voice words music Brian Routh/selfie Brian Routh

Being Alive

I have been a performance artist since 1971 performing as one of the Kipper Kids until 2003.
I have also worked as a solo performance artist collaborating and appearing with Karen Finley, Henry Rollins, Public Image, Genesis P. Orridge, Sex Pistols, Joanna Went, Eric Bogosian, Anne Bean, Bow Gamelan, Lol Coxhill, Paul Burwell, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey and Ian Hinchcliffe among others. 
I currently live in Leicester in the UK and make soundworks and movies.
My digital movies have been presented at the Royal Academy in London-https://vimeo.com/brianrouth and my sound works on BBC radio and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

The Kipper Kids have been involved in writing and starring in three projects for HBO and Cinemax and appeared in a number of movies.

Recently I have collaborated with digital artist Patricia Routh on soundtracks for Patricia's animations and video works-https://vimeo.com/channels/wells

I am also working on my soundscapes for my poetry and songs plus instrumental music and sound-works that incorporate vocal soundbites of world leaders, politicians, madmen, poets, rebels, murderers and others. As well as soundtracks for my own low budget movies and musical video poems.

UK creatives should listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK4wBWiozyM

You must hear this: https://vimeo.com/52766051

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Ed Brunsden was kind and patient enough to interview me for  his blog Desert... Mountain... Dust...  - you can read it at https://desertmountaindust.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/tuonela-primitive-progressive.html

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. ~ Aldous Huxley

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it. ~ Jean Cocteau

All music is beautiful. ~ Billy Strayhorn
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I've become addicted to drone. Again. I was the kid with his head on the piano, listening to the overtones die away, or pressing his ear to the steel hull of the ferry, enthralled by the sounds it created. I was the kid who formed wordless songs to accompany the sound of train wheels on a long journey, or hummed along with the fan on a hot day.

In the 60s I used to play my 45s on 16, or backwards, or by hand using razor blades as stylii.

I made cut-up tapes on a cheap cassette recorder in the 70s and experimented with reel-to-reel in the 80s. 

Thank you Subotnick, Lygeti, Coltrane, Jimi, Mimaroglu, Eno, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle...

I am not a musician. I am a scavenger of sounds. I use the most basic software to process those sounds, stretching and filtering until something emerges that makes a joyful noise. Or not...