A5, 40 pages, Colour printing, Saddle stitched, Softcover, 2026

“Bare Windows, Many Shades” started life as an installation - a video box on a tripod in a gallery, containing processed youtube footage of clubnights I’d been to from the mid 90s to 2012. It was an attempt to distil my memories of these nights and the effect they had on me into the same fluid, glowing light-and-dark interplay of motion that I could see when I closed my eyes and thought back. It’s since evolved into projected work and larger installation, but at its root it’s about being alone with headphones on peering into someone's small internal recollections.

In motion, the effect is highly impressionistic; but when shorn of movement and placed into single frames, you can pick out details. Bodies poised before rhythmic movement and club spotlights merge with lights from the dj equipment and the shadows of those at rest - the stills work as snapshots in the same way that the videos work as dreams-in-motion.

Close comrade thorsten sideb0ard presents responses both audio and written to the project. He says:

"When Ruaridh told me the concept of his ‘Bare Windows, Many Shades’ installation, over dinner one evening, the distillation of formative clubbing memories through processed video and his own musical re-interpretations, my mind immediately began bubbling up memories like the ones i’ve tried to capture in this zine.

I had also recently been working on a new track with a bassline, reminiscent of Beltram’s ‘Energy Flash’, and which had led me onto a series of fun YouTube track reconstructions of classic house tracks (Ski Oakenfull - www.youtube.com/@pointblankmusicschool )

I use my own custom audio environment named SBShell - github.com/sideb0ard/SBShell . It's a combination of a programming language and a number of sound generators - an FM synth based on a DX100, a subtractive synth based on a Minimoog, plus a drum machine, and granular synth based sample playback. Taking this project idea, I found YouTube reconstructions for a couple of tracks - Lil Louis ‘French Kiss’, Mr Fingers ‘Can You Feel It’, the aforementioned Beltram ‘Energy Flash’, and 808 State ‘Pacific State’. From the YouTube reconstructions I could learn the chord progressions, rhythmic patterns, particular synths and settings used, then use my programming language and sound generators to create my own homage /slash/ interpretation. With a particular direction in mind, it was a great exercise in exploring and expanding the capabilities of my own code, and in trying to tweak my synths into a particular sound or feeling!" 

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