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Composer Oliver Coates on the cello, chaos and connection: ‘The best music is out there in nature’
He has been hired by Radiohead, Steve McQueen and Charlotte Wells for Aftersun. But the British prodigy is less interested in virtuosity than connection – and chasing an ineffable ‘shimmer’
His cello-based solo releases have spanned deconstructions of the UK pirate radio that he listened to in the family car as a teenage music obsessive in Wandsworth (2016’s Upstepping) to Low-influenced incursions into the outer reaches of static and saturation (2020’s Skins n Slime). Although no written piece about Coates fails to note that he got the highest-ever grades at London’s Royal Academy of Music (he says it was just because he took loads of modules, “turned up, read all the books and maxed out”) he’s vastly more interested in these shimmery kismet moments than virtuosity. Similarly, he sees his work with directors as a mixture of “psychology and polyphony” and raves about the potential of how “managing [to] collaborate intensely with another person and reach a moment of peace has the chance to explode and ripple out for many other people.” After Steve McQueen Shazam’d his music in a clothes shop, he invited Coates to soundtrack his 2023 documentary Occupied City, about Holland under Nazi rule.
Or read this on The Guardian