Daniel Thorne of Immix Ensemble talks Transitions
As Liverpool's Immix Ensemble bring their collaboration with electronic artist Vessel to Manchester this month, we learn about the collective's beginnings, collaborations and aims from its founder and director, Daniel Thorne.
Daniel Thorne’s transition from the peripheries of the Liverpool music community to working with a selection of the UK’s finest music makers is down not only to his hard work (although that has a lot to do with it). Moving to a city as an outsider allows for an insight that might not be afforded growing up among the foundations – and Thorne has used this to his advantage in creating Immix Ensemble.
“I wasn’t engaged as a performer for the first few years,” he says of moving to Liverpool, “but I went to a lot of gigs. What really struck me was the fact that there are people making some incredible music that is both accessible but so well crafted.”
With a background in classical and jazz studies but also a keen ear for the more visible side of Merseyside's musical landscape, he soon realised that while the city had a wealthy supply of performances, “there was very little cross-talk between the two camps” of indie, electronica and the more orchestral-led ensembles like Ensemble 10/10 and the Liverpool Philharmonic.
The founding of Immix Ensemble
Thanks to a 'Time and Space' residency at artist hub Metal, Thorne was able to draw together established contacts within the classical and conservatory world and create an ensemble of performers with a broad but unusual palette of instrumentation, ready for deployment.
For Immix’s first season after its founding in late 2013, the conscious decision was to work with low-key, upcoming composers such as Joseph Hillyard and Lucy Pankhurst – along with acts no less experimental, but perhaps with a broader appeal, like Ex-Easter Island Head and glitch-blues guitarist John McGrath.
“I’ve always been really interested in music that sits between styles, and I get a lot out of seeing performers from different styles getting together to collaborate,” Thorne says. “The first season to a degree was a lot about the people who I was aware of; there was some thought to pairing people up, trying to push this idea of pairing people who hadn’t worked together or weren’t aware of each other.”
The foundations set up in the first year of Immix gave steady ground to Thorne’s ambition – not an ambition for fame and recognition, but to create more fluidity in collaboration, and to collaborate for specific occasions. Among those who've worked with Immix for new compositions and reimaginations of their repertory are psych-pop auteurs Stealing Sheep, eclectic songwriter Bill Ryder-Jones (whose new composition, No Worst, There Is None, will be performed by Immix at this year's Liverpool LightNight on 13 May), and Bristolian industrialist Sebastian Gainsborough, aka Vessel.
Working with Vessel
As part of Tate Britain’s Made in Transition series in 2014, Thorne answered a call for commissions to create a response to the gallery’s redevelopment period, and with Gainsborough worked on a specific idea of technological development and its impact on society. What the two conjured up, along with video artist Sam Wiehl, was the historical births of sonic textures specific to industry and communication.
“For instance, [the piece] Battle Cry, musically, is about the changing technology of war, Sam’s video is about the evolution of the textile machinery, but then you look at the physicality of the sewing machine and the industrial nature of war,” Thorne says.
Prior to the event at Tate, Thorne and Gainsborough had developed the piece via Skype and by emailing concepts, demos and manuscript. It was a challenge Thorne had been eagerly anticipating. “I learned loads as most of my work has been in the acoustic sphere, but I’m absolutely fascinated by electronic music,” he says. “So seeing how [Gainsborough] approaches his gear was great for my understanding.”
Through the collaboration, Thorne began to reach the limits of traditional scoring: “I remember Sebastian sent over an initial sketch as a violin feature, but there was no way for me to notate it for our violinist, Rakhi Singh, so he had to trust me that it could be translated well for the ensemble… There’s an unfortunate thing in notated music, in that in some circles the score is the finished article – but it’s just a way to communicate, and there’s no more value in writing complicated bowing than having a means to show controlling filter sweeps. There’s so much nuance to what [Gainsborough]’s doing.”
Transition in transition
The constantly evolving process of a piece is vital to Vessel and Immix Ensemble’s collaboration, and even though the Tate work has since developed into the album Transition, released earlier this year on the much lauded Erased Tapes label, each iteration of its performance has presented a new challenge for Thorne in considering the environment.
“It’s moved each time,” he explains; “we’ve only performed it live twice [in its entirety], so it’s still growing, [we’re still] finding out where we can stretch things. It’s definitely evolving in that sense. It’s notated in a way that allows for growth, for each member of the ensemble to inhabit their parts.”
For the launch of the record, Immix was invited to perform at London’s Cafe Oto, arguably the UK’s home for modern classical and experimental music. With the next show at Soup Kitchen in Manchester, Thorne expects the transition from the gallery to the club space to provide another interesting stage in the evolution of the piece.
“Transition works with a live AV,” he says. “You need your audience to get on board, particularly if they don’t know what they’re expecting. It’s about making sure we can pace the night so when we play people are ready to sit and listen and watch something, as the AV’s very part of it.”
On Vessel’s part, it will likely be more a matter of tempering expectations against his better-known noise-dub compositions – but with his eclectic background and Immix’s rising reputation, Transition has the potential to inspire many, from both club and academic circles.
Vessel and Immix Ensemble present Transition (live AV show), Soup Kitchen, Manchester, 7 May, and Bristol Colston Hall, 14 May.
Transition the recording is out now via Erased Tapes.