I am musician currently living in Sheffield. I have been composing and recording my own brand of instrumental music since 1999. This started off in a post-rock vein (under the influence of Mogwai and David Pajo’s M projects) but has progressed to an interest in experimental compositions. Around 2001 I was blown away by Brian Eno and his ambient experiments (particularly Discreet Music and Music for Airports) which shifted my interest as a composer towards gradually changing soundscapes. Similarities can be found in Morton Feldman’s concept of crippled symmetry, Steve Reich and his interest in gradual musical processes and La Monte Young with his drones and long, near static pieces.
My music is mostly constructed in my studio using a variety of sound sources and post-processing. I often begin with some kind of framework, deriving tones by chance, exploring a certain tuning or a chord progression for example. In this respect I see my work as ‘composed’ rather than improvised. In reality, my method is somewhere between the two with a lot of improvisation with equipment and the way sounds are recorded and treated. I use experimental to describe my music after Cage’s definition – that is, composing music where the outcome is not necessarily foreseen. I’m interested in improvisation as a way of taking my music outside of the confines of the studio and have performed several sets of improvisation with guitar and various and temperamental bits of electronic equipment.
Whilst my earlier pieces almost exclusively went for organic sources such as guitars, trumpet and other acoustic instruments but I increasingly find myself turning to other sources such as field recordings and electronics. I don’t really see myself as an electronica artist as such 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 got their hands dirty. I have also made several ’circuit bent’ instruments, where battery powered toys are deliberately short circuited to create a variety of noises.
My tracks have been released on the Liverpool based Keith Records as part of their Keith’s Compilation series. I’ve also appeared on the Munkyfest samplers from the festival of the same name. In December 2002 a CD-R label Quiet Records was born with my first official album release Four Ambient Pieces (Quiet001). In the spring of 2003 I supplied the music for a film ‘Return to 92’ shown at the Germs 2003 festival. This can be heard on the Uranium EP (Quiet003). In 2004 I put together a collection of shorter pieces called ’Blind Phase’ (Quiet012). My latest release on Quiet is a processed piano improvisation called "A New Years Improvisation with Appendix" (Quiet016). I supplied two tracks for ’Afterglow’ and more recently a track for ’Sensitive to Light’ - both compilations by Durham based ambient duo Octoberman. My most recent piece ’229, 294, 306, 337’ was released on Octoberman Records in winter 2006.
Always keen to swap CDrs with like minded composers just drop me a line.
Much more music at Last.fm/music/Ian+Baxter
