Precious Images (Datafiles 1999-2008)

About the artist Michel Banabila (Amsterdam 1961) is a sound artist, composer, and producer. Banabila's career kicked off with his album VoizNoiz (2000), which received international critical acclaim. He worked in Holland, Poland, South Africa, Russia, Japan, Spain and Belgium. Banabila has produced musical scores for numerous films, documentaries, theatre plays and choreographies. Music + collaborations Banabila is especially keen on mixing disciplines and music styles, using elements and influences from jazz, electronic music, classical and world music. Therefore there is no particular genre to categorize Banabila's music. In addition to acoustic instrumentation, Banabila uses electronics, field recordings, and recordings from radio, television and film. He collaborated with many different types of artists like Mete Erker, Anton Goudsmit, Holger Czukay, Robin Rimbaud, Zenial, Sandhya Sanjana, Erkan Ogur, Joshua Samson and Yasar Saka, among others. Albums So far, Banabila has recorded 14 albums, including VoizNoiz (2000), VoizNoiz 2 (2001) and Spherics (2001), which albums were originally released by Steamin' Soundworks (NL). These three albums are internationally licensed to Tone Casualties (USA) and Pork Recordings (UK). BBC legend John Peel used music from the album VoizNoiz several times in the John Peel show. Moreover, Banabila's tracks appeared in a mix by Osymyso (4AM Eternal MixMag Magazine - 2000) and vinyl followed (Pork 081–2001). In 2008, Steamin' Soundworks released a special 2CD (Precious Images) that featured 10 years of Banabila's recordings and unreleased tracks. Banabila was also the producer and co-writer of the album Arhil, from Moroccan singer Ali Bahia El Idrissi. The first track of this album was used for the Putumayo sampler Sahara Lounge. Furthermore, his collaboration on VoizNoiz 3 (CD - Challenge JJT77009) with trumpet player Eric Vloeimans was awarded with the Edison Jazz Award in 2003. One year later, their collaboration was nominated for the Golden Calf at the Dutch Film Festival. Other projects Besides making albums and musical scores, Banabila works with theatre, dance and visual art on more conceptual artistic projects. He builds a database with samples; uses the city environment as a recording studio, collects fragments of spoken texts, which he composes into soundscapes and audio/visual installations and performances. Using recordings of speech in several languages Banabila experiments with the tonality of words and the ‘sound system’ of languages. Banabila worked on various projects with video artists Geert Mul, Olga Mink, Monoscope and photographer Gerco de Ruijter.