Graham Dunning releases mechanical techno on new album, Music For Climbing Walls

Built from a tower of modified vinyl records.

Experimental musician and analogue innovator Graham Dunning will release new album Music For Climbing Walls via LTR Records this April.

The culmination of ten years working on his mechanical techno project, which involves running five modified vinyl records from a spindle extension at the centre of a turntable, Music For Climbing Walls includes some of Dunning’s most dance floor-ready recordings to date.

Taking an almost absurdist approach to physical production methods, and part of the continuum of turntable and record manipulation of Fluxus-inspired artists like Milan Knížák and Christian Marclay, Dunning describes his process as doubly physical, “both in the sense of building an actual machine and for my body too because I need muscle memory for adjusting parts of the system, like the position of the drum triggers.”

The music takes its conceptual starting point from the abstract colours and shapes of indoor climbing walls, an aesthetic reflected on the collaged album cover.

“I’m interested in how the shapes and colours of indoor climbing walls create geometric, rhythmical and abstract sculptures with a functional and sometimes beautiful logic of their own,” Dunning explains. “I started to see a connection with my music and its layers of clean and dirty textures; pointillist scree behind rubbery rhythms, overlapping and interlocking surfaces. ”

Music For Climbing Walls is released on 12th April via LTR Records, and comes housed in a tip-on sleeve with an instruction manual. Pre-order a copy here and check out the artwork and tracklist in more detail below.

Tracklist:

1. Void Worm
2. Kind Rhythem
3. Closeness
4. Smoke Shot
5. Build My Gallows High
6. Kestral Selection
7. Rack Din
8. Threads
9. Inner Nutshell

Photo by Andy Worthington