December 2021

Covid-19 Bandcamp Sale. Everything is $2.00, or get the entire discography at half price. Includes links to the Secret Page. Ask about download codes.

September 2020

Covid-19 Lockdown Giveaway. Everything on my Bandcamp is free/name your price (i.e. free). If it's still got a price tag, hit me up for a download code (see contact details on BC or this website) while they last. Bandcamp downloads come with a link to the secret page on this site, containing music not offered to the public because of reasons.

July 2019

New exhibition: The Museum of Aphorisms and Platitudes at Rubicon ARI in Melbourne, 24 July to 10 August 2019.

December 2018

New album: Piano Sonata No. 1 (Toccata Furioso) is now available on Bandcamp.

21 January 2018

New album. Not for sale: contact for details/download.

9 September 2017

New album: Unstained Melodies. Seventy mutated miniatures for piano.

14 August 2017

My review of last December’s London Contemporary Music Festival has now been published in Tempo, focusing on Julius Eastman, Arthur Russell and Frederic Rzewski. It's an expanded version of this blog post.

20 February 2017

Emergency Gig. Short notice but I'll be playing special live versions of Chain of Ponds in London on Thursday 23 February, in the tank at Silver Road, Lewisham. With Adam Christensen and Animal Choir. Doors 7.30pm, �5 on the door.

12 October 2016

Australian tour: playing special live versions of Chain of Ponds in Melbourne and Sydney in November 2016, as part of the Inland concert series.

17 September 2016

21 August 2016

Fiona Macdonald's epic video series Museum Emotions has a return screening in Melbourne on Thursday 18 August 2016, as part of Spring1883. My first soundtrack (episodes 2 & 8).

I've written the sleeve notes for the new Paradigm Discs release of William S. Burroughs long-lost tape cut-up from late 1960s London. Curse Go Back is an exhaustive session with Burroughs exorcising the word-virus from his consciousness - possibly his most extended and controlled tape work. Full sleeve notes are reprinted on this site.

2 May 2016

An excerpt from my 18-hour piano solo Antisonata will be played as part of the Speeding and Braking conference and exhibitions. 14 May 2016 from 10am to 5pm in G05, St James Hatcham Church at Goldsmiths College, London. Free entry.

14 April 2016

I Am The President Of Capitalists Inc. now has a photo gallery of the art installation, showing the aftermath of the performance.

31 March 2016

Reissued: my album of pieces for granular synthesis Hentai-Oto-Ma has sold out its CD run, so I've made it available for streaming and download on Bandcamp. This is probably your thing, if you're into dirty noise made on shareware from the turn of the century.

10 December 2015

New album out now. I've just released a compilation of new music on Bandcamp, titled Chain of Ponds. It's the culmination of various experiments I've made over the years using digital feedback synthesis, and I'm finally getting results I find fully satisfactory.

22 August 2015

New show coming! I'll be part of Control, a group show of interactive music next month at Cafe Oto's Project Space. 10 to 13 September, from 1 to 9 pm each day (free entry).

30 July 2015

My CD Redundens for Piano has been reissued as a pay-if-you-want download. Go hog wild.

3 June 2015

My new work in progress, Chain Of Ponds, gets a brief update with one new section availble to hear now.

7 April 2015

Finally, a music shop! I set up a Bandcamp page and added two old releases. Previously only available as limited edition CD-Rs, these are updated versions with improved sound quality and cover art, in high-quality and lossless audio.

25 January 2015

New gig coming up! I’ll be playing in/with the Great Hall at Goldsmiths on Saturday 7 February 2015, as part of an all-weekend project by Contingent Events. Free entry. Live music for multiple loudspeakers in unusual combinations. Hear a sample.

2 November 2014

A new-look template for the website YES IT LOOKS THE SAME AS BEFORE.

27 October 2014

144 Pieces For Organ. A gross of very short pieces, created entirely within a spreadsheet. Hear as many or as few as you like. The complete set for streaming or download, and a growing number of videos.

