The Touching Bass duo spoke with afromerm, Rohan Ayinde, and felix taylor about translating visual art into sound, recording their performance on vinyl, and the trust, intuition, and openness that shaped their collaboration at Dulwich Picture Gallery. All photography by Ollie Tikare.

An amber eye stares out from the centre of Peter Boel’s Head of a Hound, though it remains unclear who it looks at, or whether the mouth beneath it gapes open in fear or anticipation. These emotional ambiguities and multiplicities, and the exploration of the mouth as a portal into inner landscapes, form the core of Rachel Jones’s paintings in Gated Canyons, her current exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Just as Jones’s works are presented in dialogue with the Gallery’s collection, three sonic artists — afromerm, felix taylor, and Rohan Ayinde — were in dialogue with her paintings during a performance curated and hosted by the esteemed label and curatorial platform Touching Bass in early summer. The live set translated Jones’s rich, sensory visual language — the warm colours and textures of layered oil sticks and pastels, and the breaths, whispers, and chattering teeth that can almost be heard when walking through the gallery — into one of spoken word, classical piano, and deep bass that reverberated through the packed wooden pews of the Gallery’s chapel.

The artists reunited to discuss translating visual art into sound, their feelings on recording the performance to vinyl, and the trust, intuition, and openness that shaped their collaboration.

Errol: Morning, friends. It’s lovely to be able to convene together like this since having some time to reflect on the performance itself. It’s been two months, but it feels like a real age ago. How has that time and distance affected your relationship with the work?

Rohan Ayinde: We spent some real, concerted time working on this project, and it was beautiful to get to know both of you, Felix and Cil [afromerm], better in the process of responding to the paintings. The relationship is different when you’re collaborating and making something. We spent all that time together — which felt quite charged — to get to the moment of performance, and the aftermath was like an elation. Two months on, I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground to see when the vinyl is going to be ready, but I haven’t listened to the performance since. There’s a feeling of excitement and anticipation because of the distance from it.

afromerm: I’m so glad it was recorded. When you do projects like this, where there’s an amazing collaborative brief that culminates in an ephemeral moment — it’s there, and then it’s gone. There’s a beauty in that, and that’s still somewhat the case here, but I’ve also felt excitement that it’s going to be brought back to life in a different way soon.

felix taylor: The one way that the performance has changed in my head is that, leading up to the night, and even on the night to some degree, I was thinking about how ready my part of the piece was. But as time’s gone on, I remember it less like an individual thing and more as one big forty-five-minute musical soup that we made together.

Alex Rita: When Errol and I got invited to do this project, that’s what we hoped would happen: that it would just become one thing. When I listen back to it now — obviously, I know you guys separately and I know how it was created, but it doesn’t feel disjointed. I think that’s quite special, and a skill. All of you are so good at listening and inviting people in, and it comes across. I’m thinking about the person who had come and said to Rohan that the performance was one of the most powerful experiences she’d ever had with music. I’d love to know how she’d feel when she listens back to the vinyl — it’d be interesting to see if that feeling could be somehow re-felt.

Rohan Ayinde: Let’s send her an advanced copy — she’d be gassed. It was profound to come out of the performance and have someone who I don’t know well — she wasn’t a friend who felt like they needed to say something, if that makes sense. I was talking to a few people, and she’d waited to talk to me, and she said, “I’ve never experienced anything like this before, and I don’t think I ever will again.”

felix taylor: Whoa. I think Rohan and Cil’s waterfall moment at the end of a piece in particular spoke to the power of that evening. It was an aspect that was spoken about and suggested, but that, in each rehearsal, never quite landed. There were a lot of things that we weren’t one hundred per cent sure about, but by that evening, everything had distilled for all three of us in this magical way. You can do as much rehearsal as possible, but something about the discussions we’d had, and about how we’re all rallying around this common focus of Rachel’s work… We were all in the same headspace and the same musical space by that point.

afromerm: I’m thinking about the order of the pieces and how, as the album progresses, it’s as if we’re gradually zooming out on this bigger picture. I like thinking of the shape of the album as a sliver that spans out into this expanse. Yours, Felix, focuses in so much, and we’re in this tiny portion of the landscape, and then my piece is quite successive, moving through, until we get to the grandiosity of this giant piece that Rohan picked. Then, all three of us drip little bits of our landscape into the final piece, painting almost a remix of the pieces. It feels so big.

