Description:
Cyclobe (1999-present) are a music duo based in London, formed by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown. They make hallucinatory electronic soundscapes by mixing sampled and heavily synthesized sounds with acoustic arrangements for strings and woodwind. Their approach draws upon diverse forms, including acousmatic, drone music, dark ambient, noise and sound collage. Ossian Brown worked with Coil from 1999 until the band’s cessation on the death of John Balance in 2004.
Thrower and Brown met in the early 1990s through their mutual association with Coil. Thrower left Coil in 1993 (having worked on the albums Scatology, Horse Rotor
Cyclobe (1999-present) are a music duo based in London, formed by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown. They make hallucinatory electronic soundscapes by mixing sampled and heavily synthesized sounds with acoustic arrangements for strings and woodwind. Their approach draws upon diverse forms, including acousmatic, drone music, dark ambient, noise and sound collage. Ossian Brown worked with Coil from 1999 until the band’s cessation on the death of John Balance in 2004.
Thrower and Brown met in the early 1990s through their mutual association with Coil. Thrower left Coil in 1993 (having worked on the albums Scatology, Horse Rotorvator and Love’s Secret Domain) and went on to form the experimental trio Identical, with Gavin Mitchell and Orlando. All three members of Identical now work as The Amal Gamal Ensemble, alongside other musicians including David Knight and Karl Blake of The Shock Headed Peters.
The first Cyclobe album, Luminous Darkness (1999), veered between hard-edged electronic music, Musique concrète, Industrial, and acoustic interludes for piano, strings and woodwind. They were joined on several tracks by Calina De La Mare (violin) and Niall Webb (bass clarinet). Next came The Visitors (2001), again featuring De La Mare (violin), alongside Sarah Willson (cello) and Coil’s Thighpaulsandra (production). Although still assaultive at times, The Visitors developed a warmer, expansive sound, with lush atmospherics and harmonic complexity. A third album followed in the form of a collaboration with Nurse With Wound, called Paraparaparallelogrammatica (2004). Cyclobe took their ‘remix’ of a 40 minute Nurse With Wound composition to the extreme, mostly obliterating the original. With contributions from David Tibet of Current 93, and Coil members/collaborators Thighpaulsandra and Cliff Stapleton, the result was complex electroacoustic psychedelia, completely individual but very much in sympathy with Nurse With Wound’s methods.
Ossian Brown in 2009 played on the Current 93 album “Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain”. Stephen Thrower recorded “The Temporal Bends”, a CD that was releasing in collaboration with David Knight under the name UnicaZürn, featuring a rare performance from the artist and musician Danielle Dax.
In 2010 Cyclobe released the full length album “Wounded Galaxies Tap at The Window” on Phantomcode records. On this album Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower worked with guest musicians Thighpaulsandra, Cliff Stapleton, Michael J York and John Contreras. The albums centre piece being the 17 minute epic “The Woods are Alive with The Smell of His Coming”, a track that was premiered at the Tate Gallery in St Ives. at the exhibition “The Dark Monarch - Magic and Modernity in Modern Art”. The front cover artwork to “Wounded Galaxies” was created by the American artist Fred Tomaselli and the insert artwork by the artist Alex Rose. Alex Rose went on to create the front cover artwork for Cyclobe’s “The Eclipser/The Moths of Pre-Sleep” single which was also released that same year on Dot Dot Dot Music.
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