Closely allied with post-industrial dub terrorists such as
Bill Laswell,
Techno Animal,
James Plotkin,
Robert Musso, and
Anton Fier, Birmingham-based artist
Mick Harris is something of a study in extremes. A drummer with noted death metal outfit
Napalm Death through the group's late-'80s/early-'90s heyday,
Harris began experimenting with monochrome ambient and dub styles toward the tail end of his association with that group. Releasing material through Earache as
Scorn (his ambient dub aegis) and through Sentrax as
Lull, in addition to other sporadic projects, his genre-spanning activities have done much to jar the minds, expectations, and record collections of audiences previously kept aggressively opposed. To the present,
Scorn and
Lull, along with
John Zorn's experimental jazz-dubcore outfit Painkiller have remained
Harris' primary ongoing projects, although one-off collaborations with the likes of
James Plotkin,
Nicholas Bullen,
Bill Laswell, and
Martyn Bates are common.
Harris formed
Scorn in 1991 in collaboration with bassist
Nick Bullen, incorporating elements of ambient, industrial, dub, rock, and hip-hop. The group (though pared back to just
Harris following
Evanescence) have released a number of increasingly well-received full-length recordings, including the remix LP
Ellipsis, which features outbound reworkings by the likes of
Coil,
Autechre,
Laswell, and
Germ.
Harris' solo work as
Lull focuses on darker, more "isolationist" ambient soundscapes, some of which have been reissued domestically by
Laswell's now-defunct Subharmonic imprint; a move to Relapse yielded 1996's Continue and 1998's
Moments. [See Also:
Mick Harris, Scorn] ~ Sean Cooper