Darkroom is a British electronic music project created by Andrew "Os" Ostler (synthesizers, loops, processing and bass clarinet) and

Michael Bearpark Michael Bearpark is an English scientist and musician. Work as scientist Bearpark is a Principal Research Fellow in the Chemistry Department at Imperial College London. He works in computational chemistry, including method and software developm ...

(guitars, bass guitar and loops). Other contributors to the project have been Tim Bowness (voice and voice loops) and Peter Chilvers (space bass). The project performs live in the UK and has released several albums, mainly available via the independent record label

Burning Shed Tim Bowness (born 29 November 1963) is an English singer and songwriter primarily known for his work as part of the band No-Man, a long-term project formed in 1987 with Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson. Music career In addition to recording al ...

History

Darkroom originally formed in 1996 under the name Collective. The project featured three musicians who had been working together since the early 1990s: synthesizer player Andrew "Os" Ostler, guitarist

and vocalist Tim Bowness (the latter being the singer for

No-Man No-Man are an English art pop duo, formed in 1987 as No Man Is an Island (Except the Isle of Man) by singer Tim Bowness and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson. The band has so far produced seven studio albums and a number of singles/outtake ...

, an art-pop band who had by then released six albums on One Little Indian Records, 3rd Stone Ltd. and Voiceprint). Collective was formed in order to provide a live soundtrack at the

Nevers Nevers ( , ; , later ''Nevirnum'' and ''Nebirnum'') is a city and the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Nièvre Departments of France, department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Regions of France, region in central France. It was the pr ...

Film Festival in France, working via extensive looping of synthesizers, electric guitar and abstract vocals. The project self-released the limited-edition ''Soundtracks'' album in 1997, following which there was a name change to Darkroom and an ill-fated performance slot at the Wise Crone Cafe tent at the 1997 Glastonbury festival. In 1998 Darkroom released the ''Carpetworld'' EP on the Halloween Society imprint of 3rd Stone Ltd. The EP was followed in the same year by the Darkroom debut album ''Daylight'', which featured most of the tracks from ''Soundtracks''. In 1999, Darkroom released their second album ''Seethrough'' on the peoplesound.com label (it was later reissued in 2003). In contrast to the more free-form approach of ''Daylight'', ''Seethrough'' featured a number of pieces with semi-sung, semi-spoken lyrics. During this period Darkroom played two gigs in Cambridge and also performed at Richard Sanderson's London improv music night The Clubroom. In 2000, Bearpark and Bowness played without Ostler at the Scala, London, providing accompaniment for the Roswell alien autopsy film. Shifting their base of operation to Bowness' own

label, Darkroom released three albums in the "Fallout" series between 2001 and 2002. These albums drew predominantly on live recordings and returned to the free-form looping material of ''Daylight''. ''Fallout 1'' was based around trio performance recordings from London and Cambridge in 1999 and 2000, while ''Fallout 2'' featured live duo recordings from Os and Bearpark, and ''Fallout 3'' subjected further live trio recordings to studio post-production. A further recording from the period, ''Freefall'', was released in 2002 as a free download. Bowness only featured on ''Fallout 1'' and ''Fallout 3'', and future Darkroom activity would be centered around the duo of Ostler and Bearpark. Darkroom continued to play live, with their main physical performance base now being

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

and

East Anglia East Anglia is an area of the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with parts of Essex sometimes also included. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, ...

. Having played the Digital/Analogue Cambridge Festival of 2001, Darkroom collated the live material which they'd recorded and invited various other electronic musicians to remix it. The results were eventually released in 2004 on ''The DAC Mixes'' - remix contributors included centrozoon, DJ Dictaphone,

Theo Travis Theo Travis (born 7 July 1964) is a British saxophonist, flautist and composer. He is a member of Soft Machine which he joined in 2006 while the group was still using the "Legacy" suffix and was a member of Gong from 1999 to 2010. Biography Tra ...

, Nemeton and

Steven Wilson Steven John Wilson (born 3 November 1967) is an English musician. He is the founder, guitarist, lead vocalist, and songwriter of the rock band Porcupine Tree, as well as being a member of several other bands, including Blackfield, Storm Corrosi ...

's ambient project

Bass Communion Bass Communion is a solo project of English musician Steven Wilson, best known for his lead role in the rock band Porcupine Tree. Records released under the name Bass Communion are in an ambient or electronic vein—lengthy, drone-heavy compo ...