Errol: That’s interesting — it’s almost the opposite of the journey through the exhibition. When you step in, you’re initially met by the grandiosity of three or four pieces, then as you edge further through, the work gets smaller. As you guys are talking a bit about process, I was particularly interested in, Felix, you breaking down further why you decided to approach it from a more microscopic perspective.

felix taylor: With projects like this, I quite often get overwhelmed, especially when they’re to do someone else’s work and there’s so much of it, and I like all of it. At some point, I find it very freeing to constrain myself. I find a piece that speaks to me and my attraction towards graphic scoring. I’m looking for something that denotes different things — a small section that can show me a range of different emotions. A reaction to there being so much work is to, at some point, get rid of as much of it as possible.

Alex Rita: That’s a really smart and genuine way to go about it. I felt the same when we approached this idea. There were so many options, in the sense that our community is the work, and we have to choose the right people to respond to this. We could have gone in so many directions, so we almost had to foresee what it was going to be. A lot of the time, when we get asked to collaborate, I feel like the word “collaboration” has lost meaning. It now stands for placing two names together, but not necessarily creating together and being part of the whole process. It’s become quite superficial, and maybe a tactic to be in the same room as someone, but you’re not interested in their work and deeper thoughts. But this really did feel like a collaboration between the three of you. I mentioned before how you came with your separate pieces, but also allowed so much space for input from one another. What could have happened was that you all made three pieces and were like, “No, this is how it is, and I don’t want to change it.” It’s good to have that ego, but sometimes it can get in the way. When I visited the studio as you were putting it all together, I just knew it would be great — it didn’t feel like that was the first time you were playing together. There was such a symbiosis.

afromerm: It was a really supportive environment. It’s quite rare that you go into a collaborative space with not one, but two other people, and I feel like we were supportive of all of the creative decisions each other were making. That allowed the process to be so fluid — one person would suggest something, and there would be such an openness from the other two to see where that took us. It allowed such ease in the process to sew up our pieces together and create something that felt like a genuine reflection of the three of our practices.

felix taylor: It was like a dance, almost. Everything that someone did, someone had a musical or sonic reply to. Actually, Carla Flores — a musician who I admire and think of as much more of a performer than I am — was saying that she was really inspired by the role that each of us had, and how we had this absolute balance and confidence in knowing when to make noise and contribute, but also when to step back or move aside for someone else.

afromerm: Listening back to the final piece,* Mouthing Love*, it strikes me as very spacious, but there’s also this beautiful, quite naturally occurring space in the centre of the piece from which we’re quite literally moving in and out almost immediately. It’s as if the other person can sense when someone is ready to take a step back, and they immediately come to support and take over. There’s no speaking over each other — it’s all just assuming that role at the moment that feels best.

Rohan Ayinde: It’s an interesting one because, as a poet that often offers words rather than sound, I’m unsure of the best way to not be an interruption. I understand that, as soon as words get added, there’s an overvaluation that can occur. People then listen for the words more than to the bassline. I have, in the process of understanding performance, been a bit in my head about wanting to be an instrument as much as a word, and trying to navigate the delicacy of that. In this instance, I felt safe and able to be both those things with my language. I felt confident about adding my voice, as if it were Felix’s piano or guitar, or Cil’s machine.

Errol: It’s so cool to hear you all speak so fondly about the way in which this experience panned out. Much of what we’re learning about what curation is is that it’s about providing the best room, and making sure that the bed is well-set. But, ultimately, though we set up the environment, it’s up to the artists, yourselves, to step into that room and make yourselves as comfortable as you can be. I think we also need to give a moment to Cil’s instrument-making — can you tell us a bit about the journey of bringing her to life?

afromerm: Juniper’s a motion-reactive MIDI instrument that I built as part of my undergraduate thesis, about five years ago, and that I use a lot as part of my performance practice. The idea was conceived as a way to collaborate with movement practitioners and dancers, but because she was born in the pandemic, she ended up being a lot more isolated, so that’s still not a vision that I’ve completely realised. But in this project, she had a slightly percussive role at the start. In the artwork that I chose, there were these shapes that I was interpreting as echoey strikes, so I brought in this percussive, almost industrial sound that I triggered using my hand. Later on, I had a flute synthesiser that was heavily processed to sound really airy, and to move around the space. I was, again, using my hand, this time a lot like a theremin to control the pitch and the amplitude of the sound.

