The Paul Hamlyn Foundation has awarded £600,000 to new recipients of Awards for Artists 2022. Ten visual artists and composers receive £60,000 each with no strings attached from the largest awards for artists in the UK.

Awards for Artists supports visual artists and composers at a pivotal moment in their careers. Each award offers recipients £60,000 over three years – with no obligations or conditions as to how the money is used. Not only the largest award in the UK, this ‘no strings attached’ approach sets the awards apart from other schemes by giving artists the time and freedom to develop their creative ideas and to further their personal and professional growth.

The Awards reflect the Foundation’s strong belief in the value of artists to society, and the vital contribution that they make to our culture. This year’s recipients span a broad spectrum of visual arts practice and composition, including Mariam Rezaei’s pioneering turntablism; Sarathy Korwar’s heady mix of South Asian jazz and Indian classical music; Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye’s exploration of the intersections of writing, scenography and performance; and Vanley Burke’s intimate photographs documenting the lives of Black British people.

Jane Hamlyn, Chair, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Chair of the Visual Arts Panel commented:
“Artists are facing enormous challenges right now. These awards give artists much-needed time, resources and headspace. There are no strings attached, but I’m sure they will give back in many different ways.”

Moira Sinclair, Chief Executive of Paul Hamlyn Foundation said:
“We believe that a healthy civic society is one where artists thrive – we want to support artists and composers to have the freedom to develop creatively, and to grow personally and professionally.”

Since the Awards began in 1994, PHF has recognised a total of 337 artists across a range of artforms with funding totalling £9.94 million. Previous recipients include visual artists Yinka Shonibare (1998), Jeremy Deller (2001), Phyllida Barlow (2007), Ed Atkins (2012), Michael Dean (2014), Sonia Boyce (2016), Charlotte Prodger (2017), Ingrid Pollard (2019) and Hetain Patel (2021). Composers include Sally Beamish (1994), Janek Schaefer (2008), Tansy Davies (2009), Eliza Carthy (2012), Shabaka Hutchings (2014), Daniel Kidane (2016), Serafina Steer (2017) and Abel Selaocoe (2021).

Each year, a panel of four new judges selects the recipients on the basis of talent, promise and need, as well as achievement. The awards might be made at any point in an artist’s career with no age restrictions unlike many other awards schemes; Gustav Metzger was 80 when he received the award in 2006. In selecting recipients, the panel always considers an artist’s potential for future development.

2022 Visual Arts recipients:

Vanley Burke is a photographer who uses his work and imagery as a counterpoint to any perception of negative or stereotypical imagery of Black people found in mainstream media. His photographs capture experiences of his community’s arrival in Britain, representing members of the Black community back to themselves in an intimate portrayal.

Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye is a writer, performer and maker of artwork, integrating the visual, written and spoken word through print, text, image, and live performance. Eno-Amooquaye creates the environments in which she performs her writing, developing complementary stage sets and bespoke garments, allowing her work to explore the intersections of writing, scenography and performance.

Trevor Mathison is an artist, musician, composer, sound designer and recordist. The defining feature of his work is the integration of environmental sound and archival material into his sonic practice, with the fragments combining to create fractured and haunting aural landscapes. Mathison is a founding member of a number of experimental groups, collaboratively producing and performing sonic and visual events using installation and ambient scores.

Libita Sibungu is an interdisciplinary artist working with writing, performance, photography, print and sound to build environments that weave decolonial narratives into immersive installations and poetic arrangements. Through storytelling Sibungu connects her familial history with political movements, and wider collective memories and cosmologies to amplify displaced, buried and marginalised voices.

Alberta Whittle choreographs interactive installations, using film, sculpture, and performance that are often made in response to current events with themes including xenophobia, the catastrophe of the weather and the global pandemic. She is motivated by the desire to manifest self-compassion and collective care as key methods in battling anti-Blackness.

2022 Composer recipients:

Laura Bowler is a composer, vocalist and Artistic Director specialising in music-theatre, multi-disciplinary work and opera. She has been commissioned across the globe by ensembles and orchestras, producing award winning compositions and multimedia music theatre. As a vocal soloist she has performed and premiered works internationally, and is the vocalist in contemporary music ensemble, Ensemble Lydenskab.

