Peter Maynard - discovering sounds

I first met Peter around 2010 at the time I was creating a large audio, video installation for an arts festival. We quickly became close friends and would spend many days walking and collecting sounds with our little field recorders - Andrew Heath, Nov 2024

Both a sound and a visual artist, Peter Maynard works mainly with treated field and sound recordings using a handheld recorder and found instruments such as acoustic guitar or harmonium - minimal tools that he uses to create sublime and ethereal soundscapes that envelop you and carry you on a journey. Sonic elements are perfectly placed within the soundstage in much the same way as his art and photography are created.

Peter Maynard in his own words...

My background was and still is in painting, but there came a point when I considered another material which was sound.  I think it was around then that I started ‘listening’ and wondering how, if I was going to do so, to go about making sound work.  I was not a musician in the conventional sense of the word but was astounded by how sound - which had no weight, touch or scent and was by its very nature invisible - could have such a profound effect, so I bought myself a field recorder, a computer and music software to see where it might take me.

A very important place...

It was in Highgate in North London that I first entered the door of Sound 323, a record shop run by Mark Wastell, himself a musician.  For me the shop contained a different language of recorded sound. There was nothing immediately identifiable to match my usual record store wanderings and purchasing.

A new language...

Mark, having gauged something of my musical sensibilities and interests, introduced me to that which would eventually turn and radicalise my ear, CDs of intriguing design and artwork that gave little clue as to what was contained within: Bernard Gunter, Steinbruchel, Eliane Radigue, Philip Jeck, Tomas Philips, Fredrico Durand and so on.

Morton Feldman and the art of minimalism

Listening to Morton Feldman initiated my interest in interval and silence, how music could achieve a sense of stillness rather than rushing to find a conclusion, as in the work of Jurg Frey and in a more contemporary vein, the music of Mark Hollis, in which existed possibilities for sound not to be there, but which nevertheless, if you will, can ‘be heard’.

Steve Roden’s ‘Winter Couplet’ and Sawako’s ‘Yours Grey’ are the most frequent visitors that alight of themselves on the Cd tray, and as far as my back pages go, so too do Steely Dan, Henry Cow and Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica and others I would possibly be too ashamed to mention!