A trip to Belbury

Apart from a few brief theremin performances, I’m stepping back from live shows over the next few weeks as I’m working intensively in the studio.

This month, I’m composing music for The Effect, a sharp and witty new play by Lucy Prebble (writer of Enron). The Effect is a ‘clinical romance’, exploring the nature of love and sanity and the boundaries of neuroscience. The composition is somewhere between music and sound design – I’ve been engaged in a lot of last-minute Max/Msp wrangling to make the bleeps, clicks and drones of the laboratory and transform them into musical riffs. I’m working alongside the brilliant sound designer Chris Shutt – I’m hoping you can’t tell where his sounds end and mine begin. The Effect opens at the Cottesloe, National Theatre, on 13 November and runs until the end of February. It’s a joint production with Headlong and is directed by Rupert Goold.

As soon as The Effect is open, I’m taking an excursion to Belbury. Spacedog are delighted to be working on a 7″ single with Belbury Poly, due for release in early Spring 2013 as part of the Ghostbox Study Series. I’m also contributing to a code-based album and am featuring on an release by another fine electronic artist (details coming soon).

I’m so enjoying this studio retreat, I’m planning to stay in the warm a little longer and work on some new studio-based tracks of my own. It’s liberating to write music and not care one jot about how to perform it live (although I’m sure I’ll be itching to make a connection with a live audience again soon). Stay tuned for news – and if you’re in Brighton before the spring, do pop by for a cup of a tea. Hugo will put the kettle on.