ellen murphy timbre
music, audio engineering, mixing,
visual + sound art
soft animal studio
Queer friendly, sliding scale recording and mixing services in downtown Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
A cozy spot to record vocals and anything direct input. Would love to help you get your music out of your bedroom and into the world.
fees
Recording • $50 hr
Mixing • (2 revisions) $250/ song
If this is cost prohibitive, please get in touch! On a sliding scale, open to working to your budget. Will always entertain a barter.
Tell me all about your project at [email protected]
email: [email protected]
phone: (902)478-9843
Born in the early 80’s under a Taurus moon, Ellen lived but a brief 3 years in a suburb of Montreal before moving to yet another suburb in Western Massachusetts. The early years were rough and depressing, followed by the awkward tumult of her teens and young adulthood, fueled by art school and drugs and music and always double shifts waiting tables at bougie vegetarian restaurants and craft beer brew pubs. In the haze of her mid twenties, Ellen made moves to hightail it back to Canada to finally finish her fine art degree and with zero plans beyond school, Ellen found love and community, and made Nova Scotia her home.
With music slowly brewing in the background, Ellen started a small business, had two kids, lost and found herself and then in the last year of her 3rd decade, decided to finally go back to school for audio engineering and music production; a leap she’d been too afraid to take until she’d shed a few f*cks.
Now playing regularly with her band Ghost Tongue, working on a solo electronic music project jole plastik, engineering and mixing for a handful of local acts, and reacquainting herself with her visual art practice, Ellen has opened Soft Animal Studio at her home in Dartmouth, NS for sliding scale recording and mixing services.
Ghost tongue
Ghost Tongue is a four (sometimes 5) piece ethereal noise pop band based in K'jipuktuk
engineered + mixed
Work done with local bands recorded at NSCC studios. Produced, engineering, mixed and mastered by yours truly.
collabs
Songs made in collaboration with the wonderful people in the Music Arts and Music Production and Engineering program at NSCC. Collaborations on songwriting, production, engineering, mixing and mastering
sound art
Best suited for headphones and a dark room or closed eyes
v i s u a l
film photography
a gathering of good tension
A Gathering of Good Tension is the first collaboration between settler artists Kit Holden-Ada and Ellen Timbre, shaped by a curious and emergent confluence of practice (craft/art), of bodies (human/ land/water/plants) and of time (past/present/future). Combining elements of their jewellery/metalsmithing, installation, film photography, book & box making practices, the piece is comprised of 11 silver gelatin prints shot in various locations in Mi’kma’ki, simmens (traditional Orcadian handmade rope), and a hand constructed box (with lichen dyed linen book-cloth & metallic foil) which serves as a vessel for the rope and the photographs.
Foundational components of this piece stem from a previous project in 2019 through which Kit researched and developed a committed ritual of making simmens (handmade rope from straw, heather, and other natural materials) as an embodied practice of reconnection and collaboration with their Orcadian ancestors. The work explored questions around belonging, lineage, and ways we might better embody our efforts to disrupt white supremacy in the context of settler colonialism.
Emerging from years of relationship building and conversation, this current work reflects explorations around growing our capacities for discomfort and staying present with the harm inherent in our lineages as settlers. The interplay of body, landscape, rope, and the reflective material woven throughout the images represent complex entanglements of history, self-reflection, tension and presence; grounded through and held within the handmade box, inside which viewers have the opportunity to see their own likeness reflected.
k e p t
An ongoing personal series of photos capturing fleeting scenes from the wild, beautiful and bewildering ride of raising children whilst coming to terms with time, life, death, joy, grief, boredom, existential exhaustion and repeatedly losing and rediscovering ones self amidst the chaos. All black and white silver prints are printed by hand.
Shot on a Canon F1 and Fuji 6x4.5
polaroid
Favourites from a constantly growing and evolving collection.
Shot on a vintage SX-70 Polaroid camera
colour
A selection of colour film images from different times, events, places, spaces and series.
Shot on a Canon F1 and Fuji 6 x 4.5
old work
Silver prints from former series' and former lives.
Shot on a Mamiya c330, Mamiya 7 and Canon FTB
paintings
Selections from 6 separate bodies of work
Oil on canvas or board
drawings
A smattering of work made over the years.
Mostly graphite on paper but some chalk pastel in there as well
mule mother
A small but mighty bookbindery in various states of operation for the past15 years. Having made literally thousands of books and boxes, these are a microscopic selection of favourites.
©ellen murphy timbre All rights reserved.
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