Myoptik has always been obsessed with music, spending his school years messing with tape loops, warbling uncontrollably to feign a demented singing voice, feeding synthesizers through guitar amps and generally goofing with sonics, all when he wasn’t listening to other people’s music.
But it wasn't initially as a performer or producer that his hobby raised its head above the surface. Music journalism came first with Myoptik writing reviews on specialist electronic music for De Montfort University's student newspaper The Voice during the late 1990s through which he interviewed key players in the experimental scene such as Autechre. This led to him contributing to the highly influential magazine Miles Ahead. Interviews and features continued with the likes of Matthew Herbert and Kraftwerk. He then went on to write for underground specialist magazine Overload where he interviewed the likes of Luke Vibert and Muziq. But it was Law n Auder's first Monastery Of Sound festival for experimental music in an old Chateaux in Normandy, France that really opened the door, Myoptik's review of the festival was published in Melody Maker in 1997.
Running in tandem with his musical journalism Myoptik began another media avenue in specialist radio broadcasting. Again in the late 1990's Myoptik submitted demos to DemonFM, De Montfort University's student radio station. The demos submitted were well received and Myoptik went on to have a long and fruitful relationship with the award winning station. On Friday nights he had his own electronic music show called Sonar which he produced, scheduled and presented all on his own. This show proved to be the perfect outlet for the knowledge and contacts he had developed through his musical journalism. Not only did he use the show to bring exposure to a lot of unsigned electronic talent, but the show also allowed him to incorporate his own tracks and productions into the show. Indeed early on he ditched the station's own jingles and instead used his own home made ones that he created with a 4-track tape recorder, effects units, mics and synthesizers. The dramatic tones and pitch shifted voices set the scene for the cutting edge music on the show. Very quickly the show developed from a 2 hour slot on a Friday night into an all-night session from 11pm through to 5am the next morning allowing local underground sound-systems to drop into the show to do live sessions and DJ sets after their own club nights had finished. On one show The Zen Masters made an appearance doing a live DJ set. Later Ugly Funk and BWPT joined the show on two occasions with live sets and DJs. From there things grew further with the show having live or commissioned sessions and sets from the likes of Luke Vibert, Matthew Herbert, District Six, Beduoin Ascent, Law n Auder records, Data Out, Reflexicon, Cursor Miner and many others.
As well as the electronic show Myoptik had a Sunday afternoon comedy show with Frannie Cheesecake where the two presenters spoke in fake Italian accents as Boris and Josephine with numerous comedy guests including Maggie Festering-Cheese-Lowt and Two Birds Eating. Again the show was produced by Myoptik and this time provided a platform for his surreal comedy writing. He and Maggie Festering-Cheese-Lowt wrote and recorded stories and jokes in numerous impersonated voices which were dropped between the looney, happy music. The show was very impactful for a Sunday afternoon, not least because easy listening, latin and funk records sat alongside more eccentric tracks from the likes of Aphex Twin, The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and Frank Zappa. There were also numerous live ‘appearances’, some musical, such as the excellent Jon Cank who became the house band, and some of which weren’t, such as the time someone puked up in a bucket live in the studio. I don’t think the listeners at home realised that particular joke was real!
In time this show spawned another as Myoptik, this time under the guise Heinz Jaki-Volvo, took his writing partnership with Maggie Festering-Cheese-Lowt to a new level for the surrealist story show called Shrimpsalad. Combined with a website which collected surreal images and tales Shrimpsalad was designed to take the listener "On a psychotherapeutic journey into the world of the strange." In time the show was picked up by ResonanceFM who broadcast the first 4 shows on their station in the early part of the 21st century.
It was at this point that both the music journalism and the radio production started to take a back seat as Myoptik's own music took over in earnest. Myoptik's debut live performances came, ironically, at Monastery Of Sound 3, just 2 years after he had first attended as a punter. Now though Myoptik was on stage. In the day time he played live improvised experimental electronic beat-driven music fused with folk guitar and vocals as part of his Bloom project with Francis Binns and Terminal Clearly (both from Jon Cank). The mesmerised audience convinced all 3 that Bloom’s music was vividly expressive and expansive and so the project continued for another 2 years with sporadic well received performances in places like London, Leicester and Hastings, as well as a series of live albums for Myoptik’s Ping Discs, including Dirty Biscuit and Maggery Sac Sartic.
