Andi Chapple's CV for music projects - electronics, DJing, site-specifics, collaborations - Cumbria, England

I was born in Birmingham, England in 1962; I lived in Manchester 1980 to 2002, and since 2002 I have lived in Sedbergh, Cumbria.

my early training was in piano and singing.

I played bass guitar from late '70s to early '90s; I was a founder-member of an obscure post-punk group which developed gradually into Those Who Celebrate, a strange rock/improvisation hybrid. highlights include Food (self-published LP) and Let's Celebrate (CD, October Music), a short Arts Council-funded tour of England and an appearance at Derek Bailey's Company Week in London (not sure of the year but it might have been 1990). the band's membership included Matt Wand (later of Stock, Hausen and Walkman/Hot Air Records) and Rex Casswell (later of Bark!). I took a large part in 'ish', a collective which promoted improvised music in Manchester in the late '80s and early '90s.

I was a member of Ripwrap with Rico Caporale during the mid '90s, writing and performing MIDI-based dance and chillout music in Manchester. our activity was mostly as a subset of Boom Booom, a performance/event collective - club nights, local radio, semi-legal outdoor events ...

I began DJing in the mid '90s - I learnt the craft within Boom Booom - and I still do it today. I developed the abstract, beardy-tunes side into a performance style which fits in a larger ensemble and has been performed within the Creative Jazz Orchestra in a number of projects. I developed this in 2005 into Soundland, all-day sound-as-landscape events (see here). I did a lot of evenings of wide-ranging medium-energy music in bars from 2000 to 2006, at Centro in Manchester and latterly at Eclectic in Kendal (also known as Friday Night Mixers' for a bit). that strand lives on as a blog, EclecticDJs. I can be tempted to do weddings, birthdays, etc. I really like playing noisy music for dancing to but I don't get as many offers as I'd like.

Soundland developed into a couple of events with my music and other people's words. this then developed into Descant on Rawthey's Madrigal, a 45-minute piece using my music and the poetry of Basil Bunting, which was commissioned by the 2006 Sedbergh Festival of Books and Drama with support from the PRS Foundation. I also collaborated in 2007 with multi-instrumentalist Colin Blakey - the first time we'd worked together since the mid-'80s!

I was a reviewer, then the reviews editor, and ultimately the music editor for Flux (Manchester's own national style magazine) up to 2004.

I've been studying t'ai chi since 2002, and it has greatly influenced how I lead soundwalks and my overall aesthetic.

dayjob: graphic designer (details here).