29 July 2014

I'm playing a live gig for digital and analogue feedback at Cafe Oto.

Real Characters and False Analogues now has its own series of accompanying videos, for the full sensory experience.

5 November 2013

Antisonata for piano. Full PDF score available for download, music samples up now on Soundcloud. MIDI file and dedicated page coming soon. This is the piece that playes all 555 of Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas simultaneously, in the time it takes to play them consecutively. Hijinks ensue.

5 August 2013

The John Cage Volkswagen Ad Project. "John Cage's music will never be used to sell cars." O RLY?

2 June 2013

Music. Fun with field recordings: Tropical Ravine With Blackbird on SoundCloud, and Untitled (22 April 2013) on YouTube.

28 March 2013

I'll be at Sonorities 2013 in Belfast in April, presenting my piece Third City: Walking on Red and Blue at the Sonic Lab, 12 noon, Thursday 25 April.

5 September 2012

For John Cage's 100th birthday: I Am The President Of Capitalists Inc.

More radio. My podcast with ABC Classic FM about the Interior Design: Music for the Bionic Ear project is now online. You can hear the premiere of my piece at the concert, and an interview with Stephen Adams about writing music for listeners with cochlear implants.

1 August 2012

Music. Two spinoffs from the Redrawing shows are now ready, each with their own video: Spectral Shadow of String Quartet No. 2 and Symphony.

14 July 2012

More radio. I've just been interviewed by ABC Classic FM for a podcast about the Interior Design: Music for the Bionic Ear project. Details on how to listen are coming soon.

28 February 2012

Music: Me and/or my music will be featured on ABJECT BLOC radio on RESONANCE 104.4fm, Tuesday 6 March 2012 at 22.30 GMT. What's that? Of course you can listen online!

Art: This is the New Music Video: Spectral Shadow of String Quartet No. 2 (Canon in Beta). A spin-off from the Collected Collaborations show.

10 September 2011

Music: Live gig, Tuesday 13 September 2011. Unconscious archives #2, presented by no.w.here and Other Film. I’ll be supporting Korean filmmaker and performer Hangjun Lee, with local musician, poet, performer, filmmaker and legend Hugh Metcalfe. Live analogue electronic feedback loops, made from small amplifiers, mixers and modulators. Connected into circuits these gadgets start to oscillate and interact with each other in unpredictable ways.

Apiary Studios, 458 Hackney Rd, London, E2 9EG. £4 donation, BYO. 8pm onwards.

14 July 2011

I have two shows coming up in the next few weeks. A live gig in London, and an exhibition in Melbourne.

Music: Live gig, Saturday 23 July 2011. ABJECT BLOC. Live analogue electronics. With John Wall, "                "[sic]™, Anthony Iles, Allon, Lee Gamble (DJs). 8pm start. £5 donation. Limehouse Town Hall, 646 Commercial Road, London E14 7HA.

Art: New exhibition: Collected Collaborations. An exhibition initiated by the Artists' Book Research Group, featuring propositional projects from the Redrawing Collective (Ben Harper, Fiona Macdonald, Alex Martinis Roe, Thérèse Mastroiacovo and Spiros Panigirakis) and OSW (Terri Bird, Bianca Hester and Scott Mitchell). Guest Curator: Brad Haylock.

Monash University Museum of Art, Caulfield Campus, Melbourne. 4 August – 1 October 2011.

The Redrawing Collective focuses upon the artist's book as a collective site of production and reception. The group examines and remodels the record of its past dialogues, creating a two-part book that is both a performative object and a platform for critical engagement.

1 March 2011

Music: Video of a news report on the Interior Design concert is now online. An expanded review of my piece for cochlear implant wearers, This Is All I Need, has now been posted. This includes mp3s, video, background notes on how and why the piece was composed, and an overview of the premiere concert.

1 February 2011

Music: Concert Date! Music For The Bionic Earwill be premiered on 13 February 2011, at the George Fairfax Theatre, The Arts Centre, Melbourne. An ongoing project conducted by the Bionic Ear Institute, composing music specifically intended for people with cochlear implants. Two mp3 samples of my work in progress are now available, along with a short video about the project.

