025

ZC: It’s on record now guys – FND025 – it’s ear-marked! Music for Frogs!

KS: It’s coming straight after Music for Dogs; FND024!

MV: Ziggy has talked about the development of a nostalgic mood in his latest pieces. Do you see this as a new departure? Does it potentially relate to previous explorations of time structures – loops as circular, time stands still – and manipulation of record players – ‘loss’ of function? I also feel that in highlighting the iconic qualities of temporary features of the urban environment and the road, Tommy and Kev are creating mementos to some extent.

ZC: I think it’s brilliant that Monika’s actually saved the most complex question for the end! Erm . . . there’s always been a mood of nostalgia in my work; I’ve always had a reference to a retro look, a retro design so it’s not really a departure as such.

TP: Why have you been interested in nostalgia?

ZC: More recently it’s been making sense because the new piece that I’m doing for the show; making a score for found film footage, is a sort of memento to . . .

TP: . . . things that have been lost? Lost technology?

ZC: Not lost technology, more just the past. Lost past. Now I’m seeing it more than ever. Whenever I go back home there’s much more changed, much more lost in my community, my past, my tribe I suppose. It’s all gone basically. In this piece I’m making for the show, I’m trying to make a memento or reminder – but I don’t want it to be over-wrought with sentimentality so I’m using someone else’s memories to do it with.

TP: So you’re slightly detached?

ZC: Yeah, I feel more comfortable if it’s not so close to home.

KS: If you look nostalgia up in the dictionary, although it’s often used as a negative term, the definition is actually a sense of belonging as much as it is looking into the past. It’s a sense of belonging to something as opposed to thinking of another time as better – you’re looking forward but still remembering the past. That’s my problem with nostalgia as a term. A great deal of my work has nostalgic values as well.

ZC: Yeah, I didn’t really think about it until Monika pointed it out, but you are making mementos of your mates – doing drawings of your friends, or people who have affected you. I think it’s cool that you are putting importance on something like that rather than something outside of your immediate sphere.

TP: I think that what we all do is to make sense of what is going on around us. My work is a document of what’s happening. I’m not looking back; I’m looking around at what’s happening at the moment. Once I’ve made the work, then it becomes a document of what was happening at the time. For example, I’ve done a lot of drawings of buildings that have now been knocked down.

MV: Your projects – working with found sound and footage, prints, photography, road movies – document and map localities but are never straightforward documentary. For instance, Tommy’s paintings and screen-prints of cityscapes are extremely realistic, but he chooses not to use the medium of photography.

TP: I wouldn’t say they are photo-realistic by any means. I choose not to use the medium of photography because I feel there are many better photographers than I. Also, I don’t think that a photograph captures what I want to say. I think that by selecting the bits that I am interested in, I create a new narrative for the viewer.

KS: Yes, it’s all about a narrative and selecting what information is important to reveal that narrative.

TP: Yeah, when I see a scene and take a photograph of it, there may be only one or two reasons why I have been interested in that scene, so I then disregard everything else.

MV: Prints are emptied of passers-by and signage, like portraits of different street corners, iconic, timeless and monumental, city as nature/landscape. People and action return in the audio pieces, especially in the Random Audio Therapy Unit you get circular, looped, timeless structures again.

TP: I am very into typography so signage is normally quite central to my compositions; car park signs . . .

ZC: Is that not true for both of you?

KS: Yeah, definitely typography and design in general. Design within the city. It’s almost like making something quite mundane become monumental. It’s not what I set out to do, or what you set out to do but . . . it’s definitely something that could be said of your work.

ZC: Maybe not making it monumental, but just finding the beauty in the ordinary.

TP: But also, I try to tell people that these buildings that are about to get knocked down have beauty and significance and they are monuments . . . landmarks. But with my SURVEY:UK project I am trying to highlight the fact that most of our towns and cities have a lot in common and you can see the same kind of thing everywhere; the same street corner, the same car park, the same high-rise, the same concrete block, the same signage. And that’s similar to what you’re doing – boiling things down to a graphic iconography.

ZC: That kind of signals the end of the interview doesn’t it?

TP: Well we’ve still not answered the last part of that question – that people come back into the audio pieces . . . Monika’s cleverly trying to relate Kev’s and my visual work to the audio work, and I do think there are relationships there that we’re not clever enough to think about!

KS: Yep, I think you’re probably right.

ZC: Well let’s just call it a night then?

TP: [refusing to give up] I know what she means – even though we reference people in those works, they’re not about one person, they are about people in general. And because you loop stuff up you take away that individuality. Do you reckon?

ZC: Kill it man.

KS: Thanks, bye.

“Perception”, Bergson wrote, “is never a mere contact of the mind with the object present; it is impregnated with memory-images which complete it as they interpret it.” And memory-images are of course much more than mere pictures. Sounds, emotions, mistakes, jumbles, repeats, exchanges…contribute to the potency of the memory-image and move us perhaps closer to the ideal concept of pure-memory or pure-recollection or interpretative truth.

