Maillist
FOCUS ON: Function
- Official Website >>
- Label: Locust Music >>
- Genre: Avant Garde/Experimental
Spat out on Jaunary 2nd 1977 into small-town Australia into a landscape full of industry, universities and birth defects
\func"tion\ : \the natural or assigned action of any power or faculty, as of the soul, or of the intellect; the exertion of an energy of some determinate (or indeterminate) kind... a quantity that has no interruption in the continuity of its real values, as the variable changes between any specified limits... a relation such that one thing is dependent on another\
Spat out on Jaunary 2nd 1977 into small-town Australia into a landscape full of industry, universities and birth defects, Matthew Liam Nicholson took up sound experimentation early in 1991, when, getting around mostly by skateboard, he made his first audio-collage, using two family tape decks. The collage, made at the tender age of fourteen, featured a thrillingly weird arrangement of Indian, choral and avant-garde oddities stolen, collaged and re-rendered. Though the arrangement did not prove popular with local teens who had not yet discovered drugs, it signaled a love of sound experimentation that has since spiraled into something like a career.
In 1993, Nicholson co-formed the shaky supernova of the Golden Lifestyle Band, a spastic, elastic small group by turns shambolic and spectacular (and frequently both), that featured the talents of Chris Smith (Fat Cat/Emporer Jones), Dion Nania (Hi-God People/Panel of Judges) and Pat Ridgewell (Small World Experience) - the group becoming posthumously legendary in underground Australia. It was during his five-year tenure in the Golden Lifestyle Band that Nicholson, in 1995, coined the moniker Function, and began giving more time and attention to his solo recordings, increasing his use of naively discovered Eastern modes, rich delay figures, piano, skittering percussion and lyrical content of top-shelf poetic sensibility.
In 1998, Function self-released its first eponymous full length in Australia, a rich and raw gleaning of wooden-textured love spotted with dirty heartfelt pop, mesmerisingly layered improvisational expirements and gusts of warm feedback. It was the initial sign that a Function record will always dance freely and dissolve itself between the poles of sound-art and song, even whilst making no particular distinction between light and dark.
It wasnt until 2003, though, that the first commercial Function LP, The Zillionaire-Retarded Speeds of Ordinary, Measured Light, appeared in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, to almost unanimous critical acclaim. Described variously as the finest album to emerge from Australia this year (Delusions of Adequacy, USA) one of this years most intriguing releasesan ambition to make something entirely new out of a very tired form (Francis Leach, ABC Radio, AUS) and a stunning masterwork of intriguing musical delights (mono.net, AUS/NZ), The Zillionaire saw Nicholson, with the able hands of friends & family, expanding the palate of the self-titled record, articulating his unusual pop sense clearly and ecstatically, always interspersed with soaring and graceful improvised sounds.
Function live are an amorphous thing, appearing, over the last few years, as a solo electro-acoustic performance, sound-art duo, band, and occasionally, a larger ensemble. In 2004, a 4-piece Function band blew through SXSW in Austin, Los Angeles, New York, London and Tokyo, in support of The Zillionaire.., playing alongside the likes of Piano Magic, Thalia Zedek, Oren Ambarchi and the James Orr Complex. More recently, Nicholson has performed around Europe, including a sell-out show at Londons Institute Of Contemporary Arts with the legendary Fennesz, in collaboration with ::Room40:: artist John Chantler. Upcoming Function shows in USA & Europe, 2006, promise the larger ensemble with strings, horns, electronics & rock wilderness.
In recent years Nicholson has also created 7 hours worth of intricately synchronised soundtracks (via composition, as well as collage & de-composition) for the sacred art suites (triple-screen projection installations) of Advaitayana Buddhist Master Adi Da Samraj - in particular to the monumental-scale suites "The Breather" and "Kaliedoscape - Eleven Visions Of Countless Points Of View" (premiered mostly in California and The Netherlands thus far), as well as the sound tracks for both a DVD documentary on Transcendental Art and a forthcoming Australian film Lloyd Omerod Wants His Face Back. Nicholsons work is eminently cinematic, evocative and sensitive. Expect it to start appearing in fine films in the near future.
The fruit of innumerable trips around the world, and featuring a cast of over thirty players, recorded in 10 countries, Functions official second LP, (and stateside debut) The Secret Miracle Fountain, is the fullest realisation of Nicholsons talent yet. Sweeping, as it does, from sublime electro-acoustic washes to expansive tear-jerking dream-pop to arching, hook-laden ecstatic rock, The Secret Miracle Fountain sees voices arise out of indefinably sweet yet haunting electro-acoustic textures, submerged horns, rickety banjo, waves of piano, string section apparitions, and the cooing of dakinis in a landscape at once dense enough to get lost in and spare enough to hear every note. Partly produced by Australian pop luminary J. Walker of Machine Translations, The Secret Miracle Fountain, as with The Zillionaire..., travels some remarkably diverse terrain while remaining, unmistakably, the work of one man.
With instrumentation including modified flutes, trombones, trumpets, french horn, harmonium, bansuri flute, ghatam, tanpura, tabla, analog synths, violins, cellos, laptops, guitars, kalimba, djembe, and assorted electronics - The Secret Miracle Fountain cascades blissfully irrespective of genre boundaries, landing somewhere in the ballpark of the Heart, remarkably accessible. A labour of almost four years, the fact that, despite being recorded so disparately, The Secret Miracle Fountain succeeds so well as a whole, is a kind of miracle itself. Some pieces took years, some several days, and, in the end, the record doesnt particularly sound like anything or anyone at all. It is simply the immense and intoxicating noise of someone trying to bring something unabashedly beautiful into the world, and succeeding undeniably.
The Secret Miracle Fountain is available February 14 2006 through Locust Music.
Function will be performing in rare big-band style at Locusts showcase at SxSW in Austin, March 16 2006 and heading thereafter to New York and Boston for more shows between March 20-26th..
