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BOVINE LIFE:
social electrics (Bleep 06)
BOVINE LIFE and international friends
Broadcast the phenomenon of SOCIAL ELECTRICS
Award winning UK film maker / digital artist Chris Dooks was known
for his film work on musicians in Britain - directing documentaries
on all sorts of luminaries from SCANNER for The South Bank Show,
to tiny bedroom labels in the middle of nowhere. The fuse to his
film career was lit and burning brightly in the nineties…
However, Chris became ill with a dibilatating disease in 1999 and
he put film making on hold and that’s where this story should
have ended.
Never one to give in, give up, or surrender, he got himself a pseudonym
– BOVINE LIFE - as his hobby of electronic music making was
starting to become a bigger deal. The fuse to his music career had
been lit ! He used the internet as the conduit for a series of solo
excursions and collaborations that eventually formed the result
of this fantastically eclectic release from www.bip-hop.com
His exclusive soundclashes with artists such as Köhn, the label
Alku and Mego and Plug Research alongside three tracks with Matt
Eilliot (formerly the Third Eye Foundation) are included on this
20-track release. There’s also solo Bovine workouts and lesser
known talents from Puerto Rico, Sweden and California on the disc.
Bovine Life has not met any of these collaborators in “real
life” as most of the music was constructed with mp3 dialogues
when Chris was fit enough to make it to the keyboard. This is truly
protest music ! Protest at being unwell !
If you've ever been put on hold, you'll know that the tune they
play down the telephone is a waste of telecommunications ! Not so
with Chris’s modem adventures. Bovine Life has been jamming
through the modem, speaking in electronic tongues, secreting sounds
that vary from being immersed in amniotic fluid, right through to
searing bleeps that would make any nation stand to attention !
This enhanced CD also features a six minute film that Chris directed
just prior to becoming ill and was unable to market as a consequence.
Chris also scored the soundtrack. It’s rare that artists are
able to straddle more than one discipline, but Bovine Life’s
output is full of such wonderful variety that we at bip-hop cannot
predict where it will explore next !
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Chris Dooks, digital artist, broadcast tv director and musician
- (AKA Bovine Life), is a virtual friend to the world's leading
electronica artists !
Over the past fifteen months Bovine Life has been jamming through
the modem, speaking in electronic tongues, secreting sounds that
vary from being immersed in amniotic fluid, right through to searing
bleeps that would make any nation stand to attention !
And it's all been done through the telephone autobahn - AKA the
web !
This cd features BOVINE LIFE VS THE THIRD EYE FOUNDATION, and
other collaborations with KOMET, KOHN, FUTURE
PILOT AKA, and artists from labels such as MEGO (ALKU), LEAF (YLYPTYK),
DISKONO and the electronic sound community
at www.insine.net
but WHY and HOW ?
Well. Bovine Life started because Chris was struck down with Myalgic
Encephalomyelitis - or M.E. - a dibilatating disease which
affects energy levels and a myriad of other symptoms (see www.afme.org.uk)
and so his film making adventures around the world
were put on hold. He could barely get out of his Edinburgh flat.
So the computer became absolutely essential to his survival.
But if you've ever been put on hold, you'll know that the tune
they play down the telephone is a waste of telecommunications
! Not so
with Chris's modem adventures. He fought back, focussing his creative
ventures into broadening the sonic superhighway with his
website project SOCIAL ELECTRICS.
He included "kits" of samples of his site that artists
could download and reconstruct into their own compositions, some
of which have made it to this cd such as the KOHN track...
but is it ANY GOOD !?
Hell Yes ! This enhanced CD release features highlights from the
past two web releases from BOVINE LIFE's SOCIAL ELECTRICS
project, an accompanying photographic booklet of Wolfgang Tillmans-style
images plus a seven minute award winning movie on the
cd directed by Chris himself. It's a glorious package showcasing
this incredibly versatile artist who looks like he'll make a stunning
contribution to the electronic aesthetic for years to come...
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links :
SOCIAL ELECTRICS : http://www.bovine.org.uk
CHRIS DOOKS older site : http://members.xoom.com/digitalcow
Discography :
1. 2001 : Social Electrics Part Two : Free mp3s : Collaborations
with The
Third Eye Foundation, Kohn, Komet, Future Pilot AKA, Nine Mile Burn,
Duodecimo, plus solo Bovine material.
2. 1999 : Social Electrics Part One : Free mp3s : An album's worth
of net
based collaborations featuring Bovine Life Versus ALKU (Barcelona),
Ylyptyk
(Brooklyn), Smyglyssna (Malmo), Octorock (Philadelphia) and material
gathered from a six month residency in Alturas California.
3. 1999 : Collaboration with Future Pilot AKA on The Future Pilot
AKA album
: "A Galaxy of Sound" (Sulphur Records)
you may also have seen Chris’s work from the documentary he
shot for the flagship arts programme in the UK THE SOUTH BANK SHOW
on SCANNER . |
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how to order
