Michael John Harris (commonly known and credited as Mick Harris or occasionally M.J. Harris) is a prolific British musician.
Mick started out in the 1980s as a drummer working with various punk rock and grindcore bands (most notably pioneering grindcore band Napalm Death); as a drummer he is generally credited with popularizing the blast beat, which has since become a key component of much of extreme metal and grindcore. Since the mid-1990s, Harris has worked primarily in electronic and ambient music, his main projects being Scorn and Lull. According to Allmusic, Harris's "genre-spanning activities have done much to jar the minds, expectations, and record collections of audiences previously kept aggressively opposed."
Beginnings and Napalm Death
Harris' recording debut was as Napalm Death's second drummer, joining after founding member Miles "The Rat" Ratledge left the band in November 1985. His first live appearance with the band was on 18 January 1986, opening for Amebix. Harris was the driving force behind the band's seminal Scum album and the second release From Enslavement to Obliteration. After the release of the EP Mentally Murdered, Napalm Death began to become more interested in the death metal scene and their sound started to move away from the British grindcore sound. At this point Bill Steer and Lee Dorrian departed the band due to creative differences, Later, Harris was the sole band member who remained in the tumultuous group through many line-up changes, eventually leaving in 1991, just after the tour for Harmony Corruption.
While in Napalm Death, Harris also played drums for Doom and Extreme Noise Terror, and participated in a side project with Mitch Harris called Defecation, which produced two records, Purity Dilution and Intention Surpassed, through Nuclear Blast, but this last one just with Mitch Harris.
Post Napalm-Death
Scorn
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Scorn (band)After leaving Napalm Death, Harris founded Scorn with Napalm Death's original bassist/lead singer Nic Bullen. Scorn released several well-received albums and EPs in the early 1990s, creating a unique fusion of experimental heavy metal, electronic music, and dark dub music. Bullen left Scorn in 1995, but Harris continued to release albums under the Scorn moniker, exploring dark and minimalist industrial hip-hop territory, with a focus on extremely low and loud bass frequencies. Harris' work presaged the grittier aspects of the dubstep craze of the mid-2000s. As with the tendency for people to put a name to anything, Scorn has also been referred to as beginning the ‘Dark-Hop’ sound. After two albums in this style still on Earache Records who didn’t quite seem to know what to do with this new sound, Scorn and Earache parted ways, leading to a somewhat nomadic existence since then. Scorn has been associated with KK Records, Invisible Records, Hymen and most recently seminal US drum and bass label OHM Resistance, to which Mick had earlier ties to with other projects. In 2007, OHM Resistance released the first album of all new material in 5 years in a smattering of 12” have also been in the works of late on labels such as the UK’s Combat Records and Record Label Records in the US.
Lull
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Lull (band)Somewhat concurrent with Scorn, Mick began Lull, a beatless dark ambient project. Though not as prolific or popular as Scorn, one can argue that this project in its own way is just as influential. Lull was at the front of the so-called Isolationist movement that also included people such as Thomas Köner. Under this moniker, Mick has released full lengths on Sentrax and Release Entertainment (part of Relapse) as well as various 7” releases and compilation tracks, most of which were collected and re-issued on CD by the late Manifold Records. After a number of years of inactivity, Lull has returned with a remix for Franziska Baumann on Soleilmoon Recordings, a contribution for the 3-CD-compilation "Nekton Falls" on Celestial Dragon and the CD Like a Slow River on Glacial Movement Records
Painkiller
Also around the same time as Mick leaving Napalm Death, he was contacted by John Zorn who wanted to create a new group consisting of Zorn, Harris and Bill Laswell on bass. This trio became Painkiller. – a free jazz-extreme metal trio. The group released 3 successful albums in the early to mid nineties. Guts of a Virgin and Buried Secrets were released by Earache Records and contained mostly short aggressive tracks reminiscent of Napalm Death at times, but with the added elements of both John Zorn’s sax and Bill Laswell’s bass and all the history the two had behind them. 1995 saw the third (and last proper) release, the two disc set Execution Ground (also released in Japan on Toy's Factory with a third, live disc), on the Subharmonic label. This release saw the trio spread out in three long tracks that retained some of the aggressiveness of the earlier albums, but added a much more spacious, dubby and (at times) ambient feel to the recordings, arguably much influenced by Laswell’s production work at the time. The second disc contained ambient re-workings of two of the tracks. In the years since, some live recordings have been released and the trio tends to play a few shows a year, but since the later half of the ‘90s, different drummers have been behind the kit as Mick stopped drumming live. Rumors of the original trio reforming have been cropping up in recent years, particularly in light of Mick’s recent gigs with the group Black Engine.
Quoit and Hed-Nod
In addition to the projects he is most well-known for, two other monikers make occasional appearances. Quoit is a name used for a drum n bass project that has released three full-lengths, assorted 12”s, a 7” and the occasional remix. HedNod is/was the name for a series of beat and bass releases tengentially related to the Scorn sound, but in a lighter vein. A series of colored 12” releases were put out on the Disques HushHush sub-label HedNod. Buying into the series in advance also got subscribers a CD of extra HedNod tracks not found on the vinyl releases. In 2005, all of the HedNod sessions were released on one double disc set called (logically) the Hednod Sessions. Though inactive as a project since the initial 12” releases, the project sees the possibility of reactivation in the near future if conditions are right.
Possible Recs
In the mid ‘90s, Mick started his own record label, called Possible Recs., which leaned towards a drum n bass sound with some exceptions. The short lived label released a batch of 12”s from PCM, Ambush, Quoit, Scorn, James Plotkin’s Jupiter project and Eraldo Bernocchi's Interceptor and SIMM projects. Additionally, the label released full-length albums in both CD and 2x12” format by Quoit and SIMM. Unfortunately, shady distribution and the normal music business ethics of bottom-feeders put a fairly quick end to the label.
Other Collaborations
Along with these (mostly) Harris-helmed projects, many remixes and other random collaborations have appeared through the years. Mick has released and/or produced albums with/by Mark Spybey, Submerged, Bill Laswell, Eraldo Bernocchi, Martyn Bates, Sielwolf and a host of others. He’s also done extensive remix work for Almemegretta, Sielwolf, PSI Performer (Anthony Rother), TMK, Franciszka Baumann, Pigface, Meat Beat Manifesto, Ambre and a host of others. Live performances generally under his Scorn moniker have been a constant through the years.
Influences
Mick Harris has cited Discharge circa 1979-1984, Disorder, Chaos UK, Killing Joke, Joy Division, Siege, Swans circa 1983-1995, Cocteau Twins, Membranes, Pil, Meat Beat Manifesto, Old School & Darkside Jungle, Drum & Bass circa 1993-1996, Early Aphex Twin, Skinny Puppy, Brian Eno, Zoviet France, Nurse with Wound, Lee Scratch Perry, Scientist, Jon Hassel, Miles Davis up to 1975, John Coltrane & Alice Coltrane, Celtic Frost, Moritz Von Oswald & Berlin Dub Experimentalists, Deathstrike, Jeff Mills, Rob Hood, Minimal, Hard Techno, Gai, Swankies, Janet Jackson, John Zorn, Kuro, Electroacoustic & Music Concrete, Found Sounds, Genocide, Repulsion, Death, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Sho & Ag, A Tribe Called Quest as prominent inspirations. He also shows utmost respect to late BBC radio 1 DJ John Peel. [1] [2]
External links
References
- ^ Interview with Andrea Ferraris, Chain DLK, May 29, 2005. [1] Access date: July 24, 2008.
- ^ Mick Harris's MySpace page [2]