6 November 2010

Music: Music for Bionic Ears now has its own page, with two audio samples and a video clip. This is an ongoing project conducted by the Bionic Ear Institute, composing music specifically intended for people with cochlear implants. Further updates announcements will appear first on the blog.

7 October 2010

Music: I'm currently working on a project conducted by the Bionic Ear Institute, composing music specifically intended for people with cochlear implants. More info here, with updates to come on the blog.

Writing: Most of my posts at the late, lamented Australian culture site Sarsaparilla have been preserved at the National Library of Australia's Pandora archive. The rest of the site is worth your time, too.

1 September 2010

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. Normal service has now resumed.

Blog: Blogging resumes with a review of Morton Feldman and Cornelius Cardew's belated appearances at the Proms.

1 June 2010

Music: Baroque Variations (Hoddle-Fawkner-Batman Mix) - a psychogeographic voyage around cheap General MIDI samples, field recordings from Melbourne 10 years ago, and inspirational words from Father Gerard Dowling.

2 May 2010

Art: Third City: Walking on Red and Blue - An installation of writing, drawings, maps, photographs and music.

10 April 2010

Art and Music: The Slips - A day-long performance at Clubs Project Inc. in 2003.

26 March 2010

Website: Fixed!

Blog: Close enough.

22 March 2010

Ha ha! I screwed up the website template. It'll take a day or two to update all the pages, but then it will be better than ever. Promise.

21 February 2010

Art: Rescreening: String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) is my first music video, now up on YouTube. It's a remake of the installation version of String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta), first shown as part of the Redrawing exhibition.

New gig: I'll be one of the performers of Dan Goren's new group piece Sum Over Histories on Wednesday 24 February. More details here.

23 January 2010

New gig! Thursday 28 January I'm giving the first UK performance of my String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta), at the Vibe Bar in Brick Lane, London, as part of Music Orbit's "Strung Out" night. 7.30 pm, �7 on the door.

20 January 2010

New look website: I'm making small but significant improvements to the design. Some pages will have the old look for a while longer, while I try to make sure nothing breaks too badly. Again, email me if something's buggy or broken for you, 'cos I know Macs running old versions of Safari are having trouble with the blog (it's always the blog.)

Blog: The new-look blog has recent reviews of gigs for George Crumb and Iancu Dumitrescu, and points you toward the Virtual Philips Pavilion.

3 January 2010

New look blog: I've switched over from Blogger to WordPress and started to redesign the site, to give it a more consistent look and add some more features. Email me if something's buggy or broken for you, 'cos I can't be bothered checking on anything other than the versions of Firefox and IE-something installed on my computer.

25 November 2009

All music files are now fit and working again. The move to a bigger web server with more bandwidth is a qualified success. Sorry about the disruptions.

4 October 2009

Writing: The Taxi Driver Looks At The Seine. Since being written in 1993, this piece has lived a fitful life as an amusement for obscure zines, a spoken performance for bemused audiences, and now as a content-added web experience, thanks to Flickr's random image function.

10 September 2009

Music: Melodica! An album of new music for melodica(s) curated by Daniel Wolf. Includes Redundens 1m.

19 August 2009

Music: The Listening Room is now fully functional. Ninety-four mp3s, and all of the Stained Melodies and Redundens now play without distortion. All mp3s on the site are now tagged with a "listen" button for instant streaming.

7 August 2009

Music: Callington. 5 x 5 choruses for a guitar or something increasingly unlike it. The sound of failure. Where all the buildings look alike, even if they're not.

25 new mp3s ready for download or streaming at The Listening Room.

Blog: I am cleaning up some scans of old slides (hint: I'm about to finally add some more stuff to the Art pages).

27 June 2009

Music: Real Characters and False Analogues. The long-awaited sequel to Stained Melodies. Five years in the making, because I'm a superb procrastinator. A set of twelve pieces for microtonal piano, with a richer palette of harmonies and textures than its predecessor.

