Mick Harris

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Mick Harris (actually Michael John Harris , * 1967 in Birmingham ) is a British musician and producer . He gained fame in the mid-1980s as the drummer of the British grindcore band Napalm Death and is considered one of the founders of blastbeat . Since the 1990s Harris has devoted himself to various industrial and electronica projects, the best known being Scorn .

Musical career

Mick Harris was born in Birmingham in 1967 and grew up there. He had been part of the local hardcore punk scene since the early 1980s when, in March 1984, an acquaintance offered him to play the drums in an as yet unnamed Psychobilly band . Harris, who had never played an instrument before, accepted the offer and suggested Martian Brain Squeeze as the name. After two demos and a few live appearances, the band broke up again. Harris became the drummer for the punk band Anorexia, with which he stayed until 1985.

Harris met Justin K. Broadrick and Nik Bullen of Napalm Death at the Mermaid music club in Birmingham and became the band's permanent drummer in late 1985. His style was characterized by extremely fast playing, the so-called blast beats . He is also credited with inventing the genre name Grindcore . In 1987 he founded the grindcore project Defecation with napalm death guitarist Mitch Harris , with which he released the album Purity Dilution in 1989. He was also active as a drummer for Extreme Noise Terror and Doom . In mid-1991 Harris left Napalm Death because he had different ideas about the musical development of the band than the other band members.

Together with Bullen and Broadrick, who had left Napalm Death before Harris, he founded the industrial music project Scorn . Harris was already interested in electronic music, dub and new wave in the 1980s, and was influenced by post-punk bands such as The Birthday Party and Public Image Ltd. , but also from industrial bands like Einstürzende Neubauten and new wave bands like Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil . Justin Broadrick left the band after the first album Vae Solis (1992), and Nik Bullen after Gyral (1995). From this point on, Harris limited himself exclusively to the use of electronics, conventional instruments such as guitar, bass and drums disappeared completely from his music. As a drummer he was active in the 1990s with Painkiller , a project by John Zorn and Bill Laswell , which he saw as living out his personal musical freedom. Another project was Equations of Eternity with Laswell and the Italian experimental musician Eraldo Bernocchi .

Also in 1991, Harris launched the Lull project, which focuses on ambient sounds without beats . With his drum and bass project Quoit, Harris recorded three albums between 1997 and 2003. In the late 1990s he founded his own record label Possible Records. In addition to his own musical activities, Harris works as a DJ and remixer for other musicians in the field of electronic and experimental music, such as Franziska Baumann , Oliver Ho , DJ Spooky and Toshinori Kondō . In 1998 he mixed his own version of Walter Ruttmann's Weekend for Bayerischer Rundfunk and was thus one of the winners of the radio play award radio play of the month .

At the end of 2011 he turned his back on the music business because he couldn't earn enough money for a living with his music. He returned in September 2017 after a break of several years, the album Over Depth was released under the artist name Fret on the Berlin label Karlrecords .

Private

Mick Harris lives in a public house in Birmingham with his partner and two children and works at a college in his hometown.

Discography (selection)

Due to the large number of split releases, singles , EPs and sampler contributions , only regular studio albums are listed here.

with Bill Laswell
  • Somnific Flux (1995)
with defecation
  • Purity Dilution (1989)
with Extreme Noise Terror
  • The Peel Sessions '87 -'90 (1987)
with Equations of Eternity
  • Equations of Eternity (1996)
with Lull
  • Dreamed About Dreaming (1992)
  • Journey Through Underworlds (1993)
  • Cold Summer (1994)
  • Continue (1996)
  • Moments (1998)
  • Like a Slow River (2008)
with Napalm Death
with Painkiller
  • Guts of A Virgin (1991)
  • Buried Secrets (1992)
  • Execution Ground (1994)
with quoit
  • Lounge (1996)
  • Properties (2001)
with scorn
with fret
  • Over Depth (2017)

Remixes (selection)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marc Urselli: Interviews: Mick Harris. Chain DLK, May 29, 2005, accessed January 8, 2011 .
  2. ↑ Albert Mudrian: Choosing Death: The Incredible Story of Death Metal & Grindcore . IP Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-931624-35-4 , pp. 28 .
  3. ↑ a b c Alexander Pehlemann: Mick Harris. Private apocalypse in pure sound. Zonic Magazin Issue 10, 1998, accessed January 8, 2011 .
  4. ↑ a b Jonathan Horseley: ex-Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris on Scum, Scorn and the hell of urban living. Decibel, February 27, 2012, accessed February 20, 2013 .
  5. ↑ Derek Szeto: Fret - Over Depth. karlrecords.net, September 13, 2017, accessed on March 6, 2018 (English).

literature

  • Sean Cooper: Mick Harris . In: Vladimir Bogdanov (Ed.): All Music Guide to Electronica . Backbeat Books, 2001, ISBN 978-0-87930-628-1 , pp. 236 f .
  • Sean Cooper: Lull . In: Vladimir Bogdanov (Ed.): All Music Guide to Electronica . Backbeat Books, 2001, ISBN 978-0-87930-628-1 , pp. 305 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Harris, Mick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British musician and producer
DATE OF BIRTH 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH Birmingham