Music
Iain Chambers and Kate Carr create immersive electronic soundworlds from waste.
“They work with what has been spoiled or thrown away in order to reveal its latent value, or rather to affirm the upcycling capacity of human creativity. There is nothing sardonic in their choice of ‘Trash and Treasure’ as the title for a hands on performance. Rather those words register, as does the music itself, the transformation which may arise from imaginative engagement with even the most unpromising materials.”
Julian Cowley, The Wire.
I’ve created bespoke podcast themes for many companies, including CBeebies, Audible, Wondery, The Guardian, Chalk + Blade, Sony, Eurosport, PRX, The National Trust.
My music for podcasts often draws on my experience working with location sounds and field recordings, to create unique music responding to the sonic worlds and locations featured in the stories themselves
Voices - A Co-produced Psychosis Soundworld
I’m excited to begin a groundbreaking new project exploring voice hearing, co-produced with voice hearers in East London, and supported by a Participatory Research Grant from Queen Mary, University of London.
Working with Viet-Xuan Elen Williams and Dr Natalie Shoham (both of Wolfson Institute for Population Health) and CoreArts, Hackney, I'll create a sonic representation of the side of psychosis we don't hear much about - the neutral, even positive voices that can be a constant presence in the condition.
We'll make an initial digital realisation of the work, before a longer multichannel realisation is installed at Rainy Days Festival, Luxembourg in November 2025.
Electronic pop from Iain Chambers, Tamara van Esch and Tom O C Wilson
“Render Ghosts brings a unique modern voice to synthpop. The melodies are sublime and the songs expertly crafted to showcase them.”
The UK’s leading musique concrète composing / performing ensemble, who create new music from old technology, and give “authentic” performances of 20th century repertoire by John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff.
“A kind of Radiophonic Workshop Rebel Alliance” The Quietus
Iain Chambers: Concrete Paris (2021)
BBC Radio 3 feature and album exploring brutalist architecture in the banlieux of Paris.
“Concrete Paris combines a sound collage made from the fabric of the buildings it describes alongside interviews with residents, architects, and planners out in the banlieues. Nobody tells you they’re “going on a journey,” nobody is patronized, and you’re left almost alone to interpret what is happening; yet this lack of hand-holding makes it all the more atmospheric and suggestive as an exploration of a habitually ignored landscape”
Owen Hatherley,
Iain Chambers: Secrets of Orford Ness (2020)
Music made from field recordings at the former UK Ministry of Defence site Orford Ness, on the East England Suffolk coast.
“Orford Ness exudes a damp mistiness that seems more than willing to reveal and give up its wartime ghosts. Chambers does an exemplary job of facilitating by coaxing out these hauntological specters of a past whose future was quickly and radically changed. Secrets of Orford Ness is a vivid sound walk into a past that was, and still is in constant technological flux. Chambers has a unique, and very compelling ability to transport this past into the now…and it’s a walk worth taking!”
Mike Eisenberg, Avant Music News
Iain Chambers: The Eccentric Press (2019)
Vinyl/Download release by Persistence of Sound
"A beautiful and nuanced composition, making art from unexpected places, creating a kaleidoscopic portrait of the world. The delicacy and charm with which Iain Chambers sequences his materials is really something to admire. The machines live, breathe, and talk to each other – and to us. Yet there’s also something faintly valedictory about the tone, as if reminding us this is probably the last we’ll hear of these old-fashioned devices built on Newtonian principles"
- The Sound Projector
Iain Chambers: Ivry-sur-Seine (2022)
Musique concrète work exploring life within brutalist architecture at Ivry-Sur-Seine, Paris, composed from location field recordings.
Winner of Palma Ars Acustica Prize, 2022:
“As virtuoso field recordist and experienced composer Iain Chambers managed to accomplish the nearly impossible task - to rethink brutalist architecture in the medium of sound and in the human, sociological context while retaining compositional logic of highest degree. Ivry-sur-Seine is both confrontation - physical, tactile, aural, emotional confrontation - with living environment and superb musique concrete in every moment of the piece.”