Meanwhile, back at Monastery Of Sound 3, but this time in the evening Myoptik was back on stage again with his Blam Blam project which featured Frannie Cheesecake and Two Birds Eating on live keyboards. The set really had an impact at the festival, with Myoptik's crunching beats and feedback loops spiralling within the swarm of the effects drenched improvised keyboards of the other two members. The reputation of that performance was lasting, with Myoptik still receiving feedback 2 years later. Blam Blam went on to appear on a Law n Auder compilation and to play at Sprawl and the Foundry in London before disbanding soon after.
From 1999 onwards Myoptik started performing at The Foundry in London both as a DJ and as a live act, sometimes at the invite of the venue and sometimes as an artist at Law n Auder's event called Rehab which saw many of the best underground electronic artists play live to packed audiences for many years.Next Myoptik connected with Worm Interface records and went on to play live at their Radiophonica festivals which took place in influential BBC Radio Workshop producer Daphne Oram’s ex-home. At the last Radiophonica festival Myoptik’s ‘chilled’ Sunday afternoon set was so full-on that the equipment was no longer able to produce sound by the time he had finished. Something that he still apologises for to this day, although the audience enjoyed the onslaught up to the point where the equipment gave way.
It was also at the turn of the century that Myoptik started running his own music events in Leicester. Two occasional events ran over a 2 year period. The first was Salt Shaker where he worked with Jon Cank to create a smoky candle-lit folk-meets-electronica happening in an upstairs live room of a long since demolished pub in the centre of the city. The event tended to fuse poetry and storytelling with folk, electronics and drinking. The second was a live incarnation of his surrealist Shrimpsalad radio show in which he and Maggie Festering Cheese Lowt collaborated with local musicians to create a kind of late night jackanory with a sinister, comic edge.
But it was in 2002 that the event promotion stepped up. It was an exciting time for experimental electronic music in Leicester because a new club event called Auxilec was born. Run by Steve Morgan these highly respected and successful nights brought many of the key names in electronic music to the city. Myoptik became a resident at these events often helping source artists for the shows and performing live himself. Myoptik booked the likes of Worm Interface Records, Bedouin Ascent, Cursor Miner, Data Out and Reflexicon, whilst Steve Morgan booked artists like Ceephax Acid Crew and DJ ShitMat to name a few. The nights also championed local talent and it was here that early performances by the likes of Preston (who went on to be famous as Phelaeh), Kid Ritalin, Polar One and Hidden Persuader were witnessed. Soon other electronic events were cropping up in parallel and at one of them, hosted by Polar One, Myoptik’s collaboration with Preston unleashed a monster of techno funk under the name Ausgang. The Ausgang set remained a favourite of the founder of Ruder Records for many years.
Overall the period 1999-2006 was a very productive time for Myoptik with him creating over 20 albums of material and working on numerous collaborative projects including Peata Out with Francis Binns, Rea Diapason with Kams and Francis Binns, The Guildford Trio with Terminal Clearly and Data Out, Otaku with Preston and Skeletor with I-Mitri to name a few. He also set up his own record label Ping-Discs with Reflexicon and Data Out. Debut albums from all 3 artists were launched at a special Auxilec event in 2003 and in 2005 a special compilation called Cake featured contributions from Ben Bayliss, Preston, I-Mitri, Francis Binns, Terminal Clearly, Data Out, Reflexicon, Urn and Si-Scran.
The many event collaborations with Auxilec’s creator Steve Morgan led to a reunification with DemonFM as the pair were interviewed and performed live in the studio to promote the brand. They then went on to set up a long series of Sunday night sessions that had a strong Detroit techno flavour and often featured their own material in their evening long mixes.
As Auxilec continued Myoptik saw an opportunity to take the scene in a slightly different direction creating his own regular events with their more humorous and unhinged look at music. PVC was born. Here things were more off-kilter and at the first event in 2005 Myoptik performed live on stage alongside two digeridoo players, drenching their instruments in effects to create a morphous, snaking, headonistic sound augmented with hard-edged beats and synth lines. PVC developed a reputation for having live performances that fused electronics with live instruments, much in the way that Myoptik's early band projects had. For example, PVC featured the debut of his Otaku project with Preston in which Preston played live guitar and live bass over Myoptik's funk-ridden electro beats. At another show Chin Chin from Bathysphere brought xylophones and acoustic guitars with their breakbeats and synths. It was at PVC that Myoptik first booked BJ Cole to play his fusion of pedal steel and electronics, the show featured a number of the tracks BJ Cole had written with Luke Vibert and his new band thrilled a packed audience.
