In February 2003 Warp Records launches a series of limited edition garments in collaboration with a clutch of exciting new fashion designers. First up is the "Fly T", which has been designed specially for girls. For this, Warp has teamed up with Cornish-bred, Central St Martins-trained designer Catherine Haines, who turned for inspiration to Warp Records musical muse, Mira Calix.
The Fly T references Mira Calix¹s mid-2002 performance at the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Geneva. She was commissioned to compose a 30-minute piece from raw source material of insect noises, all of which were recorded in the perfect conditions of an anechoic chamber.
To make this one-off designer event even more special, the Fly T comes with an exclusive, unavailable-anywhere-else CD from Mira Calix featuring a 13 minute excerpt of her insect composition "NuNu".
As Mira Calix says, "Sometime during the summer of 2002, I was contacted by Eric Linder, a curator at 'La Batie- Festival de Geneve' with a proposal to compose a 30-minute piece of music for their 'Micromusic' part of the festival. When I read the brief I was intrigued and excited; participants were to compose the music completely (with no additions) from the sounds they provided and then to perform them at the 'Museum d'Histoire Naturelle' in Geneva at the beginning of September.
Fittingly, as this was to take place at the natural history museum, the sounds provided were to be ones they had recorded of insects. There are more insects on earth than any other living species and having the opportunity to mold all the amazing and beautiful noises they make, into something other, really appealed to me. At the end of August, I received the sounds, about 150 or so, of every insect imaginable; wasps, flies, larvae hatching, butterflies beating, and with this menagerie, I frantically got to work.
What you have here is a 13-minute extract of the composition, which I got to play about a week later, sheltered under a rather large dinosaur skeleton. I could have sworn it was nodding its head..."
The Fly T is a black lycra/cotton blend slim fit t-shirt with a grey insect pattern. It comes in a one-size-fits-all limited edition of 144 and will be available exclusively from Warpmart online. Catherine Haines has attained a certain cache after the success of her knitting-in-public-places group, Cast Off, and has a burgeoning designer collection. More information about her work can be found at http://www.15dots.co.uk
Mira Calix will release her second album, entitled Skimskitta on Warp Records on Mar. 11, 2003
