About

 CHAINES (Cee Haines) is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and multimedia artist based in the Greater Manchester area (UK), who writes surreal and fantastical electronica and electro-acoustic music. Their background in classical music and eclectic musical tastes sees them working in a wide range of musical genres and contexts. More recently, they premiered an orchestral/electronic arrangement of 90s gaming music entitled ‘Tribute to Pokémon, Ecco and Secret of Mana’ for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the BBC Proms’ first ever Gaming Prom (2022). As well as large scale works, CHAINES has also been working with the exceptional and enterprising George Barton (percussion) and Siwan Rhys (piano and keys) of GBSR Duo to create a new live electro-acoustic show, winning support from PRS Foundation’s Open Fund (2023).

 

In June 2019 they won an Oram award from the PRS Foundation and BBC New Radiophonic workshop for innovation in music, sound and related technologies. Their 2018 album, ‘The King’, was received with enthusiastic critical praise; it was ranked in FACT magazine’s top 25 albums of 2018’s first quarter, was made Boomkat’s album of the week, and Robert Barry of The Wire called it ‘vast in scope, rich in execution’. The live, semi improvised version of the album 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 has worked extensively with the visionary London Contemporary Orchestra, premiering original electro-acoustic works at venues such as Mumuth in Graz (Musikprotokoll, 2021) The Royal Albert Hall (BBC Proms, 2018), Tate Modern (Uniqlo’s Tate Lates series, 2017) and the Roundhouse (Ron Arad’s Curtain Call, 2016). They have been in residency with SAY award winner Anna Meredith, and Grammy Award winner Imogen Heap, improvising, performing and producing audio and video. As of 2021, Cee lectures in Sound Art and Composition with Technology (SCoWT) at the Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester, UK), and began a PhD in Performance at the RNCM in 2022.