Phil Western is a Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

-based musician who is a founding member of the bands Download

Download (band)

Download is an electronic music group formed by Dwayne Goettel and cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy in 1994. The initial lineup also included Off & Gone's Phil Western and Mark Spybey of Dead Voices on Air, but has since been particularly fluid, with Key and Western being the only constant members...

, PlatEAU

Plateau (band)

PlatEAU is an electronic music project featuring cEvin Key and Phil Western. The project resembles a very loose approach to the Download project featuring the same members. The song names and album titles refer to the coffeeshop culture of Amsterdam in The Netherlands implying a "trip" throughtheir...

, Frozen Rabbit, and Off And Gone.

Having started his career as a drummer and eventually as a programmer, he became a remix engineer starting in the mid 1990s. His friendship with Dwayne Goettel

Dwayne Goettel

Dwayne Rudolph Goettel was a member of the industrial band Skinny Puppy. He played keyboards for an early incarnation of the Canadian gothic/synthpop band Psyche, as well as a band called Water, who opened for Skinny Puppy in 1985...

 led to him doing a small amount of keyboard work on the Skinny Puppy

Skinny Puppy

Skinny Puppy is a Canadian industrial musical group, formed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1982. The group is widely considered to be the founders of the electro-industrial genre....

 album The Process, as well as creating the Subconscious record label with Goettel in 1993.

After Goettel's death from a heroin overdose in 1995, he became partners with Cevin Key in several musical projects. As an engineer, or remix engineer, he has worked with Skinny Puppy

Skinny Puppy

Skinny Puppy is a Canadian industrial musical group, formed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 1982. The group is widely considered to be the founders of the electro-industrial genre....

, Mirror

Mirror

A mirror is an object that reflects light or sound in a way that preserves much of its original quality prior to its contact with the mirror. Some mirrors also filter out some wavelengths, while preserving other wavelengths in the reflection...

, Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams, is a Canadian rock singer-songwriter, guitarist, bassist, producer, actor and photographer. Adams has won dozens of awards and nominations, including 20 Juno Awards among 56 nominations. He has also received 15 Grammy Award nominations including a win for Best Song Written...

 and Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...

. He has also assisted in remixes of songs written by Monster Magnet

Monster Magnet

Monster Magnet is an American stoner rock band. Hailing from Red Bank, New Jersey, the group was founded by Dave Wyndorf , John McBain and Tim Cronin...

 and Rob Halford

Rob Halford

Robert John Arthur "Rob" Halford is an English singer-songwriter, who is best known as the lead vocalist for the Grammy Award-winning heavy metal band Judas Priest. He is nicknamed the "Metal God" as a tribute to his influence on metal, and after the Judas Priest song of the same name from 1980's...

 and Metallica

Metallica

Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...

 among others.

Often maintaining a low visibility in his collaborative projects, it was his solo work which brought his abilities to light for fans of Download - a complex approach to rhythm and programming, and a sense of melody rooted in psychedelia, drones

Drone music

Drone music is a minimalist musical style that emphasizes the use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece compared to other musics...

 and space rock

Space rock

Space rock is a subgenre of rock music; the term originally referred to a group of early, mostly British, 1970s progressive and psychedelic rock bands such as Hawkwind and Pink Floyd, characterised by slow, lengthy instrumental passages dominated by electric organs, synthesizers, experimental...

.
Since 2001, Western has been the operator behind The Record Company, which has been the imprint for several releases under his own name, as well as a reissue of the Floatpoint CD "Beam Error"

Solo works

• Power/Touched (12" split w/aDuck) (1993)
• The Escapist (1998)
• Dark Features (w/Tim Hill) (2001)
• Therapy (10", w/Tim Hill) (2001)
• Worlds End (2003)
• 4am (2007)
• 1221 (2008)
• Dat Hell (2008)
• Treatment (2009)

Download

Download (band)

Download is an electronic music group formed by Dwayne Goettel and cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy in 1994. The initial lineup also included Off & Gone's Phil Western and Mark Spybey of Dead Voices on Air, but has since been particularly fluid, with Key and Western being the only constant members...

• Furnace
  Furnace (album)
  -Personnel:*Dwayne Goettel*Philth*Mark Spybey*cEvin Key*Genesis P. Orridge...
  
  (1995)
• Microscopic (EP)
  Microscopic (EP)
  Microscopic is a 1996 EPs by the industrial music group Download. It was one of the first releases with a lenticular cover. Their previous LP, Furnace, also made use of this new type of packaging.-Track listing:-Personnel:*Dwayne Goettel*Philth...
  