Rohan **Ayinde: **It’s mad because the first time we were in Wu-Lu’s studio, you weren’t going to bring Juniper into the performance — you weren’t sure. I remember thinking that that was crazy.

Alex Rita: Rohan was like, “Well, can I play her?”

Rohan **Ayinde: I thought someone had to! **But I didn’t want to push — you’re an artist, and you know what you want to do, but I remember thinking that it was a real shame because I felt like it was going to answer something.

afromerm: I used her all the time in my practice when I first built her, and it’s been an interesting journey to begin choosing to use her quite consciously. I mean, it’s a gesture that commands a lot of attention. You have quite literally command of sound with your hands. I’ve gotten to a place where using her a bit more sparingly has felt very impactful and intentional.

**Errol: **You have the physicality of a conductor, or like you’re conjuring some spells. It’s quite mesmerising to hear you play her. As we touch here on the live performance, I’m curious to hear your feelings about this next era of the project’s life on vinyl, a physical format for people to hold on to, to turn to time and time again in their own spaces.

felix taylor: It feels good, and I guess it speaks to how real the feeling was on the night. It’s interesting that it was a live piece that we committed to record, not something that we spent six months composing and mixing and making sure that bar three of track five is the correct volume. It’s a physical record of the music, but also the feeling that was there in the chapel, which is special.

afromerm: Performance, by nature, can’t live forever. It’s ephemeral, so something quite special and fitting about vinyl is that it degrades ever so slightly with each play, and you have to be quite intentional about putting it on. I grew up surrounded by records, so I’m excited to give one to my dad — alongside his day job, he was a vinyl DJ when I was younger, and he was heavily involved in sound system culture in Brixton in the eighties and nineties.

Rohan **Ayinde: **There’s something about these visual landscapes being physically transferred into something that you can hold and play. I often think about what it means to commit something to a physical object, whether that be a poetry book or a painting — something that people can return to. It also feels fitting given that it’s a response to physical artworks. It would feel strange for the outcome to only live as a digital release when you have these very tangible, visceral objects that the work is responding to.

Alex Rita: There’s something about just being there at the moment — if you were there, you had this experience — but I was also thinking about how many hours of making music there have been that we wish we’d recorded. It feels like we should record everything and have the archives, then choose the pieces that we feel should re-exist for people. After you guys had finished performing, I was saying, “Yes, we have it recorded!” I was so excited because there are so many times when we want to hold on to this feeling and to listen back, and now we can.

Rohan **Ayinde: **I remember during the second rehearsal, us three had a conversation about the amount of space we’d been given. There was no overbearing direction or desire to hear too much before the night, and in that moment, we very much felt that trust. It felt freeing to be invited to a collaboration by people we deeply respect and have a very clear sense of music, and how they want music to live in the world. To be offered the room and flexibility to do what we felt made all three of us feel like we didn’t need to worry about how or what we were doing, because we were being enabled by that invitation and support. I certainly felt that sense of freedom throughout the process.

Alex Rita: I’m glad that’s how it felt, because there was a point where I wondered if you’d felt a bit lost because I hadn’t intercepted much. We know all of your worlds — I know Rohan very well, and we’ve worked with Felix last year, and, Cil, we have done a few things together — and I could see those worlds going well together, or well enough not to feel like you needed to send me what you’d made so that I could make sure it sounds good. I just knew it would. For a long time, it wasn’t clear to me what my skill was. I have a lot of different skills, but there isn’t one thing that’s like, “Oh, this is what Alex does.” That can be confusing, but something that came up during a conversation I was part of at We Out Here was that I might be good at seeing someone’s energy and connecting people that I know could do something special together. I’m sure lots of people feel that way, but I guess it’s just making that a practice in itself.

