J.G. Thirlwell's Manorexia

JG Thirlwell is a composer/producer/performer based in Brooklyn, who also works under many pseudonyms including Manorexia, Foetus, Steroid Maximus, Baby Zizanie, Hydroze Plus, Clint Ruin and Wiseblood. He has released over thirty albums.

If there is a common thread to his varied musical styles, it is a dramatic intensity and an evocative, cinematic quality. Thirlwell is also featured as producer or remixer on a wide variety of artist recordings, including releases for artists as diverse as Nine Inch Nails, Excepter, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lydia Lunch,The The, Coil, Z's, Swans and many more. JG has completed commissions for Kronos Quartet, Bang On A Can and LEMUR and is also a member of the "freq_out" sound-art collective, who create on-site sound and light installations. JG performs live with a chamber ensemble version of his Manorexia project, and also scores "The Venture Brothers", a cartoon on Adult Swim/Cartoon Network. JG Thirlwell received the 2010 New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship in Music/Sound.

JG Thirlwell recently scored the film The Blue Eyes, a supernatural thriller directed by Eva Aridjis. He is also working on his third string quartet for Kronos Quartet and scoring season five of The Venture Bros. His latest release is Manorexia "Dinoflagellate Blooms", which he released in 5.1 surround sound. He has also scored Ken Jacobs' acclaimed "Seeking The Monkey King", which was recently heralded in the New York Times, Village Voice and Indie Wire, and screened at the Sundance film Festival.

more info at www.foetus.org

JG Thirlwell on Manorexia:

Manorexia was conceived in the year 2000. I began working on the first album on Thanksgiving morning and released it in 2001. It was started as an electronic and sample based project where I wanted to explore a spatial quality not existent in some of my other work, but evolved into a multi-tentacled being. Soon I released two albums as Manorexia, Volvox Turbo (2001) and The Radiolarian Ooze (2002), both on my label Ectopic Ents exclusively thru my website www.foetus.org.

I had wanted to rearrange some Manorexia compositions for string quartet with percussion for some time. Eventually I made the first live performance as Manorexia in Russia in 2006.

I have since formed separate Manorexia ensembles in NYC and London. Manorexia has played at All Tomorrow's Parties in Minehead and Asbury Park, The Whitney Museum, Bang On A Can Marathon, Brainwaves Festival and various venues in NYC. In 2010 I released an album of the chamber arrangements from the first two albums on John Zorn's Tzadik label, entitled The Mesopelagic Waters. The instrumentation of the ensemble is two violins, viola, cello, piano, tuned percussion and laptop.

The latest Manorexia album, entitled Dinoflagellate Blooms, is back to being performed solely by myself, and is mixed in both stereo and 5.1 surround. Begun in Berlin in 2005, and completed in 2011, the album was recorded primarily at my Self Immolation Studios in Brooklyn, and the 5.1 mixes were made at Harvestworks Studio with Paul Geluso. I decided to make the album in surround sound after creating several multi-channel sound installation works, which inspired to to want to continue down this road and make a long-form work which is an immersive listening experience. Manorexia will be embarking on a European tour in April 2012.

500 Internal Server Error