John Matthias

John Matthias is an award winning musician and composer. He has released three albums; Smalltown, Shining (2001) on Accidental Records, Stories from the Watercooler (2008) on Counter Records (a sublabel of Ninja Tune), and Cortical Songs with Nick Ryan (2008) on the Nonclassical label, a work for string orchestra and solo violin which includes remixes by Thom Yorke (Radiohead), Simon Tong (Gorillaz / The Good The Bad & The Queen), Simon Jones & Nick McCabe (The Verve), John Maclean (The Beta Band / The Aliens), Gabriel Prokofiev, and others. He also plays in the band Derailer with David and Andrew Prior. In 2008 he won the PRS Foundation New Music Award (the musical equivalent of ‘The Turner Prize’) for the development of a huge sonic installation entitled The Fragmented Orchestra (with Jane Grant and Nick Ryan), which also won an award at the Prix Ars Electronica 2009. He has worked with many recording artists including Radiohead on the 1995 album The Bends, Matthew Herbert, Coldcut, Corker/Conboy, Lunatic Calm and The Blue Aeroplanes. He has also performed extensively including at the Wordless Music Series in New York, The Pompidou Centre in Paris and at the Union Chapel in London. He has worked on the scores of several film projects including The Hamburg Cell (Dir. Antonia Bird), Three Degrees Colder (Dir. Florian Hoffmeister) and recently co-scored the straight 8 film ‘Out of Time’ (Dir. Duncan Wellaway) which was a winner at the Cannes International Film Festival 2009. He is the deputy director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research at the University of Plymouth, UK and is currently developing new instruments and compositional processes relating to sonic events and spiking neurons. These initiatives include orchestral composition, distributed systems and the development of a new Neuronal Music Technology. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.