John Stephen Richards (born 1966 in

Bideford Bideford ( ) is a historic port town on the estuary of the River Torridge in north Devon, South West England. It is the main town of the Torridge District, Torridge Districts of England, local government district. Toponymy In ancient records Bi ...

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, England) is a British musician and composer working in the field of

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

. Since 1999, he has predominantly explored performing with self-made instruments and creating interactive environments for composition. In the mid-1990s, Richards’ works began to be recognised amongst the electroacoustic community. He received a mention at the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges in 1997, and in the same year had a work performed at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. In 1996, along with Nick Fells, Dylan Menzies, Gabriel Prokofiev, and Timothy Ward, Richards formed nerve8: an experimental sound diffusion group. Richards’ work with the

post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of music that emerged in late 1977 in the wake of punk rock. Post-punk musicians departed from punk's fundamental elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a broader, more experiment ...

group Sand (

Soul Jazz Records Soul Jazz Records is a British record label based in London. Outside of releasing records, the label also publishes books, occasionally films and performs as a DJ set. The music releases labels from a variety of genres, including reggae, house, ...

) and kREEPA has also received international recognition. kREEPA was formed in 2000 with Hilary Jeffery, who Richards met at Dartington International Summer School in 1990. Key contributors to the work of kREEPA have been British saxophonist

Paul Dunmall Paul Dunmall (born 6 May 1953) is a British jazz musician who plays tenor and soprano saxophone, as well as the baritone and the more exotic saxello and the Northumbrian smallpipes. He has played with Keith Tippett and Barry Guy. In the earl ...

and contra-bass recorder player Cesar Villavicencio. Since 2004, the group has also worked closely with Nicholas Bullen (founder member of

Napalm Death Napalm Death are an English grindcore band formed in Meriden, West Midlands, in 1981. None of the band's original members have been in the group since 1986, but since ''Utopia Banished'' (1992), the lineup of bassist Shane Embury, guitarist Mi ...

and Scorn), and have released material on Bullen’s label Monium. Whilst working with kREEPA, Richards developed the kreepback instrument: an assemblage of self-built sound generating devices and discarded analogue audio hardware patched together to create a feedback labyrinth. His connection with Gabriel Prokofiev has continued, and he released in different guises pieces on Prokofiev’s nonclassical label, the most notable of these being a work for piano and electronics performed by GéNIA with re-mixes by Vex'd and Max De Wardener amongst others. John Richards coined the terms dirty electronics and punktronics to describe an approach within electronic music that shirks working with corporate technology and virtualness and focuses on a do-it-yourself ethos, found objects and the physical in relation to the human body. Richards also began to explore these ideas through workshops and performances. In 2003, he formed the Dirty Electronics Ensemble, a large group that is often made-up of workshop participants where making things and performances are intrinsically linked. The group have performed specially commissioned pieces by Merzbow, Pauline Oliveros, Howard Skempton (founder member of the Scratch Orchestra), Gabriel Prokofiev and Nicholas Bullen (ex-

and Scorn). Other notable collaborations have included working with Rolf Gehlhaar (original Stockhausen group), Chris Carter from Throbbing Gristle, Keith Rowe and STEIM (Amsterdam). As Dirty Electronics, Richards has explored the intersection between artwork/copper etching and printed circuit board in a number of touch instruments. In 2011, Dirty Electronics collaborated with graphic designer Adrian Shaughnessy to create a specially commissioned hand-held synth for

Mute Records Mute Records is a British independent record label owned and founded in 1978 by Daniel Miller (music producer), Daniel Miller. It has featured several prominent musical acts on its roster such as Depeche Mode, Erasure (duo), Erasure, Einstürze ...

. Dirty Electronics workshops and performances have taken place internationally including Japan, United States, Europe and Australia. John Richards studied at

Dartington College of Arts Dartington College of Arts was a specialist arts college located at Dartington Hall in the south-west of England, offering courses at degree and postgraduate level together with an arts research programme. It existed for a period of almost 50 ...

and the

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

where he completed a PhD in electroacoustic music in 2002. In 1999, he joined Andrew Hugill and Leigh Landy as part of the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Group, now MTIRC, at

De Montfort University De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) is a public university in the city of Leicester, England. It was established in accordance with the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, Further and Higher Education Act in 1992 as a degree awarding body ...

where he helped initiate the Music, Technology and Innovation, and Music, Technology and Performance degrees. He has written a number of academic papers and articles on contemporary electronic music that in particular cover postdigital theory, new modes of performance and

hybridity Hybridity, in its most basic sense, refers to mixture. The term originates from biology and was subsequently employed in linguistics and in racial theory in the nineteenth century. Young, Robert. ''Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and ...

References

Ears: ElectroAcoustic Resource Site
*Hugill, Andrew. The Digital Musician. New York: Routledge, 2008. *Richards, John. "32kg: Performance Set-ups for the Post-Digital Age." Proceedings of NIME 06. IRCAM, Paris (2006): 283-287. *Richards, John. "Getting the Hands Dirty." Leonardo Music Journal. 18.1 (2008): 25-31. *Richards, John. "Lead & Schemas." Roland: The ICA’s Magazine. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts. Issue 9 (2011).

References

External links