August 2001
Big Chill Highlights Feature

"If you think ambient music is boring, then you're not listening hard enough", reckons Bruce Bickerton, the 33 year old one man band better known as Alucidnation. "For me it's all about the spaces between the sound".

On the Sanctuary stage between the trees in the Enchanted Garden, tucked away behind a bank of studio equipment, Alucidnation provided one of the highlights of 2001's first Big Chill festival, creating a subtle, emotive soundscape, that perfectly suited its lush, verdant environment. Surprisingly, it was Alucidnation's debut performance.

"I did expect to feel some nerves, but I couldn't really see sod all!", he laughs. Bickerton's dad was there to see his son's inaugral gig. "He was really blown away... he wrote me a letter saying so afterwards. He's just a music fan; he likes classical..."

Like father like son, then. Bickerton, you see, is a classically trained musician. He began playing the piano aged 5, and now composes all the disparate musical elements of the ambient tracks he releases via Pete Lawrence's Big Chill Recordings - from the piano to the guitar, from studio tinkering to the vocals themselves.

"I get bored very quickly", he says. But not with music, it seems. Bickerton, a self confessed ELO fan, has been collecting records since the age of 7, and now has 'an enormous' collection, according to Pete Lawrence. "I've never really been a clubgoer" he confesses. "I dallied with Megadog quite a bit in the early 90s - what turned me on was stuff like the Orb and Orbital, Aphex Twin etc." From there it was just a short step to making tracks.

Although, as Bickerton recalls, his work only found its way to Lawrence's ears a few years ago: "I've been going to the Big Chill since the Black Mountains in 95, and always thought that they'd be the ideal people to promote my stuff. I put out a very limited edition of a CD containing 'I'm Not Bad' last year - I only made about 20 CDs...and stuck them on the Changing World stand (at Enchanted Garden) last year. A friend of mine took one out with him to Naxos (Big Chill Greece) and gave it to Tom Middleton...he's been promoting my stuff since."

Alucidnation's 'EP:01' surfaced last month to critical acclaim. But despite claiming that he tries "not to do very much at all", Bickerton also works as a multi-media designer, knocking websites into shape and such. And he distils art and design into his live sets too, working against a backdrop of his own 35mm photography. He also records 'deep aquatic house music' with his friend Stuart Nisbet.

But it's as Alucidnation that Bickerton is starting to make waves. Catch him at Lulworth, and then check out his forthcoming 'EP:02' due sometime next year.

 

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