Outshine Family (formerly Function & Function Ensemble) is the ever-evolving musical moniker of Australian songwriter, composer and producer Matthew Nicholson.
Over the course of fifteen years and three lps, Nicholson has worked with an extensive band of collaborators all over the world to create a genre-defying and critically acclaimed sound that, like the mysterious, gassy mass in which it was created, doesn't conform to simple labels or descriptors.
Running through avant-rock, psych-folk, minimal, orchestral/classical, electro-acoustic, experimental and ambient musics, without ever wearing any particular hat, or staying in any one place for too long, the music of Outshine Family is unified only by what The Wire called Nicholson's ´clear authorial voice´ and a transcendental sensibility that ´borrows more from Emerson than indie rock´ (Ampcamp).
Live and on record, Outshine Family's music blurs the lines between composition and
improvisation, song and piece, ranging from microtonal intimacy to maximal orchestrations, from resonant drone to ecstatic pop while incorporating sounds and instrumentation and inspirations from many corners of the world.
Outshine Family began in the 1990s, when Nicholson, while playing in Melbourne bands, began releasing home-recorded tapes & singles under the Function moniker. Within a few years, the old bands had dissolved, and before long, Function had grown to be less a solo project than a collective, loose in its construction but tight in its bonds. Out of this network of connected hearts and heads came a sound alternately spare and lush, foreboding and sublime, brushed in psychedelic colour and magic-hour light.
In 2003, just before leaving Australian shores, the newly coined Function Ensemble recorded the rich, sprawling Zillionaire Retarded Speeds of Ordinary Measured Light, a remarkable, almost 80-minute long lp that ran through
sublime dream-pop; swooning, Eastern-inspired drone; and bright rock. Zillionaire was met with near unanimous acclaim: Roger Shepherd, founder of Flying Nun records, wrote, ´Function makes me feel better about people and the world in general´; Delusions of Adequacy said Zillionaire was ´the finest album to emerge from Australia this year. You have been warned.´
Ever the nomad, after the release of Zillionaire and a tour of the US, UK and Japan, Nicholson embarked on a lengthy period of wandering, writing and recording that would eventually result in The Secret Miracle Fountain, Outshine Family’s second lp. Produced in 12 countries, and featuring over 30 people & 50 instruments, The Secret Miracle Fountain is a thrillingly expansive aural document of the collective’s many and varied travels and inspirations. Press heads around the world were united in their praise: Dusted Magazine called it ´almost impossibly beautiful´; Reckless a ´densely layered pop masterpiece´. ´If pain persists,´ wrote the Sydney Morning Herald, ´put it on again.´
In 2007, while still working on their third lp, a six-piece Outshine Family embarked on a tour of 10 European countries including a jaunt with Low. In 2009, with Nicholson now living in London, Galeria de la Luz (literally, ‘Gallery of the Light’), the group’s third lp, was completed. Four years in the making, and featuring over 80 musicians, including a full orchestra, Galeria de la Luz was co-written with Chicago composer Patrick Liddell and long-time Family members Milo Mylecharane and Clare Tuckley. It is at once the group’s most expansive, focused and fully realized work. It is big, intricate and strikingly beautiful. It dances between compos- ition and improvisation, micro and macro. Like all Outshine Family records, Galeria is about the heart in the midst of everything. A truly essential listen that blossoms for a long time.
Outshine Family live 2010/2011 is Matthew Nicholson, John Chantler, Dominic Garwood and Carina Thoren.
Galeria de la Luz will be out on Blackmaps in January 2011, vinyl, cd and digital.