Sevish

Sean Archibald (born 1988), also known as Sevish, is a British electronic music composer from London. Described by Aaron Krister Johnson as "a well-known creative force in the world of online microtonal music", he is most known for his compositions which combine aspects of electronic dance music with microtonality.^[1][2] As a child, Archibald was inspired by music in video games such as Chrono Trigger, Streets of Rage, and Sonic the Hedgehog. He would then go on to discover microtonality as a teenager by listening to gamelan music and Aphex Twin. At age 16 he began officially releasing music online and released his first solo album at age 20.^[3][4] He first gained notoriety in the microtonal music scene with his 2010 release Golden Hour.^[4][5][6] Sevish's 2011 xenharmonic dance album, Subversio, created in collaboration with Tony Dubshot and Jacky Ligon, was described by Andrew Hugill as "dub meets microtonal tunings".^[7]

Sevish
Genres	Experimental music
Years active	2005-present
Website	sevish.com

Since most instruments in the West are built to play the 12-tone equal tempered scale, Archibald turned to less common instruments and methods of composing microtonal music. He now uses an AXiS-49 hexagonal MIDI controller to play his microtonal music, along with various DAWs such as Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio (on a Linux system^[8]), and Max/MSP.^[1] The tuning systems he uses to create his music include 22-EDO, 15-EDO, 10-EDO, 13 limit just intonation, the Bohlen-Pierce scale, Pelog tuning, and many others.^[4][9] Adam Hart of the University of Salford said that his compositions "do not indicate a desire to move away from the archetypes of established EDM genres, but rather to explore alternative tunings through familiar stylistic approaches".^[4]

Archibald has expressed a desire to make microtonality more widely consumed by the public, creating multiple side projects to achieve this goal. He is the creator and host of Now&Xen, a podcast about microtonal music. In 2010 he founded his own record label, split-notes, which is focused on promoting music which uses microtonal scales, alternative tuning systems, and xenharmonics.^[1][4]

Discography

Solo Work

• Sevish EP (2005)
• Crowded Images (2008)
• Exposure EP (2009)
• Golden Hour (2010)
• Human Astronomy (2010)
• Sean but not Heard (2012)
• day:dot EP (2013)
• Rhythm and Xen (2015)
• MK-SUPERDUPER (2016)
• Harmony Hacker (2017)
• Horixens (2019)
• Odds and Ends (2020)
• Bubble (2021)
• Formless Shadows (2021)
• Morphable (2022)
• Murmurations (2023)
• Big Sway (2023)
• One With the Fractal (2025)

Collaborations

• Crack My Pitch Up with 9 other artists (2010)^[10]
• Subversio with Tony Dubshot and Jacky Ligon (2011)
• 2MM2 (2 Minute Masterpieces 2) with 15 other artists (2013)^[11]
• 23 with Tony Dubshot and Jacky Ligon (2014)
• Next Xen with 18 other artists (2016)^[12]
• 3 Remixes with Acreil, Brendan Byrnes, and ZIA (2019)
• STAFFcirc vol. 7 - Terra Octava with 16 other artists (2021)^[13]
• Maglonia - Remix with M F TroniX (2022)