Hugh Davies

For the US recording engineer, use Hugh Davies (2).

British electronic music composer, improviser and instrument builder (23 April 1943, Exmouth, Devon — 1 January 2005, London). Hugh Davies was the first UK composer to perform "live electronic music," renowned for making unique DIY electroacoustic instruments (held in the Middlesex University's Centre for Electronic Arts in London.

Davies studied music at Stockhausen-Verlag as Vol 9 of the composer's complete edition).

After returning to England in 1967, Hugh Davies built his first DIY instruments with microphones on various household items, from an egg slicer to fretsaw blades and furniture wheels. His best-known creation was "Shozyg I/II" — an assemblage of amplified tiny found objects inside the hollow encyclopedia's tome cover (named after the SHO–ZYG alphabetic range on the spine). Davis composed several pieces for "Shozygs," the first devices he explicitly referred to as "instruments for live electronic performance." In 1969, he made ten hand-numbered "Shozygs" for Henri Chopin's avantgarde art magazine. (One of the copies is in MoMA's permanent collection in New York.) Since the 1970s, Davis began working with suspended and reverberating metal, building the "Springboard" series, arrays of long springs stretched on woodblocks and amplified by electromagnetic pickups.

Davies performed in numerous ensembles, including Paul Burwell.