Composer for Contemporary Dance, Digital Artist, Photographer, Film Maker
“OK. When did you know it was love?”
I had great fun making some music for Amy Morvell’s new duet called Turtle Dove. All the sounds take their lead from some beautiful soundbites of people talking about love, that Amy had collected during her research. So rather writing music for contemporary dance on the theme of love, the musical tracks are inspired by the places and characters we hear in the text, and that is what makes it so varied!
Huge thank you to The Point for hosting a preview of my immersive sound exhibition The Choreography of Sound. The exhibition gave me an opportunity to test some of the recordings I have made while researching the project, and get some audience feedback on what has been successful so far.
In Brighton the sound of seagulls, traffic and people blend into a mixture of noise that most people have unconsciously trained their minds to filter out. Modern life has added a fairly invasive mix of mobile notification sounds, buzzing home appliances, music piped into every shop, self service check out machines, and phone waiting music to name a few.
Hope you’re feeling in a Christmassy heartwarming mood because here’s a short animation I scored for NIX. The film was produced by Cass Productions who brought me on board to write some original music for this rather special animation. NIX wanted to make something a bit more special than ‘just’ and advert and I think the result is really beautiful.
In two week Lila Dance’s The Deluge will start touring to rural venues across the UK. The immersive dance show has been adapted for the tour, so I took the opportunity to test my new Olympus E-M5 mk ii camera out, and shoot this short trailer video.
All footage was shot on an Olympus Em5 mark ii. I think it really shows off the in-camera stabilisation, and I am very impressed with the focus tracking even in incredibly dark lighting.
For more information about The Deluge and Lila Dance please visit their website www.liladance.co.uk
Dougie Evans is a composer for dance as well as a photographer and filmmaker.
Depicted through a David Lynch-esque filmic style, The Enormous Room portrays a relationship between a father and a daughter who are trying to deal with grief.
The soundtrack for The Enormous Room is a complex mix of dreamy nostalgic music and household sound FX. When I first met Stopgap’s Artistic Director, Lucy Bennett, to discuss her creative ideas I knew instantly that it would be a production in which i could really flex my sound design muscles. So in order to write my tracks for the show I divided the sound design into two aspects:
(Continues after photo gallery)
I loved composing the music for the show. It’s a mix of synths and guitar quite unlike any other i have written for contemporary dance or theatre. It has almost a twin peaks feel to the reverb drenched guitar loops and distant vintage synth sounds.
For the more surreal moments such as Nadenh Poan’s utterly enthralling solo and the beautiful Rooftop Duet between Hannah and Christian, the percussive elements of the music are made from recordings of me drumming on kitchen utensils, pots and pans. In the second half of the show some of these rhythms return for Christian Brinklow’s solo, this time played on a wooden door to give a deeper more dream-like texture to the music.
Under the whole show is a track called the enormous room tone. This is an infinity looping, almost inaudible track of kitchen sounds, opening and closing doors/cupboards, fridge/freezer buzzes, kettles boiling and outside traffic. This track is to make sure that there is never true silence during the performance, keeping the audience immersed in the bizarre melancholy of the show.
The show is touring in 2017, please visit Stopgap Dance Company’s website for more details. http://stopgapdance.com
Really excited to be finally able to share a short dance film that I’ve written the music for, called Antechamber. It was produced by Wigglyline Productions and features contemporary dancers Rosa Kentwood, Hayley Barker, and Janina Smith. It is beautiful and grotesque, and the production quality is exceptionally good. The movement was improvised on the day and it think the dancers have done a brilliant job of capturing the surreal atmosphere of the piece in their movement. I really enjoyed composing the music for this film, and then adding some glitchy sound design to it. There are already plans to organise more dance films with Wigglyline in the future, so watch this space…
ANTECHAMBER from Wigglyline Productions on Vimeo.
Wow, what a flying start to 2013. Only a month has gone by, and amongst the snow and rain, I’ve already been involved in some fantastic projects. First there was Metsä, a short art film with Bella Kardasis, shot and recorded at Stanmer Park on a frosty morning; then the Mayakaras, Lila Dance’s fantastic youth dance company; followed by a live performance on Brighton & Hove Community Radio; and then following straight into recording the soundtrack for Yael Flexer’s new work Weightless.
Bella Kardasis and I set the tone for the year with a site specific collaboration with Wigglyline Productions. We filmed and recorded a structured improvisation live and on-site at Stanmer Park when there was the first light frosting of snow over the country. The results, I hope you will agree, are beautiful, and my eternal thanks go to Josh and Liam for doing such an incredible job filming the project.
Metsä – Dougie Evans & Bella Kardasis from WigglyLine Productions on Vimeo.
Lila’s Youth Dance company, Mayakaras, are an ever changing and inspirational group of young people. It is our privaledge to work with such hard working and wonderful teenagers every year, and this year is no exception.
This year we have launched a tumblr site to record our process, and their journeys as we develop a piece together. It is fantastic to have a permanent record of their experiences on a public domain, and I hope that they will look at the site in years to come and remember what incredible things they achieved as such young and mature people.
Thank you Caroline for having me back on your show. I had hoped that I could anounce a new album release date when I booked the show but unfortunately i am still a fair way off finishing my second album. Never-the-less, I played a couple of new tracks including Kyo, and a track as yet untitled. You can listen to the show on mixcloud:
Dougie Evans Live sessions and recorded compositions on Coastal Waters Review by Coastal Waters Review on Mixcloud
Last and by no means least, I have been working on Yael Flexer & Nic Sandiland’s latest soundtrack for Weightless, which premieres at Salisbury Art Centre on the 13th of March. It’s an upfront and witty contemporary dance peice celebrating and re-living 20 years of the companies existence, and i’ll be sure to post more information as the project develops.
Its November, the month of fireworks, way too early christmas adverts, and thanks to the rise of Australian based charity ‘Movember’, moustaches. Helping to raise awareness and funds about men’s health, particularly prostate cancer, Movember encourages Men all over the world to embrace the tuft under their nose for the whole month of November.
I’m extremely proud to say that Movember have used Elan, from my album Movement for their season teaser.
If you would like to donate to my moustache growing efforts then please click here
My collaboration with contemporary dance choreographer Jerrel Jackson, has continued with my scoring of his fantastic dance film ‘021203’.
The screen dance was produced, shot, and edited by Wigglyline Productions in June, and I’m really excited to be able to finally share it with you.