Oliver Coates
Oliver Coates’ work as a cellist, composer and producer over the last two years has fed into his new record skins n slime. From touring with Thom Yorke across Europe and the US for half a year, to creating the soundtrack to Marianna Simnett’s short film The Bird Game, Coates has explored drone and drone metal techniques and has developed a new ‘slime’ improvisation method with a viscous and melting approach to live sound, through digital loopers, distortion and chorus.
On skins n slime, Coates leads an incandescent performance of string through sticky, synthetic modulation. The record beholds a darker sensibility than recent predecessors, 2018’s Shelley’s on Zenn-La and 2016’s Remain Calm (co-written with Mica Levi). An emotional outpouring, skins n slime inhabits scorching color palettes and brutal howling tones, conjuring a lonely dream state which pivots between wide symphonic harmonies and lucid, overdriven sound.
A wide scope in his interpretation of classical and contemporary notated music brought Coates to prominence in the 2000s and he has been a principal cellist for Aurora Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Britten Sinfonia and London Contemporary Orchestra. Away from public concert life, he has developed a language in electronic music through sequencing various forms of dance music, with wide divergences in style and methodology as part of his artistic vocabulary. His ongoing work as a soundtrack composer involves translucent and hushed layers of strings and melodic hooks embedded in electronic scores.
Coates has collaborated with Mica Levi, Dean Blunt, Jonny Greenwood and Malibu on live and recorded music projects, Lawrence Lek and Marianna Simnett on video art projects, and Hannah Perry on experimental theater works. He conducted an orchestra performing his own electronic music for Karl Lagerfeld’s homecoming fashion show for Chanel in 2017 at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.
In 2019, Coates performed a headline set at the Manchester International Festival as curated by David Lynch. He has curated two editions of the DEEP∞MINIMALISM festival at London’s Southbank Centre, where he has also been an artist in residence, featuring the music of Éliane Radigue, Liz Harris, Pauline Oliveros, Hanne Darboven, Morton Feldman, Daphne Oram and Malibu.