Rohan **Ayinde: **That reminds me — Rachel was blown away by the performance that evening. I know she was honoured and quite emotional about what she’d experienced. I was just thinking about the paintings, being in the room with them, moving through the space with them. I felt the incredible generosity that she offers as a painter who engages with colour in that way, but also as someone who is quite a multidisciplinary artist, and who thinks expansively about her work beyond just the canvas. I went to see an opera that she wrote a couple of years ago. I know she wasn’t necessarily painting the works in Gated Canyons as scores, but there was already a score-like quality to the work with the movements and the repetitions throughout, right? Even though these are all unique pieces, when you take them as one complete body of work to read and respond to, there are movements. There’s an adagio, there’s an allegro, there’s an andante. That gave us so much room to rummage in. Part of the reason we could go away, make things by ourselves, and bring them together was because we were all responding to that stable centre. I wonder what you two feel when you reflect on the paintings and the sound that emerged from them?

afromerm: You’re right, they are such dynamic paintings. I was drawn to a piece called Tender Crags for its cinematic quality — it’s so wide, almost like a cinema screen, but even wider — and because scoring for moving image is a big part of my practice. I enjoy having visual cues to show me what the pacing should be, how to move, what the quality of the timbre will be. There was one particular motif of these icicle-esque structures towards the end that I evoked with the crystalline, almost tinny quality of the flute synth. I was talking to Rachel afterwards, and she was like, “Yeah, I heard the icicles!” There’s a lot we infer in art, and you can’t help but fear if you were just projecting. That’s the whole thing, right? Artistic analysis is projecting your own experience and combining that with what the artist’s intentions might have been. It’s special to have moments where your interpretation does align. I think strong work is so evocative that there will naturally be parallels between your interpretation and what the intention was. The way that Rachel works is very intuitive, and mirroring her approach was as integral to my process as the paintings themselves. I went to the exhibition and sang to the paintings a lot to see what seeped out. Most of those melodies are gone forever, but some of them were carried in, woven in, obscured. I was trying not to be too cerebral because, with interpreting art, you can try to find concrete ways of translating. That is valid, but taking intuition, pacing, and shapes as cues and combining those approaches is such a beautiful, organic way of translating one medium into another. It’s been presented to me in the past, maybe by professors, that there are tried and tested methods of making. When you come away from more academic spaces, you realise that you can’t always go down the trodden path. You have to forge your own process of interpreting work and making work.

Errol: I guess the academics need the experimentalists in order to come up with their theses. You’re the ones they’ll look to!

Rohan **Ayinde: **There’s the sound and the pieces as you have them, but something also emerges through how we title them. What were yours?

felix taylor: A Smile Or A Grimace. It came from Pieter Boel’s Head of a Hound, the painting in Dulwich Picture Gallery’s collection that Rachel had selected as the basis for her own body of work. I think what Rachel found interesting about the painting was that you can’t tell whether the hound is baring its teeth or smiling — as is often the case with animals! That point made me question all of Rachel’s work. I had, until then, seen her mouths as these big cartoonish smiles, but I all of a sudden realised that they don’t have to be this outward expression of joy, or an invitation in. They could be expressions of defence and boundary. I like that greyness. I’m attracted to that in music — the space between major and minor, the space between those emotions, and how you can exist between them all. All of those ideas made sense to me, and also made sense as a musical world that I could sit in.

afromerm: Through Open Mouths comes from a repeated phrase that emerged while I was looking at the paintings and allowing words to spill out. Moving through these different internal landscapes and seeing all these mouths with colours spilling out of them was so evocative. “Worlds are born through open mouths” was the sentence I kept returning to — we speak words into existence, and words spur actions, and actions create the world that we live in, for better or worse. It felt like quite a powerful sentiment to see these mouths as birthing different shades and shapes. It’s almost impossible to intellectualise them because you feel so much when you look at them. That’s what I wanted to evoke with my title.

Rohan **Ayinde: **For me, all of that came through the title Bodies Echo Raising Worlds. I was thinking about how the mouth is the vehicle for the body’s echo: it’s the trumpet, or the horn, or the point from which everything interior is made feasible to be heard outside in the world. It speaks to ideas that you’ve both mentioned, of both the ambiguity that comes from what can come out of a mouth — the unknown, or the space between, or the grey areas that you mentioned, Felix — and the notion that it is our words that build these worlds. The final piece that we did together, Mouthing Love, was the final phrase that came about through those first three pieces. When I saw what Cil and Felix had named theirs, it felt like there was a movement to be made where the vinyl could read like a poem. It felt like another layer of meaning. It was a gorgeous secondary invitation to come up with these titles that do something by themselves, but, when connected, also say a whole phrase. We’ve been speaking about the moment of clicking in the performance, but the moment when the titles came into sync with one another also felt like a reconfiguration of the same series of processes. We kept coming into this moment.

Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons continues at Dulwich Picture Gallery through 19 October 2025. The limited-edition vinyl record of the performance can be purchased here.