THE ORAM AWARDS

PRS Foundation, the UK’s leading funder of new music and talent development, together with The New BBC Radiophonic Workshop created The Oram Awards celebrating innovation in music, sound and related technologies by the next generation of forward thinking women and gender minority artists.

Named after Daphne Oram, one of the founding members of the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the awards hope to build on her legacy. Daphne worked at the workshop with others including Delia Derbyshire, Glynis Jones, Jenyth Worsley, Maddalena Fagandini and Elizabeth Parker, creating music for the distant future, the distant past and inside the mind. She played a vital role in establishing women at the forefront of innovation, in newly emerging audio technologies, in the UK and around the world.

Whilst there are many women and gender minority artists innovating in music and sound, their work and their voices often struggle to be heard and we're missing the opportunity to celebrate role models for the next generation.

2020 WINNERS

Following an outstanding uptake in applications in 2020, The Orams are pleased to announce the names of this year’s six winners: Loula Yorke and NikNak (Nicole Raymond) received special commendations and talent development bursaries of £1,500 each with Poulomi Desai, Una Lee, Vicky Clarke and Yifeat Ziv receiving talent development bursaries of £500 from PRS Foundation.

LOULA YORKE

Loula Yorke is a composer and performer who uses sound, video and participation to create artworks. Dancing in the spaces where the personal meets the political, her varied and noisy electronic music practice conjours moments of revolt as well as revealing hidden systems of control. Yorke runs femme-centred synth-building workshops Atari Punk Girls, and co-founded the SonitusLIVE curated livestreams.

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“I will be able to access mentorship for the first time, and I hope to take my instruments on a mini tour, creating connections and performing to new audiences in other regions of the UK.”

NIKNAK (NICOLE RAYMOND)

NikNak (Nicole Raymond) is a Leeds based music creative; an artist, performer, presenter, producer and turntablist. She makes experimental music that mingles with other genres. Her debut album  "Bashi" is a sonic exploration and retelling of her time spent in Turkey, due for release November 2020. As a turntablist and sound artist, she has worked with artists like Shiva Feshareki and Anna Meredith, in creating soundscape-based live improvised performances.

“I believe that Turntablism has not yet been represented in the New BBC Radiophonic workshop and so to be the first Turntablist to be in the cohort is a true honour.”

POULOMI DESAI

Poulomi Desai is a multidisciplinary artist and curator. Her work interrogates the politics of identity, listening and perception, inspired by her activist background and DIY post punk. She subverts broken sitars into new electronic instruments and melds circuit bent toys, optikinetic instruments, kitchen knives, and massage tools.

Under Covid restrictions, she has been exploring the mini-oramics instrument (made by Tom Richards) using data from pandemics, migration and financial markets.

“It's great to be part of this award with so many amazing creatives and I am looking forward to creating a solo release and the mentoring.”

UNA LEE

Una Lee is a South Korean, UK based artist working with sounds, stories and sensations. She sings, narrates, improvises, collects field recordings and makes graphic artworks. She creates immersive compositions, and designs performances and intervention scenarios. She is currently exploring, rethinking and contemplating the notion of ‘song’ through ‘Songs to Stay Awake to’, a spoken song project in collaboration with Poetry Jukebox.

“The bursary of the award will help me realise my project ‘Songs to Stay Awake to’ by supporting the involved musicians for their time and work. It will be a vital contribution to the production process.”

VICKY CLARKE

Vicky Clarke is a sound and electronic media artist from Manchester. Working with sound sculpture, DIY electronics and human-machine systems, she explores our relationship to technology through sonic materiality, live audiovisual and browser-based artwork. She is currently working on her debut album SleepStates which explores ideas around machine addiction, broken transmissions and algorithmic sleep territories.

“It’s a privilege to join the Oram awardees community. My obsession with electronics and machines and all those noisy hours spent experimenting in my studio with materials and solder have been worthwhile!”

YIFEAT ZIV

Yifeat Ziv is a London based vocalist, composer, sound artist and free improviser. She combines voice, electronics, field recordings and text to create interdisciplinary sound works that derive from her research of the human voice, technology, acoustic ecology and listening practices. In her performances and installations, she aspires to create situations where an active listening experience can emerge; an invitation to critically engage with sound.

