|
Kurzporträt:
The soundscapes of the last 15 years cannot be imagined without taking into consideration the contribution of Michael John Harris (born 1967 in Birmingham/ UK). His persona is directly connected with productions of alternative music that have started new trends in their field.
Harris came to international attention as drummer of the band "Napalm Death", with whom he recorded in 1987 the legendary album "Scum". In 1991 he left Napalm Death, and has since moved across the entire span of popular music ignoring the signposts of commercial taste to his wayside. In his oeuvre Harris demonstrates a refined sensibility for profound, and innovative music smoothly overstepping genre boundaries and perpetually exploring new realms of music.
In 1991 Mick Harris together with the highly renowned New York based jazz musicians Bill Laswell and John Zorn founded the experimental jazz project "Painkiller", which has received wide attention, and to this day sets standards in modern jazz.
In the same year and together with Nicholas James Bullen (ex-Napalm Death) and Justin Broadrick (ex-Napalm Death, Godflesh, Techno Animal et al.) he brought the band "Scorn" into being. This project blends ambient, dub, industrial, and rock music as well as hip hop, and drum'n'bass into an alluring and fascinating aural experience.
In several major and minor projects Harris applied himself to the manifold varieties of electronic music. Of these, especially the solo project "Lull", founded in 1992, should be emphasized here. Conceived as an ambient project "Lull", counter to Brian Eno's (Roxy Music, Talking Heads, et al.) original definition of ambient as an "unobtrusive musical wallpaper", was instead rather oriented to telling fascinating stories, or else to employing warm layers of drones to dwell in a noticeable equilibrium. The 5 LP’s and 7 EP’s published to date take the senses of the listener onto a journey into the depths of subterranean labyrinths ("Journey Through The Underworlds"), into various worlds of the wet element ("Cold Summer", The Passing/Iceberg", "Brook"), or up into the infinite reaches of the universe ("Way Through Staring", "Echoed Currents/Shooting Star Crash").
All in all, in his music Mick Harris works with the sensually perceptible experience of rhythm in time, space, and nature. The very essence of his music is energy.
Musical influences:
Brian Eno "Ambient 4: On Land" (Caroline Records, 1982)
Jon Hassell & Brian Eno "Fourth World. Vol.1: Possible Musics" (EG, 1980)
Eraserhead. Original soundtrack (1982)
Statement zu "SEA-CHANGE/ REWORKED":
Mick Harris works intuitively with sound and rhythm. He regularly uses everyday noises, familiar sounds that he utilizes in an unfamiliar way, restructuring them and thereby setting them into a new context of meaning. With this working method he partakes of a basic principle of geology: weathering, erosion, transport, and sedimentation.
SEA-CHANGE/REWORKED is "clastic* music", which re-forms bits and pieces of sound to a new entity.
* clastic (adj.): Refers to sediments whose material is the product of the mechanical destruction of other rocks.
|
