Simeon Soden

Biography

Simeon Soden is an electronic musician/producer, sound engineer, record label founder and festival organiser.

His music (released under the aliases ako, Badger and Mausoleums) has had UK and international record label releases in various formats (including VHS cassette, audio cassette, CD, blockchain and digital) on Halcyon Tapes (USA), Sunset grid (Australia), HOT-Q, SPRIX (USA), N-aut, Virtual Soundsystem (Mexico, date TBC), Nothing but.., Northern Exposure, Kaneda Records and Linebreak Records. His music has received airplay on BBC6 Music, BBC Introducing and many independent radio stations around the globe and been playlisted by Tom Robinson’s 'Fresh on the Net'. He has toured nationally across the UK including a notable booking at the 100 Club, London and headline festival appearances and support slots with high-profile touring artists (including Blanck Mass, Kite Base and others). He was recently commissioned to produce a remix for internationally acclaimed New Zealand based vaporwave artist ‘Eyeliner’ (aka Luke Rowell / Disasteradio) as part of a project by the New Zealand National library to archive his ‘Buy Now’ album. He has also produced remixes for the notable goth band ‘Cold in Berlin’ as well as remixes for many other emerging artists in the UK and beyond and collaborated on a track with Me Lost Me. In 2021 he was selected for the Sage Gateshead Summer Studio artist residencies with the collaborative project 'Badger'.

He completed a BSc (Hons.) in Music Technology at Birmingham City University in 2011 and a Masters in Music (MMus) at Newcastle University in 2014. In 2017 He was awarded NPIF research funding for a PhD at the University of Sunderland (completed 2021, title: PayPal for Punks: Blockchain for DIY Music) which explored the uses for blockchain in music distribution, performance and direct to fan commerce. As part of the PhD practical research projects he founded Linebreak Records, which is the world's first cryptocurrency record label and also conducted the world's first blockchain ticketed live music stream. He is a co-founder of Kaneda Records (an independent electronic music record label with a catalogue of over 300 tracks that runs monthly club nights and performance events) and Northern Electric Festival (an annual 2 day, multi-venue electronic music festival held in Newcastle-upon-Tyne which regularly hosts over 40 artists and DJs).

He has worked freelance as both a live sound and studio engineer with notable recording credits including influential punk bands Penetration and the 999 (released on Cleopatra Records, USA) He has also engineered, mixed and mastered for a plethora of emerging artists, covering a wide stylistic spectrum. Additionally, he has previously been employed in FE education as a music production tutor, worked on community music/production tuition projects and has worked in practice studios for several years.

His work under solo alias 'ako' infuses diverse influences from more obscure elements of electronic and dance music, including (most recently) vaporwave and witchhouse, with experimental IDM sensibilities to create thought-provoking experimental dance music. These influences include Eyeliner, Com Truise, Windows 96, Clams Casino, Cylob and Boards of Canada. Ako is an audio-visual experience and he creates experimental videos to accompany his musical works. This includes generative (self-generating) video and experimental reactive (self-generating in response to the qualities of the music) music visualisation. This video often employs creative coding approaches including PureData and Processing and hardware such as modified games consoles, VHS manipulation, analogue video equipment and experimental videography techniques including glitch and CGI.  He also employs similar video techniques when performing live and uses projectors to create arresting audio-visual encounters. His interdisciplinary collaborative project 'Badger' fuses poetry / spoken word with post-punk influenced IDM and experimental electronica in a furious maelstrom. 

At Keele, he teaches the 'Audio Fundamentals', 'Digital Sampling', 'Sound Recording', 'Record Production' and 'Sound for Moving Image' modules.

Videos

Links

• https://ako0.bandcamp.com/
• https://theartfulbadger.bandcamp.com/
• https://www.kanedarecords.com/
• https://linebreakrecords.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/northernelectricfestival/