“Especially in our current reality, I believe in the necessity of forming a network of creative women and gender minorities who have a mutual interest in innovation in sound and electronic music”

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photo credit Murperphoto

2019 WINNERS

AIN BAILEY

Ain Bailey is a sound artist and DJ. Her practice involves an exploration of sonic autobiographies, architectural acoustics, performance, as well as collaborations with performance and visual artists, such as Sonia Boyce and Jimmy Robert.

photo by Cacau Fernandes

ANDIE BROWN

Andie Brown began performing and recording as a solo artist in 2007 under the name These Feathers Have Plumes. Experimenting with glass and electronics, Andie has created what she terms an “augmented glass harp” and in recent years her work has focused on sound installation.

CEE HAINES AKA CHAINES

Cee Haines is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who writes surreal and fantastical electro-acoustic music under the moniker CHAINES. Their album, ‘The King’, was met with critical acclaim (The Wire Magazine, FACT Magazine), and their works for the London Contemporary Orchestra have been premiered at major venues including The Royal Albert Hall (BBC Proms, 2018).

NWANDO EBIZIE AKA LADY VENDREDI

Nwando Ebizie has been carving out her own particular strand of Afrofuturism as Lady Vendredi.
She is a multidisciplinary artist with an international focus whose work converges around performance art personas, experimental theatre, neuroscience, music and African diasporic ritualistic dance.

credit Dimitri Djuric

NATALIE SHARP AKA LONE TAXIDERMIST

Natalie Sharp is a 360 artist from Cumbria at the forefront of what The Quietus described as 'New Weird Britain’. As Lone Taxidermist, her practice focuses on presenting live music in non-conventional settings, challenging existing frameworks and expectations. Exploring issues around gender and sexuality, her practice pushes at the parameters of the live environment.

STEPH HORAK AKA SHEISREVOLTING

Steph Horak is a sound and video artist. She designs systems for voice and composition, and performs on the improvisation circuit. She produces experimental pop music under the name SheIsRevolting. She focuses on error, malfunction and bad programming to create polyrhythmic sonic washes against a backdrop of homemade videos.

2018 WINNERS

GEORGIA RODGERS

Georgia Rodgers is a composer of instrumental and electronic music whose work focuses on textural and spatial aspects of sound and the experience of listening. In 2016 she was selected as one of Sound and Music’s New voices.

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Georgia studied Physics and Music at the University of Edinburgh followed by a Masters degree in computer music taught by Michael Edwards. She is now pursuing a PhD in composition at City University, London, with a particular focus on the perception of sound, space and the human experience of listening. Her supervisor is Newton Armstrong.

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Georgia also works part-time as an acoustician for a firm of consulting engineers, specialising in architectural acoustics. She lives and works (and was born) in north London.

LORAINE JAMES

North London native Loraine James is an electronic artist/producer (influenced by artists such as Aoki Takamasa, Telefon Tel Aviv and Toe) with a lot of promise and already a wealth of material. A master at crafting organic textures through inorganic means, she effortlessly blends Electronica and IDM with whispers of jazz and ambience all wrapped up in the artists key avant-garde aesthetic and sensibility.

Having released her debut album ‘Detail’ in 2017, Loraine has gone on to play at Shankra Festival in Switzerland, Rye Wax and Splice Festival at Rich Mix.

FRANCINE PERRY

Francine Perry is a 25 year old producer, composer and engineer based in London. 

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Under the moniker La Leif she makes gritty electronic music that sits somewhere between broken techno and a dystopian film soundtrack. Her new material takes inspiration from the urban soundworld as apposed to the natural soundworld of her debut EP ‘The Nest’. It involves field recordings taken in Berlin and London, meshing industrial sounds into a deep listening and club context. As well as making music Francine co-founded the London based collective for female and non-binary music producers called Omnii and is one half of the duo ORKA with whom she has toured across Europe, Hong Kong, Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

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Her next EP ’Violet’ will be released on August 31st by Blank Editions.

AJA

Using unsettling noise, distressed screams, hand made electronics and found objects pushed through pedals, AJA’s industrial beats and distorted drone, combined with a psycho-visceral, intense performance, challenges the audience by breaking down barriers and pushing limits sonically and visually.

HANNAH CATHERINE JONES / FOXY MORON

Hannah Catherine Jones is a multi-instrumentalist, scholar, radio presenter, composer, conductor and founder of Peckham Chamber Orchestra.
Her practice is connected through a central spine of inclusivity and decolonization. Myths, (both ancient and modern), word-play, appropriation and my own voice (in song) are my materials. Aspiring towards a totality of the performative experience – incorporating language, music, location and technology (lyrics, sound, site, documentation (content, performance, signs, devices)).
Foxy Moron, her alter ego, is summoned to epitomise the antagonisms of my performative investigations into language and action. Foxy Moron re-enforces a status as a living pun and armours me with the power of physiological disguise.

