sholto dobie & mark harwood: the blue horse

Sholto Dobie is an artist and performer born in Edinburgh and living in London. His solo output is marked by live performances that are characteristically delicate, evocative, and absurd. He uses his own instruments, crudely assembled from materials such as reeds, whistles, bin bags, fans, and air compressors, alongside loose performative structures, to respond to places and situations. He plays in Al Fresco (with Lia Mazzari and Tom White) and regularly collaborates with Ben Pritchard, he has also worked with Ashley Paul. He continues to run the event series Muckle Mouth which he founded in 2014. Mark Harwood is a musician and performer born in Ferntree Gully and living in London. His output veers towards uncanny audio both delicate and unsettling whilst his performances rely on teasing out and playing with the mood embedded within any given environment and audience situation. He has collaborated with Graham Lambkin, Aine O'Dwyer, Timo Van Luijk, and MP Hopkins and runs the Penultimate Press label which brings forth this very release. The Blue Horse is a beautiful strange journey through a landscape where little is familiar but all are welcome. Made from predominantly acoustic sources, The Blue Horse gracefully hisses, puffs, wheezes, whirls, and clunks its way through a series of distinct musical and non-musical environments. Sounding both at times like a dark and stormy night, and "an elephant trying to get laid", the ambiguous style of The Blue Horse conceals the artists' unsettling, fantastical, and quietly humorous sensibility. Whilst The Blue Horse lacks any obvious precursors, its elemental and environmental leanings potentially tread a path initially mapped out by Moniek Darge and Godfried-Willem Raes in the works coming out of the Logos Foundation in Ghent, Belgium in the mid '80s. The Blue Horse is the debut recording from Sholto Dobie and Mark Harwood and features a guest appearance from cellist Judith Hamann.