Hip-hip: Tom Middleton Rings the Bell on Cab Vol's Fifth Birthday

February marks the fifth birthday of Edinburgh’s beloved venue The Cabaret Voltaire, with a series of special guests appearing across five nights of events. Karnival have extra cause for celebration as their own fourth birthday falls at the same time as the Cab. To mark this double celebration, on 27 Feb Karnival are bringing in a very special guest –musician, producer, remixer, DJ and all-round sickeningly talented fellow Tom Middleton.

With good reason, Tom Middleton has garnered something of a reputation over the years as being almost a musical chemist, tinkering his sets with a precise attention to detail and administering changes to his music depending on the venue he is playing in. Like most artists who have shown a particular skill in keeping their output fresh in spite of being involved in music for around 20 years, Middleton’s roots have always shown a great deal of talent. As a classically trained pianist and cellist, he worked in the early 1990s with Richard D. James, co-producing En-Trance To Exit on the Analogue Bubblebath EP which appeared on Mighty Force Records. This was quickly followed by his first solo outing, My Splendid Idea, produced under the name Schizophrenia.

Middleton later joined forces with Mark Pritchard and the pair recorded under a variety of monikers, including Reload – where they created experimental techno –Global Communication and Jedi Knights, an electrofunk and house music project. 

The success of Global Communication's 1994 album 76:14 played a large part in the success of both Tom Middleton and Mark Pritchard and the pair later created their own record label called Evolution. A flurry of remix work soon followed under the names Cosmos and Modwheel, resulting in reworks of artists such as Kerri Chandler, Orbital, Kylie Minogue, Coldplay and Underworld.

Middleton’s achievements are many and varied, including his AMBA project, which placed him alongside an orchestra and a choir in an interesting contrast. His 50 improvised performances with The Bays were unpredictable, imaginative and at times playfully disjointed – all this from a man who helped Aphex Twin secure his first record deal. A show on Kiss FM, giving Mylo and Hot Chip their first festival dates and a residency at Ibiza’s superclub Manumission almost seem like mere footnotes in comparison.

After spending years championing musical styles long before they were the norm, from ambient to drum & bass, techno to rock 'n' roll, his attention to detail allows him to find connections between all forms of music, uniting every genre with technical skill, utilising all types of forward-thinking technologies. To this day Middleton refuses to sample other people’s songs, instead opting to create his own sounds from software that he helped to create. If only more musicians practised their craft as well as Middleton has throughout the years; but perhaps we should just be thankful that a talent such as his exists in the first place.