As seductive as true objective recollection might be, Perman, Campbell and Sim know the perils of that kind of totality. To escape the trap of patronisingly totalising memory-images on behalf of lucky beholders/listeners, the principle mode of practice for FOUND is open-ended collaboration on the construction of audiovisual-memory-images – a potentially never-ending programme to run parallel to the mere objects of our perception – in order to accumulate shared access points which might allow us in the present or future present to recognise then recall something of our accelerating technosociety.

But there is also a strong principle of critique in this project which is undersold if attention rests on formal strategies for the production of the acoustic and the aesthetic. For what FOUND as a social act will not accept is the given nature of many of our audiovisual-memory-images. The critique inherent in FOUND is of Adorno’s type, a throwing of the images and sounds of our contemporary lives into crisis: FOUND resists seeing and hearing that which is given to be seen and heard.

Bergson gave a lead on this point by castigating associationism, that tendency towards the totalised memory-image. “The capital error of associationism”, he wrote, “is that it substitutes for the continuity of becoming, which is the living reality, a discontinuous multiplicity of elements, inert and juxtaposed.” Similarly, against the atomising of experience into totalised associated fragments, FOUND finds delight, play and perception in the fluidity of an ever-changing audiovisualscape, one which fractures, following the great lessons in hermeneutics of the Cubists, yes, but one which is then reconstituted through collaborative creative action. The inert becomes once again active and interconnected.

Whether it is a street or a building or a billboard that is to be dissected, or a sound that is to be disassembled, the memory-images which follow are more than mere alterations to the sequences of the atomic parts of the given objects; they allow us to see and hear again those symbols of the urban everyday too often simplistically associated with given analogues, and too often coloured by the audiovisual overlays of consumerist imperatives. FOUND encourages us to reconvene with the dynamic and uplifting fluidity of our closest environment behind its own immediate image: a re-finding of substantive, moving meanings – a critical ability too valuable to lose.

Ken Neil

Triangular thinking

Trying to establish a linear timeline with Tommy, Ziggy and Kev is a pointless exercise. Ask, “What have you been doing over the past 12 months?” and they reel out a load of concepts, sounds and images. With so many projects evolving simultaneously and at different rates, it is impossible for them portion off their year in a linear structure. “We don’t do linear,” Tommy says, “Can’t you tell?”

Luckily, the boys have a slick multimedia website which clearly links and catalogues all their work, called surfacepressure. Having spent the last year working for a graphic design company in Edinburgh, Tommy has been able to put his hi–tech know–how to good use, building a state of the art site which promotes and showcases their work as well as forging links with other creative outfits.

Shared visions

Creative exchange underpins the ethos of the Found collective’s work. Whether they’re bouncing ideas off each other or inviting other artists to remix their sounds and visuals, their work evolves as a collective, interactive experience.

In September 2004 the boys took part in an interactive event called Cabin Exchange in Edinburgh’s Bristow Square.

Z: We turned the cabin into an instrument – just sort of bashed it and stuff and recorded the ambient sounds around about. The idea was we would make this racket during the day – we would limit ourselves to just this one day – and make a track and then copy 50 CDs and trade them off with people for sounds or records or whatever.”
K: We wrote a smart track, swapped some sounds and stuff.
T: it was a total experiment – it did actually turn out pretty successful.

Stop Look Listen

All the work they’ve done over the past year will culminate in an exhibition tour: Stop Look Listen, which opens at Peacock Visual Arts on February 5th, transferring to the Meffan in Forfar on March 26th and then on to the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh on April 28th. The boys are currently cramming to tie up loose ends in time for February’s opening. It’s a towering task, but all three boys agree that deadlines are crucial for focussing their creative energies.

T: We like restrictions. I can’t just work aimlessly – I always set a deadline, a brief for myself.
Z: I think it just encourages you to get better results and make stuff that you wouldn’t normally come up with.

Kev agrees. Full time work has meant being especially hard on himself. “I work in a bar, a lot of hours. But it’s important to have deadlines so that you force yourself to make the time to get work done. So yeah, I just have to force myself to stay up all night drawing.”

Task masters

If boys are said to be crap at multitasking, Found are the exception to the rule. Since they hooked up at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen three years ago, they have kept a clear but broad collective vision. Working together, they generate three dimensional concepts, incorporating music, sound and visuals in a diverse range of media.

Z: Often things you’re juggling will inform each other.
T: Yeah, they all spill into each other.
Z: The thing I like about this exhibition (Stop, Look, Listen) is that it’s not just visual art – I’d probably get pissed off if I was just spending all my time working on visual art, because I’d rather be incorporating music and performance and all the stuff that we’ve been working on.

South central foray

Last year Kev and Ziggy moved from Aberdeen to join Tommy in Edinburgh in an attempt to expand their profiles in Scotland, and find new opportunities.

