Born in 1952 and brought-up in a London suburb, Ian D Mellish (Mel) initially trained as an artist. Although he had earlier studied the violin for eight years, his interest in music was only later rekindled, leading to a first class hons. BA in electronic music from North East London Polytechnic in 1983 and a Doctorate in composition from York University in 1989. His music has been performed throughout Europe, Canada and the USA, and his graphic scores have been exhibited in the UK and USA.

He has been a member of the new music ensemble Icebreaker, as production assistant, since 1989 and his works can be heard as introductory music to most of Icebreaker's concerts. 1999 saw the debut of his live group Merkin Zimmer, which made it's first appearance at Icebreaker's festival in association with the Wiener Musik Galerie at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), Vienna. Since 2000 he has been a member of the (occasional) group Wiener Klang Manufaktur, live tape mixing with the virtual-violin/violinist Ernst Zettl and percussionist Wolfgang Reisinger.
Mel has lived in Pyhra, Austria since 1997.

The work:

The visual still plays a large part in his compositions, many of which are inspired by and bear titles taken from the art world, such as the tape pieces Rauschenberg, Currents, Stoned Moon, Surface Quartet [all based on Rauschenberg], Riley, Clandestine Relative [Riley], Tinguely, Flying Deep (Pollock mix), wHolE [Warhol], and the environmental pieces Rothko and Olitsky. In 1999, inspired by the book 'Works, Texts to 1974' by artist Tom Phillips, and based on work for a film from 1990, he embarked on a three year project Details, a set of 67 short pieces based on his own previous works (about 3 or 4 for each year, from 1979 to 1999).
As a reaction to the fact that artworks occupy space and music occupies time, he has been interested in longer works, often with very slow-changing material, more as environmental music, wallpaper or background noise than concert pieces. From the (relatively) short Life In The Shelter (47'16"), waterFall (1:08'00"), Drive My Car (1:08'58"), Drone (1:23'20"), Gradual Juno (Drift) (1:31'16") and MAK (4:11'36"), to the rather longer multi-tape/CD pieces. These are for simultaneous 'loops', tape or CD, that are considered to have come to an end when the material starts to repeat. Satellite Wars (1:59'00", 2 loops: 5'57" & 5'40"), Juno Variations for any two-of-three loops, Enomia, Juno and Bamburger (8 weeks, 1,2 or 3 days, depending on which pair you pick, or 508 years. 7 weeks. 6 days, 23:11'36" if you try all three), Rothko (10 weeks, 4 days, 18:45'49", 2 loops: 40'19" & 44'31"), Juno Variation II (4.36 years, 2 loops: 39'45" & 40'04", designed to last the duration of the orbit of Juno) and Olitsky (1,648,171 years, 7 weeks, 6 days, 10:23'33", 4 loops: 44'43", 44'39", 44'46" & 44'54"). This last piece has a circular score, with the staves on the background and the note-heads on four moveable transparent sheets. It could be said to be through composed.
An installation piece for the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (1999) worked on the same multi-'tape' principle: originally for five rooms, each room had two looped CDs. The five room pieces last between 12 and 16 weeks but a duration for all ten simultaneous CDs has not been worked out. Material from these CDs was used to create MAK.
In addition, Endless Interference is for overlapping tracks recorded on a 4-track cassette machine on a 6 minute 'endless' answer machine tape, this does not stop or fade-out (but does repeat after 6'08").

Although he is primarily interested in tape music there are a number of works for live instruments, including: Beach for tape and amplified: solo reed instrument (oboe, clarinet and sax to date), piano, percussion & 'junk' percussion with live electronics; Condensed Beach for tape and percussion; Dentistry 31.5 with James Poke, for tape & flute; Greek Princess for tape, violin, synth. & live electronics, or tape, 6 violins & live electronics; Cairn for solo bagpipes, wind band & tape; Son of Cairn for the amplified ensemble Icebreaker & tape; Warm Gods for the ensemble Subdivo (soprano sax., vibes, guitar & bass); Live Arc for the Merkin Zimmer Ensemble (WX synth, tenor sax, electric 'cello, piano. vibes & guitar) & tape; (Parp) On the Rug for harp & piano; Rising "--", a piece for two or four harps, live electronics & live televisions; Q3 for Irish harp quartet, TV & electronics; and Illumination for Viola and tape.
A number of other pieces are based on existing classical music, including: The Art of Mote for chamber orchestra (a short study based on Mozart); Percill Washes Whiter, Stretch Marks, Thirteen Gods, C6H12O6 and Cold Gods for tape, Strungout Boeing for marimba, vibraphone & piano, and vile intentions for the Delta Saxophone Quartet (all part of an ongoing series based on 'Fantazias and In Nomines, for strings' by Henry Purcell - Edition Eulenburg); and Sleepless Buffalo for tape, based on a Schumann fragment found decorating a clock face, translated into a 20-note per octave micro-tuning.

Multi-media works include Brush Work for the animator Clive Walley, which won the first prize for experimental film in the 1993 Cinanima Festival in Portugal, work for the video artist Mireille Chan (Orientation, Recognition 12 and Recognition 117 for a multi-video installation), The Fourth Man, a soundtrack for the film by Nick Hoare, a remix of Telling Fibs for the film 'Die Sprache des Wassers' and MG Seven, music for the film 'Chakrenreisen', both by digital artist Michael Guzei, and Amnesty for Tom for the film maker Tom Hadley