. In October 2002, Darkroom played at the debut "ACEMS Presents..." concert evening by the Anglia Contemporary & Experimental Music Society. In 2003, they played two further concerts in Cambridge - the February "Self Assembly" event in the Kettle's Yard New Music Mornings and the First (International) Cambridge Festival of Looping. In 2004, they played the Second (International) Cambridge Festival of Looping, and in August 2005 the First International Loopfestival in

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

. In 2006, Bearpark (plus a briefly returning Bowness) played as part of a live internet-streamed performance as part of the Y2K6 International Live Looping Festival. From 2007 onwards, Darkroom became frequent performers at Improvizone, a London-based improvisation night which they had helped to set up with drummer Andrew Booker. More recent international performances as part of the

Live looping Live looping is the recording and playback of a piece of music in real-time using either dedicated hardware devices, called loopers or phrase samplers, or software running on a computer with an audio interface. Musicians can loop with either loo ...

movement have been at the 2009 Antwerp Loopfest and the 2nd International

Köln Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

Loopfest in 2011. In 2008, Darkroom released ''Some of These Numbers Mean Something'', which featured a greater use of acoustic guitar as sound source and a musical style which incorporated "'70s

space rock Space rock is a music genre characterized by loose and lengthy song structures centered on instrumental textures that typically produce a hypnotic, otherworldly sound. It may feature distorted and reverberation-laden guitars, minimal drummin ...

, '80s

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...

electronica, '60s guitar instrumentals and '90s

post rock Post-rock is a subgenre of experimental rock that emphasizes texture, atmosphere, and non-traditional song structures over conventional rock techniques. Post-rock artists often combine rock instrumentation and rock stylings with electronics a ...

." In addition to his Darkroom work, Andrew Ostler owns and runs audio software and hardware vendor

Expert Sleepers An expert is somebody who has a broad and deep understanding and Competence (human resources), competence in terms of knowledge, skill and experience through Practice (learning method), practice and education in a particular field or area of st ...

and has remixed tracks by

and

. He had a short-lived solo project in the early 2000s called Carbon Boy, which released two EPs on peoplesound.

Discography

*''Carpetworld'' EP - (3rd Stone Ltd. (HAL 8001CD), 1998) *''Daylight'' - (3rd Stone Ltd. (HAL 8002CD), 1998) *''Seethrough'' - (peoplesound.com, 1999 - re-issued on Burning Shed, 2003)

CD-R CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can only be Write once read many, written once and read arbitrarily many times. CD-R discs (CD-Rs) ...

*''Fallout 1'' - (Burning Shed, 2001)

*''Fallout 2'' - (Burning Shed, 2001)

*''Fallout 3'' - (Burning Shed, 2002)

*''Freefall'' - (2002) free internet release. *''The DAC Mixes'' - (Burning Shed, 2004)

*''The DAC Mixes (Slight Return)'' - (Burning Shed, 2004) free download. *''Some of These Numbers Mean Something'' - (Burning Shed (bshed 0408), 2008) *''Gravity's Dirty Work'' - (Burning Shed, 2013)

Carbon Boy (Andrew Ostler solo project)

*''Carbon Boy EP'' - (peoplesound.com, 2000) *''Baby Croon EP'' - (peoplesound.com, 2001) *"Nano" - track on ''Collection 2: Moving'' ( Databloem, 2003)

Os (Andrew Ostler) guest appearances as guest musician/remixer

, ''Flowermix'' - (

Hidden Art Hidden or The Hidden may refer to: Film and television Film * ''The Hidden'' (1987 film), an American science fiction/horror film * ''Hidden'' (2005 film) or ''Caché'', a French thriller film * ''The Hidden'' (2005 film), a Spanish-British-Ita ...

, 1995) *

, ''Bass Communion (Reconstructions and Recycling)'' - (

Headphone Dust Headphone Dust is an English independent record label founded by the musician Steven Wilson. It's almost entirely focused on releasing Wilson's own music as well as his remixes of other artists. The only exception to this is the Irish band Fov ...

, 2003)

References

*Pallanck L. Gravity’s Dirty Work. Electronic Musician. 2014;30(3):36. Accessed June 8, 2025. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=93739606&lang=ru&site=eds-live&scope=site *https://www.innerviews.org/inner/darkroom-1 *https://www.innerviews.org/inner/bearpark-1 *https://waveformmagazine.com/waveform-reviews/darkroom-the-noise-is-unrest/ *https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/122975/alter-ego-chemist-musician/ *https://waveformmagazine.com/waveform-reviews/the-last-sense-to-fade-darkroom-/

External links

Darkroom websiteDarkroom site
on

MySpace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Darkroom British electronic music groups