Another new event was born in the same era, Fortran. Myoptik soon connected with them as well and made a number of noise-worthy appearances at various venues, including a well-received live performance as Peata Out. Peata Out is an improvisatorial project with Francis Binns where they filter acoustic and analogue instruments through Myoptik’s electronic equipment to create a sonorous soup of expressive sound epics to sooth the soul.
Also in 2005 and 2006 Myoptik collaborated with I-Mitri to create the more academic and acousmatic project Skeletor. Skeletor performed live at EXPO 2005 in Scarborough and Expo 2006 in Manchester. Each was accompanied by an album release on Myoptik’s Ping-discs.
The Summer Sundae festival became Myoptik’s next outlet. In 2005 he collaborated with Matthew Preston and Steve Morgan again, this time as a trio for a new project called Cyan. They were the opening act for the Summer Sundae Festival that year, playing on the Friday evening to a jam packed marquee. The beautiful melodious electronica set that they performed made such an impact that they had a full page spread on page 3 of the Leicester Mercury the next day. Following this Myoptik went on to perform on the Bathysphere stage for the festival right up until 2008.
In this same era Myoptik performed in some warehouses in London, the last of which was Cursor Miner’s then shared home in Stratford. Notoriously his wife ‘interrupted’ Cursor Miner to ensure he wouldn’t miss the Myoptik set. It is still a moot point as to whether Myoptik’s cacophonous melee was preferable to the activities which Cursor Miner had been busy with at the time...
It was also during this chaotic period that Myoptik first began collaborating with BJ Cole. Though BJ Cole had worked with many famous names in every style of music it soon became clear that their partnership had a particularly fervent chemistry and their debut live performance at the Coventry live music venue ‘Taylor John’s House’ was a real sensation. Neither the performers, nor the audience expected quite such an intensely exciting and explosive outcome.
Since then BJ Cole and Myoptik have been collaborating by proxy to create new tracks to reflect the energy and obtuseness of that first sensational gig, as well as doing a few more highly energised live performances. Although notoriously on one occasion the venue flooded and was knee deep in water before they had even played a note. They had to create a temporary bridge out of milk crates to escape the mirky flood waters.
In 2008 Myoptik went to see an early event by new label TheCentrifuge at The Moog in Nottingham and a new underground connection was born. Myoptik went on to book a number of artists from TheCentrifuge for events in Leicester and has had many releases on the label in the years since. His first track for The Centrifuge was for a Christmas compilation on which he did an avant-electronic take on the Christmas carol ‘We Three Kings Of Orient Are’. He went on to feature on many other compilations for the label over the years including Supernatant, The Centrifuge Christmas Collection, Anyone Can Make Dubstep, The Centrifuge Remixed, Acid Futures Volume 1 and Moments of Inertia. The label also released 3 of his solo EPs, as well as his Night Raidz album of which Planet303 magazine said “The sky around we is stellato of bombs that they will hit goodness knows which objective, beyond our eardrums. Moments of quiet. Then the strafings recommence." Myoptik also performed live for TheCentrifuge a number of times supporting acts such as Funckarma and Bogdan Ryczinski at venues in Nottingham, London and the infamous Tacheles in Berlin.
In March 2009 Myoptik created a special half hour track to commemorate the birth of his daughter. He performed the track live in the Phoenix cinema at the Stench multimedia arts event. Subsequently he became a member of the Stench collective, going on to promote future events and book many of the artists that performed at these experimental sound and visual extravaganzas which took place in art galleries, warehouses, cinemas and music venues across Leicester.
In time the Stench phenomena became a weekend-long preliminary fringe event for the Summer Sundae festival under the name Stenchival. Each year Myoptik programmed all of the music for one day of Stenchival, bringing the kind of boundary pushing talent seen at his PVC events to the occasion.
In 2009 Myoptik added another trick to his bow with the launch of Myoptik’s 78’s where he lined up a pair of wind-up gramophones with three microphones, one each for the gramophones and a third to amplify his ridiculous adlib segues. Over the course of the next three years Myoptik’s 78s entertained audiences in the Twist & Spout tent at festivals such as The Lynton & Lynmouth Festival, The Secret Garden Party and Shambala educating the audiences about the origins of classic old tunes.
