Joseph Franklin

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#theory
#writing
#video

Album Release:  a thousand tiny mutinies liveOctober 15, 2025
 Very happy to announce the release of a new duo album with electronic artist Ben Carey, via Melbourne/Narrm label Nice Music (nm064). 

This conversation was built on the materials from my solo album a thousand tiny mutinies (2024) and was performed in quadraphonic sound, with spatialised electronics, bass(es), and percussion. 

Recorded live at The Quadraphonic Club, Brunswick. Released 15 October 2025:

https://josephfranklin.bandcamp.com/album/064-a-thousand-tiny-mutinies-live#composition
#contrabassguitar
#liveperformance
Where Things Were Once ConjoinedOctober 15, 2025In early October, my concertino for double bass and orchestra, where things were once conjoined, was premiered by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, with Matt McGrath as the bass soloist, conducted by Simon Reade, at Federation Concert Hall, nipaluna/Hobart, on 3 October 2025. 

where things were once conjoined is a work of collage: a process of reconfiguring, smearing, bending, sculpting, collapsing, smashing, disfiguring and reanimating. To Frankenstein is to be a restless, defiant creature that ruptures protocols through highly attuned mechanisms, taxonomies and rituals.

Listen HERE.


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Album Release:  You Can’t See Speed (LP)October 5, 2025
 You Can’t See Speed is a limited-edition vinyl accompanying Tina Stefanou’s major solo exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

The album features my 17-channel electro-acoustic composition for Tina’s video work/installation of the same name, which I mixed down to stereo for this release. 

From the liner notes:

The B-side centres a collaboration with blind motorbike mechanic and rider Matthew Cassar and composer Joseph Franklin. Anchored in ideals of trust and experimentation, the work traces Cassar’s journey through high-performance dirt bike riding as a surrealist voyage of adrenaline and self-actualisation. In his own voice, Cassar reflects on the layered worlds—both on screen and within—where ‘image meets experience’. Cinema becomes sensorium, as singing, thrumming, electronically mediated dirt bikes, outer-suburban field recordings, exhausted vocalities, hymns, trumpets, harmonics and grain converge in a rush of sonic and embodied image-making.

Released 10 July 2025

https://nicemusiclabel.bandcamp.com/album/066-you-cant-see-speed
#album
#film
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#video
#composition
#studiorecording
an incomplete history of the art of the solo violinAugust 08, 2025
 It was surreal to have this piece performed by  phenomenal violinist, Miranda Cuckson, at Rose Hall in Philadelphia. 

Commissioned by the Australian National Academy of Music for their ANAM Set 2025, the piece continues my interest in transferring and transposing musical materials from bodies to bodies, instruments to instruments, and situations to situations.

The music draws upon my solo contrabass practice, translated to the violin via the cello — a process developed in close collaboration with David Moran. The title comes from Rohan Kriwaczek’s eccentric book An Incomplete History of The Art of The Funerary Violin.
Category
#composition
#score 
#studiorecording 
#liveperformance  


australian music
July 02, 2025
 In April,  NYC-based vocal ensemble Ekmeles premiered a new composition called australian music, at Rose Hall in Philadelphia. The text and inspiration for the piece comes from a poem by South Australian poet Tadhg Porter-Cameron.

Link to the score can be found HERE.


Category
#composition
#score 
#studiorecording 
#liveperformance  

Solo Album: A Thousand Tiny Mutinies
March 05, 2024
 I’m very happy announce the release of my new album, a thousand tiny mutinies for solo contrabass guitar and artefacts, via Nice Music label. It was recorded and mixed with Timothy Harvey, mastered by Magnus Lindberg, cover design by Design Rows, with an accompanying essay by Andrew Goodman.


Category
#studiorecording 
#liveperformance
#solo
#album 
#contrabassguitar
You Can’t See Speed
December 23, 2024
From 4 April–9 June 2025, Tina Stefanou’s solo exhibition at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) will be open in Narrm/Melbourne. I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with Tina on many  projects and artworks — some that will feature in this exhibition. I’m having huge amounts of fun making the sounds for her major film/sculpture/installation, You Can’t See Speed.

You can find the exhibition details here: https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/tina-stefanou-you-cant-see-speed/

And the online catalogue can be found here: https://youcantseespeed.acca.melbourne/ Category
#studiorecording 
#liveperformance
#installation
#creativedevelopment
#video
#composition
#film


Tina Stefanou, You Can’t See Speed (still) 2025.
Senegal
December 22, 2024
 In February of 2024, I had the incredible experience of spending some time in Senegal, taking part in the creative development and showing of a theatre project by Lamine Sonko and team, at the Daniel Sorano National Theatre in Dakar. 

Below is a track from 2023 called Taamo— which was a joy to record on. 


Credits:
Lamine Sonko (kora, voice, composition)
Xani Colac (violin) 
Anita Quayle (cello)
Joseph Franklin (double bass)
Category
#creativedevelopment 
#liveperformance
#dance
2024 MSA Conference
December 01, 2024
 Here’s a LINK to my abstract for a paper I presented at the 47th National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia 2024, titled THE HORROR OF THE AVANT-GARDE(S) - composing with an ethics of affirmation. 



Category
#contrabassguitar#writing
#composition
#theory


© 2025Joseph FranklinInformation, Works, Schedule, Email