Ben Neill
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
In 1984, Neill completed Orbs, his first major composition for mutantrumpet, percussion and audio/visual projections; pieces including 1985s Mainspring, 1987s Money Talk and 1988s Abblasen House followed prior to his breakthrough work ITSOFOMO (In the Shadow of Forward Motion), a 1989 collaboration with visual artist David Wojnarowicz. A year later Neill travelled to Amsterdams Steim Studios to develop a new, MIDI-capable mutantrumpet; the upgrade resulted in the addition of a number of switches, knobs and pressure-sensitive pads allowing the player to trigger and modify a variety of sounds and sequences, as well as lights and projections, all in real time. After Haydn, a collaboration with electronic composer Nicolas Collins, followed in 1991.
Neill then began a six-year stint as curator of the downtown NYC performance space The Kitchen, a position which served as his gateway into the burgeoning electronic music scene. Presenting performances by everyone from John Cage to Jim ORourke to Future Sound of London, he began increasingly absorbing electronic influences into his work and was particularly fascinated by the local illbient movement; originally created as an installation/performance piece, Neills 1995 album Green Machine instead evolved into a full-blown dance music project, complete with 12 remixes from the likes of Single Cell Orchestra and DJ Spooky. The latter resurfaced on 1996s Triptycal, and Neill also spent the better part of 1997 appearing with Spooky and on the Sci-Fi Lounge tour of video-sampling innovator Gardner Post. After the appearance of Goldbug in 1998, Neill was relatively silent until 2002, when a series of productions done for Volkswagen advertisements was turned into a full LP, Automotive.
