person

1948 –

United Kingdom

He is a composer and sound artist. Currently he is Professor of "Auditive Gestaltung in den Medien" at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (1996- ), where he is working with the various technologies of digital recording, signal processing and sequencing with computers. Besides teaching, he continues making music, sound compositions and sonic installations. He has been studying singing since 1988. Having studied Indian classical music with Viram Jasani in 1969, he composed his first movie soundtrack for David Larcher's ’Mare's Tale’. He has since written a number of scores for European independent movies, many of which have won awards. In 1970 he moved to Hamburg, Germany, where he recorded three albums for Polygram, ’Pieces from the Cloudland Ballroom’, ’Secrets of the Blue Bag’ and ’Reed, Whistle & Sticks’, for voices, strings, woodwind and percussion. In 1972 he formed the band Slapp Happy with Dagmar Krause and Peter Blegvad. From 1973 he worked in various European locations as a freelance composer, writing songs, film scores and experimenting with sound. He collaborated with Pink Floyd on two of their albums, working on concepts, sounds and sequencing in their recording studio and contributing lyrics. His on-going experiments with instrumental film music and song led to a synthesis of these two forms in music theater. In 1991 he composed a one-hour television opera commissioned and broadcast by Channel 4 called ’Camera’. Besides teaching, he continues making music, sound compositions and sonic installations. His latest publication: 'Transactional Fluctuations 1 (towards an encylopaedia of sound)' (in: 'Variantology 3. On Deep Time Relations of Arts, Sciences and Technologies', szerk. Siegfried Zielinski, Eckhard Fürlus, Verlag Walther König, Köln, 2007). (2011)