It was also in 2009 that Myoptik first connected with Ann Shenton from Add N To X, attending the Sonic Weekend music event that Ann had set up through White Label Music. As part of this, Myoptik collaborated with a group of other acts from the label to create an album of experimental electronics in the Derbyshire countryside. Sonic Weekend is an annual event for 20-30 artists surrounding the label and each year an album is made, each peppered with contributions from Myoptik and the many others. Sonic Weekend albums are available through i-Tunes and reflect the diversity of electronics available through White Label Music.
Meanwhile, in 2010 Myoptik began another event collaboration as he started occasional work with Leicester based experimental electronic event promoters Subtrakt. Once again he was helping the underground book quality electronic acts to perform. Myoptik also played his own live sets at Subtrakt, the last of which occurred in 2012 and went on to be broadcast on TheCentrifuge radioshow on BrapFM the following year.
Throughout this period and ever since the Peata Out project has remained active with Myoptik and Francis Binns creating new albums bi-annually. The musicianship, emotion and adventure captured in albums such as Cryptic Sea, Up1Notch, Dronal Loves, Pistol Dreams and Moorland Gorge demonstrate the near telepathic understanding the two have when creating improvised music.
2011 was an active year as well with Myoptik’s aforementioned performance at the infamous Tachelles live venue in Berlin as part of TheCentrifuge’s 4th anniversary celebrations with Bogdan Ryczinski, StormField and Cursor Miner. It was also that year that Myoptik’s Night raidz album was released by the label.
2012 was perhaps a quieter year for Myoptik as he concentrated on a series of new albums and eps in his studio, not least with BJ Cole. Indeed their collaboration ‘Polystyrene Funq’ went on to be released by TheCentrifuge and was reviewed by Igloo Magazine who said “BJ Cole and Myoptik sync pedal steel guitar and obscure bursts of sonic funk on the excellently deranged “Polystyrene Funq”.
2013 has been another creative year for Myoptik, particularly with regard to remixes. He so enjoyed doing a a remix of Squarepusher that he went onto to do remixes of Free Control, Dirty Electronics, James Kelly and Ola Szmidt. Also in 2013 came the return of an old collaboration with his Bub Bub track being used as the soundtrack to a documentary on the illegal trade of Rhino Horns directed by Jonny Hulson as featured on the Environmental Investigation Agency website as part of the campaign.
Updates for 2014, 2015 and 2016 to follow...
But it wasn't initially as a performer or producer that his hobby raised its head above the surface. Music journalism came first with Myoptik writing reviews on specialist electronic music for De Montfort University's student newspaper The Voice during the late 1990s through which he interviewed key players in the experimental scene such as Autechre. This led to him contributing to the highly influential magazine Miles Ahead. Interviews and features continued with the likes of Matthew Herbert and Kraftwerk. He then went on to write for underground specialist magazine Overload where he interviewed the likes of Luke Vibert and Muziq. But it was Law n Auder's first Monastery Of Sound festival for experimental music in an old Chateaux in Normandy, France that really opened the door, Myoptik's review of the festival was published in Melody Maker in 1997.
Running in tandem with his musical journalism Myoptik began another media avenue in specialist radio broadcasting. Again in the late 1990's Myoptik submitted demos to DemonFM, De Montfort University's student radio station. The demos submitted were well received and Myoptik went on to have a long and fruitful relationship with the award winning station. On Friday nights he had his own electronic music show called Sonar which he produced, scheduled and presented all on his own. This show proved to be the perfect outlet for the knowledge and contacts he had developed through his musical journalism. Not only did he use the show to bring exposure to a lot of unsigned electronic talent, but the show also allowed him to incorporate his own tracks and productions into the show. Indeed early on he ditched the station's own jingles and instead used his own home made ones that he created with a 4-track tape recorder, effects units, mics and synthesizers. The dramatic tones and pitch shifted voices set the scene for the cutting edge music on the show. Very quickly the show developed from a 2 hour slot on a Friday night into an all-night session from 11pm through to 5am the next morning allowing local underground sound-systems to drop into the show to do live sessions and DJ sets after their own club nights had finished. On one show The Zen Masters made an appearance doing a live DJ set. Later Ugly Funk and BWPT joined the show on two occasions with live sets and DJs. From there things grew further with the show having live or commissioned sessions and sets from the likes of Luke Vibert, Matthew Herbert, District Six, Beduoin Ascent, Law n Auder records, Data Out, Reflexicon, Cursor Miner and many others.
