Music and sound composer for film, games and other visual media – Simon Marchant.
Sound and music production including recording, editing, mixing, restoration and mastering for musicians and other clients.
I create immersive and emotive music under the name Slow Worm Sound Works using a combination of electronic and traditional instruments alongside field recordings and the use of experimental audio manipulation techniques.
I am a core member of the post-punk band Normil Hawaiians with records originally released by Illuminated Records in the early 80s and lately re-issued (also on vinyl) by the London label, Upset The Rhythm. We have been fortunate enough to have been given positive reviews for all our releases from a range of publications including Wire, Mojo and The Quietus. Other Ways of Knowing, a track from our first album, was used in the Lemaire Fashion Show of Fall-Winter 2019/20 and another track, Martin, from our second album, featured in the February playlist last year from fashion house The Row. This February, the song ‘Yellow Rain’ from our debut 1983 album ‘More Wealth Than Money’ again formed part of The Row’s highly respected playlist. We are currently in the process of putting together quite a significant and eclectic collection of new material. As well as coming up with many of the creative ideas, I am responsible for recording, editing, mixing and mastering the work and I am hoping all will be completed and ready for release by the end of the year. I have also recently mastered Bertie Marshall’s (formerly known as Berlin and founder member of the Bromley Contingent) retrospective album, Exhibit, also on Upset The Rhythm records.
From a personal perspective, I have an interest in exploring alternative approaches to sound/music creation. I believe that composition is simply a process of discovery and that the most interesting music comes either from searching deeper and further or from foraging with an unorthodox technique. I like to use found sounds as compositional sources in a variety of ways, especially when these are linked to specific spaces. For example, waves lapping the shoreline of Tayinloan on the West coast of Scotland morph into a darkly submarine and slow moving harmonic eddy in the track NR728524 (to be included on the new NH album). In this piece the only sound source is the recording of the waves. These are gradually and progressively filtered using Sophia Poirier’s wondrous Rez Synth to sculpt form from a block of natural sound.