Grasscut is Andrew Phillips and Marcus O’Dair.
Andrew is an Emmy-winning and BAFTA-nominated composer, artist and producer. Over the last ten years he has scored many films including Oscar-nominated Watani, My Homeland (2016), BAFTA-winning Grenfell (2018) and War In The Blood (2020).
Marcus is a writer, musician and academic. His books include Distributed Creativity, about the potential impact of blockchain technology on the creative economy, and Different Every Time, a biography of Robert Wyatt which was nominated for the Penderyn prize. More…
@grasscutmusic
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I've been composing the score for this extraordinary series for the past few months, part 1 tonight BBC2 9pm
Congratulations to @andrewphmusic for his fantastic work on the new crime series "Murder in the Valleys" airing this evening on Sky and Now TV 🎉
#accordermusic #peermusic #murderinthevalleys #originalsoundtrack #crimeseries
An unlikely duet, from 'Witley Common' from Haunts: aeolian harp played by electric fan 🌀
Find more album insights via
Andrew's blog page here: https://grasscutmusic.medium.com/
The Pull is a beautifully intimate story about memory and water.
I responded rather literally when filming this and dropped the camera in a lake, but it survived, and that shot is still in the video.
📹 http://youtube.com/watch?v=qNfm-5bLrPg
@grasscutmusic
2 of 2. On a cd!
1 of 2. Demo sent to Ninja Tune in 2009
The closing track on Haunts is 'Witley Common', the voice recorded on a "wet, windy, and frankly rather bleak" day. It's like a story of time travel where the present dissolves in and out of the past.
My aeolian harp seemed like the perfect backdrop for this, with its complex wailing tones driven by wind vibrating its strings. But it's hard to get it to work consistently if you rely on the wind.
Last summer I was melting in the studio, so bought a fan (designed by an absentee Brexiter who shall remain nameless).
The fan was multispeed with a remote control, and I found that by varying the speed of the fan blowing across the strings, and recording with contact mics on the back of the harp to eliminate the fan noise, I could control the intensity of the harp manually. I was still too hot, but I had another instrument in my arsenal!
Haunts is out now // link in bio
When I was making 1946 for 1 Inch: 1/2 Mile, in 2009, I had just done a Gamelan workshop, and became obsessed with making a lo fi tuned percussion instrument that I could record for my compositions in my studio.
The ‘gong rack’ has been a staple here ever since, most recently on the upcoming Netflix film 'Nailbomber'. I bought a second hand shopping rack for clothes, and hung a paella pan, Victorian dinner gong, cymbal, wind chimes, and over the years added anything interesting I could find in junk shops to it, including a ship’s bell, and, as of last weekend, a Town Cryer's "oh yea, oh yea" bell
This ‘gong rack’ features on the Haunts track The Pull, recorded on these 1950s Reslo ribbon microphones (2nd pic)
I bought one of these mics in Portobello Market for £20 in 2019. It was frankly a bit dodgy (I’m not complaining at that price), but ribbon mic supremo Stewart Tavener of Xaudia brought it back to life, supplied a matching twin, and on my felted Consolette piano and percussion they produce an otherwordly colour from another time that I absolutely love.
The Pull is a beautifully intimate story about memory and water, and I wanted the music to feel both immediate and spontaneous, but also somehow sound like a memory.
AP x
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Some more from Andrew’s 1929 Dulcitone.
Take a little tour inside 🎹
Andrew's 1929 Dulcitone,
the lead instrument in Seacliff.
Seacliff was the first message to arrive, and I think its sense of place sets the scene for the whole of Haunts.
I improvised the main keyboard part on dulcitone, added some rhythm, and a sample of Kathleen Ferrier (who also appears in sampled form on We Fold Ourselves, from Unearth), singing like a mermaid in the distance.
#Haunts is out now. Link in bio
Andrew at the Prophet and Marcus at the Görs & Kallman recording Inchkeith Island #haunts
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This sea buoy, recorded on the south coast of Skye, provides the rhythm for Inchkeith Island.
The voice message is about a dream and an intention: “one day I’ll go there” and feel “alive and connected”.
Haunts is out now. Order Link in bio
Over the last year, we have all had ‘go to’ places in our heads, many of which we have been unable to go to in person.
Haunts, our new 6-track mini LP, is out everywhere today. A big thank you to those who sent in messages to us about their favourite places. We hope the wait has been worthwhile. Order link in bio #haunts
Down to the last few copies of our new mini LP 𝙃𝙖𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙨 left over on Bandcamp. Release day tomorrow.
Pre-order link in our bio.
Here’s how I made the sound. From #Haunts, our new mini-album out this Friday. AP x
With Everyone Was A Bird (2015) we included a card inviting listeners to send us recordings of their thoughts on places important to them….
#Haunts / @lorecordings
📸 @pedrbrowne