About
Rapid Eye Electronics Ltd (REEL) are three refugees from the West Country Psychedelic Duelling Wars (generally regarded as between April 1969 and April 1989, though accounts vary). REEL was originally conceived in 2017 as a one-off collaborative project commissioned to perform improvised live soundtracks to experimental films at Supernormal Festival but, forged as we were in the fiery heart of festival experience, we found we still liked each other enough to keep working together and REEL became a semi-permanent fixture, playing gigs and festivals across the country. REEL remains an intensely collaborative venture, with our multi-media live performances often integrating improvisation with other artists, children, grandparents and occasionally non-human animals. Both live and in the studio we rely on rapport and deep listening, with the general proviso that it should be the music of Psychedelic Duelling; it is music to be destroyed, if not by others, then by ourselves. Our recent albums have seen collaborations with dancing shamanic gardeners, Mohave desert witches, at least one female Pope and various sexologists, urologists and ethnobotanists.
The three permanent members of REEL have previously been involved in widely acclaimed experimental musical projects such as Hacker Farm,Magnetophone, Twilight Sequence and IX Tab, forming part of what became known as the Wyrd Wild West, alongside fellow travellers like Ekoplekz and Kemper Norton. We are naturally suspicious of artists who refuse labels, so we attach our own, with most of our Music For Psychedelic Duelling considered Wild Garlick Electronica, Eschatological Ambience or Brown Acid Techno. Occasionally, a little mandrake is mixed in. Many of the machines we use to make this music are self-designed by our resident genius Farmer Glitch and often re-purposed from abandoned farm machinery, out-dated office equipment or telephone exchanges. Much of it is potentially very dangerous and we do not advise members of the public to touch the instruments while they are still warm. As we often remind people at our shows: please wash your hands after this music.
We are always interested in future collaborations, especially ones where a little chaos can be generated. Previously, we have worked collaboratively with the artists at festivals like Acid Horse to conduct one-hour long, slow-build ritualised versions of Donna Summer's I Feel Love, Terry Riley's In-C, a quartet of improvisations based on The Fall (the band, the book, the tv show), EVP Ghost Hunts through neon-soaked and haunted woods, Sonic Wheelbarrow processions and, latterly, inhumane chanting, based partly on the novels of Joris-Karl Huysmans. If you ever came to the psychedelic bad-trip nightmare of our residency at The Delaware Road festival on Salisbury Plain then we can only apologise; your statutory rights perhaps were affected but our lawyers have requested we keep everything vague.
If you have a project you'd like us to take part in, then we'd love to hear from you. We have two basic live modes: i) improvised brown acid house party band and ii) deeply serious live film soundtracking band (though we're refusing to do fucking Häxan again; that shit has long passed). Often we mix the two, sometimes deliberately. We do the odd wedding and bar mitzvah but they'd have to be pretty odd. Get in touch; we're cheap and mostly cheerful. A half-tub of analytical philosophy and some good quality substrate mix is often enough to turn our heads and we almost never bite. If you've got a festival or a gig night that you feel might need a little chaotic psychedelic twinkling around its edges then we can bring the lights, the deeply strange films and at least some of the music.
