STM 097 - Lee Gamble

Lee Gamble is a British musician, composer, producer, and prolific DJ. He began his career spinning vinyl on pirate radio and at events during the emergence of the jungle scene in the 1990s. He is a founding member of the multidisciplinary CYRK collective, has produced and curated three radio series for London-based Resonance104.4FM radio station, and currently runs a long-standing monthly show on NTS Radio. Since 2015, he has owned his own brilliant label, UIQ.

Lee Gamble began releasing music in 2006 with his first record on Entr'acte. However, an essential turning point in his career came with his two critically acclaimed albums, Diversions 1994-1996 and Dutch Tvashar Plumes, on Bill Kouligas’s phenomenally expanding PAN Records. His latest album, Mnestic Pressure, released on Hyperdub, continues his experimental sonic forays into deconstructed fragments of early electronic dance music (related to jungle and techno) and thoughtfully formed layers of nostalgic, rich ambiance. The sense of novelty and originality in all his pieces is always accompanied by sublime micro-convulsions and skillfully polished sound patterns. Over the past decade, Lee Gamble has collaborated with visual artist Bryan Lewis Saunders and musicians John Wall, Mount Kimbie, Cosmin TRG, Yutaka Makino, Special Request, and more.

Following his previous recordings for FACT, Self-Titled, and Boiler Room, Lee Gamble presents Secret Thirteen Mix 097, which he titles Your Sociometric Afterlife (Hyperrealist Absurdist Psychodrama Written for Radio). This is a complex and conceptual audio collage of precisely cut rare sound motifs, field recordings, and academic pieces. Everything is rearranged and melded together to form a new sustained composition. The development of the recording is diligent and emotionally progressive—akin to refined literary narratives. Effective experimentations with colossal formless structures, static signals, voices, diverse samples, and computer modulations generate a multi-layered, flexible wholeness.

The mix is reminiscent of Tony DeLap’s abstract painting Portrait of Queen Zozer II, where meticulously crafted shifting forms create a strangely stimulating sense of depth and isolation. Similar to DeLap’s willingness to continuously challenge the viewer's perception of reality, Lee Gamble explores a variety of complicated musical themes in his recording. It's one that certainly requires time, patience, and open-mindedness to absorb fully.

“Your Sociometric Afterlife (Hyperrealist Absurdist Psychodrama written for radio)

The audio is constructed and composed around sampled discussions and lectures on the theory of 'The Biocentric Universe' and concept of 'The Resistance to Social Change' and acts out as a radio play for the notions of 'The Illusion of Death'/'This Dysfunctional Life/Afterlife'.

All frequencies are present, many are unavailable for perception.

The narrative is hidden as a 'sub-vocalisation' in the sub-harmonic content.”