2017 WINNERS

EWA JUSTKA

Ewa Justka is a polish electronic acid-technoise artist, self taught instruments builder and electronics teacher based in London. 

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She is also interested in the notion of materiality of objects, vibrant, ontological systems (human bodies, electronic circuits, integrated circuits: varied range of micro and macro environments and relations between them) and an investigation of modes of quasi-direct perception through extreme light and sound actions, electronics, hardware hacking, breaking, deconstructing, wiring - or, to put it bluntly - designing synths and playing hard techno. 

KLEIN

Have you heard of Klein? If not, then get ready to be introduced to a global phenomenon!

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For the past two years Klein (Zoe Bell) has been living the dream out in LA, first of all as a backing singer for stars such as Victoria Justice and Nicki Minaj, before being discovered by music guru Tony Bennett who personally invited her to record in his studio. Since then, she hasn’t looked back.Her first single ‘Where’s the bulb?!’ became an internet sensation, racking up 495,078 views within a week of it being shared by legends such as Gary Barlow, Ray Mears and Enya.

CLAIRE M SINGER

Claire M Singer is a composer, producer and performer of acoustic and electronic music, film and installations. In recent years her work has focused on a mix of organ, cello and electronics and her debut album Solas was released on Touch in June 2016 followed by her second release Fairge in October 2017. 

Performances and commissions include Union Chapel; Sound Festival Scotland; Tate Modern London; The Shunt Vaults; Chez Poulet Gallery San Francisco; XMV New York City; Fylkingen Institute Stockholm; Ceremony Hall Austin, TX; Norwich Arts Centre; Kunst-Station Sankt Peter Cologne; Muziekgebouw Aan' t ij Amsterdam, Oude Kerk Amsterdam and the Barbican London.

ELVIN BRANDHI

Freya Edmondes is a multidisciplinary artist and active in fields of fine, visual and audio arts. As a music producer she is participating in different projects such as NAPALM TREE.

Her solo project Elvin Brandhi combines experimental music with electronic beats. Described as being in a "genre of one"* her duo, Yeah You, are a father-daughter duo making noise-pop out of field recordings taken in Ikea car parks. Elvin's energetic and skilled performance work results in sonic art that does not easily fit into any specific category or genre.

KATHY HINDE

Kathy Hinde’s work grows from a partnership between nature and technology expressed through audio-visual installations and performances that combine sound, sculpture, image and light. 

Drawing on inspiration from behaviours and phenomena found in the natural world, she creates work that is generative; that evolves; that can be different each time it is experienced.

Kathy frequently works in collaboration with other practitioners and scientists and often actively involves the audience in the creative process. She has created light and sound installations in public spaces, including urban streets, woodlands and forests.

MARY STARK

Mary Stark is an artist filmmaker with a background in textile practice.

Since 2012 Mary has been making 16mm film performances exploring optical sound created from fabric and stitch patterns. The filmmaking technology of optical sound involves visual forms in the soundtrack area of the filmstrip transforming into noise through film projection. Mary's performances summon absent voices and obsolete industries, involving 16mm film projection, light and shadow, mechanical noise and music associated with textile production. 

SALLY GOLDING

Sally Golding is an British-Australian artist creating immersive audiovisual performances, sound art releases and participatory installations which consider liveness in audiovisual art as a mechanism for shared experiences and dialogues within new technological contexts. Golding blends discordant sonics and harsh lighting in her approach to sound through her innovative ‘darkroom compositions’ reminiscent of tape cut-ups created by reworking the optical soundtrack area of the industrial film sound system as a site for psychoacoustic ‘radio play’; experimentation with lathe cutting her own audio inscribing recordings with the sound of the substrate; and live interference and generative feedback systems using amplified lighting and light sensitive audio including instrumentation with repurposed camera flash units and laboratory strobe lights.

SHELLY KNOTTS

Shelly Knotts produces live-coded and network music performances and projects which explore aspects of code, data and collaboration in improvisation.

She is currently based in Melbourne, AUS. She performs internationally, collaborating with computers and other humans. She studied for a PhD in Live Computer Music at Durham University with a focus on collaboration in Network Music. She is currently a Research Fellow at SensiLab, Monash University working on Improvisational Interfaces.