Lawrence English (born 1976) is a composer, media artist and curator living in Brisbane, Australia. For over a decade he has been an increasingly active force in Australian sound art and experimental music - both as a creator and curator.
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His recorded work is widely published on a variety of respected labels including Touch Music, Crónica, Baskaru, Winds Measure and numerous others.
His sound works move across a broad range of spheres from electronic based composition, through to evocative field recordings that seek to reveal those sound spaces largely ignored or inaudible. His Studies For Stradbroke edition for example drew out a variety of hydrophonic atmospheres from Stradbroke Island - capturing sounds as delicate as sand grains in motion.
As a producer English has worked extensively to develop a unique perspective on the possibilities of deconstruction of expectation with song form - working for artists such as Tujiko Noriko, Tenniscoats and The Rational Academy amongst others.
English cites childhood experiences birdwatching for reed warbler with his father as a large influence on his work. He has stated, "If you just looked in the reeds you'd see nothing. If you listened you got an idea of space and a sense of where it might be, then you understood it. That's probably my first experience with these ideas of space and sound, which are basically the fundamental building blocks of what I've been interested in since then."[1]
Lawrence English has exhibited a variety of auditory, kinetic, public and structural artworks that are primarily concerned with a notions of incidental experience, site specificity and environment.
English curates the acclaimed labels Room40 and Someone Good, as well as an ongoing series of sound art and electronic music series including MONO, Fabrique, Syncretism and NineHoursNorth which are active across Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia.
His conceptually driven sound art exhibitions Melatonin - Meditations On Sound In Sleep (commissioned by the Next Wave Festival), On Isolation (commissioned by the University of Tasmania), Incidental Amplifications (co-curated by Lloyd Barrett), Audible Geography (commissioned by the and Airport Symphony (commissioned by the Queensland Music Festival)