Following its installation over the Summer at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Of the Oak by Marshmallow Laser Feast for which I wrote the score and composed the spatial sound design is being installed at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where it will be open to the public from December 2025 until March 2026.
Read More'Ayouni' London premiere at the London Palestine Film Festival, ICA
‘Ayouni’, a film about the human cost of the disappeared in Syria during the Assad regime, by Director Yasmin Fedda, for which I did the sound design and wrote the score, is coming to London, with a screening at the London Palestine Film Festival on Saturday 22 November (tickets here). I’d love to see you there - it’s a rare chance to see the film in London.
Read More'New Beginning' review at the Grand Theatre, Luxembourg
“Entering the Grand Théâtre Studio these past few days was like taking a break, opening a parenthesis in space and time. It was responding to an invitation to participate in a return to the most distant sources of our universe, to take the time to relive what emerged and developed from nothing. An invitation to understand that this has always been our story. And to spark an awareness that can only change our view of our threatened, already compromised world, perhaps leading us to finally react and act.”
Stéphane Gilbart, Luxemburger Wort
23 May 2025
https://www.wort.lu/kultur/les-jeunes-nous-racontent-comment-repenser-notre-lien-a-l-univers/68246560.html
“The result is a strong and intense theatre - conceived and designed by David Shearing - with essential images that question our place and the meaning of our lives. The music and the soundtrack (by James Bulley) contribute to this in large measure, skillfully combining recorded texts and musical vibrations. […]
Culture opens the debate, highlights the important subjects for today's society and tomorrow's... Nothing is more jubilant than an artistically accomplished show that knows how to denounce and raise awareness, while involving the younger generations to the highest degree.
[…]
All dressed in black, as if in mourning, very dignified and grave, these young people are our whistleblowers. Their conscience awakens ours. It's up to us to act. The message is received 10 out of 10.”
Alexandre Pham, Classique News
19 May 2025
https://www.classiquenews.com/critique-spectacle-musical-luxembourg-grand-theatre-le-17-mai-2025-new-beginning-variable-matter-creation/
More information about Variable Matter’s New Beginning can be found here.
Sound design for '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.
Read More'George III: The Man Behind the Myth' exhibition score at Kew Palace
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.
Read More'Ayouni' 4* Guardian review
'Island' now available online
Island is now available to download via iTunes, Vimeo, Google Play and Amazon Prime Video
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' released online
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.
'Island' released on MUBI
Island directed by Steven Eastwood, for which I composed the score and sound design, is up on Mubi for the next 30 days. You can watch the film here: https://mubi.com/films/island-2017-steven-eastwood
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