12 new mp3s ready for download or streaming at The Listening Room.

Blog: In the presence of greatness? Seeing the previous generations for myself: Christian Wolff, AMM, Robert Ashley, Phill Niblock, Joan La Barbara, Alvin Lucier.

18 May 2009

Blog: Hooray! Eurovision Week is over! Hooray!

24 April 2009

Blog: The good news? The blog is active again. The bad news? Yet another post about Stockhausen.

24 March 2009

Music: New Redundens. Now with three foursix mp3s: Redundens 1b, Redundens 6, Redundens 6i, plus Redundens 4 and the brand-new Redundens 1k and Redundens 6j.

Sarsaparilla: Google versus Death, Round 2. (Sarsaparilla Lite)

Please Mister Please: ... also gets the spiffy new jukebox.

21 March 2009

Music: The Listening Room. Every piece of music on this website in one convenient location, playable as streaming audio - over 50 mp3s to choose from.

Sarsaparilla: How to not recognise famous art. (Sarsaparilla Lite)

15 March 2009

Music: New Redundens! Now with three fourfive mp3s: Redundens 1b, Redundens 6, Redundens 6i, and the brand-new Redundens 1k and Redundens 6j.

Sarsaparilla: Sarsaparilla Lite is on the air while the main site is refurbished. Thoughts on Dance, Jane Austen, and The Wrestler.

5 March 2009

Music: New Redundens! Now with threefour mp3s: Redundens 1b, Redundens 6, Redundens 6i, and the brand-new Redundens 6j.

Sarsaparilla: Sarsaparilla is on hiatus. Expect a relaunch and new site design soon.

5 February 2009

Music: The Cure For Headaches. An new mp3 added to the Dick Without A Hole Page - a touching duet between a born-again Christian and Microsoft Songsmith.

Blog: Late Rothko at Tate Modern.

1 February 2009

Music: Redundens. A more detailed page explaining the Redundens series in progress, with three new mp3s: Redundens 1b, Redundens 6, and an improved-quality Redundens 6i.

Recordings. The discography, such as it is, has finally been uploaded.

Blog: What, more Stockhausen? Yup. Inori and Hymnen at the Barbican.

9 December 2008

Music: Hentai-Oto-Ma. The title track of this CD is now available as an mp3, and the page now includes a comparison of the source images used in its composition and the sounds they produce.

Sarsaparilla: The Most Useful Piece of Advice You’ll Get All Year.

26 November 2008

Music: Dick Without A Hole. What makes Australians so bloody funny? Talkback radio callers in Adelaide show the world their unique gifts of humour and comic timing. Comes with an mp3 for you to share the magic.

23 November 2008

Sarsaparilla: Bloomsbury Foyer With Ken Done Prints (2008).

Blog: A week of Stockhausen at the Klang festival in London: eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs.

30 October 2008

Music: String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) now comes with a 23-minute mp3 of the 2008 version. This is a much more developed version of the piece than the one in the shorter 2005 mp3, similar to the version presented in Redrawing.

Some of my music can now be heard on Kyle Gann's excellent internet PostClassic Radio.

Art: String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) - now has new images and audio from the expanded version exhibited at CAST (Contemporary Art Space Tasmania), as part of the Redrawing exhibition.

Blog: Finally getting Grisey. Also finally talking about music again.

12 October 2008

Sarsaparilla: A tale of life and death, preservation and destruction, bin days, blue asbestos, and bull dust: it's all in Google vs Death.

Blog: Lately it seems I've been reserving my respect mostly for the dead.

16 September 2008

strong>Art: String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) - the audiovisual installation is now on display in Tasmania, at at CAST (Contemporary Art Space Hobart), 27 Tasma Street, North Hobart, as part of the Redrawing exhibition. The show runs from 19 September to 12 October 2008.

Writing: The new, improved version of "World Class Anxiety" in on sale now in the latest issue of Meanjin (Vol.67 No.3, 2008).

