Wavamatics

Working out of West Cork, Wavamatics is the project of Paul Clifford, experimental composer, sound artist, clinical psychologist, software designer and inventer.

Born in London, for 40 years Paul’s life has been divided between London and West Cork, where he now lives and works. Throughout his life Paul has studied the relationships between thoughts, feelings, language and consciousness and trained as both philosopher and clinical psychologist. He is now an experimental composer and sound artist.

Paul’s work explores the ways that meaning is produced when worlds meet. At the moment of interaction a new but undefined set of possibilities is opened up.  Strangers talk for the first time and search for points of contact;  urban and rural lifestyles bump up against each other; old and new musical forms react to and influence each other.

A parallel theme is the relationship between technological and cultural change. Technological innovation often has unpredictable cultural effects. The internet is an obvious example – the hyperlink, a seemingly modest innovation for linking documents, has transformed the social world in countless ways.

These interests have led Paul to focus on creating new sound technologies as well as on the direct production and recording of music and sounds. His interactive devices respond to the musician’s performance in multiple unpredictable ways, thereby providing both a sonic accompaniment and new sounds for the performer to explore and respond to.

Paul is thus especially interested in exploring sonic spaces within which the human and the electronic interact. Sometimes the interaction flattens the human experience, sometimes it enhances it and provides a new perspective. The point where the human and the electronic touch is a node at which the possible becomes real in an unanticipated manner.   

Irish Trad provides ideal raw material for this type of exploration: it is a musical tradition that is embedded in performance and the interaction between musicians and audience in an intimate social context, and,  as with other popular musical traditions (e.g. blues, rock’n’roll), it has a relatively simple form but is able to constantly mutate and evolve whilst still remaining faithful to its roots.

Since 2020, Paul has developed an approach to traditional Irish music, referred to as ‘Cubist Trad’ (the dimensions of the cube being the composition, the performers and sound transformations).  His first album ‘Tradformations’ was a set of electronic re-interpretations of some classic Irish reels and melodies.

A further strand to Paul's work is the use of words and sounds to explore the relationship between institutional and political structures and the stifling of freedom and imagination.  This is reflected in dark tracks such as 'Twilight in Wuhan' and 'Advance of the Peacemakers'.