Spare Music is a half-hour set for trombone with effects pedals and live electronics (2 players). It builds on past compositions 'Tired Music' and 'Religious Music' by Joe Snape, and is set to tour extensively in spring 2022. Written for Ian Sankey, based on an improvised performance at Sage Gateshead in October 2020. Voices stretched beyond the human, guitar and synthesizer lines spawned by loops of compressor feedback, organized algorithmically before being smoothed over and handcrafted into an engaging, strangely familiar musical narrative. This is a 6.43 excerpt from the first half of the work. For booking enquiries please consult http://joesna.pe.

Spare Music [Pre-Premiere Preview]

Spare Music is a duet for trombone with effect pedals, and keyboard and electroacoustic elements. It was composed by Joe Snape in close collaboration with Ian Sankey and based on a three-minute interstitial sketch prepared for, and then left out of, a 2021 concert disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The piece is not only spare in its sound-world and musical language (a blend of folkish modes and shifting repetition characteristic of classical minimalism and electronic dance music), but also literally composed of leftovers. From a solemn, prayer-like beginning, Spare Music develops its material carefully, building momentum towards a surprising and emotional finale.

Snape - Sankey Spare Music - FourMinuteRedux

One of ten new tracks lined up for Taller & Taller, a new record from Northumberland Radical Fun Group, the North Eastern modern music collective and big band led by composer-performer Joe Snape.

Take Your Love [Taller & Taller Unmastered]

The fifth of five movements that make up 'Signs of Life', 15-minute piece written for Zoellner-Roche, commissioned by Zoellner-Roche in collaboration with the Cyborg Soloists project at Royal Holloway, University of London. A small, highly portable piece for accordion, clarinet and simple electronics and projected text and animation.

For more visit: http://joesna.pe and https://www.zoellner-roche.com/

Signs of Life

From Here We Go Home [From Signs of Life, 2022-23]

This is a short excerpt of one of the tracks from a new, continuous set (or a segment of a long piece, if you prefer) written for and with NYC drummer, percussionist, composer, performer and probably magician Nicole Patrick. It's a musical exploration (explosion?) of a single, unattributed minute of very interesting synth and drum music found dubbed onto an unlabelled cassette of children's Christian pop music that accidentally shipped with a Casiotone MT-45 bought on eBay from, yes, Minnesota. 

Think the music to the scene of your favourite romcom (you know, the one in which one protagonist is chasing another to the airport) but instead of the music being dignified and romantic it’s still romantic but resolutely undignified: everybody is dressed like sad clowns with yellow rubber gloves and covid masks and confetti canon(s?) are going off left, right and centre, and a chamber ensemble is also involved in the chase, limping along at high speed lugging instruments not designed for sprinting with. Also it’s, like, happening in St. Paul and there’s an enormous fresco of Prince on the ceiling of the airport departures concourse. That's the idea. 

For more, visit http://joesna.pe and https://www.nicoleepatrick.com/about.

Mwah (Softsynth Demo) from That Minnesota Sound

A tiny demo of a sideproject with the multitalented Rob Hughes, TOA who-knows-when, #musicforgettingbetteratmusic.

Wire & Wood | GlassyLoopSoftsynthDemo_231210

The final track from Snape's recently completed album, Action Vibration, loosely based on 2021's composition of the same name. Unmastered preview for its May 12th Newcastle premiere with Northumberland Radical Fun Group's chamber unit, a quartet of the larger ensemble's core players, all based in the North East.

Action Vibration

Far Northern Summer (Action Vibration Bonus Track)

A very short snippet from 'That Minnesota Sound', a collaboration with NYC drummer Nicole Patrick, that reimagines an entire, perhaps not-ever-finished duocore album from a 90-second snippet discovered dubbed onto a children's Christian music cassette that arrived inexplicably with a Casiotone keyboard ordered on Ebay from Minnesota.