12 September 2008

Sarsaparilla: Everything I've written for Sarsaparilla, thrown together in one convenient location.

21 August 2008

Art: I love and hate the guitar. So I'm going to write and play 2000 Guitar Solos for it. How's that coming along?

Writing: A new section! Dedicated to writing available online and in print. First up: The Obsolete Guitar. Did I mention that I love and hate the guitar?

7 August 2008

Sarsaparilla: Starbucks pulls out of Australia, takes over Britian, thus simultaneously improving the standard of coffee in both countries.

Blog: It's Stockhausen Day at the Proms!

28 July 2008

Music: New! Expanded! Improved! All twenty-four Stained Melodies are now available to download, in improved quality audio.

21 July 2008

Music: New MP3s at last! Two takes of my piece from the Horse Bazaar gig. Too much Coopers Pale Ale and a laptop with a dicky ticker team up to prove to the world that The Old School Is Built On The Ruins Of The New School. (Blog post only, proper web page up soon.)

Sarsaparilla: A visit to the wild frontier of Coburg, Melbourne. Where life is cheap, if you're a brickie.

17 July 2008

Art: Redrawing: String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) - the audiovisual installation.

Art: "Every once in a while Don would scream at his mother 'Sue! Get me a Pepsi!' There was nothing else to do in Lancaster." Mock Tudor No.2 (Why doesn't someone get him a Pepsi?)

13 July 2008

Blog: Still banging on about String Quartet No.2.

3 July 2008

Sarsaparilla: What makes an Australian? Beside urban myths and clerical errors.

21 June 2008

Art: Photos of String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) installed at the Redrawing show are now online. Redrawing at RMIT's Project Space in Melbourne is open until 27 June.

7 June 2008

The new Art page has gone online, with further updates to come. Speaking of which, the Redrawing show is now open.

First up on the Art page, a little discussion of radical amateurism: Mock Tudor No.2 (Why doesn't someone get him a Pepsi?)

Blog: Stockhausen takes the High Road, Tudor takes the Low Road.

25 May 2008

The Music page has been rejigged, with a page dedicated to live performances, and "The Night We Burned Down Bimbo Deluxe" has been moved to its own page.

Blog: It's Eurovision time! Oh, there's some stuff about operas: Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur and Luigi Nono's Prometeo.

1 May 2008

New show! Redrawing at RMIT's Project Space in Melbourne, starting 6 June. The exhibition will include my String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) in a new, installation version. Floor talk by me and some (all?) of the other artists on Thursday 12 June 12 - 1 pm, followed by a live performance of the String Quartet.

New gig! Also in Melbourne, at Horse Bazaar, Wednesday 11 June, 8:30 pm. Live electroacoustic music with Ben Byrne, Natasha Anderson, Sean Baxter + Sam Dunscombe, Judith Hamann, James Rushford Trio. 397 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne. $5 on the door.

New music! Magnificent Bastards - eight short pieces for multiple tuning systems, written and performed as quickly as possible. With mp3s.

Blog: I'm haunted by the ghost of websites past.

1 April 2008

Blog: Make your own damn Stockhausen composition! You can do it like this, or do it like that.

Sarsaparilla: Two countries, locked in combat over who has the greatest inferiority complex. World Class Anxiety! Now continued in Part Two...

11 February 2008

Blog: Looking at Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth at the Tate Modern, I wonder if it means something very different from what the artist thinks it means.

20 January 2008

Blog: I review Vaucanson's Duck in Melbourne.

Sarsaparilla: I have a feeling we're not in Crouch End any more.

2 January 2008

New music: Redundens 6i, for piano. Part of Daniel Wolf's A Winter Album.

Blog: I review the Other Film Festival in Brisbane.

Sarsaparilla: The Year in Review. An absolutely official end-of-year list ready and waiting to shape your opinion the past 12 months.

22 December 2007

New music: What I did on my holidays. The One Who Was Neither or Nor, recorded live in Melbourne and Brisbane. MP3s from the gigs, with behind-the-scenes gossip about the joys of being booked for a show which changes venue three times in a week.

