Sam Kidel

Sam Kidel is the Customer Service Agent. As the Customer Service Agent, Kidel probes and reshapes ambient music, exploring its emotional and sensory effects and its relationship with capitalist production, as Muzak. Kidel was formerly a member of the Young Echo collective (Young Echo Records, Ramp Recordings), which he co-founded, and Killing Sound (Blackest Ever Black). Since the age of 15, when he started making music with computers, Kidel – also operating under the moniker El Kid – has built up a diverse portfolio, including soundtracks for British and French TV documentaries, fashion shows, French painter Fabienne Verdier, the New York theatre world, and installations and performances from Glasgow and Geneva to Basel and Berlin.

As part of his current work with ambient music, Kidel has curated a conference at Oxford Brookes University titled “The Politics of Ambience” (with Terre Thaemlitz, David Toop, Nina Power, and Chino Amobi among the contributors), created a mix for Thump (Vice) revisiting archive recordings of ambient music parties of the early 1990s, and released the acclaimed LP “Disruptive Muzak” for Death of Rave. Kidel completed a Masters in Composition and Sonic Art at Oxford Brookes in 2015, and now teaches at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute in Bristol.