due to spam, not checking inbox, 'comments' or friend requests. real relations - don't email us via myspace - rather, function108 at gmail dot com - anyone welcome to genuinely make contact, but you won't find us at rupert murdoch's apocalyptic narcissism party.
See www.functionensemble.com for biographical information and more.
Re The Secret Miracle Fountain - we highly recommend you buy it.
Peace.
"The Secret Miracle Fountain" is available now - from
locust music
boomkat - europe
amazon
(and itunes, of course, or google the album title for all kinds of places to get it worldwide)
"The Zillionaire-Retarded Speeds Of Ordinary, Measured Light" (Function's 80-minute epic released in 2003) is also available at the ITUNES store.
********* biographically speaking *********
Matthew L Nicholson is an Australian born musician/composer/sound artist/producer. His nomadic collusion with a geographically vast network of talented friends creates Function. Begun as an occasionally-tended-to solo venture in 1995, Function in recent years have relocated to being based between USA & Europe, touring and recording more regularly, having signed to Locust Music of Chicago.
Unpredictably ecstatic/dark/spare/maximal/lush experimental songs and pieces incorporating sound sources from all over the world, their work has been heralded highly by indie media worldwide since the release of The Secret Miracle Fountain by Locust early in 2006. Not classifiable merely as psych-folk, sound-art, experimental indie, ambient, avant-rock, jazz, classical, minimal or world, Function is a foray into the Transcendental. Instruments tending to be used by Function include piano, strings, winds, brass, varied percussion, bansuri flute, harmonium, tanpura, banjo, guitars, choir, surmandel, kalimba, ukelele, whistles, melodica, various electronics, female voices, presented in a twisted psychedelic and heart-moving electro-acoustic remix of all therein.
Function have performed throughout Europe, USA, Japan and Australia in various forms in recent years with such artists as Piano Magic, Fennesz, Thalia Zedek, Dreamweapon, Gamelan Son Of Lion, Sir Richard Bishop, Ethan Rose, No-Neck Blues Band and Oren Ambarchi, recently having completed their 3rd US tour in January.
The group will be doing an extensive tour of 16 European countries all throughout August and September 2007 as a multi-instrumentalist 6-piece of mostly Australian Function mainstays - Matt Nicholson, Clare Tuckley, Pascal Babare, Felicity Mangan, Ian Wadley, along with Patrick Liddell.
Function have also produced numerous soundtracks for documentaries, short films and art installations. Collaboratively prolific, the core members of Function are working on various additional projects to see release at some point, including an experimental/orchestral/ambient record and a electro-acoustic/drone/improv/sound-art release.
Nicholson and composition partner Patrick Liddell have recently been working in a full orchestral setting in Chicago, writing and recording material for 2007's Locust release (which is expected to have nearly 100 players listed), as well as sound design for Adi Da's Venice Biennale exhibit, Italy 2007. Liddell is currently completing his doctorate in composition at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Function members and contributors also include Milo Mylecharane (Canyons!/Particles Collect), Chris Smith (Fat-Cat, Emperor Jones), Pat Ridgewell (Small World Experience), Dominic Johnson (Rachels/New Millenium Orchestra), John Chantler (Room 40), Matthew Golombisky & Quinlan Kirchner (Torrow Music Orchestra), Gabriel Lewis (Three Month Sunset), Aaron Robinson (Messes), David Wenngren (Library Tapes/Resonant), Shirley Hunt (PLAy Ensemble), Anna Steinhoff, Edward Nicholson, Pete Nicholson, Aaron Nakagawa, Georgina Ward, Joseph Burkett, Corey Dixon, Natalja Thomen, Tom Van Acker, Sara Kraft, Enrico Glerean Annie Reese and sometimes others, in various configurations.
Discographically speaking, there was first various tapes and 7"s in the 90s, then a Function cd-r album self-released in 1998 in Australia, then the commercial release of "The Zillionaire-Retarded Speeds Of Ordinary, Measured Light" in Japan and Australia/NZ in 2003, then "The Secret Miracle Fountain" in 2006. The new Function record is almost finished and to be released before the year is out.
www.myspace.com/function108
www.functionensemble.com
www.locustmusic.com
********* recent press sayings *********
"Almost impossibly beautiful. At 72 minutes long, and incorporating pristine folk, field recordings, pop melodies, jazz-like bursts of dissonance and sampled world music intervals, The Secret Miracle Fountain is immediately arresting"
---Dusted, USA
"The Secret Miracle Fountain is without a doubt one of the finest releases in Locusts catalogue and is destined to appear in many a top 10 at the end of the year!"
---Boomkat, Europe
"...stretches the ethereality of dream pop into blissout, as strings, wordless vocals, and guitar bleed together in swatches of psychedelic color...Function argue convincingly that sometimes you have to leave the planning behind and go on instinct."
---Pitchfork (Rating: 8.2)
'The Secret Miracle Fountain is an experimental rock album that glitters to its depths like a musical coral... a broad and startlingly mature representation of world musicianship'
---Tangents, UK
'Function makes me feel better about people and the world in general.'