As well as the electronic show Myoptik had a Sunday afternoon comedy show with Frannie Cheesecake where the two presenters spoke in fake Italian accents as Boris and Josephine with numerous comedy guests including Maggie Festering-Cheese-Lowt and Two Birds Eating. Again the show was produced by Myoptik and this time provided a platform for his surreal comedy writing. He and Maggie Festering-Cheese-Lowt wrote and recorded stories and jokes in numerous impersonated voices which were dropped between the looney, happy music. The show was very impactful for a Sunday afternoon, not least because easy listening, latin and funk records sat alongside more eccentric tracks from the likes of Aphex Twin, The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and Frank Zappa. There were also numerous live ‘appearances’, some musical, such as the excellent Jon Cank who became the house band, and some of which weren’t, such as the time someone puked up in a bucket live in the studio. I don’t think the listeners at home realised that particular joke was real!
In time this show spawned another as Myoptik, this time under the guise Heinz Jaki-Volvo, took his writing partnership with Maggie Festering-Cheese-Lowt to a new level for the surrealist story show called Shrimpsalad. Combined with a website which collected surreal images and tales Shrimpsalad was designed to take the listener "On a psychotherapeutic journey into the world of the strange." In time the show was picked up by ResonanceFM who broadcast the first 4 shows on their station in the early part of the 21st century.
It was at this point that both the music journalism and the radio production started to take a back seat as Myoptik's own music took over in earnest. Myoptik's debut live performances came, ironically, at Monastery Of Sound 3, just 2 years after he had first attended as a punter. Now though Myoptik was on stage. In the day time he played live improvised experimental electronic beat-driven music fused with folk guitar and vocals as part of his Bloom project with Francis Binns and Terminal Clearly (both from Jon Cank). The mesmerised audience convinced all 3 that Bloom’s music was vividly expressive and expansive and so the project continued for another 2 years with sporadic well received performances in places like London, Leicester and Hastings, as well as a series of live albums for Myoptik’s Ping Discs, including Dirty Biscuit and Maggery Sac Sartic.
Meanwhile, back at Monastery Of Sound 3, but this time in the evening Myoptik was back on stage again with his Blam Blam project which featured Frannie Cheesecake and Two Birds Eating on live keyboards. The set really had an impact at the festival, with Myoptik's crunching beats and feedback loops spiralling within the swarm of the effects drenched improvised keyboards of the other two members. The reputation of that performance was lasting, with Myoptik still receiving feedback 2 years later. Blam Blam went on to appear on a Law n Auder compilation and to play at Sprawl and the Foundry in London before disbanding soon after.
From 1999 onwards Myoptik started performing at The Foundry in London both as a DJ and as a live act, sometimes at the invite of the venue and sometimes as an artist at Law n Auder's event called Rehab which saw many of the best underground electronic artists play live to packed audiences for many years.Next Myoptik connected with Worm Interface records and went on to play live at their Radiophonica festivals which took place in influential BBC Radio Workshop producer Daphne Oram’s ex-home. At the last Radiophonica festival Myoptik’s ‘chilled’ Sunday afternoon set was so full-on that the equipment was no longer able to produce sound by the time he had finished. Something that he still apologises for to this day, although the audience enjoyed the onslaught up to the point where the equipment gave way.
It was also at the turn of the century that Myoptik started running his own music events in Leicester. Two occasional events ran over a 2 year period. The first was Salt Shaker where he worked with Jon Cank to create a smoky candle-lit folk-meets-electronica happening in an upstairs live room of a long since demolished pub in the centre of the city. The event tended to fuse poetry and storytelling with folk, electronics and drinking. The second was a live incarnation of his surrealist Shrimpsalad radio show in which he and Maggie Festering Cheese Lowt collaborated with local musicians to create a kind of late night jackanory with a sinister, comic edge.
But it was in 2002 that the event promotion stepped up. It was an exciting time for experimental electronic music in Leicester because a new club event called Auxilec was born. Run by Steve Morgan these highly respected and successful nights brought many of the key names in electronic music to the city. Myoptik became a resident at these events often helping source artists for the shows and performing live himself. Myoptik booked the likes of Worm Interface Records, Bedouin Ascent, Cursor Miner, Data Out and Reflexicon, whilst Steve Morgan booked artists like Ceephax Acid Crew and DJ ShitMat to name a few. The nights also championed local talent and it was here that early performances by the likes of Preston (who went on to be famous as Phelaeh), Kid Ritalin, Polar One and Hidden Persuader were witnessed. Soon other electronic events were cropping up in parallel and at one of them, hosted by Polar One, Myoptik’s collaboration with Preston unleashed a monster of techno funk under the name Ausgang. The Ausgang set remained a favourite of the founder of Ruder Records for many years.
