We thought it was time to inform our readers of the integral mechanics keeping igloomag.com afloat so here’s a window into the backgrounds of our Contributing Editors.
ALAN R. LOCKETT (Active) ::
I do reviews and commentary mainly on ambient/drone, but also operate within a beat-driven triangle whose coordinates are the more adventurous ends of techno, post-dub, and IDM. To illustrate, this week the Loco stereo has flowed with sounds from Steve Roach through Stephan Mathieu to Kangding Ray and Marcel Dettman – a spectrum of spaceambienceatmospherepulse/rhythm articulated in a couple of assemblages accessible via igloomag here. While I can mainly be read on igloomag.com, you might find occasional insertions on the always intriguing Lend Me Your Ears blog, and I have also been contrib./ed. for the questing Furthernoise site. Beyond listening and reviewing, I engage otherwise with music, with outcomes in the form of self-assembled mix creations and audio-doodle under the moniker albient (via Soundcloud and Mixcloud). Based in Bristol, epicentre of 90s’ Trip-hop and ’00s Dub-step in the Wild West of England, I guess a person’s day job might be considered salient to who they are, so let it be known I earn a crust in language education, though, to be honest, you’ll find more of me in language than education.
GUSTAVE SAVY (Alumni) ::
I’ve been messing about with music since about age 6 when I started playing recorder and piano with the best music teacher in the world. She managed to instil a love of music in me which has served me well. I studied the saxophone in classical and jazz styles up to grade 8, then learned a bit of guitar, bass and drums – enough to get myself in bands and play gigs, sometimes to empty halls and sometimes to packed out venues. I got into using drum machines and samplers sequenced on an Atari ST in the ‘90’s and ended up doing a degree in music technology. Then I even managed to blagg my way into a teaching position for several years teaching music performance, tech, theory and some other stuff. These days I compose for and play in a small saxophone ensemble, co-run a record label, produce curious electronic hybrid bass music, play in a reggae orchestra, rear several children and ride my skateboard every spare minute I get.
JAMES KNAPMAN (Alumni) ::
A product of good old eighties Britain, screwed up by school, shat out by university and infuriated by anything corporate, I have never studied music, played an instrument beyond learning and then quickly forgetting the piano, rarely go to gigs and hold no particular interest in music hardware. It probably shows. But ever since my first exposure to late eighties popular music, a very simple and straightforward passion has remained a pure constant: that there is nothing more sublime in this life than simply sitting and listening… to music in particular. It was the late and dearly beloved BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel who irrevocably changed my life for the better, savagely demolishing the walls obscuring the wondrous and rapidly evolving proliferation of music that was really out there. Since then this music has constantly and inescapably shaped my life. My early attempts to persuade friends and family that this was what truly inventive, inspired music could sound like largely fell on deaf ears, and I quickly tired of the imitation bleep noises and amusing quips about the record or CD player being broken. Since then I have written for igloomag.com in an attempt to persuade you, the readers, not to make my early, blinkered mistakes, but instead to brave the waters of the ever deepening oceans of musical possibilities that exist out there. You wouldn’t want your life to be boring or humdrum, so why should the music you listen to be?
NOCTURNAL GHOST (Alumni) ::
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture—it’s really a stupid thing to want to do.”
PHILIPPE BLACHE (Active) ::
Philippe Blache’s approach to music started during his teenage years with a major interest in anything related to obscure progressive rock genres (including krautrock / kosmische electronic school), to electro-acoustic researches and to late 60s pioneering works in U.S avant-garde minimalism. He’s been an avid music writer since 2004 and started quite recently to make dark-ambient, drone music, post-industrial—his field of specialization. Philippe has written a few introductive essays about underground and alternative music within a theoretical, philosophical framework and also obtained a PhD in Socio-Cultural Anthropology in early 2012. Initially trained in classical music and, Philippe formed Day Before Us a couple of years ago which navigates a synthesis between neoclassical minimalism and cinematic dark ambient.
ROBBIE GEOGHEGAN (Active) ::
Robbie Geoghegan, a son of fair Ireland, has been hooked on electronic music since the tender age of twelve. Robbie’s musical taste crosses a broad spectrum of electronics; from techno, house and electro into italo, synth wave, ambient and well beyond. Away from the day job Robbie turns his hand to some mixing, writes press releases for a number of imprints and enjoys exploring new sonorous scenarios. Part of the Igloo faithful for half a decade, and still putting finger to keyboard for electronics.
STEPHEN FRUITMAN (Alumni) ::
Born and raised in Toronto and living in Northern Sweden since 1984, Stephen Fruitman is a free-range intellectual with a Ph. D in the History of Ideas and a particular interest in modernity, about which he lectures at the local University and school of architecture. He has written widely in the past about culture and the arts in the Swedish press and has been reviewing music on the net for some fifteen years. He is considered well-intentioned but unreliable in everything but research stringency and taste in art and music.
For more information about the entire igloomag.com family, visit our About page.
(Artwork by Simon Raabenstein :: simonraabenstein.com :: Igloo Trax V2)
