Lawrence English

Lawrence English is an artist, composer, engineer, writer, and curator based in Brisbane, Australia. Often described as ambient music or drone, his work uses field recordings and found sounds to explore the politics of perception. He first gained a wider audience with 2008's dense, subtly shifting Kiri No Oto. Some of his later work (such as 2014's acclaimed Wilderness of Mirrors) is heavier and noisier, expressing bleakness, desolation, and loneliness through waves of distortion. In the 2020s, the pipe organ that played a foundational role in many of his pieces came to the fore on works such as 2021's An Observation of Breath and 2023's Loscil collaboration Colours of Air. Along with releasing recordings on 12k, Line, and Touch, he runs the Room40 label. In addition to creating audiovisual installations for galleries and art spaces across the world, he has written for publications including The Wire and Cyclic Defrost.