Overall the period 1999-2006 was a very productive time for Myoptik with him creating over 20 albums of material and working on numerous collaborative projects including Peata Out with Francis Binns, Rea Diapason with Kams and Francis Binns, The Guildford Trio with Terminal Clearly and Data Out, Otaku with Preston and Skeletor with I-Mitri to name a few. He also set up his own record label Ping-Discs with Reflexicon and Data Out. Debut albums from all 3 artists were launched at a special Auxilec event in 2003 and in 2005 a special compilation called Cake featured contributions from Ben Bayliss, Preston, I-Mitri, Francis Binns, Terminal Clearly, Data Out, Reflexicon, Urn and Si-Scran.
The many event collaborations with Auxilec’s creator Steve Morgan led to a reunification with DemonFM as the pair were interviewed and performed live in the studio to promote the brand. They then went on to set up a long series of Sunday night sessions that had a strong Detroit techno flavour and often featured their own material in their evening long mixes.
As Auxilec continued Myoptik saw an opportunity to take the scene in a slightly different direction creating his own regular events with their more humorous and unhinged look at music. PVC was born. Here things were more off-kilter and at the first event in 2005 Myoptik performed live on stage alongside two digeridoo players, drenching their instruments in effects to create a morphous, snaking, headonistic sound augmented with hard-edged beats and synth lines. PVC developed a reputation for having live performances that fused electronics with live instruments, much in the way that Myoptik's early band projects had. For example, PVC featured the debut of his Otaku project with Preston in which Preston played live guitar and live bass over Myoptik's funk-ridden electro beats. At another show Chin Chin from Bathysphere brought xylophones and acoustic guitars with their breakbeats and synths. It was at PVC that Myoptik first booked BJ Cole to play his fusion of pedal steel and electronics, the show featured a number of the tracks BJ Cole had written with Luke Vibert and his new band thrilled a packed audience.
Another new event was born in the same era, Fortran. Myoptik soon connected with them as well and made a number of noise-worthy appearances at various venues, including a well-received live performance as Peata Out. Peata Out is an improvisatorial project with Francis Binns where they filter acoustic and analogue instruments through Myoptik’s electronic equipment to create a sonorous soup of expressive sound epics to sooth the soul.
Also in 2005 and 2006 Myoptik collaborated with I-Mitri to create the more academic and acousmatic project Skeletor. Skeletor performed live at EXPO 2005 in Scarborough and Expo 2006 in Manchester. Each was accompanied by an album release on Myoptik’s Ping-discs.
The Summer Sundae festival became Myoptik’s next outlet. In 2005 he collaborated with Matthew Preston and Steve Morgan again, this time as a trio for a new project called Cyan. They were the opening act for the Summer Sundae Festival that year, playing on the Friday evening to a jam packed marquee. The beautiful melodious electronica set that they performed made such an impact that they had a full page spread on page 3 of the Leicester Mercury the next day. Following this Myoptik went on to perform on the Bathysphere stage for the festival right up until 2008.
In this same era Myoptik performed in some warehouses in London, the last of which was Cursor Miner’s then shared home in Stratford. Notoriously his wife ‘interrupted’ Cursor Miner to ensure he wouldn’t miss the Myoptik set. It is still a moot point as to whether Myoptik’s cacophonous melee was preferable to the activities which Cursor Miner had been busy with at the time...
It was also during this chaotic period that Myoptik first began collaborating with BJ Cole. Though BJ Cole had worked with many famous names in every style of music it soon became clear that their partnership had a particularly fervent chemistry and their debut live performance at the Coventry live music venue ‘Taylor John’s House’ was a real sensation. Neither the performers, nor the audience expected quite such an intensely exciting and explosive outcome.
Since then BJ Cole and Myoptik have been collaborating by proxy to create new tracks to reflect the energy and obtuseness of that first sensational gig, as well as doing a few more highly energised live performances. Although notoriously on one occasion the venue flooded and was knee deep in water before they had even played a note. They had to create a temporary bridge out of milk crates to escape the mirky flood waters.
