Resonance Series - 10 - Will humphreys

Published on 2020-08-11 00:00:00 by Jasper Golding

**Welcome to this edition of ‘Resonance Series a feature, curated by Jasper Golding, about the interplay between art forms. A love for showcasing and sharing music is at the centre of Loose Lips and there are numerous ways in which this can be done.****Music massively influences visual art, and vice versa. This feature, running every other Tuesday from now on, introduces you to musical individuals via their visual art first, telling a personal story of their creative output and how different mediums influence each other.**For the 10th edition we have an insight in to the work of Will Humphreys AKA Makirikur.

Will taps in to the mystique of the music producer and their visage with his mixed media works. Using different styles and techniques, he unveils the underlying emotions that are tied to the appreciation of another artist. This ‘art about artists’ is a perfect concept for the resonance series as it really portrays how media can be used to distil down the indescribable. Will draws on his skill for abstraction and application of stylistic techniques to draw out the lateral emotions or styles that he attributes to his chosen musicians, the result is inescapable emotion in physical form, a visual representation of music and his emotion towards it. 

Makirikur · Ice Album Mix

Will Humphreys / MakirikurThe 100 Electronica Portraits SeriesMusic, Art and Human Connection****

Mrs Jynx

100 Electronica Portraits

**Some years ago I had something of a breakthrough moment. I was going through very difficult times emotionally and psychologically, and despite my relatively privileged situation and plenty of love and support from family I found myself stuck in a sort of grey zone of pointlessness.****Luckily I was still able to enjoy music and used to listen obsessively to search out new sounds and build playlists and mixtapes something I still do… I stumbled upon Shura’s song ‘Touch’ and something shifted for me. I could see some light and hope. Around the same time I was also listening to Mrs Jynx a lot and her music has always reminded me of the blessing said by Ursula Le Guin’s future inhabitants of California, the Kesh:  ‘Be always coming home’ the feeling you get just before you crest the final hill on your way back to belonging.****The idea of painting a series of 100 portraits of women electronica artists solidified over a couple of years and I began the series with Shura in 2016. I remember a friend saying ‘Why would you do that?’ and I didn’t really have an answer. As Bill Drummond once said, “If we knew why we wouldn’t be doing it.”**As the project developed, I realised I could give the paintings to the musicians and I have been doing this not selling them, which is important, although I welcome a contribution towards postage costs. So I suppose it is something of a thank you to a section of the music community who have given so much to me and others with their work and just to celebrate the worlds that they bring into being. And an especial shout to Ariadne’s Labyrinth, who has supported this project from the early days.Through this work I have built amazing connections and found the community of electronica artists (broadly defined) to be welcoming, generous and passionate about art, music and the world.

Music Projects

Mixtapes

As a musician (under the name Makirikur)  I primarily make things I like to call  ‘mixtapes’, although technically no tape is involved. I am not a DJ I use Logic or Live to layer tracks into hopefully seamless and coherent mixes, often combining radically different genres and again showcasing artists who may not be as well known as they should be.****Wills Soundcloud can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/makirikur

The Ice Album Project

**This year I finally got round to reading Anna Kavan’s 1967 slipstream/SF novel ‘Ice.’ I had been making a lot of ambient music and decided to make a ‘book soundtrack’ to the novel. The story deals with themes of environmental apocalypse, identity confusion and misogyny and is regarded by some as a proto-fminist text. To me it is a mysterious, disturbing and riveting literary masterpiece with echoes of Kafka, Ballard and Vonnegut, while maintaining its own unique voice. Kavan is still woefully unknown considering she  is one of the most important British writers of the 20th Century.****The Ice Album is currently in the mastering stage with Pushkin and I aim to release in September on Bandcamp. A continuous mix of the unmastered tracks is available here: https://soundcloud.com/makirikur/ice-album-mix**Read Wills contribution to Wikipedia here on the subject of Anna Kavan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Kavan

Written by Jasper Golding