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Craig Scott's Lobotomy

Craig Scott (b.1987, Aberdeen,Scotland) creates sound works for human and non-human performers. Using handmade analogue hardware, robotics and modified obsolete audio technology exploring the disquieting tension that exists between human and machine made music.

this takes form across three streams:

Animating instruments and domestic objects in the absence of/in collaboration with improvising human performers;

Exploiting malfunction as artistic expression, harnessing the inherent instability of obsolete audio technologies through the precision digital control affords;

Acousmatic music in which live instrumental recordings are dissected, transformed and blended with synthetic sources and field recordings, blurring perceptions of the organic/artificial.

As a solo artist he is the recipient of the PSR Composers Fund, Jerwood/PRS Take 5, Francis Chagrin Composer Award, Gain Trust Award, Hope Scott Trust Award, ECF and PRSF grants. Works have been commissioned by BBC Jazz on 3, Late Junction & LUMELab.

He has performed throughout the UK and Europe at: Cafe Oto, WOMAD, The Vortex, Union Chapel, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Chalton Gallery, Hackoustic, Great Exhibition of the North, Hundred Years Gallery, Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Dutch Fretless Guitar Festival, UCA, International Festival for Artistic Innovation, The National Museum of Scotland, Music ExMachina festival (Spain) & Trem Azul (Portugal).

Broadcasts of his solo work have been featured on BBC radio, ResonanceFM and NTS. Interviews and features have been published in The Guardian, Wire, Quietus, Jazzwise, Louder than War & Stereogum.

On February 12th 2021 Craig Scott’s Lobotomy releases his second album I am Revolting, a genre defying allegory of our navigation of the digital age - as the lines between physical selves and digital anima become blurred & consensus reality crumbles as our individual reality tunnels and ideologies become increasingly radicalized. Within this uncomfortable junction of human and machine, live recordings of acoustic instruments and field recordings are pulled apart and transformed by Scott’s unique palette of homemade digital and analog technology before being reborn into new forms. Manipulating the listeners' perceptions of reality as it becomes overwhelmed by the illusion. Serving as a timely reminder that our maps of ourselves and our world are only that; the map is not the territory and we just nervous systems perpetually ordering chaos. The album was meticulously crafted over a period of 5 years during which Scott also taught himself audio electronics and designed/built all of the microphones and production equipment used to facilitate its Composition, Recording, Decomposition and Recomposition. As its name suggests I am Revolting is a work of duality, simultaneously vulnerable and the aggressor; beautiful and ugly; serious and humorous; complex and simple.

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“In a class of his own when it comes to creating wildly inventive music” Gary Lucas (Capitan Beefheart /Jeff Buckley)

It's everything new music can and should be...a wake-up call for the ears...A superbly executed tour de force that leaves audiences shunting between fits of laughter and jaw-dropping wonder. Steve Mead, Artistic Director, Manchester jazz festival

This is a moderately extraordinary record...To say unique in this case would be proper...The silly name aside, it’s not messing about. Chris Cutler ( Henry Cow/Art Bears/RER records)

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