In 2008 Myoptik went to see an early event by new label TheCentrifuge at The Moog in Nottingham and a new underground connection was born. Myoptik went on to book a number of artists from TheCentrifuge for events in Leicester and has had many releases on the label in the years since. His first track for The Centrifuge was for a Christmas compilation on which he did an avant-electronic take on the Christmas carol ‘We Three Kings Of Orient Are’. He went on to feature on many other compilations for the label over the years including Supernatant, The Centrifuge Christmas Collection, Anyone Can Make Dubstep, The Centrifuge Remixed, Acid Futures Volume 1 and Moments of Inertia. The label also released 3 of his solo EPs, as well as his Night Raidz album of which Planet303 magazine said “The sky around we is stellato of bombs that they will hit goodness knows which objective, beyond our eardrums. Moments of quiet. Then the strafings recommence." Myoptik also performed live for TheCentrifuge a number of times supporting acts such as Funckarma and Bogdan Ryczinski at venues in Nottingham, London and the infamous Tacheles in Berlin.
In March 2009 Myoptik created a special half hour track to commemorate the birth of his daughter. He performed the track live in the Phoenix cinema at the Stench multimedia arts event. Subsequently he became a member of the Stench collective, going on to promote future events and book many of the artists that performed at these experimental sound and visual extravaganzas which took place in art galleries, warehouses, cinemas and music venues across Leicester.
In time the Stench phenomena became a weekend-long preliminary fringe event for the Summer Sundae festival under the name Stenchival. Each year Myoptik programmed all of the music for one day of Stenchival, bringing the kind of boundary pushing talent seen at his PVC events to the occasion.
In 2009 Myoptik added another trick to his bow with the launch of Myoptik’s 78’s where he lined up a pair of wind-up gramophones with three microphones, one each for the gramophones and a third to amplify his ridiculous adlib segues. Over the course of the next three years Myoptik’s 78s entertained audiences in the Twist & Spout tent at festivals such as The Lynton & Lynmouth Festival, The Secret Garden Party and Shambala educating the audiences about the origins of classic old tunes.
It was also in 2009 that Myoptik first connected with Ann Shenton from Add N To X, attending the Sonic Weekend music event that Ann had set up through White Label Music. As part of this, Myoptik collaborated with a group of other acts from the label to create an album of experimental electronics in the Derbyshire countryside. Sonic Weekend is an annual event for 20-30 artists surrounding the label and each year an album is made, each peppered with contributions from Myoptik and the many others. Sonic Weekend albums are available through i-Tunes and reflect the diversity of electronics available through White Label Music.
Meanwhile, in 2010 Myoptik began another event collaboration as he started occasional work with Leicester based experimental electronic event promoters Subtrakt. Once again he was helping the underground book quality electronic acts to perform. Myoptik also played his own live sets at Subtrakt, the last of which occurred in 2012 and went on to be broadcast on TheCentrifuge radioshow on BrapFM the following year.
Throughout this period and ever since the Peata Out project has remained active with Myoptik and Francis Binns creating new albums bi-annually. The musicianship, emotion and adventure captured in albums such as Cryptic Sea, Up1Notch, Dronal Loves, Pistol Dreams and Moorland Gorge demonstrate the near telepathic understanding the two have when creating improvised music.
2011 was an active year as well with Myoptik’s aforementioned performance at the infamous Tachelles live venue in Berlin as part of TheCentrifuge’s 4th anniversary celebrations with Bogdan Ryczinski, StormField and Cursor Miner. It was also that year that Myoptik’s Night raidz album was released by the label.
2012 was perhaps a quieter year for Myoptik as he concentrated on a series of new albums and eps in his studio, not least with BJ Cole. Indeed their collaboration ‘Polystyrene Funq’ went on to be released by TheCentrifuge and was reviewed by Igloo Magazine who said “BJ Cole and Myoptik sync pedal steel guitar and obscure bursts of sonic funk on the excellently deranged “Polystyrene Funq”.
2013 has been another creative year for Myoptik, particularly with regard to remixes. He so enjoyed doing a a remix of Squarepusher that he went onto to do remixes of Free Control, Dirty Electronics, James Kelly and Ola Szmidt. Also in 2013 came the return of an old collaboration with his Bub Bub track being used as the soundtrack to a documentary on the illegal trade of Rhino Horns directed by Jonny Hulson as featured on the Environmental Investigation Agency website as part of the campaign.
Updates for 2014, 2015 and 2016 to follow...
