Ross Downes is a musician, multi-instrumentalist and artist, based in London, UK.
He studied Fine Art at the Edinburgh College of Art and later a masters degree at Goldsmiths, London.
Ross has released a number of LP’s since 2011 with the latest being, the well-received, STACKED UP AT ZERO in 2020. Of late he concentrates on electronic music composition of a dark ambient nature that is heavily influenced by a love of cinema. The music encompasses sound design and a preoccupation with atmospherics. Downes often talks of ‘world building’ and attempting to offer a sense of place and setting with suggestive psychological and narrative implications, combining elements from various genres including electronic, ambient and classical minimalism.
In 2011 Ross co-founded the artist-run label Trestle Records with three musician friends. The label facilitates a broad spectrum of activity, focusing on instrumental music with Ross being the principal curator for their renowned One Day Band sessions, where the musician’s who have rarely or never worked together before, are invited to a fully engineered studio to make a record in a single day. During the Covid lockdown of 2020, Ross facilitated the From Isolation sessions, working with a global array of musicians in the production of new collaborative EP’s. Ross is also the in-house designer/consultant for all Trestle Records releases and regularly programmes live events on behalf of the label at venues such as Cafe OTO, with the most recent being the first collaboration between Dame Evelyn Glennie, Bhangra pioneer Kuljit Bhamra and This Heat’s Charles Hayward. The One Day Band sessions are all free to hear/stream on the label’s website.
Recent commissioned activities from Ross have included compositions for large European art installation projects. In 2019 he contributed a piece to Mischa Kabul’s long-running installation Res-o-nant at the Jewish Museum, Berlin. In 2018 he composed a lengthy work for his collaboration, with Cologne-based artist Sebastian Freytag on an ambitious light/audio installation titled Sygnal for The Museum Slaskie, Poland. In 2020 Ross composed the background audio for Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost’s exhibition at the Sydney Biennale and has most recently composed a short score for artist Kit Craig’s experimental animation Pose.
In 2017 he collaborated on the well-received Trestle release PUSH / LINK / SITE / CUT with the Dusseldorf based electronic musician Thomas Klein AKA Solyst (Kreidler, Bureau B) which helped establish strong ties to the experimental music scene in West Germany resulting in a residency for Trestle Records and The One Day Band project at The Haus Fur Musiker in Hombroich.
He is currently working on multiple collaborative projects due out in 2022. These include releases working alongside singer Keeley Forsyth, for which Ross produced the forthcoming LP alongside Keeley and pianist/composer Matthew Bourne. Ross previously co-wrote Keeley’s EP Photograph in 2020, also directing the accompanying video for the title track.
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- Website
- Soundcloud