From child actor to teenage pop idol, self-confessed ‘extreme sound freak’ to acclaimed solo recording artist, Simon Fisher Turner’s career has been nothing if not varied. His early acting credits included film and TV roles from Black Beauty to The Big Sleep (re-made with Robert Mitchum). At the same time he was fronting various ‘70s pop acts, and at the age of 17 was signed to Jonathan King’s UK Records, releasing his first solo album in 1969.
After that precocious start, Simon followed an often eccentric, sometimes outlandish musical path. He operated on the fringes of punk; performed briefly with The The; became ‘Musician in Residence’ at the ICA in 1980; released two albums as one half of a fictional French female duo know as Deux Filles. But through all this, Simon was developing a deep and abiding interest in the stuff of sound, accumulating a vast library of collected sounds from daily life. It is this interest which now forms the basis of his improvisatory, eclectic approach to music making, and is manifest on his most recent solo albums on the Mute Label (his discography comprises some 30 solo albums to date). From trite pop to extreme sound-freakery, the mature SFT (as he now styles himself) has arrived at a mesmeric originality.
Simon’s life as a film composer stems from his association with Derek Jarman in the 1980s and ‘90s. His scoring credits for Jarman included Caravaggio, The Last of England, The Garden and Edward II. His final film for Jarman was the powerful, poignant Blue, where a soundscape recorded by Simon at Eno’s country house, together with Jarman’s AIDs-inspired spoken words, stood in for visuals – only a blue screen was projected. The film won a Michael Powell Award. Simon subsequently tours Blue around the world, performing his music at live screenings.
His work with films has continued unabated since Jarman’s death, recent credits including the Anna Campion-directed Inertia and Bipolar, Don Boyd’s My Kingdom (on which he collaborated with Deirdre Gribbin), Paul McGuigan’s Gangster No. 1 and Mike Hodges’ Croupier and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.
While adept at avant-garde projects such as Blue, Simon Fisher Turner is nothing if not adaptable and responsive. He has also worked on a number of television dramas and documentaries; most recently BBC 1’s Helicopter, Channel 4’s Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes, as well as advertising commercials for Macmillan Cancer Research (2008). In addition, he composed the music for Derek Isaac Julien’s acclaimed documentary film on Derek Jarman, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2008.
Most Recently, Simon Fisher Turner has produced the debut album for Mute label-mate Polly Scattergood, completed a new 12” for the Isis Gallery in Lodon and released Japanoise (Papier Mache records); in the spring of 2008 he created the music for Frank Gerhy’s summer pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery. In 2010 Simon has already released a cd “Music From Films You Should Have Seen,” he is also doing a sound installation at the Julia Stoschek Collection in Dusseldorf, he has fashioned sound design for cellist Natalie Kein, and is in pre-production for the Aldeburgh Project which is due for completion in 2011. He is also performing a new soundscape to the silent film, I Was Born But…(1932) by acclaimed Japanese legend Yasujiro Ozu.
