Drew McDowall is an artist who refuses to conform — in both music and life. McDowall mines the hallucinatory spaces that exist between reality and celestial otherness. His meditative compositions are haunting and spiritual, melding intricate modular soundscapes with cut-up samples, and deconstructing sounds into their most basic shuddering structures and shapes. The disorienting ambient mirages that result elicit terror, tender melancholy, and heavenly flickers of expansive beauty.

His backstory reads like a primer of psychedelic fiction. Growing up in the gangs of 1970’s Scotland, McDowall — fatigued by years of daily violence and the chaotic madness of that life — sought aggressive self-expression in punk and found a home in Glasgow’s rich underground music community. He moved in circles with British avant-garde pioneers such as Genesis P-Orridge, David Tibet, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, and John Balance, who helped define the early wave of industrial music.

He later collaborated with Psychic TV and became a full member of the cult group Coil, where his contributions shaped their later albums.

While McDowall has adhered to electronics throughout his career, he has escaped making music confined to any one genre. In recent years, he has incorporated strings, wind instruments, church organ, and harp into his work. This diversity of approach is reflected in collaborations with artists such as Kali Malone, Caterina Barbieri, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Hiro Kone, Varg, Puce Mary, Shapednoise, Rabit, James K, Elvin Brandhi, and LEYA — several of whom have also performed at NEXT.

His first solo album Collapse was released by Dais Records in 2015, followed by Unnatural Channel (2017), The Third Helix (2018), and Agalma (2020). His 2024 album A Thread, Silvered and Trembling continues his lifelong fascination with pibroch (Gaelic ceòl mòr) — the elegiac Scottish bagpipe style traditionally used for laments and tributes, combining modal drones, shimmering dissonance, and mournful melody.

For Acousmonium, McDowall will present a special multichannel version of his live concert set.

Organized by A4 as part of the New Perspectives for Action project within the international collaboration Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union and supported using public funding by the Slovak Arts Council and Bratislava City Foundation.
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