ABOUT

CHAINES (Cee Haines) is an Oram award winning composer, multi-instrumentalist and multimedia artist who writes surreal, fantastical electronic and electro-acoustic music. A classically trained musician with broad musical tastes, CHAINES’ work encompasses everything from traditional methods of music creation to cutting edge technologies. This might be best exemplified by their work with the London Contemporary Orchestra (conducted by Rob Ames), which combines orchestral forces with live signal processing and electronic instruments to create lush sonic textures. Recent projects include the BBC Proms (2024's Reel Change, 2022’s From 8 Bit to Infinity and 2018’s Pioneers of Sound), UNIQLO’s Tate Lates at Tate Modern (2017) and Curtain Call at The Roundhouse (2016).

 

CHAINES is also an imaginative arranger who has arranged orchestral forces for artists such as Speaker’s Corner Quartet (2024) and violinist Galya Bisengalieva (2024). They have been in residency at Studio Richter Mahr (May 2023) following the release of SRM’s Free & Equal Vol. 1, to which they contributed the track Odd Postcard. They have also been in residency at The Glasshouse (Summer Studios, 2023), at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry with SAY award winner Anna Meredith (Brighter Sound, 2016) and at Band on the Wall with Grammy Award winner Imogen Heap (Brighter Sound, 2016).

 

In addition to composing, CHAINES performs solo and in collaboration with other artists on a range of acoustic and electronic instruments. Following a joint release on Nonclassical’s album I hope this finds you well in these strange times, they’ve worked with GBSR Duo on live-show-come-concept-album The Rite of Autopsy, which premiered at Spitalfields Music Festival (7/7/2024), supported by PRSF’s Open Fund and The Hinrichsen Foundation. In November 2023, they premiered Crystalqueer, a collaboration with Liza Bec commissioned by The Glasshouse involving electronics, various flutes and recorders, spatialised audio and sound reactive visuals (programmed by CHAINES). The live, semi improvised version of their 2018 album The King (described by Robert Barry in The Wire as ‘vast in scope, rich in execution’) was premiered at TUSK music festival (The Sage, Newcastle, 2018), and was described by the Guardian as ‘a mesmeric collage of ecclesiastical beauty and creeping dread’. 

CHAINES also experiments with audio-visuals and gaming formats, designing the one of a kind puzzle game Beethoven Simulator for Classical Remix’s celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2021. Audio reactive visuals constitute part of their doctoral research at the RNCM, where they also teach Sound Art and Composition with Technology.