Offer a diverse bunch of musicians an assortment of instruments sculpted by artists, give them six hours to write and record a song, and what do you get? Meet Late Works and their ‘Of Noise’ LP

“Late Works: Of Noise’ is the eclectic, Futurist-inspired compilation from DIY arts collective Late Works. A playful, experimental record that nudges at the conventional boundaries of music-making, the album features members of bands from the forefront of London’s underground scene – including Goat Girl, 404 Guild, Black Midi and Powerplant – deconstructing elements of industrial noise, hip hop and electronica, and reassembling new and radical sounds.

The limited edition long-player is Late Works’ debut vinyl release and the latest in a series of free-form, forward-thinking projects. Based in London, Late Works is a fluctuating collection of musicians and artists creating live performances and events, and a radio show on Resonance Extra. Conceptual and nomadic, it’s a slippery beast to define, which it turns out, is exactly the point, says graphic designer and founder Joseph Bradley Hill.

“I use three words – indeterminate, intermedia, and improvisation – to define what I feel Late Works is,” he explains. “And even those terms are so loose. Essentially, I create rules and conditions for events to take place. It always starts with a concept.”

Late Works grew out of Hill’s background in art and graphic design (his irreverent, retro-style collages adorn the ‘Of Noise’ sleeve) and his increasing desire to play with the possibilities of performance-based work. He speaks passionately and articulately about his influences over the course of our conversation, from typeface and the underlying theories of design to the conceptual Fluxus artists George Brecht and Yoko Ono.

The ‘Of Noise’ compilation looks to the Italian Futurist movement for inspiration. In particular, the artist and pioneering noise music composer Luigi Russolo and his 1913 manifesto ‘The Art Of Noises’. Russolo grouped noise into six classifications using colourful descriptors, from “whistling, hissing and puffing” to “bangs and booms” and “death rattles and sobs”, which the groups of musicians managed to turn into their own weird and wonderful sonic vocabulary.


The last time Hill played an instrument himself “was in Year 3”, he claims, making a high-pitched noise as he mimes scratching away on a violin. But during his undergraduate years in Cornwall, he started to make music by sourcing copyright-free videos and sampling them to create new sounds.

“From that point, I always saw music as a diary,” he says. “I think maybe I’m impatient, but I see it as something where, if you’re done with it, you just put it out there and forget about it. You can see the echoes of that in how I do Late Works. I come up with an idea and two weeks later it’s happening.”

photo: Mathilda Bennett-Greene

True to his word, ‘Of Noise’ was recorded in under a week at the HQ of Slow Dance Records in London Fields. The musicians for the project were hand-picked by Hill and label founders, Marco Pini and Maddy O’Keefe. To make these projects happen so quickly, collaboration is key.

“I produce the seeds of the ideas, but there’s absolutely no way I could carry them to fruition by myself. That’s why Late Works is permutable. I bring artists in from previous events and they help influence the way the project moves forwards. It’s quite a funny one, because the only time there is a collective of people is when an event is happening. The collective part of it is the action.”


Action was in many ways at the heart of the Futurist movement. Encouraged by early 20th century advancements in industry and technology, the artists aimed to capture the dynamism of their new modern world. How does Hill think the Futurist ideals stack up against the present day?

“Sound is much closer to us because it’s in our phones. We carry sound in our pockets – on the tube, everybody is plugged in and there’s no interaction. That’s the perfect example for me, where you’ve got both the screeching of the brakes on the Northern Line and this thing in your ear playing so loud. You have to compete with everything that’s getting louder and louder and louder. It’s like a loudness war.”

I ask him why he thinks it is that manifesto writing has become something of a lost art, and he chuckles.

“It’s the death of the author,” he beams. “The democratisation of authorship. Everybody online is compiling everything into one – you rarely see things in isolation anymore. You would scroll past someone’s manifesto now! That whole attitude of, ‘Oh, I’ll read it later’, is what I really wanted to fight against with Late Works. In a simple way we can do that by having things happen on one single day, only once, and you can’t see it again.”

The art world can be an obtuse place, at times seemingly inaccessible and exclusionary. Conceptual art courts its share of detractors and Hill is mindful of keeping sight of who the Late Works audience is. He believes that the listeners are just as much a part of the music as the performers.

“The audience are the participants,” says Hill. “Constructing events that people are going to enjoy is the most important thing for me. Because if the performers are enjoying it, then the audience are going to enjoy it.

“We had a show in a gallery in Peckham and these three construction workers came in off the street, because they heard the music coming from the building. At the end, one of them went up to the pianist and said, ‘Thank you so much, you’ve made my whole week’.

“That’s what is so exciting to me about improvised music, how it can make you feel. If I’m just played what I’m used to hearing on a record, then I don’t want to listen, it’s not interesting to me. I think it speaks to a lot of people.”


