Sound check: David Byrne plays a building

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Wired for sound: David Byrne has taken his project to the Battery Maritime Building in Manhattan

Who was it who said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture? Soon we'll be able to do both, when David Byrne, art-pop boffin and former head of Talking Heads, turns Camden's Roundhouse into one giant musical instrument.

For his sound installation, Byrne will enable visitors to clank radiators, bang pillars and send spookily whistling air through heating pipe "flutes" in the 160-year-old former engine shed.

It's a wall of sound that has real bricks in it, and it's sure to delight anyone who has ever run a stick along some railings.

London is not the first city to allow Byrne to rearrange its furniture. He first came up with the idea when he occupied an empty Stockholm factory for an art project in 2005.

This time last year he brought the concept to the Battery Maritime Building, a disused 1909 ferry terminal in Manhattan - more than 10,000 people came to hear its cavernous rumbles and scrapes within the first month.

But our Roundhouse will be an even more spectacular space when the rarely opened rooftop windows allow in broad shafts of light.

With its exposed structure of iron pillars and beams, it must be the Fender Stratocaster of musical buildings.

"It really does fit the industrial, steam-powered nature of the place. It feels absolutely right," says Marcus Davey, the energetic and unerringly enthusiastic head of the buzzing venue, who is still finalising a line-up of artists to lead the public in "jam-alongs" during the project's run after Byrne has rigged it up.

The concept is far from high-tech - mechanical, not synthesised - which perfectly suits a Victorian space like this because the sounds are controlled by a battered, out-of-tune pump organ in the centre of the room, from the back of which stream dozens of coloured wires.

They send electricity to metal parts that vibrate, thwack or tap at bits of the structure all over the building.

Keys that would have played low notes on the organ will prompt rumbles, those in the middle send air through pipes used as wind instruments, and top ones ping at metal with little hammers.

You could try to play your favourite sonata when it's your turn to sit at the organ but you would fail.

Byrne enjoys the fact that well-schooled pianists will generate a frightening racket no more or less tuneful than the toddlers who will thump the keys with their elbows.

"It might be an experience in which one begins to re-examine one's surroundings and to realise that culture - of which sound and music are parts - doesn't always have to be produced by professionals and packaged in a consumable form," he has said.

At the moment, this music by professionals constantly surrounds us, assailing us from mobile phones and shop Tannoys, infinitely available at the click of a mouse. Byrne's project appeals because it allows us to listen to something different.

At last, here's a song we've never heard before: a whole building alive with sound. You can't hum it, but the creaks and groans of this haunted house will stay with you far longer than whatever is number one this week.

Playing the Building, 8-31 August, Roundhouse, NW1 (0870 389 1846). www.roundhouse.org.uk.

FIVE MORE STRANGE SOUNDS

SHORT CIRCUIT
The Roundhouse's festival of electronica includes a live mix of clips from vintage sci-fi films tonight, a piece about the Titanic tomorrow and the reformed BBC Radiophonic Workshop tomorrow.
www.roundhouse.org.uk
 
LONGPLAYER
Jem Finer's composition is designed to last 1,000 years. It can be heard online and at Trinity Buoy Wharf lighthouse in Docklands, where it has been playing since Millennium eve. On 12 September a 1,000-minute segment will be performed at the Roundhouse. www.longplayer.org

MUSIC AND MACHINES
On 2 June, Kings Place hosts an evening of mutant instruments, including the monsters that are Felix's Machines. www.kingsplace.co.uk
 
PLAY ME I'M YOURS
Twenty-two pianos will be dotted around London's streets from 20 June, freely available for public use, as part of Sing London 2009. Luke Jerram is the artist behind the idea. www.streetpianos.com

GONZALES
Canadian pianist Gonzales will take to the stage in Paris tomorrow, aiming to play for a record-breaking 29 hours. “I am half Houdini, half Energizer Bunny,”

New on the net

Indian indie comes calling

It doesn't cost much to invest in the considerable talents of new electro-indie band Passion Pit at the 7digital store.

Twinkly new single The Reeling is a recession-busting 50p there this week, and you can also pre-order next week's marvellous debut album Manners for a fiver.

In late June, Belle And Sebastian main man Stuart Murdoch releases his God Help The Girl album, a set of songs that collectively tell a story and broaden his cutesy indie palette.

His fervent fanbase can also subscribe for £35 now at www.godhelpthegirl.com, to stream the tracks instantly and subsequently acquire much other stuff.

In this webbified world is the existing Top 40 still the most reliable chart? I'm intrigued by new site Wearehunted.com, which brings together what it claims are the 99 most popular tracks each day, taking into account the enthusiasms of bloggers, Twitterers and the like.

Dubiously accurate it may be, but a Top 10 featuring Tiga, Regina Spektor and NASA is certainly different.

New in town

George Harrison's love of the sitar and Oasis's Hindu Times single aside, the relationship between Western rock and Indian music hasn't been close.

So it may surprise you to learn that there's a burgeoning Indian indie scene — and it's coming to London.

Stone Roses and Radiohead producer John Leckie and Doves producer Dan Austin have been working with the British Council on the Soundpad project, and have chosen four rock bands from the subcontinent to record and bring on tour in the UK.

Swarathma, from Bangalore, have something of The Eagles about their acoustic guitar-led grooves, although they sing in Hindi. Delhi's Indigo Children sound more like NME readers — duelling electric guitars and English vocals generate a lively sound with which we're familiar.

Medusa are more like it, a Mumbai outfit who create trip hop-style mood music laden with electronic loops and guitar effects. Some tighter jeans and silly haircuts and they'll fit in well in the country that inspired them.

19 May, The Fly, WC1 (0870 907 0999). barflyclub.com, http://radioverve.com/britishcouncilsoundpad

 

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