Maxwell Sterling spent Summer 2017 as an artist-in-residence at Wysing with Harold Offeh and Tai Shani. Following the residency, Maxwell sent us this mix reflecting on his time at Wysing. The mix contains influences that soundtracked his residency and closes with Anthropocentric vocal études, a new work composed and premiered at Wysing. Maxwell spent the residency researching and theorising the voice and it's potential for composition. He spent time recording with youth choir Harringey Vox and exploring an archive of voices compiled by artist Max Hawkins for the Call in the Night app. The live premiere of Anthropocentric vocal études featured vocals from musician Teresa Winter and can be listened to in podcast
Maxwell Sterling is a composer and artist whose music is an ongoing investigation of time, repetition, geography and the human condition. Following the success of his debut record Hollywood Medieval, (The Death Of Rave, 2017), he has signed to Warp Publishing and will be releasing his 2nd LP (a collection of sonic works) Laced With Rumour: Loud-Speaker Of Truth on Ecstatic Recordings, March 2020. Creating a fluid continuum between double bass, modular synthesis and digital processing, Maxwell deliberately blurs the timbral boundaries between acoustic and synthetic, real and unreal. Exploiting the full tessitura of the double bass, Maxwell taps into the instrument's affective potential.
Maxwell’s interest in narrative has seen him work as a film composer on over 30 films, as well as collaborating with visual artists such as Tai Shani, Friedrich Kunath and Linder. He has also created music for fashion labels, such as Christopher Shannon, Louise Gray, Helmut Lang and Longchamp. As a producer and performer, Maxwell has worked with the likes of Neneh Cherry, Leslie Winer, IVVVO, Kenichi Iwasa and Rabit.