Joshua Sabin

Joshua Sabin is a Scottish composer and sound artist whose work explores the perceptual and emotional relationships between sound, space and environment. Moving between electroacoustic composition, field recording, archival material and music for moving image, his practice is rooted in close listening and the transformation of recorded sound into densely constructed, often immersive sonic environments. Sabin studied composition at the University of Edinburgh, where his work encompassed electronic and audiovisual practice alongside orchestral composition. His interest in the relationship between lived experience and recorded sound became central to his debut album, Terminus Drift, released by Subtext Recordings in 2017. Constructed from field recordings made while travelling through the transit systems of Kyoto, Tokyo, and Berlin, alongside electromagnetic recordings captured in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Terminus Drift draws on subway alarms, engines, public-address systems, and electromagnetic signals. These are abstracted from their original contexts and reconfigured into an electroacoustic work concerned with movement, memory, and perception His second album for Subtext, Sutarti (2019), extended this approach toward the human voice and the archive. Developed through access to the Ethnomusicology Archive of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, the work drew upon archival recordings of Lithuanian sutartinės, exploring their distinctive compositional structures, vocal relationships and psychoacoustic properties through electronic transformation. Across these works, Sabin approaches recorded material not simply as documentation but as a compositional substance carrying traces of place, experience and human presence. His music has been presented internationally, including performances at MUTEK Mexico, Berghain/Säule in Berlin and OSA Festival, and his work has featured on NTS. Alongside his recorded and live practice, Sabin composes for film, television and audiovisual projects, extending his interest in atmosphere, perception and sonic space into work for moving image.