Blog: We connect Stockhausen with Ezra Pound.

Sarsaparilla: Something soon, I promise.

12 December 2007

Back home from Australia now, so service is returning to normal. The blog has a review of the Other Film Festival in Brisbane. More about Australia and the how the gigs went will follow shortly.

Please Mister Please is running again, with a memorial to Stockhausen.

24 November 2007

Ben.Harper live in Brisbane: Sunday 25 November, see the blog for details.

I'm on holiday travelling around Australia and New Zealand until early December, so updates and blog posts will be slow and sketchy until then. Hopefully, when I'm back home I'll have some write-ups, photos and music to share.

6 November 2007

Ben.Harper live in Melbourne: Tuesday 13 November at The Make It Up Club, Bar Open, 317 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. With Dur-e Dara and Ren Walters, Blow, and boy Brightbulb and Robert Curgenven - looks like a night of electronics, percussion, guitar and winds. Something for everyone! $7/$5, 8.30pm.

I'll be playing a new piece for digitally simulated feedback, The One Who Was Neither Or Nor. It's a more sophisticated development of the principles used in St Paul's Pianos With Real Nightingales. More details soon.

No updates to Please Mister Please while I'm on reduced internet access in various bedrooms around Australia.

19 October 2007

On the music page: St Paul's Pianos With Real Nightingales, for piano, digitally simulated feedback, and two nightingale stops. Nearly two years in the making, mainly because I just couldn't get the electronics right. Includes mp3 excerpt.

23 September 2007

On the music page: I get quietly excited about the preview of a work in progress, Sketch for "A"-16. Yes, it comes with mp3s and a blurry photograph of a messy desktop.

At Sarsaparilla: Several specimens of the Canterbury Block are discovered in the wild.

30 August 2007

A new feature! Please Mister Please launches with Buddy Greco, and everything feels a little bit better.

At Sarsaparilla, your chance to join the Magic Listeners Advisory Group.

26 August 2007

String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) gets its own page, with a couple of pictures and an mp3.

At Sarsaparilla, I indulge in some gentle joshing of the Dawn and Dusk Club and all heck breaks loose.

18 August 2007

On the music page: new mp3s uploaded of some more Stained Melodies for piano, and the story of Disposable Guitar Play Once Throw Away gets its own page, including an mp3 of Ola-R.

13 August 2007

I celebrate three years of being online in a connected Web 2.0 environment by finally adding a search engine.

26 July 2007

Coming up Sunday 29 July: I'm performing String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) at the Placard Headphones Festival in Paris 27 - 30 July. More about the gig here. Online audio of the event at Radio WNE.

Well, I promised more unpopular music when the server switch was completed. Here are two excerpts from Disposable Guitar Play Once Throw Away, a limited edition cassette made in 1999, uploaded in response to this blog post.

Sweet, addictive acknowledgement from the real world: I get to dick around in The Age.

4 July 2007

The site is moving to a new server, so things may be a bit flaky over the next couple of days. Please drop me a line if you notice anything unusual.

Normal service will resume shortly, with more room to offer new and exciting features (i.e. more unpopular music).

9 June 2007

At least three half-finished music projects are on the go. I'm working through some new ideas, but they don't go far enough yet.

At Haiku Review: I have misgivings about Richard Tipping's public art works.

At Sarsaparilla: The bookshelf debate heats up, and then I worry in public about finding philosophical consolation in horrible, horrible pop music.

May at Boring Like A Drill: Eurovision madness! Again! Again! Again! Then we connect John Cage with James Bond, and tell you another thing about what's wrong with newfangled electronic music these days.

1 April 2007

Two more Stained Melodies are now available for download, with accompanying notes if you want to know more about how these pieces were written.

Latest from Sarsaparilla: Test your word power against a dead squirrel, and Contextualising the contemporary artist within capitalist society: a case study.

Also, I moved house!

17 June 2006

Gradually we are getting the feeling that this website is getting somewhere.