That Minnesota Sound Final Track Snippet

'Happiness' - the second track from a suite of 5 released as a tour-only disc via Manchester's Ono imprint. The record, called Fleck EP, features work by Michael Cutting and Vitalija Glovackyte alongside mine; all of which are fixed-media reimaginings of a live show we've been touring since May 2015. It involves birds, fish, old ladies and live text projections. For more info, head here:

http://www.acm-ensemble.co.uk/fleck.html

UK DATES:
130515 - Apiary Studios, London
140515 - Vivid Projects, Birmingham
150515 - S1 Artspace, Sheffield
160515 - Metal, Liverpool
170515 - IABF, Manchester

EU DATES:
170615  - Del Rex, Berlin
190615  - Spanien 19, Aarhus
200615 - Mayhem, Copenhagen
220615 - Splendour, Amsterdam

US DATES:
040317 - National Sawdust, New York City

Happiness

A five-part suite of fixed-media reworkings of numbers from the large-scale touring work Fleck Flob Flop, in collaboration with Manchester experimental music group ACM. Tracklisting & credits:

01 - Scandinavian Natural Roman [ft. Otto Willberg]
02 - Happiness [ft. Robbie Gardiner & Otto Willberg]
03 - Morning Breaks On Bones In A Bed And A Closet Full Of Clothes
04 - Verjaardag [ft. Robbie Gardiner & Otto Willberg]
05 - Mount Olympus [ft. Robbie Gardiner]

All music written, played & recorded by Joe Snape, except clarinet and double bass, played by Robbie Gardiner & Otto Willberg respectively.

The suite is released as a tour-only disc featuring works also by Michael Cutting and Vitalija Glovackyte, at Apiary Studios in London on May 13th 2015. The record is published by Michael Holland's Ono imprint.

http://joesna.pe
http://diskono.jimdo.com

Mount Olympus [ft. Robbie Gardiner]

The first of four new numbers written for a January workshop with Opera Erratica. First presented at the Theatre Delicatessen Black Box, London.

Buried In America

The second movement of Disappointment & Small Relief: Hospital Scenes, a 20-minute work for mixed quartet, sound recordings and live-typed text commissioned by British ensemble The House of Bedlam, developed and premiered during a summer 2016 residency at Aldeburgh Music.

Disappointment & Small Relief follows the story of a photosensitive protagonist and an ophthalmologist with a smile like a strobe through an unusual stay in hospital.

Joyrobics [Aug 2016 Demo]

Second Hospital Scene

The new record, titled Joyrobix, is in the final stages of mixing, and it’s a carefully deranged half-hour song cycle that sounds something like a commercial radio station loaded into a shopping trolley with children's toys, a few of my uncle’s favourite adult contemporary records, and my best Michael Bublé impression, and then kicked down a long flight of stairs. It’s really smooth until the wheels start to come off. 

This is a snip of the second half of (Just Wanna) Matter With, first track of the flipside of the 12", out in the winter.

Matter With [Joyrobix Premaster Excerpt]

A wee slice of the demo for a mulitmovement 30' piece for the junge norddeutsche philharmonie, which premieres March 2019 in Germany & Poland. With big thanks to Simon Nathan and his merry band of arrangers for their expert and very quick assistance.

Go to http://joesna.pe for dates etc.

Petrushka Reloaded [Demo Clip]

Early demo for one of a dozen new tracks for Northumberland Radical Fun Group in residency at Sage Gateshead. Woop! 
Visit http://joesna.pe for more info

Makes No Flowers

Joe Snape (1989) mixes conventional and homemade instruments with light, text and video to make unusual and emotive performances. His work has been presented at places like The Kitchen (New York), Café Oto (London), and Wonder Site (Tokyo), and also at places like the Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg) and Aldeburgh Music. The Quietus calls Joe’s music ‘goofy, melancholy, irreverent fun – very, very singularly itself.’ Fluid Radio thinks it’s ‘joyous and beautiful’, and one time in The Guardian Nico Muhly called it ‘organized, disorganized fun’. In front of a small audience, AACM trombonist George Lewis described Joe’s work as ‘some seriously unartful sh*t,’ and everybody agreed. Joe is a former UK Young Artist, has been nominated for the Arts Foundation’s Creative Producer fellowship, and has helped commission new work from over twenty young artists and composers on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a recipient of the 2021-22 Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Award for Artists in Composition and was a 2020-21 composer-in-residence at the beautiful Sage Gateshead.

Joe Snape

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