For most of his career, Phil Durrant has led two separate lives: violinist on the London free improv scene and electronician in the techno underground. His work in a trio with John Butcher and John Russell in the late '80s onward established his name and started a journey into reductionism influenced by Butcher and Radu Malfatti. By the late '90s, he was improvising using either or both violin (with Quatuor Accorde, Burkhard Beins, Thomas Lehn, Chris Burn's Ensemble, etc.) and electronics (in Ticklish, the M.I.M.E.O.).

Durrant is a classically trained musician in violin and piano from the London College of Music. While he was there, he also attended the Barry Summer School where he opened up his musical horizons with the help of tutors such as Tony Oxley, Derek Bailey, and Philipp Wachsmann. The latter's workshops provided a particular source of inspiration and when he turned 20, Durrant dropped classical music altogether to make a living as a freelance musician. Gravitating around the London Musicians' Collective, he first worked within trios with Brett Hornby and Will Embling (Saxoviotrump) and Mike Johns and Ross Plotkin (untitled). In 1978, he was in a string quartet with Wachsmann, Oxley, and Tony Wren (he would join the latter's first project upon coming back to performance in the late '90s, the Quatuor Accorde).

In 1979, Durrant and guitarist John Russell started to play as a trio with saxophonist Mark Pickworth. The three explored areas of free improvisation that involved acute listening and a reduction in gestures inherited from the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Wachsmann. When John Butcher replaced Pickworth, things began to happen. This trio, News From the Shed, and the Chris Burn Ensemble (all comprising the same pool of musicians) established a new group approach to the genre and their first albums of the late '80s brought Durrant to international attention. In the meantime, he was involved as a musician and producer in the English techno underground, working under aliases like Excel D, Midi Tribe, and Mystical Units, often with Francis Powell. He was instrumental to the production of hits by Fabio and Grooverider, cut a few 12" singles, and played raves from 1987 to 1994.

After that period, he mostly focused on integrating electronics to free improvisation and collaborating with dancers (Susanne Thomas, Maxine Doyle, Gill Clarke), an aspect of his work he developed constantly after participating in a choreographers/composers workshop in late 1995. In the late '80s, he was briefly associated with the Swiss avant-garde, playing in Planet Oeuf and Stringfield (which included Günter Müller and Alfred Zimmerlin). A decade later, he had strong ties with the Berlin musicians involved in the group Phosphor (Burkhard Beins, Ignaz Schick, Michael Renkel, etc.) He has released a first solo album, Sowari: Violin Live Electronics, in 1997. ~ François Couture, Rovi