Brìghde Chaimbeul is a Gaelic musician established as one of the leading experimental purveyors of Celtic music. Chaimbeul plays the Scottish smallpipes and has devised a unique way of arranging and composing for pipes that emphasises the rich textural drones of the instrument; the constancy of sound that creates a trance-like quality in the music.

Sarathy Korwar is a musician specialising in North Indian classical music and jazz. He has established himself as one of the most original and compelling voices in the UK jazz scene, using his experiences as an Indian in Britain alongside his training in classical Indian percussion. Korwar is the founder of the UPAJ Collective – a group of South Asian jazz and Indian classical musicians.

Mariam Rezaei is an award-winning composer and performer. Her work is at the forefront of cutting-edge research in ‘Turntablism’, composed from her perspective as a northern, mixed heritage, working class, queer, female turntablist. Her innovative music has recently been described as “genuinely ground-breaking” (LCMF 2022, London Jazz News) and “high-velocity sonic surrealism” (LCMF 2022, 4* The Guardian).

Orphy Robinson is an award-winning multi-instrumentalist who has been a major force in contemporary jazz, improvised and classical music for over 40 years. Robinson’s compositions use influences from across historic timelines, combining melodies and rhythms that underpin their stories with spoken word narrative and improvised textures of sound to create a unique soundtrack for each performance.

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Aphex Twin’s debut album, Selected Ambient Works 85-92, was released 30 years ago today. 

A landmark release in electronic music’s history, the album compiled 13 tracks made by Richard D. James over the seven years preceding its release, beginning when he was aged only 14. 

The record’s unique sound fused serene ambient pads and atmospheric synth melodies with techno-inspired drum patterns, resulting in a hybrid style of ambient techno that was as mesmerizing as it was propulsive. Labeled ‘intelligent dance music’, or IDM, by fans and critics (a term James himself dismissed) the album has since been named as an influence by countless other electronic artists.

Although James undoubtedly now owns an envious collection of synthesizers and recording gear, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was produced at the beginning of his career, using a more limited selection of kit. A 1993 interview with Future Music revealed that his set-up was based around a Korg MS-20, a Roland SH-101 and a Yamaha DX7. James also used a Casio FZ-10M sampler with custom filters, estimating that he used it on 80% of his songs.

The album was sequenced using an Atari 520ST computer and a Korg SQ-10, along with custom-built DIY sequencers. James likely also used the onboard sequencers on the Roland SH-101, while using CV and MIDI to keep different devices in sync. He’s said that his tracks are “99% sequenced”, with only the synth strings parts occasionally played by hand. 

To achieve the uniquely grainy reverb sounds that characterise the record’s sound, James made use of the Alesis Quadraverb, a rack-mounted digital reverb from 1988. In a 2014 interview with Noyzelab, James mentioned that the Quadraverb was “used on all tracks on SAW85-92” and praised its “dark and muddy” sound, along with “nice arrangement of subtle pitch shifting, delays into reverbs”. All of the tracks on SAW were recorded to cassette, which imbued them with a noisy, lo-fi sound, and audible distortion.

Pads

SAW is full of dark, spacious synth pads. These usually outline the song’s chord progression, and the song “I” consists of only a pad run through a heavy amount of reverb. These ambient pads were likely recorded with the Yamaha DX-100 or DX7, as these were the only polyphonic synths James mentioned owning at the time. He likely used the DX strings patches, as they have long attack and release times as well as mellow, sine-like oscillator sounds.

Bass

Bass sounds are a fundamental part of SAW85-92, with a mixture of mellow riffs, acid synths, and flowing melodic basslines present. One recurring sound is a dark sawtooth synth with a high resonant filter at a low position, which creates a dull, bass heavy sound with little high-end. It also has a soft attack, which prevents it from sounding too plucky. You can hear this prominently in “We Are the Music Makers” and “Tha”.

