00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers. Lovely
00:05 to speak to the composer Ned Bigham, also known as Viscount Mersey of Bignar Park. Now
00:11 Ned, you are having some fantastic success with music at the moment, and really interestingly
00:16 you've got a new EP out with the Anti Atlas name, and the EP is called Codecrim. What's
00:24 happening there? What's Anti Atlas all about?
00:27 So Anti Atlas is a kind of musical collective, and the main partner in crime is Chris Hufford,
00:34 who's the manager of Radiohead, and produced some of their early music. Also producer of
00:40 Slow Dive and manager of Gaz Coombe's Supergrass. And we have been working together for quite
00:48 a while, we kind of put musical kind of, what would you say, tableaux sort of together,
00:56 and then we bring in guest vocalists to sing over them.
01:02 And what's happening on the latest one, Codecrim?
01:05 So Codecrim features a fantastic French Malagasy singer called Fred Lessor, and he has written
01:12 some wonderful lyrics, some quite psychedelic, and we've got three songs with him on the
01:20 EP, and then three instrumental versions.
01:23 And it's so interesting that you do the two, what does the voice add, and what do you get
01:29 when you take the voice away?
01:31 The voice takes them into a completely new dimension, and they become kind of proper
01:36 songs really, and some of them are kind of quite R&B. One of them is getting some great
01:42 airplay on Mickey D's show on My Soul at the moment, and when you take away the vocal they
01:49 become more like kind of orchestral soundscapes.
01:54 Sounds fantastic, and all this comes at a very happy time for you, having just had a
01:58 very, very prestigious nomination for a completely different area of your work.
02:03 Well, thank you, yes, that's for a commission for the West Sussex Youth Orchestra, with
02:09 the West Sussex Youth Choir and Young Voices, that was performed in Chichester Cathedral
02:14 as part of the festival to celebrate their 60th anniversary.
02:19 And the nomination was?
02:21 So it was Ivor's Classical, Ivor Novello Awards, and it was I think for Best Community and
02:26 Participation piece.
02:29 And what does that mean to you to have that nomination?
02:31 Well, it's lovely to have it recognised, it brought, the whole process was really, really
02:38 sort of fantastic for all of us. They were so talented, the young musicians and the singers,
02:43 and they put so much into the performance, seemed to go down very well with the audience
02:48 as well, which always helps.
02:50 Fantastic. Well, congratulations on both, and really lovely to speak to you, Ned. Thank
02:54 you very much.
02:55 Thank you, Phil, nice to speak.
02:56 Thank you.
02:56 Thank you.
02:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]
