About

Lance Gurisik's passion for music was ignited later than most, as he first strummed a guitar at the age of 16 and began teaching himself to play along to his favourite bands. He was soon encouraged to audition as a composer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he completed his Honours in composition under the tutelage of Australian composer, Michael Smetanin. 

It was in these formative years that Lance's musical literacy expanded rapidly. Having no formal training prior to the Conservatorium, it was initially a very intimidating experience. While most of the students at the Conservatorium were virtuosic performers with traditional instruments, it was mainly behind a computer screen that Lance began to finesse his compositional language. It was through Bach's choral writing exercises that Lance's unwavering appreciation and love of harmony and voice leading came to fruition. He began incorporating these ideas into his own works. This period marked the beginning of a lifelong passion for music. 

After graduating from the Conservatorium, Lance embarked on a career as an in-house composer at Song Zu, where he created a diverse range of music for television shows and campaigns. During this time, he also toured as an electronic artist across Australia, collaborating with renowned musicians like Ngaiire and remixing tracks for prominent acts such as The Presets and Rufus. 

In 2014, Lance's artistic path led him to London, a city that proved to be a catalyst for his professional and personal growth. Lance's residence in the warehouse community in North London's Manor House had a significant impact on his creative development. Living amongst the vibrant counterculture and throwing warehouse parties of his own with his peers, Lance was immersed in an atmosphere that nurtured his artistic spirit and allowed him to fully explore his passion for electronic music and rave culture. 

In 2015, Lance performed his debut Boiler Room appearance. In this period and the years following, Lance performed at numerous venues and festivals internationally. 

In 2017, after some ongoing health challenges with Crohn’s Disease, Lance returned to the sunny shores of Sydney. Taking a hiatus from touring and releasing EPs, he devoted himself to producing larger bodies of work influenced by some of the idols he found at university, including Terry Riley, Keith Jarrett, Stravinsky and Miles Davis. 

During the first Covid-19 lockdown in Sydney, Lance channelled his creative energy into finalising his first album, Cull Portal, a modern-fusion take on modal jazz with electronic influences. Lance worked with Australian saxophonist Jeremy Rose as well as recording both string section and drums. With the easing of border restrictions, Lance was able to travel to Melbourne's MESS, a Mecca for electronic music enthusiasts that boasts one of the largest collections of rare synthesizers in the world. There, he was able to record on the original Yamaha CS-80, a piece of music history that played a role in Vangelis' iconic score for the 1982 sci-fi classic, Blade Runner. 

In 2022, Lance's talent was recognized with his first APRA Screen Award. Following this, the Bangarra Dance Company performed to Lance's music from this campaign at the iconic Sydney Opera House.

In 2023, Lance released his debut album Cull Portal featuring Jeremy Rose on tenor saxophone. The album was nominated for Best Jazz Album at the ARIAs last November and is currently in the running for an AIR Award for Best Independent Jazz release in August of this year. 

Cull Portal was named The Guardian UK’s ‘Contemporary Album of the Month’ July 2023 giving it ⅘ stars. 

'Gurisik’s startling album – think Aphex Twin meets Keith Jarrett – combines jazz, electronica and contemporary orchestral music to compelling, coherent effect. Cull Portal slowly mutates in various directions. Analogue synths burble; intense meditative improvisations develop on the piano; pastoral string sections fade in and grow more harmonically complex; wispy saxophones spray modal jazz riffs over coruscating digital drones; live drums and electronic breakbeats occasionally disrupt proceedings. Even when you become aware of the repeated structures and chord sequences, you find yourself constantly startled by the album’s extraordinary textures, audacious turns of phrase and spectacular flourishes. It is a dazzling piece of electronica, a great jazz album and a compelling piece of contemporary orchestral music, all at once.' John Lewis - The Guardian UK. 

The year also saw Lance take out the prestigious APRA Screen Award for the 2nd year in a row for his work as a screen composer. 

2024 saw the release of Lance’s sophomore album Proffer, on his Sydney-based label 33 Sides, to be distributed globally through Inertia/PIAS. Proffer is a psychedelic fusion record that blends an eclectic array of musical influences. The album draws inspiration from the late German krautrock hero Manuel Göttsching; the French synth legends AIR; the American minimalist composer Terry Riley; and the works of classical composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and Alexander Scriabin. The album composed and produced by Gurisik features Lamorna Nightingale from Ensemble Offspring on alto and bass flute; Nick Meredith on drums and percussion; a 16-piece string section performed by Ian Cooper on violins and violas; Paul Ghica on Viola da Gamba and cellos; and Gurisik performing all the modular synth and keyboards on the record. 

Proffer is a protest album challenging the prevailing norms in the music industry, which often reduces music to mere soundbites intended to accompany short-form content. It advocates for the recognition of music as a vehicle of escapism and self-exploration through active listening, rather than merely a backdrop for other media and activities. 

Proffer presents a maximalist approach to composition and production, in which Gurisik pushes the limits of where experimental electronic, jazz and modern classical forms meet. The album mutates tone colours and sonic textures from modular synth arpeggios to cascading marimbas to cyclical, trance-like string compositions to challenge and transport the listener. These surprising and bold combinations of acoustic and electronic sounds and the intersection of older musical languages with the newest and most progressive, create an adventurous cinematic listening journey unique to Gurisik’s style and compositional voice. 

For the Welter music video, Lance collaborated with Danski Tang, a Chinese-American visual artist, who focuses primarily on 2D hand-drawn animation and Morgan Beringer, an experimental visual artist based in London on Prednisone and Glut exploring themes of surrealism and escapism. Lance also was able to license footage from Georges Schwizgebel’s paint-on-glass animation film Fugue (1998) for the fourth single off the record Balance.

Proffer was also named The Guardian UK’s ‘Contemporary Album Of The Month’ giving it ⅘ stars in August 2024. 

John Lewis at The Guardian UK said: A heart-wrenching, genre-crossing compendium. The Australian composer's latest offering is a mash-up of electronica, minimalism, drum’n’bass and more - but it’s the orchestral tracks that really shine. 

Projects

Composition, Arrangements, Song Writing, Creative Direction.

Experiments

Currently in the midst of working on a new project called ‘El’s Pyramid Scheme’ featuring some big Australian singers on club focused electronic music.