Andi's CV
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. 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 2007 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 brought together a number of strands of my activity in 2008. I composed and organised 'Sounds in a Wood', a ground-breaking fusion of singing, acoustic music, natural sounds and listening exercises for the audience, which was performed on 15 June 2008 for Sedbergh Music Festival. I was commissioned by Ephemeral House, with support from Arts Council England, to create the multi-media installation 'Each Pebble Its Part', which was presented in Sedbergh in June 2008 and in Brighton, as part of the Sonic Arts Network's EXPO Festival, in July 2008. to round off the year, I devised 'In The Sparkly Dark', which was presented in Sedbergh in December 2008.
In the first half of 2009 I worked on and presented 'Three Spring Performances' for singers, instrumentalists, live electronics, etc., which were supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Sedbergh Parish Council and took place in south-east Cumbria in May and June.
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. I have begun teaching, under the supervision of my own teacher, in the last year.
dayjob: graphic designer (details here).