---Roger Shepherd, Founder, Flying Nun Records (NZ), now Circus Records (UK)
"....sweeping, skyward epics, worthy of Olympic closing ceremonies or peyote snacks by the "fire spot" in the woods... Hearkens to Donovan's pre-chatty productive years, but he is instead Spiritualized's Jason Pierce here, at the writing and directing and arranging helm, propelling himself amid peaceful 1968 acid haze over a steady march pattern with backing harmonies and whirling strings."
---Prefix
"...the raw thrashing of rustic instrumentation treads alongside mercurial, abstract electronics, forging a sublime juxtaposition."
---Nuemu, USA/UK
At times, Function lean towards the beautiful sweep of David Sylvian or Felt, with shimmering sounds and lush atmospheres Listen to this album if you're not in a hurry to be anywhere, physically or emotionally. It will slow down the passing world and maybe even alter the way you see the light coming in the window. If pain persists, put it on again.
---Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
"A rippling and tempestuous collection. Ive listened to it time and time again and have been enraptured by its organic flow and subversive sounds but it is so mercurial, so permutable that I cant seem to pin it down....The Secret Miracle Fountain is a passively thoughtful yet aggressively experimental album, contradictory in that it's both feral and utterly modern in its presentation; the power of nature digitized and the heart of humanity released from its societal mores, all in one album."
---Kyndmusic, USA
'Nicholson and his band of merry musicians traveled from their native Australia to England, Japan, the United States, Fiji, India and Egypt to put together this incredible piece of music that, thankfully, seems to go on forever (72 minutes to be more exact). The result is what you might get if you threw Sigur Ros, Architecture in Helsinki, Broken Social Scene, Animal Collective and Espers into a room with every instrument and a sound library at their disposal. Songs on The Secret Miracle Fountain employ the use of modern rock instrumentation, classical strings and horns, improv jazz styles, electronic sampling and turntable techniqueI think you get the picture. Matt Nicholson puts everything but the kitchen sink (and even then I wouldn't be surprised if someone didn't use one as an instrument) into this album. It is not quite an ambient record, or a world music melange, or even an indie rock record, but it IS all of these things in one and much more...The Secret Miracle Fountain is a release unlike any other that will stun, astound and yes, possibly even bring you some much needed peace in your life, giving a complete air of truth to the album's title.'
---Treblezine, USA
"The Secret Miracle Fountain... will absolutely own you on the first exposure. Matthew Liam Nicholson, welcome to my head - pardon the mess....An album that spans 3½ years in the making, a multi-continental endeavor (recordings from Hawaii, Egypt, Australia, Fiji.. .) - it occurs to me that I could type for days and come nowhere within the proper realm of "beginnings" in conveying the white magic function delivers on album."
---Slightly Confusing To a Stranger, USA
"The album is mystical and soothing. It offers an experience that is unapologetically contemplative and fully immersed in the realm of the ethereal. The album is not meant to exist in the world of philosophical reductionism or simplified physics. The Secret Miracle Fountain is an expression of free will, a foray into transcendentalism... with its woodsy, hinterland sounds, (the album) seems to borrow more from Emerson than from Indie rock."
---Ampcamp, USA
"He's a lyricist of wry wit and rare intellectual cunning, a poet who disses his subjects with a hearty, Zen-flavored circumspection. I feel I should point this out, seeing that, if there's any record fit to draw its listener's attention as far away from the lyrics as possible, it's probably The Secret Miracle Fountain. Dig in. Get lost. (I mean that in the most polite way.) Lord only knows when Nicholson or anyone else will summon the wherewithal to complete another album this ambitious and absorbing."
---Flagpole, UK
"...clever ideas like Tunng...big production like Sufjan Stevens, though the musical aspect is more truly expiremental...Even the more ambient parts have very alive and quick evolving patterns, and waves...fits perfectly with the newest heroes on the edge of the singer/songwriter teritory."
---Psychadelic Folk, Belgium
"Fans of The Books, Low, Animal Collective & Broken Social Scene need to hear this densely layered pop masterpiece"
---Reckless, Chicago
"...want to know what's bigger than the band and more indefinable than their lineup? Their music... You'll have a hard time turning away, because their music is utterly beautiful. It's quite enchanting, this album.
---Mundanesounds, USA
"...a sun-soaked mesh of avant-garde instrumentation and field recordings that conjures a languorous adrenalin rush and evokes a kind of organic Arcade Fire. Matt Nicholson can already be justifiably labelled as one of alternative music's answers to Western art's more consummate assimilators of the East. With his continent-hopping consideration and ability to evolve like a global chameleon, he can also be termed a musical hero of rarely realised proportions. The Secret Miracle Fountain is an experimental rock album that glitters to its depths like a musical coral - a broad and startlingly mature representation of world musicianship with not so much as an instrumental ego in sight.
---Tangents, UK
