Ian Baxter - Sound Artist

 

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Maintained by Ian

Last Update: Aug 2011

 

 


Biography (Long Version) (Short Version) (Download CV)

I currently live in Sheffield, UK. I have been composing and recording since I was a kid, making collages of guitar with my Amiga 500 and sampler and carrying out primitive overdubbing experiments by linking 2 tape decks together. This became serious around 1999, when I got a 4-track recorder and started to produce cassettes of music in a post-rock vein (under the influence of Mogwai and David Pajo's M projects). Around 2001 I was blown away by Brian Eno and his ambient experiments (particularly Discreet Music and Music for Airports) and picking up on his influences led me to a whole world of experimental music, including Cage, Feldman, Reich, Young and others which shifted my musical interests away from traditional rock instrumentation and towards creating gradually changing soundscapes made with sound materials mostly assembled and manipulated in the studio.

I have used experimental to describe my music after Cage's definition - that is, composing music where the outcome is not necessarily foreseen. There is usually some element to my work that has been arrived at by chance but I stop short of calling myself an improviser.

My earliest efforts almost exclusively went for instrumental sources such as guitars, trumpet and other acoustic instruments but I increasingly find myself turning to other sources such as field recordings, electronics and software. I don't associate myself with electronica, despite using a computer for the majority of my work. I see my relationship to electronics in the tradition of what Thom Holmes has called "Soldering Composers", building my own equipment such as oscillators and effects devices that hark back to an era when composers such as David Tudor got their hands dirty with wires and circuits (or more recently, computer code).

My music has made it into the public domain by traditional album style releases, concerts and gallery shows (see chronology of works). I have enjoyed collaborations with other artists: Supplying the soundtrack for a film 'Breath and Heart' by Jeamin Cha, dancer Airelise has used my piece 'low pulses' for her piece 'Third Life' and I have worked with Bryan Eccleshall and Angelina Ayers to provide a sound element to the piece 'Post Hoc'.