sound
selected sound art and experimental music work and projects. Full discography here
UBU kung
2017 - present
Ubu Kung occasionally create noise / experimental music tracks and short films that are exhibited worldwide. Between 2016 and 2020, Moscow-based online station New New World Radio hosted an hour-long Ubu Kung radio programme that sought to deconstruct the notion of what is - and is not - a functioning radio programme. Ubu Kung website here
Tse tse fly middle east
2015 - 2023
While living in the UAE in 2015 Coates founded Tse Tse Fly Middle East, the platform that set out to support multi-media artists and experimental musicians with roots in the Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Now a London-based registered non-profit arts organisation and production company, Tse Tse Fly produce live arts events, artworks, workshops and interventions in support of human rights and freedom of speech. Coates has produced four Tse Tse Fly Middle East albums of experimental music and sound art.
For the full Tse Tse Fly Middle East story visit the website here.
The A Taxi for my uncle project
2013 - 2016
Between 2012 and 2013 Coates made experimental music and radio art under the pseudonym A Taxi For My Uncle. The project was created to explore the boundaries between music and noise, and how radio can function as an abstract concept. The Wasta series of A Taxi For My Uncle podcasts saw Coates create one-hour long collages of sound art, sound effects, field recordings and world music.
A selection of the podcasts were used for the UAE's Safina Radio Project that was part of the 2015 Venice Biennale.
the visqueen project
June 2016 - January 2017
Visqueen formed in summer 2016 and was an experimental noise project by Simon Coates and X, a Filipino experimental vocalist who lives in the UAE. The project sought to explore the dynamic of experimental performance and how that can function in a music-saturated world. Visqueen's debut experimental music work White Horses - a cover version of the 1960s TV theme - features on the debut Tse Tse Fly Middle East album Easy Listening Vol.1 and was played by Andrew Weatherall on his NTS radio programme. Their Downers piece featured on the Xtematic label compilation Into Hidden Visions and Breaths From X appeared on the Melodies of Noise Subtrates collection on the IFAR Musique Concrète label. Vocals were performed in English and Tagalog, and the project concluded after six months.