Hugh Davies
Performances 1969-1977

Archive recordings by one of the pioneers of experimental music in the UK, who died in 2005.

Hugh Davies was one of that outstanding first generation of European improvisers who emerged in the mid-1960's.  He played in the Music Improvisation Company (along with Derek Bailey, Evan Parker and Jamie Muir), and was a founder-member of the legendary ensemble Gentle Fire, a group who – years ahead of their time – used live electronics and improvisational elements to interpret radical scores by composers such as John Cage and Christian Wolff.

From 1964-66 Hugh worked as an assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen, during the latter’s most radical and fruitful period as a composer.  Hugh assisted on the production of  Mikrophonie I, a stunning work based on the amplification of sounds produced on a large tam-tam as it is brushed, struck or stroked by a variety of different objects and materials. In a sense Hugh's music over the next 40 years was a deepening exploration of the soundworld opened up by Mikrophonie I, again usually using metal objects as a sound source, though far smaller ones than Stockhausen's giant tam-tam.  Employing what he described as a “do-it-yourself approach to music”, Hugh built instruments from everyday objects such as springs, egg-slicers and fretsaw blades.  These were rubbed, scratched, beaten or blown, and the resulting small sounds were amplified.  Although thought of as a pioneer of the use of live electronics in improvisation, the only 'electronics' involved in the vast majority of his instruments was amplification.

Hugh continued to refine and develop this soundworld both in his compositions for tape (collected on the CD Tapestries  on the Ants label) and in his improvisations with a wide range of fellow musicians.  He particularly liked playing with other instrument builders (Max Eastley, Hans-Karsten Raecke), but also had long and fruitful collaborations with a number of instrumental improvisers with whom he felt an affinity (John Russell, Roger Turner, David Toop, Phil Minton, Evan Parker).