Z: It’s cool getting up and running again – it’s been good to be in the same area. We’ve done a lot of stuff in Aberdeen, but I’m quite glad that we’re moving somewhere else and we can start breaking Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Tour de force

Just now their focus is the exhibition tour, which will be their biggest and most diverse project to date.

T: The idea was we would make work specific to each gallery space, so it will change and we have a few tricks up our sleeves for it to evolve.
Kev: I’m making stickers for each venue which will be installed straight onto the wall of the gallery. They’ll be drawings specific to each gallery’s surrounding area. So that’s going to evolve as we go into different venues, hopefully it will grow as well and by the third venue it’ll be a much larger installation.

Add your own spin

The boys are inviting you to contribute with their Stop Look Listen poster campaign: an invitation to “Remix our Poster”.

T: you can download the poster from the website and then change it into whatever you want. We’ve been distributing fliers all over the place. We’ve already had some amazing responses – some really smart designs.
Z: We’re not picking one, it’s not a competition or anything, it’s just an interactive project.

Game on

Far from being a static retrospective of past projects, the exhibition tour will be an ongoing experiment in interactive art and music. As well as focussing their triangular vision, placing certain limitations and rules on projects allows the boys scope for change and variation.

T: The point is, using the same building blocks you can make anything, and that pretty much sums up what we do. Music as well – we’re always trying to push the limits of what we can do with just with three noises.

These three boys will be making lots of noise this year all over Scotland, so get in on the remix (see website for details).

Since meeting in their final year at Gray’s School of Art two years ago, the Aberdeen based threesome have collaborated on a number of innovative projects. Their latest audio experiment will be released on vinyl soon and they have big plans to mount an interactive, multimedia exhibition in the near future.

Tommy Perman, Ziggy Campbell and Kev Sim were in the same year at art school but studied different subjects. The three had never officially met until their final year when they came together through a shared interest in making music. Each had been composing independently and incorporating music into their artwork. Sculptor Ziggy even built his own instruments and teamed up with Kev in the second year to compose and perform experimental music.

In the remix

Soon after, Kev got involved in one of Tommy’s projects called Chinese Whispers, which has influenced much of the work the trio have created. According to Tommy it was child’s play. “I had an idea to play a musical game of Chinese whispers. So I wrote a track, a kind of hip–hop instrumental jazz influenced thing, then sent it off to someone in Edinburgh and they remixed that track. They sent their remix off to someone in Glasgow who remixed that without the third person ever hearing the first version, so each person only heard the tune before them and each time it was different.”

Three of a kind

When Tommy realised Ziggy and Kev had been doing similar work together he introduced himself to Ziggy and the three of them began bouncing ideas off each other. One music project they have collaborated on from the start is the Random Audio Therapy Unit (RATU). Ziggy explains its genesis, “We just got chatting about how we could create a piece of music in a way that was quite unusual and we developed this project. So we put it in the RSA exhibition in Glasgow’s Mclelland Galleries.”

They set up four minidisk players inside a medicine cabinet. Each of the players had a disc with sounds compiled by them. Ziggy adds, “Each of the players were playing in random mode simultaneously and creating this indeterminate musical composition. It was a real success – people really liked it in Glasgow and we had it in our degree show as well.”

Funding Found

Following the success of the first phases of the RATU project, the boys have secured funding to release a sample of their latest version on vinyl. They have also begun to promote their work under the group name Found. Tommy says, “We’re hoping to expand Found in the following year to be a collective name for all the work we do, whether it’s solo or group projects and hopefully we can get more people involved. The plan is for it to be the home of a bunch of different people’s work so that we’ve got the ability to sell stuff out there.”

Art attack

Tommy studied Painting at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen and continues to produce artwork that he exhibits on his own website, Surface Pressure, which will soon become the online home of Found. He also runs a t–shirt company, Climate Culture and is always juggling hundreds of ideas and projects. Kev studied printmaking and is currently applying his expertise to the design and creation of the sleeve for the RATU EP. As well as pursuing musical interests of his own, Kev teaches various art-based subjects to young people at Aberdeen’s Peacock Visual Arts. And Ziggy gets busy with building instruments, composing music and raising funds for Found.

Mob rule

So are three heads better than one? Tommy says, “It’s great because we can feed off each other for ideas.” Ziggy agrees, “Yeah, and I always feel much more comfortable in a mob. I’d just shit myself if I had to perform on my own.” Kev also thinks it’s more practical, “The logistics, organisation of events or anything that needs to be done as far as publicity – you know simple things like that would mean we’d have to spread ourselves quite thinly if there wasn’t three of us.”

New found success

The boys all hold down bread and butter jobs as well, but hope to be able to set up Found as a small business that will fund itself and raise money to invest in more work. Recently, Ziggy successfully applied for a grant from Limousine Bull, a subsidised funding body for the arts based in Aberdeen, and with the money they received they have been able to make the RATU vinyl EP.

As a team they can pool their creative talents to produce all aspects of their work in–house. In that sense, between them they have their bases covered. Who says three’s a crowd?