Alternity Records proudly introduces the international debut of London-based "textural guitarist" and producer Simeon Harris... Order The Assessment now! Available in Stores coming in January 2006!

Alternity Records is proud to release a masterwork of cutting-edge electronica, Simeon Harris' The Assessment. Click here to order a copy now, for a short time only available exclusively via www.alternityrecords.com.

Artist Bio:

Simeon Harris was born in London in 1968. His first exposure to the guitar came from his father, who was in a skiffle band when he was teenager and still owned a Hagstrom 12-string acoustic, which he would take down out of it’s case once a year and lightly strum while whistling pop tunes. It wasn’t long before Simeon started playing on it himself, but at the time he was listening to rock music and he knew that proper “rock” guitar noises could only be made on an electric. So after a bit of cajoling, in 1983 his dad took him down to the Maurice Plaquet music shop and as a present bought him a Telecaster copy for the princely sum of £35. Simeon immediately joined a band with his school friends and started on the lifelong journey that is “being a musician”. It’s a rocky road at the start, but the personal computer that had occupied his time until then was left untouched after years of heavy use, as Simeon immersed himself in the language of music…


Simeon Harris

It’s now almost 2006 and that personal computer that Simeon had been writing games on back in the 80’s now seems like a toy, but the experience paid off, because the computer environment is now where a Simeon makes his music. He’s assimilated the discipline of funk, the energy of rock, the grooves of dance and drum‘n’bass, the texturalism of ambient and the looseness of jazz and has melded them into something unique. Technology plays a big part in the melding process, as his loops and textures are created and twisted into huge soundscapes and mixed with strong contemporary grooves, while still retaining a strong sense of melody. “There’s so much opportunity involved in creating music in a computer, the only limit is your imagination”, he says. “I’m always pushing myself to come up with something new, something I’ve never done before. Successful composition for me will always include something novel - a new texture, a new sound, a new way of working”. We shouldn’t forget however, that Simeon is a guitar player and all his extraordinary sounds still originate from his fingers and six wires on a piece of wood. “As a sound source, the guitar is incredibly organic and capable of so much on its own, it’s a fantastic instrument and all the processing in the world can’t really hide that”. So what next? “The Assessment for me is a distillation of everything that I was at the time it was made - it’s a landmark showing the way to a particular moment in my life. The plan now is to grow musically and build on what I learnt from making it and hopefully create something even better in the process”. This is one particular loop that will never close…