Stealing Sheep

Stealing Sheep’s new record Wow Machine is a conceptual computer-based work, exploring and experimenting deeper into the world of electronics than previous, honing the threesome’s sampling, splicing, looping and reversing skills. It serves as a companion piece to an audio installation created as part of the Great Exhibition of the North in Newcastle way back in 2018.

The Sheep’s – Becky Hawley, Emily Lansley, Lucie Mercer – contribution to the exhibition was part of The Hexagon Experiment, put together by Manchester equalities charity Brighter Sound. The trio thought big for the project – because why the hell not – creating a dream cake stage with flavours of Busby Berkeley, three tiers in the shape of hexagons forming a giant cog. They used robotic-style dancers too. ‘We’d been doing some residencies with dancers, creating music specifically for movement. So yeah, we just sort of went with this machine,’ says Becky.

Around the same time, the three women had been working with BBC Radiophonic Workshop, custodians of electronic pioneer Delia Derbyshire’s posthumously discovered tapes. Everything not archived by the BBC was passed it over to the Sheep, and what a curious mix of exciting oddities they were presented with – sci-fi soundscapes and sound effects, machine sounds like a car engine starting up or a laser zapper gun. In 1970, Derbyshire herself noted, ‘people seem to think I’m just working with funny noises, that it isn’t quite serious or something’. Just goes to show, you shouldn’t listen to people – the wonders she conjured up back then have inspired a plethora of artists since, from Aphex Twin, Chemical Brothers, Orbital and more – and fed into what eventually became Wow Machine.