Ian Baxter
Experimental / Other / Electroacoustic
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United Kingdom
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Last Login:
10/11/2008
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http://www.myspace.com/ianbaxterexperimentalmusician |
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| Ian Baxter: General Info
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| Member Since | 11/12/2006 | | Band Website | ianbaxter.net | | Band Members | Just me, here's some nice things that have been written about my music:
“229, 294, 306, 337” is an analogue adventure with the occasional low-fi excursion signed Ian Baxter. There are seven tracks in a very “French” setting, guitar based electronic music as it was once defined by ADIM from France and maybe especially by Melodium their brightest shining star. But, Ian Baxter probably states it better himself if not remarkably much more concise than I managed to do: “A piece in seven parts based on tones made from a beer bottle, guitars and electronics”. It's an interesting listening experience and a fine October Man Recordings release.
Review of 229,294,306,337 from electronic desert
"Now IAN BAXTER 's 229,294, 306, 337 on Octoberman limited to 30. Now this is the sort of album your boyfriend will put on for you when you've got PMT when all you really feel is Lightening Bolt . Its an atmospheric journey through guitar harmonics and looping stuttering pluckings. It says on the label that beer bottles are used as an instrument and it sounds like young Ian's had a few, but his salvation is that he's picked some very relaxing sounds to clash against each other creating quite a lovely peaceful pot of stuff."
Review of 229, 294, 306, 337 on Norman Records
"Ian's own contribution - 'U-238' - is taken from the two-track Uranium EP , and is a guitar-based Eno-esque slice of ambience. According to the site blurb, it's built up from loops, but if this is the case they're used to create a delicately shifting patina of non-repeats - sort of like Feldman - so that you know that what happens next will come from quite a small pool of possible events, but you're never completely sure what it will be. Like Music for Airports there's just enough of this in-built expectation to engage the mind, but never so much that you have to really work at it. Unlike Music for Airports , these are tangibly acoustic instruments - you can hear the scraping of fingernails on guitar strings - which brings an additional level of engagement - if you want to listen for it. In an analogy that I'm sure Ian will appreciate, it's like watching a session of test cricket after a boozy Sunday lunch, and all the better for it."
The Rambler Blog http://johnsons-rambler.blogspot.com
"Ian Baxter goes for the drone in his first contribution; the minimal and hypnotic “SK and VL”. It would be interesting to hear this on the big sound with proper channel separation although it probably takes both its (wo)man and sound system to play it back...The tenth and last track “Nice New Chord” by Ian Baxter settles slowly as the sounds of a gently treated stringed instrument fade away and thereby conclude the compilation."
Review of the Afterglow Compilation on www.electronicdesert.com
"Loops of minimal guitar that are good in a lulling sort of way"
Review of Uranium EP in Sandman Magazine
| | Influences | (in no particular order) Brian Eno, Henry David Thoreau, Morton Feldman, John Cage, David Tudor, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Hugh Davies, Harry Partch, John Coltrane, Max Eastley, Miles Davis, Jim O'Rourke... | | Record Label | Quiet Records and others... | | Type of Label | Indie |
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| About Ian Baxter |
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
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