CMRC Seminar: Dr Liam Maloney: All we have left are recordings

Event details

Contemporary material culture – the physical things that denote our lives – is not often considered worthy of exploration for musicologists. Perhaps when important musical figures pass away (musicians, DJs, conductors) their instruments, scores, and recordings can sometimes be the exceptions to this, falling as they do within the bounds of material culture, but often we are concerned with the sound or the auditory expression of those objects only, and we rarely consider the objects in their own right. However, in these instances recordings, both as sound and as objects, can allow us access to a history we have lost our direct connection to. This session ties together 4 publications that broadly explore the role of recordings and phonography in sociomusicological study, and particularly as a way of interrogating the history that vinyl records can uncover for us. Firstly, we explore the ruins of a 60s counter culture commune in California, and ask what the value of 94 unplayably damaged records may actually be. This is then followed by a dive into personal record collections, and questioning the burden that vinyl can place on the collector. Thirdly, the session explores the record collections of 4 historically important DJs, and considers what this form of sonic thanatology can infer about legacy and cultural value. Finally, the session interrogates the potential of recordings to shed light on how vinyl records have been utilised or manipulated in dance music DJ sets throughout history, and what technological affordances and moments of technological plasticity have occured to allow phonographic practices such as DJing to evolve.

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About the speaker

Dr Liam Maloney

Liam Maloney graduated in Sound Technology from Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (BA Hons 2007). He began lecturing in further education, specialising in audio production and electronic music composition. During this time, he achieved an MSc in Music & Creative Industries Management with distinction from the University of Bolton (2011), with his dissertation examining the dissemination of taste after the digital revolution winning the Vice-Chancellor’s award for “outstanding academic achievement”. He undertook his doctoral work in the Music Research Centre at the University of York (2014-2020). His PhD, titled ‘Music Like Water: Exploring the Functions of Music Through Thematic Bibliometric Analysis and Comparative ESM Study’, supervised by Dr Jez Wells and Dr Catherine Laws, and was examined by Professor John Sloboda. He was awarded a Humanities Research Doctoral Fellowship for his doctoral work (2018).

His postdoctoral work, a joint venture between the Digital Creativity Labs and the Department of Music at the University of York for the ‘Musical Creativity and Emotional Content’ project (2020) concerned the development of real-time emotional expression prediction embedded within music sequencing systems.

In addition to this his sonic practice has seen him work with, support, remix, and play alongside many electronic musicians including Pendulum, Imogen Heap, Dom & Roland, DJ Fresh, Ruby, and Andrew Weatherall. His performed or presented work at the Bridgewater Hall, the Festival of Ideas, the Royal Institution, the People’s History Museum, LGBTQ+ History Month, BBC One, BBC Radio 2, and numerous festivals, clubs, and galleries.