For Booking:
thegalacticeffect@gmail.com

#soscuba

I come from a long line of storytellers and bards who forge epics woven from words spun together like koeksisters on any Sunday afternoon, in any chicken curry-imbued home on the Cape Flats. I come from pre-Netflix family gatherings, where after lunch, huddled between an array of milk tarts, ashtrays and beer bellies - I received first-hand the storyteller’s institution like no other. I come from a well-traveled sailor who fell for a small town tennis champ in the thick of a divided country - an offspring of two colourful giants who, in a black-and-white world, were never given the world as their oyster. Their platform was a kitchen table, their microphone a teapot and their protagonists - friends, relatives and the highlight reel of lives fully, if not richly lived. 

How mom and dad, aunty So-and-so and uncle Whatchamacallit could rote-recite their anecdotes from years gone by, talk all night and drive home, barely exhausted at daybreak was beyond the scope of my little brain. But these gatherings - these meetings of the tribespeople, had become my mainstay. Even through the clickety-clack of tiny fingers on a Sega Mega Drive, fascinated by a 16-bit blue hedgehog collecting rings on my Ouma’s static-adorned TV, I could hear them in the next room - the elders like a Greek chorus ululating a hilarious cacophony of parables and old wives tales. Here they would recite narratives about which classmate married whom and where they live now, as if in one voice they conspired to write the manuscript to some bad novella.

And by way of osmosis, I absorbed a generation’s worth of tall tales, struggle stories and small town genealogies. So, as my obsession grew, wrapping it’s fingers around my DNA like a lover’s embrace - the storyteller’s gift fell to me on a not-so-easily-defined life and career trajectory.

So for as long as I can remember, this preoccupation with characters and backstory, with subtext and plot conjures in me seeds of ideas, many of which manifest into songs, stage shows, music albums, podcasts, poems, articles and blog posts. Story is what has carried me, the last bastion of innocence in a world that prematurely births realistic thinking from childhood fantasies.

“...he views the world through a different set of lenses. This, coupled with his borderline obsession with lyricism and word play, makes him a formidable storyteller...Between his pragmatic mind and creative spirit, Josh forms part of the rarest types of people, the intellectual creative." - Jarrod Morkel, Director | The Cognative Design Solution.

Originally from London, I started my musical career training as a sound engineer and editor at Kingston College before starting work at London based music house Candle in 1996.

I have engineered and composed music for hundreds of commercials and short films ranging from Powergen to Irn-Bru to Mercedes-Benz. I appeared as an actor in the drumming advert filmed in 2006 for Cobra Beer as well as composing the music.... that was an experience!

I have won many awards during my career including a Silver and Gold at the Roses Advertising Awards and a Bronze at the British Television Advertising Awards.

I have had many of my music tracks released, the most recent being 'Amanzimtoti' which appeared on the Sansibar Sylt compilation album on German record label Kontor as well as 'Suveoo' which appeared on Puro Desert Lounge Weekend under London and Spanish record label Seamless.

I have also had seven other tracks released on The Glen Volume One compilation album through Zerosonic as well as 5 tracks on Soholoft released through Clear records.

My most recent project was writing original music for a theatre production called !AIA. Working with French director Philippe Pelen Baldini and his theatre company Theatre Tallipot, I composed music for the show as well as engineered the live sound for over 30 performances in Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Grahamstown and Reunion Islands. The show is still on tour around the world.

After an 11 year career as the studio manager for Candle Music in London, I moved to Cape Town, South Africa in 2007 where I still compose music for television, film, radio, theatre and other album projects both personal and commercial.

www.philthurston.com

All Music  © Copyright Phil Thurston 2012

harald muenz (he/him)
is a german-italian transdisciplinary artist realising instrumental & vocal, peformative and radiophonic works with an artistic focus on phonetic composition & ars acustica.
harald's compositions have been commissioned by ensembles mosaik, auditivvokal, hand werk, apartment house, modern, musikfabrik; by radio stations such as hessischer rundfunk (hr2-kultur), westdeutscher rundfunk (wdr3), bbc, deutschlandfunk, dlf Kultur, among others.
harald's works have been performed and broadcast internationally and have been documented on several cds (portrait cd nearly-fast with ensemble mosaik at coviello contemporary).
frequent collaborations with experimental poets (florian neuner, mathias traxler, cristian forte, christian filips, roža domašcyna, among others)
on the vr platform 'second life', harald (aka cuirec d’erc) has realised several interactive sound installations and has been a member of the avatar orchestra metaverse (aom) since 2017.
harald is also active as a multilingual speech performer (trio sprechbohrer), author and lecturer.
harald's music has been occasionally described by others as ‘worldly,’ ‘non-conformist,’ or ‘provocative.’

https://haraldmuenz.carrd.co/
Work list on http://composers21.com/compdocs/muenzh.htm

Artist residencies
1996 Künstlerhaus Schloß Wiepersdorf (Brandenburg/Germany)
2000 Villa Aurora (Los Angeles/USA)
2021 Künstlerhof Schreyahn (Niedersachsen/Germany)
2023 Atelier Galata (Istanbul/Turkey)

Studies
Composition at Music Universities in Cologne (J. Fritsch, K. Meyer, C. Barlow) and Stuttgart  (H. Lachenmann)
PhD in Composition from Brunel University London (J. Croft)
Phonetics at Cologne University’s Institute for Linguistics (G. Heike, G. Sachse)
„Cleaning the House“ Workshop by the Marina Abramović Institute

Teaching
2001-2005 Lecturer for Aesthetic Phonetics, Institute for Linguistics, University of Cologne (part-time)
2006-11 Artistic Director of Musikhochschule Lübeck's Studio for Electronic Music (part-time)
2005-16 Lecturer in Composition Brunel University London (full-time permanent)
2016 Decision to work as a full-time freelance composer again
2017-22 current Lecturer at International Ensemble Modern Academy Frankfurt/M. (IEMA; part-time)

Legal Disclaimer: „Es gelten die Vorschriften des deutschen Urheberrechts in seiner jeweiligen Fassung. Alle Rechte der Urheber an den geschützten Werken, die auf der Website enthalten sind, bleiben vorbehalten. Ohne ausdrückliche Genehmigung durch die GEMA darf eine weitergehende Nutzung der Werke, über das Anhören der eingestellten Musikwerke hinaus, nicht erfolgen.“

Be with Me is out now! ✨
https://song.link/bewithme

Phil Thurston is following