'A Thousand Fires' by Saeed Taji Farouky

I’ve recently finished the sound design for a new film, A Thousand Fires — by director Saeed Taji Farouky. It is a visceral, temporal portrayal of life in the Magway region of Myanmar — I have loved working with Saeed on it.

Here is a short excerpt from an article written by The Film Stage about the film following a viewing at the 2021 Locarno Film Festival, where it won the Marco Zucchi Award.

What makes A Thousand Fires stand out is Farouky’s ability to yoke the drama to the substance around which their lives gravitate. Underpinning the film is a Herzogian interest in the way oil drilling works, warts and all; time and again we watch Thein Shwe operate his makeshift derrick, scavenging for crude sixteen meters underground. In Farouky’s hands, the act itself acquires a certain nobility, a sacred beauty that’s amplified by Fatima Dunn’s score and Maxence Ciekawy and James Bulley’s sound design. Watching Thein Shwe pound the ground with his pole, I wondered if what I was looking at wasn’t a man digging, but plugging cables to a beating heart chugging somewhere below the Earth’s surface. Forsaking any vague, abstract statements on “the industry,” A Thousand Fires stays small, focusing instead on the connection between oil and the human body—the tactile, painful efforts to dig up the remnants of millions of years of sedimented histories. It’s a beguiling, epic journey.


More information will be available on the public release of A Thousand Fires soon.

'George III: The Man Behind the Myth' exhibition soundtrack at Kew Palace

Kew Palace, London

Kew Palace, London

A recent composition project that has just seen the light of day is a four room spatial soundtrack for the top floors of the Kew Palace exhibition George III: The Mind Behind the Myth. The composition is based on George Frideric Handel’s Keyboard suite in D minor ( HWV 437), which was a favourite of King George III. The work for Kew Palace unfolds across four rooms, with the audience progressing through the composition as they move through the exhibition.

The exhibition overall is a reconsideration of the story of George III’s mental illness from a contemporary standpoint, and asks how much attitudes to mental health have changed over the last two centuries – or more importantly, how much they haven’t.

Tickets are available online here and the exhibition runs from 10th June to 26 September 2021.
Thank you to Simon Hendry and Gregory White for their work on the sound system design and installation of this piece. Further thanks to KEF UK.

'George III: The Man Behind the Myth' exhibition at Kew Palace

'George III: The Man Behind the Myth' exhibition at Kew Palace

'Ayouni' Guardian Review

A 4 star review for ‘Ayouni’ in the Guardian Newspaper today, written by Peter Bradshaw.
It is good to see the film getting the recognition it deserves:

Director Yasmin Fedda, who is from a Palestinian and Syrian background and lectures in film at Queen Mary University of London, has created a powerful and urgent documentary tribute to those who have been “forcibly disappeared” by the Assad regime in Syria, estimated to be around 150,000 since 2011.

To watch Ayouni please see the official website to find the platforms it is available on: https://ayounifilm.com/watch

'Island' now available online

Island is now available to download via iTunes, Vimeo, Google Play and Amazon Prime Video

Watch on demand via Vimeo

Across the water on the island, four individuals experience the year in which their lives will end. Illness progresses, relationships gently shift, and we are witness to rarely seen and intensely private moments. One person shares their acceptance of death, whilst another is surrounded by a community in shock. We observe bedside care and the rhythm of breathing. In a pathology lab, microscopic biopsies in close-up show the interior of bodies, our biology. Filmed over 12 months on the Isle of Wight, Island is a life-affirming reflection on the phenomena of dying, portraying the transition away from personhood and observing the last days and hours of life and the moment of death. Like the ferries cyclically arriving and departing in this an enigmatic landscape, the film appears buoyant, afloat. Death is shown to be natural and everyday but also unspeakable and strange.

★★★★★  – The Sunday Times
★★★★  – The Guardian

“Poetic; disarmingly intimate” – Sight & Sound

“Probes uncharted territory with great intelligence and sensitivity” – Little White Lies 

'Ayouni' online launch

Ayouni is now available to watch worldwide at www.ayounifilm.com

It was a great privilege to compose the score and sound design for the film, directed by Yasmin Fedda..

At a time when the dictatorship in Syria is still in power, and its position is being normalised, it feels crucial to respond to the crimes that have been committed in its name, and in the wake of the destruction it has created across the country. Since 2011, government forces, and other armed groups, have forcibly disappeared at least 100,000 people – making them absent, silenced, invisible.

Families and friends of the disappeared still face the difficult tasks of finding answers. In this context, it is essential to build and preserve a portfolio of war crimes that can be used for accountability and for eventual justice. Ayouni is a small contribution to this effort, bringing intimate stories and realities in focus.