  (1996)
• Charlie's Family
  Charlie's Family
  Charlie's Family is the third LP release by the industrial music group Download. It was initially released through Download's 1996 tour in a limited run of 2,000 copies, though it was later re-issued as a digipak through Metropolis Records in 1997...
  
  (1996)
• Sidewinder (EP)
  Sidewinder (EP)
  Sidewinder is an EP by Industrial music group Download released in 1996.-Track listing:# "Sidewinder " – 5:52# "Glassblower " – 3:30# "Base Metal " – 4:29# "Chalice" – 3:06# "Shemaesin" – 5:42# "IM5" – 3:25...
  
  (1996)
• The Eyes of Stanley Pain
  The Eyes of Stanley Pain
  The Eyes of Stanley Pain is an album by Download.-Track listing:# "Suni C" – 5:29# "Possession" – 4:07# "The Turin Cloud" – 4:31# "Glassblower" – 3:01# "H Sien Influence" – 4:45# "Base Metal" – 5:00# "Collision" – 10:37# "Sidewinder" – 4:18...
  
  (1996)
• III
  III (Download album)
  III is an IDM album by Download.-Tracklist:# "Toooly Hooof" – 4:36# "Cunning" – 6:02# "Moth" – 6:59# "Tunnel" – 3:49# "Mzeo B" – 4:31# "Streaked" – 4:33# "Flight Of the Luminous Insects" – 6:11# "Beauty In the Eyes" – 6:12# "Sleeping Solus" – 6:21...
  
  (1997)
• Effector
  Effector (album)
  - Track listing :# "Carrier Tone" – 4:02# "Muscaria" – 5:09# "Vagator" – 6:12# "Ego Dissolve" – 5:31# "The Guide" – 5:27# "Chrysanthemum" – 5:03# "Ayahuasca" – 3:55# "Two Worlds Collide" – 6:44# "Affirmed" – 4:04...
  
  (2000)
• Inception (2002)
• III Steps Forward
  III Steps Forward
  III Steps Forward is a 2002 album by the band Download. It is a collection of new material, as well as outtakes from their albums III and Effector.-Track listing:# "Sticky Glandstin" – 3:14# "Dakota" – 4:30...
  
  (2002)
• FiXeR (2007)
• HElicopTEr
  HELicopTer
  -+ Wookie Wall:...
  
  (2009)

Plateau

Plateau (band)

PlatEAU is an electronic music project featuring cEvin Key and Phil Western. The project resembles a very loose approach to the Download project featuring the same members. The song names and album titles refer to the coffeeshop culture of Amsterdam in The Netherlands implying a "trip" throughtheir...

• Dutch Flowers (EP) (1997)
• Music For Grass Bars
  Music for Grass Bars
  -Track listing:#"Schipol" – 2:53#"Noorderlight" – 5:12#"Dutch Flowers" – 7:29#"Crypto" – 4:54#"White Widow" – 4:00#"Urban Chillage" – 4:30#"Chateau Plateau" – 4:52#"The Kind" – 4:58#"Superskunk #3" – 3:09#"Purple Passion" – 4:20#"Stench" – 3:13-Notes:...
  
  (1997)
• Spacecake
  Spacecake
  Spacecake is an album by Plateau, released in 1999.-Track listing:# "Jack Herrer" – 4:37# "Nam" - 5:12# "Blueberry" – 3:35# "Nocruisin" – 3:46# "Super Silver Haze" – 5:54# "The Search" – 2:12# "K2" – 2:40# "De Fog" – 6:48# "Phuket" – 4:31...
  
  (1999)
• Iceolator
  Iceolator
  Iceolator is an album by Plateau, released in 2002. The fourth release of cEvin Key's subscription-only "From the Vault" collection, it is a collection of old and newly released material.-Track listing:# "Iceolator"# "Champagne"# "Manali Cream"...
  
  (2003)
• Kushbush
  Kushbush
  Kushbush is an album by Plateau, released in 2007. It was released as part 4 of 7 of the From the Vault Series 2 series of releases from Subconscious Studios, in a limited edition of 1000...
  
  (2007)
• Gort Spacebar (2009)

Off and Gone

• untitled EP (1994)
• Sigma Receptor (12") (1996)
• Shasta (12") (1996)
• Everest (1996)

External links

• MySpace.com/PhilWestern, the official Phil Western MySpace site.