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ThuCo-founded by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown in the late 1990s, Cyclobe traverse a unique landscape in contemporary hallucinatory music. Thrower and Brown first gained attention for their work in the esoteric musick group Coil. As Cyclobe they create immersive and prismatic music, a haunted electronic reverie incorporating acoustic instruments such as the hurdy-gurdy and tulum, to evoke intense unfolding vistas both psychotropic and pagan. Despite having played together for over a decade, the groupʼs live performances number only three to date.
For their performance at CTM they will be joined by close collaborators Michael J. York (duduk/pipes), Cliff Stapleton (hurdy-gurdy), Ivan Pavlov (electronics), and David J. Smith (percussion), and accompanied by projections created by a number of acclaimed visual artists including Fred Tomaselli, David Larcher and Alex Rose. Brian Eno has said of them, "Cyclobe are sui generis. They are very important in the story of British culture; I think in the future they will be seen as even more important."
A new Cyclobe album is due in Spring 2014.
Performing within the same programme is Lichens, a moniker used by 90 Day Menʼs singer/bass player Robert Lowe for his solo and collaborative projects. Live, Lichens, who also is part of OM, creates a transfixing experience, mutating and extending his wordless vocals over drones of acoustic and electronic guitars, and percussion.
Under the moniker Lichens, multi-instrumentalist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe explores the use of voice in the realm of spontaneous music.
Cyclobe is the joint project conceived in 1999 by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown, former members of influential British industrial outfit, Coil, whose influence is conducted deeper into the subterranean and strange.