Cover art by Andrew Leslie Hooker
ODG219: EyeSkreem feat. Andrew Leslie Hooker and Russ Grant / EyeSkreem
EyeSkreem sees the union between avant-garde experimentalist Andrew Leslie Hooker on No-imput mixing board and Russ Grant on guitar.
They offer us 4 powerful tracks which bring you to a certain state of (un)consciousness.
To listen at full volume to interact the best with the music.
Both of them were/are extremely involved in experimental improvised music having played with a huge amount of musicians from that scene since the early nineties in the UK
Andrew
Andrew Leslie Hooker was born in Guildford, England in 1962, and lives in North Wales.
He began working in London as a photographer and graphic designer for various record companies and fashion/culture magazines such as i-D and The Face, and in 1989, relocated to Rome in order to focus on painting and filmmaking (shows include the Trevi Flash Art Museum and the Venice Biennale).
In the early 90’s, he began experimenting with electroacoustic feedback systems using typical audio mixing boards as musical instruments, which lead to many collaborations with composers and musicians across various genres, from modern classical (Gavin Bryars, Alexander Gabrys, Manuel Zurria, Sarah Saviet, Sylvia Hinz etc.) to avant-garde experimental (John Duncan, Valerio Tricoli, Stefano Pilia, Philip Jeck, Giuseppe Ielasi, Rhodri Davies, Toshimaru Nakamura, Giacomo Salis etc.).
For over Thirty years, he has performed improvised and composed music (his own and others) in many countries both solo and in group situations, including with various dance and theatre companies, and has released numerous recordings on CD, vinyl and cassette tape (including labels such as Touch, Entr’acte and Dinzu Artefacts).In 2011, he became artistic co-director of Anoikis Contemporary Dance with which he continues developing projects as a writer, composer and performer.
At the present time, he is a PhD research candidate in new music at The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts/Leiden University (under the supervision of Richard Barrett), developing an interdisciplinary form of musical language in which experimental pieces written for acoustic instruments are constructed entirely from electronic feedback produced by the no-input mixing board.
Over the last few years, as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, he has returned to his photographic practice as a way to negotiate a mythopoetic space between trauma, loss and landscape.
Russ
From the 1990s onwards, guitarist and composer Russ Grant regularly played festivals around the North West of England and North Wales with his jazz-rock band C-City, which also had a three year residency at the Mello Mello Bar in Liverpool.
Until 2015 he was a regular contributor to Frakture (Liverpool's free improvisation organisation). Russ performed duets with various musicians, and in the Frakture Big Band supported Eddie Prevost and Alexander Von Schlippenbach. He also has music published in the North West Real Book ( a collection of compositions by the North West of England's top jazz composers). Moving to Wales in 2015, Russ played in a Country & Western group before becoming a key member of the Improvisers North Wales organisation, which led to the formation of EyeSkreem with composer Andrew Leslie Hooker. He played at Bangor University's Free Improvisation Festival in 2023, and has supported events sponsored by LLif(t), a Bangorbased free improvisation organisation.
Improvised music by:
Andrew Leslie Hooker - no-input mixing board & various boxes
Russ Grant - electric guitar & various boxes
Produced by EyeSkreem
Recorded live by Dave Sunerton-Burl at Nannerth Farm Studio, North Wales in 2022
Mixed by ALH at home, between 2022-24
Mastered by DS-B
Artwork by ALH
Short Stories by RG
Please play loud and use speakers, not headphones.
Andrew would like to thank Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio & Bruno Maderna
Russ would like to thank Derek Bailey, David Byrne & Dewey Balfa
EyeSkreem
Short Stories
A1 The Heart Of A Phantom Is Beating
Truth and beauty march
their mildly muddled march
through canyons and cwms.
Shooting stars shoot
serene serendipitous shine-rays
above the glamorous pitter-patter
of earthling hearts.
The furling clown-angel taps the window.
A drunken uncle
admitted by sober silent parents,
scolded by auntie’s bald fury.
A2 - Not Really Now Not Anymore
I limp-dance in Procrustean shoes
towards the posing Pannonica of
the PostBop-Backlash backlash
twisting in the twilight
rapt and wrapped
in a hologram of Doris Daydream.
B1 - With These Lovely Feathers We Will Fly Around The Boundaries Of The Earth
Rough tongue, sleep-glue eyed and happy,
arise in a fanfare of flies
to search blog-page bilge bins
for virtual vestiges of vinyl virtuosi...
When will you marry my daughter dear?
A parler nous a boire
You can’t always get what you need.
Outside a crazed battered mark one
Beefheart auto-chaufferbot in a
stolen MadMax pick-up truck
scream-hiss lisps “let me take you take you for” forever
So Harry and me cuppa’d up
and were talking it over
when the battery just packed in
and the decision made itself.
B2 - Everything Ends In Mystery
Knee-deep in murk-mud of the barren plain
we hear a distant trumpet band
the ecstatic towns-people, feral citizens
fuelled full of fiesta fired communion fizzwine
clump their wild joyful chicken dance
as Otto reaches for pastels...
A time-tunnel opens and mother is mixing
“Is that space-cake mother?”
“Oh don’t ask me,
don’t ask me,
don’t ask me.”
Bloody typical.
Russ Grant 2025
Digital release on the 30th of May 2025.
Track listing:
1: A1 - The Heart Of A Phantom Is Beating
2: A2 - Not Really Now Not Anymore
3: B1 - With These Lovely Feathers We Will Fly Around The Boundaries Of The Earth
4: B2 - Everything Ends In Mystery
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