Um, sorry Ralph - I have already had a PRS foundation grant for exactly that (almost to the word)...

I have cleaned up the Joseph Taylor wax cylinders, manipulated them with Melodyne and orchestrated for a live orchestra. I'm pretty confident that I have the best sounding set of transfers of the recordings that exist at the moment to work from - its taken six months of work to get them to sound like that.

It was premiered last July at the RNCM in Manchester, but we are re-visiting it on a much larger scale (with films) next year. The plans are fairly far along, but if you want to get involved with the technical aspects then drop me a line.

And, no - no animals or sounding like Radiohead. The orchestration is more like Gavin Bryars work (listen to 'Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet' or 'The Sinking of the Titanic') crossed with English Acoustic Collective or Methera Quartet - type use of fragments of morris tunes etc. Its pretty minimal, with the voice being the main focus of the piece.

If anyone wants any more info then get in touch. I want to make an album of it first, but the aim is to do a short tour in Autumn 2009.

I'm paranoid that I'm being really predictable now..