Gigs in May

So here's a brief run down of the various musical performances i'm involved in this month. This post is as much to help me remember as it is to let interested parties know what i'm up to: 

• Tuesday 8th - The Uncanny Valley plays Club Zho #99. The analogue/digital/acoustic trio i've been jamming with are supporting Kynan Tan's premiere of his comissioned work from 2010, which itself is worth the price of admission! 
• Tuesday 15th - Performance of a new work for a medium-size ensemble at The Sound Spectrum Gallery, called 'The Soft Clip'. Will do a post on this new work after our first rehearsal, but for now i'll say it pulls together a couple of key concepts i've been thinking about over these last couple of months.
• Tuesday 22nd - Solo set at Noizemaschin!! #11. Will most likely be a stripped down version of the set i have prepared for...
• Thursday 24th - Solo set at the HEXX series at The Velvet Lounge. Apparently i've got fourty minutes to fill with various forms of noise. Sould be fun!

Cycle~ 440: The Cartography of Shifting Planes released on Twiceremoved Records

My piano/laptop duo Cycle~ 440 will be releasing our second album 'The Cartography of Shifting Planes' on the Twiceremoved Records label this Thursday, at the Spectrum Gallery at ECU Mt Lawley. Check out the Facebook event here. We are supported by my good friends The Shallows, in a more ambient incarnation, and Salamander, who are one of the top complex-ambient bands in Perth, in my humble opinion. You can grab a copy of our new album from the Twiceremoved Records bandcamp site.

The Short Shrift - Film Score Completed

For the last couple of months i've been working on a film score for an FTI film "The Short Shrift". Its a creepy little horror set piece about a doll that avenges a certain injustice and is directed by the talented Perth film maker Megan Palinkas. The score comprises of about 8 minutes of original music which was scored for a 6 piece acoustic ensemble of Cello (Tristan Parr), Violin (Zoe Chua), Bass Clarinet (Philip Everall), Percussion (James Chong), Piano (Michael Terren) and Guitar (Renee Capetta). Overall, i'm pretty happy with the resulting recordings and the results of my first paid gig as a film composer, or should I say, the first film scoring gig that actually had a budget. The performers did an excellent job, in spite of my somewhat obtuse scoring methods, and I think that their engagement with the material really reflects in the recordings. Anyway, i've collected some of the material into a single track on my soundcloud account, so check it out if you want to hear some horror-fuelled acoustic chamber ensemble chaos!

Noizemaschin!! #8 and #9 - Free Download

I've had a busy month or so and a few big endeavours are starting to wrap up, but my first post for April is the news that the recordings from Noizemaschin!! #8 and #9 are now available from The Artifactory bandcamp! At NM#8 I tried out a new piece called 'When I See Your Face (I Throw Rocks)', which is an extension of the distortion matrix I created for 'Resistance', a composition I wrote for cello and electronics last year. 'When I See Your Face (I Throw Rocks)' merges harsh noise and distortion with the ability to sequence the speeds of playback for different samples, creating melodic material. At NM#9 I demonstrated a new improvisation piece called 'I/O - 2' that is constructed entirely from layered sounds of a mini-jack being touched and plugged in and out of a quarter-inch adaptor. I posted an early version of the piece on my soundcloud account entitled 'I/O - 1' earlier in March. Feel free to grab them from The Artifactory bandcamp!

Positive reviews for Music For Computers

I've had two very positive reviews printed in some online media regarding my EP Music For Computers that was released on bandcamp earlier this year, and I thought i'd throw up a quick blog post to highlight them. The first is from Perth blog Life Is Noise and can be read here.

"Gillies produces a wide range of sounds and feels that occasionally break into brilliance ... There’s a language at play here that is distant and hard to unpick, but offers strangely satisfying rewards if you’re persistent about it, like thumbing through a novel written in Cyrillic."

The second comes from A Closer Listen, and can be read here. A sample:

"There’s beauty in this noise: an elegant, contrary beauty, the type often noticed by those who cherish the discarded and overlooked.  To love what others consider unlovable is a rare gift; to present it to others in such a way as to gain their appreciation is even rarer, and that’s exactly what the artist manages to accomplish here."

Don't forget you can grab the EP as a free download from my bandcamp account!