Sean Archibald (born 1988), also known as Sevish, is a British
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...
composer from
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
. Described by
Aaron Krister Johnson
Aaron Krister Johnson is a Chicago-based composer, musician, and teacher. His experience ranges from the Western classical keyboard tradition, to folk music, and to modern Electro-acoustic music, electro-acoustic free improvisation. ''The Chicago ...
as "a well-known creative force in the world of online microtonal music," he is most known for his compositions which combine aspects of
electronic dance music with
microtonality
Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones—intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of tw ...
.
As a child Archibald was inspired by music in video games such as
Chrono Trigger
is a 1995 role-playing video game developed and published by Square. It was originally released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System as the first game in the ''Chrono'' series. The game's development team included three designers th ...
,
Streets of Rage
''Streets of Rage'' is a series of side-scrolling beat 'em up video games, centering on the efforts of several ex-police vigilantes trying to rid a fictional, large American city from a crime syndicate that has corrupted its local government. ...
, and
Sonic the Hedgehog
is a Japanese video game series and media franchise created by Sega. The franchise follows Sonic, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who battles the evil Doctor Eggman, a mad scientist. The main ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' games are platformers mo ...
. He would then go on to discover microtonality as a teenager by listening to
gamelan
Gamelan () ( jv, ꦒꦩꦼꦭꦤ꧀, su, ᮌᮙᮨᮜᮔ᮪, ban, ᬕᬫᭂᬮᬦ᭄) is the traditional ensemble music of the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussive instruments. T ...
music and
Aphex Twin
Richard David James (born 18 August 1971), best known as Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born British musician, composer and DJ. He is known for his idiosyncratic work in electronic music, electronic styles such as techno, ambient music, ambient, and jun ...
. At age 16 he began officially releasing music online and released his first solo album at age 20.
He first gained notoriety in the microtonal music scene with his 2010 release, ''Golden Hour''.
Sevish's 2011
xenharmonic
Xenharmonic music is music that uses a tuning system that is unlike the 12-tone equal temperament scale. It was named by Ivor Darreg, from Xenia (Greek ξενία), ''hospitable,'' and Xenos (Greek ξένος) ''foreign.'' He stated that it was ...
dance album, ''Subversio'', created in collaboration with Tony Dubshot and Jacky Ligon was described by
Andrew Hugill
Andrew Hugill (born 1957) is a British composer, writer and academic. He is both a professor of music and a professor of creative computing. He directs the Creative Computing programme at University of Leicester.
Biography
Andrew Hugill studi ...
as "
dub meets microtonal tunings."
Since most instruments in the
West
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...
are built to play the
12-tone equal tempered scale, Archibald turned to less common instruments and methods of composing microtonal music. He now uses an AXiS-49 hexagonal MIDI controller to play his microtonal music, along with various
DAWs such as
Ableton Live
Ableton Live is a digital audio workstation for macOS and Windows developed by the German company Ableton. In contrast to many other software sequencers, Ableton Live is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool f ...
,
Bitwig Studio
Bitwig Studio is a proprietary digital audio workstation developed by Bitwig GmbH. Bitwig is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Bitwig is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for composing, recording, arra ...
(on a
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
system
), and
Max/MSP
Max, also known as Max/MSP/Jitter, is a visual programming language for music and multimedia developed and maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling '74. Over its more than thirty-year history, it has been used by composers, per ...
.
The tuning systems he uses to create his music include
22-EDO,
15-EDO,
10-EDO,
13 limit just intonation, the
Bohlen-Pierce scale,
Pelog
Pelog ( su, ᮕᮦᮜᮧᮌ᮪, translit=Pélog /pelog/, jv, ꦥꦺꦭꦺꦴꦒ꧀, ban, ᬧᬾᬮᭀᬕ᭄, translit=Pélog /pelok/) is one of the essential tuning systems used in gamelan instruments that has heptatonic scale. The other, ...
tuning, and many others.
Adam Hart of the
University of Salford
, caption = Coat of ArmsUniversity of Salford
, mottoeng = "Let us seek higher things"
, established = 1850 - Pendleton Mechanics Institute 1896 – Royal Technical Institute, Salford 1967 – gained ...
said that his compositions "do not indicate a desire to move away from the archetypes of established EDM genres, but rather to explore alternative tunings through familiar stylistic approaches".
Archibald has expressed a desire to make microtonality more widely consumed by the public, creating multiple side projects to achieve this goal. He is the creator and host of Now&Xen, a podcast about microtonal music. In 2010 he founded his own record label,
split-notes, which is focused on promoting music which uses microtonal scales,
alternative tuning systems, and
xenharmonics.
Discography
Solo Work
*''Sevish EP'' (2005)
*''Crowded Images'' (2008)
*''Exposure EP'' (2009)
* ''Golden Hour'' (2010)
*''Human Astronomy'' (2010)
*''Sean but not Heard'' (2012)
*''day:dot EP'' (2013)
*''Rhythm and Xen'' (2015)
*''MK-SUPERDUPER'' (2016)
*''Harmony Hacker'' (2017)
*''Horixens'' (2019)
*''Odds and Ends'' (2020)
*''Bubble'' (2021)
*''Formless Shadows'' (2021)
*''Morphable'' (2022)
Collaborations
*''Crack My Pitch Up'' with 9 other artists (2010)
*''Subversio'' with Tony Dubshot and Jacky Ligon (2011)
*''2MM2'' (''2 Minute Masterpieces 2'') with 15 other artists (2013)
[Net050Various - 2MM2 : Faturenet Collective : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive" />
*''23'' with Tony Dubshot and Jacky Ligon (2014)
*''Next Xen'' with 18 other artists (2016)]
References
External links
*
''split-notes'' website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sevish
Living people
Microtonal composers
1988 births
Experimental composers
British composers