Of Noise’ explores the spirit of improvisation in joyful fashion. The musicians involved were given the nod for their diverse range and willingness to improvise. They rose to the challenge, downing their usual music tools and experimenting with the strange-looking, sculptural instruments that were purpose-built by artists Mathilda Bennett-Greene, Angus McCrum, Jonas Pequeno, and Hill himself.

The results were over-sized, hand-shaped “teeth tools” designed to be used on a makeshift xylophone, a quasi-autonomous drum machine, and a re-purposed red javelin. In other words, about as far removed from standard-issue instruments as you can get. Hill’s sculpture, a slightly sinister looking contraption titled ‘Arms & Legs’, has the humorous, absurdist air of Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp’s infamous hand-signed urinal.

“Monty Python is one of my biggest influences,” he says. “I play their sketches on my radio show all the time. I hope people don’t see it as totally serious. I really want it to be fun. I think if you’re not enjoying yourself when you’re trying to create music or art, then what is the point? If it’s too rigid or too strict, it does suck the fun out.”

photo: Jonas Pequeno

In the studio, the rules were straightforward – no additional instruments could be used, lyrics had to be written during the studio time, and only noises sampled from the sculptures and their voices were allowed. These minimalist parameters make the diversity of results all the more impressive.

Bianca Scout of Curl Recordings leads a choral vocal over the abrasive tones of ‘Dark Lore Bingo’. On ‘Drain Myth’, 404 Guild craft woozy hip hop rhythms. Goat Girl’s Clottie Cream and Rosy Bones combine droning and ceremonial chanting on ‘Diggy Diggy Fuck Off’.

“They all responded really well,” agrees Hill. “A lot of people didn’t know what it was going to involve until they got to the space. I was there for the entire week, one day we did two sessions so I was there for about 16 hours. But I’m quite hands-off.

“Apart from formulating the idea and selecting the contributors, I just let the artists and musicians do what they want. Everyone was having fun. There were a few people play-fighting with the sculptures. The Black Midi guys really enjoyed it. Bianca wanted to come back and do it every week.”

He is also keen to stress the benefits for the artist. A lot of people Hill has worked with tell him that they have been in a complete creative rut, and that having to improvise stimulates new ways of confronting their work. It’s a useful shake up of routine, an exercise in thinking outside the box, utilised throughout musical history from classical composers to Brian Eno’s ‘Oblique Strategy’ cards and basically every jazz musician ever.

“When you’re improvising, you can find new ways of playing or new ways of creating that are completely distanced from what you would usually do,” he says. “It’s about shifting your thinking. The more you get into it, the deeper you get. There were six totally different approaches to the tracks on ‘Of Noise’, which is what makes it so interesting.”


Looking ahead, there is another ‘Late Works: Of Noise’ compilation in the pipeline, though Hill says it will be a slow process due to ongoing lockdown restrictions and financial constraints. Late Works is self-funded and events-based and neither aspect is easy to realise in a pandemic.

“It’s very hard. I’ve been unemployed since last June. I basically can’t do anything because I don’t have the money. I love working on a shoestring, but now the shoestring is way too little,” he jokes.

photo: Mathilda Bennett-Greene

He also believes that the spontaneous, environment-driven and collective nature of Late Works means that his projects don’t translate as well in an online realm.

“I really did not want to jump on the digital train,” he says. “I think if it’s got to be physical, then it’s got to be physical. Digital would remove so much.”

Instead, he has focused his energy on the Late Works radio show, ‘By Ear’. It’s a kind of call-and-response format, made up of material suggested by listeners who send in their recommendations by postcard. It’s a riot of free associations, with Hill airing everything from comedy sketches by Peter Cook & Dudley Moore and recordings from writers Gertrude Stein, Kathy Acker and Marguerite Duras, to music from Pink Floyd, Laurie Anderson, Tony Allen and Portishead.

“You can meet people really easily in London, but it is also a kind of bubble. The networks can become quite insular. The reason I did the radio show is so I can reach people outside of London,” he says.

He disappears for a moment, reappearing to show me a box filled with giant stacks of postcards.

“These are the new postcards. I send four out at a time, in an envelope with a first class stamp inside, and then they send it back to me. Obviously I could just get them to print it out, but the quality of this paper is so nice! You want to be feeling something when you’re working on it, this solid, physical thing. I think even paper can give inspiration.”


It takes a certain level of self-belief to pull a conceptual work off and transform it from a kernel of an idea into a fully-fledged reality. Hill is an advocate for diving into the unknown and allowing the process of creation to shape the outcome.

“I was actually re-reading ‘The Art Of Noises’ manifesto today,” he says. “Russolo signs off by essentially saying, ‘I don’t know anything, so you can call me an idiot, but I’m having fun with this and I think it’s an important thing, in my head’. I think that idea of allowing the process, the performance, and the conversations to dictate how you’re thinking is quite an entertaining way of allowing things to happen to you. I mean, that’s just how you go through life anyway. Starting with something and allowing it to happen.”

As all great works of improvisation demonstrate, there’s certainly something magical about making it up as you go along.

‘Late Works: Of Noise’ is out on Slow Dance

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