About the artist
Michel Banabila, born 1961, is a sound artist, composer, and producer. Banabila releases music since 1983 and has produced musical scores for numerous films, documentaries, theatre plays and choreographies. He worked / performed in The Netherlands, Poland, Lebanon, UK, South Africa, Russia, Japan, Spain, China, USA and Belgium.
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 snippets from radio, tv and internet. He collaborated with different types of artists like Anton Goudsmit, Erkan Oğur, Hanyo van Oosterom, Holger Czukay, Joshua Samson, Machinefabriek, Mete Erker, Oene van Geel, Radboud Mens, Salar Asid, Sandhya Sanjana, Scanner, Yaşar Saka , Eric Vloeimans, and Zenial, among others.
Albums
Banabila has recorded many albums, including VoizNoiz (2000) and Spherics (2001), originally released by Steamin' Soundworks (NL). These albums were internationally licensed to Tone Casualties (USA) and Pork Recordings (UK). BBC legend John Peel played music from VoizNoiz in his show. Moreover, Banabila's tracks appeared in a mix by Osymyso (4AM Eternal - MixMag Magazine) and vinyl followed (Pork 081). In 2008, Steamin' Soundworks released a special 2 CD album, Precious Images, that featured 10 years of Banabila's recordings. For the same publisher, Banabila was the producer and co-writer of the album Arhil, by Ali Bahia El Idrissi. The first track of this album was used for the Putumayo sampler Sahara Lounge. Furthermore, his collaboration on VoizNoiz 3 (Challenge Records) with trumpet player Eric Vloeimans received the Edison Jazz Award in 2003. In 2005 Banabila started his own independent label Tapu Records. Banabila was also awarded with a composition stipend for the period of 2012 - 2013 by FPK, the Dutch Performing Arts Fund. His track E.T. was used in Boarding Pass, a mix by French renowned dj / producer Rone for Tsugi Magazine #66 in 2013. Around the same time he recorded three albums with electronica wizard Rutger Zuydervelt (Banabila & Machinefabriek / Travelog / Error Log) and three albums with viola virtuoso Oene van Geel (Music for viola and electronics part I / part II / Whales Calling). Since 2014 he experiments with a small modular set for his ongoing series Feedback + Modular + Radiowaves. In 2016 two reissues with recordings from the 80's came out ; Chi - The Original Recordings (ambient) by Astral Industries (UK) and Things Popping Up From The Past (early works) by Bureau B / Tapete Records (DE). In 2017, the Canadian label Séance Centre will release a 2 LP vinyl album by Michel Banabila; Trespassing. (02SC / one reissue & also new works).
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, 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, and photographer Gerco de Ruijter. With Geert Mul he has an audiovisual set, Big Data Poetry, which they performed live in venues like The Barbican (London) during the Logan Symposium 2014, Yukunkun (Beirut) during the Global Week For Syria 2015, and TENT (Rotterdam) during Sound Spectrums 2012. With Olga Mink he performed at the LUX Festival (Sevilla), the VAD Festival (Girona) and the State Of The Image Festival (Arnhem) in 2006. For Gerco de Ruijter he did sound design for several stop-frame animations, like the critically acclaimed Crops, shown in the Hirshhorn Museum (including a live performance - Washington DC, 2013) and Ringdijk at Panorama Mesdag (The Hague / 2016). In 2017 Michel Banabila & Maarten Vos toured 4 months The Netherlands with HOME, a critically acclaimed dance performance with live music, by Conny Janssen Danst.