Elsewhere, “Green Calx” and “Ptolemy” feature a more resonant sound associated with acid music. These synth patches are created by setting the filter resonance to medium or high settings and using the envelope filter with a quick decay time and no sustain. “Plotemy” has a medium amount of envelope and resonance, whereas “Green Calx” has much more of both. 

Leads

Although lead synths aren’t often in the foreground of SAW, two memorable melodic parts can be found in the gliding lead in “Schottkey 7th Path” and the short, melodic plucks that open “Ageispolis”. These were likely recorded on the Roland SH-101, a revered analog monophonic synth from 1982. There are plenty of software emulations of the SH-101, including TAL-BassLine-101, D16 LuSH-101 and the new Softube Model 82.

The main synth heard “Schottkey 7th Path” is a monophonic patch using a single sawtooth wave, with the filter set at around 60% open and a very fast glide time. The “Ageispolis” patch can be recreated using a square wave oscillator, with the filter wide open. There’s a very short decay time on the VCA envelope, and no sustain. Both synths would have been run through plenty of Quadraverb, though we’ve used Valhalla VintageVerb as a replacement on these clips.

Yamaha DX synthesizers can be heard clearly in the rhodes-style comping in “We Are The Music Makers” and the melody of the album closer, “Actium”, both of which use the DX7’s infamous ’11 E.PIANO 1′ preset. We recreated these parts using the Arturia DX7 V software plugin, though the free synth Dexed also features the preset. The DX7 is velocity-sensitive, so sequencing lower velocities will result in softer sounding notes.

Samples

Album opener “Xtal” features a vocal sample from “Evil At Play”, a piece of library music recorded in 1986. The song’s grainy chords are also sampled from “Evil At Play”, which was discovered by YouTuber SynaMax last year, 19 years after the song’s release. 

The sounds were likely sampled on Richard’s Casio FZ-10M, a rack-mount version of the FZ-1 that allows the user to save and load sounds via floppy disk. Elsewhere on SAW, there are several movie samples buried in the mix. A sample from RoboCop can be heard in “Green Calx”, appearing at 3:56, and a sample of dialogue from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory can be heard in “We Are the Music Makers”.

Effects

SAW was initially recorded to cassettes, which were given to James’ friends before being recorded to DAT tapes for the final versions you hear on the album. As such, the tracks have a high level of background noise, a muddy sound and audible distortion at points.

If you want to recreate this lo-fi aesthetic yourself, you could record the master from your DAW to cassette, then re-record the cassette back into your DAW. If you don’t have a cassette player handy or fancy more flexibility, plugins are also an option – there’s plenty of decent tape emulation plugins out there that can produce a good imitation of this kind of sound. 

All the audio clips in this article were processed through Soundtoys Decapitator and XLN Retro Color 2 on the master channel, to add distortion, saturation and tape artifacts.

Drums

Most of SAW’s drums sound like they come from the Roland TR-808, however Aphex Twin didn’t own a TR-808 at the time this album was produced – instead he used a Roland R-8 with an 808 expansion card. There are many instances when the bass drum and hi-hats are repitched, which wasn’t possible using the original 808.

A booming four-to-the-floor 808 kick is one of the album’s main fixtures, it can be heard drenched in Quadraverb in “Xtal” and without reverb in “Pulsewidth”. There’s also a signature hi-hat pattern consisting of two closed and one open hi-hats that appears in both songs.

James is an adept sequencer, and uses a meticulously programmed fast triplet hi-hat roll in both “Ageispolis” and “Heliosphan”.

James also used the Roland R-8 sequencer to repitch the 808 kick to create basslines in tracks like “Ageispolis” and “Xtal”. 808 basslines are commonly heard in techno and house music, and can easily be recreated by loading a sample of an 808 kick into your DAW sampler and programming basslines in the piano roll.

The snare from the historic “Apache” drum break also appears to have been a favourite of Aphex Twin’s, as he used it on both “Heliosphan”, and on ”Xtal”, repitched 5 semitones lower.  You can also hear repitched 808 basslines and plenty of hi-hat programming tricks in this “Xtal” beat.