Hugh Davies

For the US recording engineer, use Hugh Davies (2). British electronic music composer, improviser and instrument builder (23 April 1943, Exmouth, Devon — 1 January 2005, London). Hugh Davies was the first UK composer to perform "live electronic music," renowned for making unique DIY electroacoustic instruments (held in the Science Museum's collection in London). As a musicologist and archivist, he created one of the most comprehensive compendiums of early electronic music, a monumental International Electronic Music Catalog (Répertoire International Des Musiques Electroacoustiques) co-authored with Groupe De Recherches Musicales at INA-GRM in France and published by The MIT Press in 1967. Davies worked at Electronic Music Workshop (EMW) at Goldsmiths College from 1968 to 1986, one of England's earliest academic electronic music studios. Since 1999 and till his death, he was a part-time researcher and lecturer at Middlesex University's Centre for Electronic Arts in London. Davies studied music at Worcester College, Oxford, between 1961 and '64, with future members of Monty Python's Flying Circus as his classmates. Hugh was indoctrinated into electronic music by Daphne Oram of BBC Radiophonic Workshop, producing his first-ever electronic composition at Oram's Tower Folly studio in London. From 1964 to '66, Hugh Davies was an assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne, Germany, experiencing a new form of "live" electronica, made with real-time processing rather than pre-assembled on magnetic tape. Davies appeared with Stockhausen's ensemble in several concerts, including the '67 Mikrophonie I / Mikrophonie II LP released by CBS (re-issued in 1995 by Stockhausen-Verlag as Vol 9 of the composer's complete edition). After returning to England in 1967, Hugh Davies built his first DIY instruments with contact microphones on various household items, from an egg slicer to fretsaw blades and furniture wheels. His best-known creation was "Shozyg I/II" — an assemblage of amplified tiny found objects inside the hollow encyclopedia's tome cover (named after the SHO–ZYG alphabetic range on the spine). Davis composed several pieces for "Shozygs," the first devices he explicitly referred to as "instruments for live electronic performance." In 1969, he made ten hand-numbered "Shozygs" for Review OU: Cinquième Saison Nº 34/35, an issue of Henri Chopin's avantgarde art magazine. (One of the copies is in MoMA's permanent collection in New York.) Since the 1970s, Davis began working with suspended and reverberating metal, building the "Springboard" series, arrays of long springs stretched on woodblocks and amplified by electromagnetic pickups. Davies performed in numerous ensembles, including Gentle Fire (1968–75), established by his friend Richard Orton at the University Of York, and The Music Improvisation Company (69–71) that Hugh co-founded with free jazz legends Derek Bailey, Evan Parker and Jamie Muir. He also played with Naked Software (1968–73) and Artist Placement Group (APG) in the mid-70s (alongside Ian Breakwell, John Latham and several other notable British conceptual artists). Hugh participated in Derek Bailey's Company improvisations in May 1983, playing in several trios with Joëlle Léandre, Vinko Globokar and Evan Parker. (Previously unreleased BBC radio broadcasts from the same era later appeared on 1983 2xLP from Honest Jon's Records in 2020.) Hugh Davies recorded with Alan Tomlinson, Phil Minton and Roger Turner as The Ferals on Leo Records in 1986 and appeared on the '88 Spirit Of Eden album by Talk Talk. Other musicians and instrument builders that he collaborated with include Lily Greenham, Peter Cusack, John Russell, Hilary Jeffery, Hans-Karsten Raecke, Max Eastley, David Toop, and Paul Burwell.