Davies was born in
Exmouth, Devon, England. After attending
Westminster School, he studied music at
Worcester College,
Oxford from 1961 to 1964. Shortly after he travelled to
Cologne, Germany, to work for
Karlheinz Stockhausen as his personal assistant. For two years, he assembled and documented material for Stockhausen's compositions and was a member of his live ensemble. From 1968 to 1971, Davies played in
The Music Improvisation Company. The group's guitarist
Derek Bailey later wrote that "the live electronics served to extend the music both forwards and backwards (...) Davies helped to loosen what had been, until his arrival, a perhaps too rarified approach". He was also a member of the group Gentle Fire, active from 1968 to 1975, which specialised in the realisation of
indeterminate and
mobile scores, as well as verbally formulated
intuitive-music compositions (such as Stockhausen's
Aus den sieben Tagen) and in the performance of its own Group Compositions. Davies invented musical instruments that he constructed from household items. Among them was the
shozyg, a generic name he used for any instrument housed inside an unusual container. The name is derived from the first of such instruments, which was housed inside the final volume of an encyclopaedia (covering the subjects from
SHO– to
ZYG–). From the 1960s onwards, Davies made very significant contributions to the documentation of
electronic music history, and in 1968 published a catalogue in which he listed - ostensibly - all the works of electronic music ever composed worldwide. It has been argued that, through his research and documentation, Davies characterised electronic music for the first time as a truly international, interdisciplinary field. Davies was also a member of the
Artist Placement Group during the mid-1970s. Davies was the founder and first Director of the Electronic Music Studios at
Goldsmiths, University of London, from 1968 to 1986 and was subsequently a researcher there until 1991. Davies appeared on the 1988 album
Spirit Of Eden by UK group
Talk Talk. Davies had been a part-time researcher and lecturer in Sonic Art at the
Centre for Electronic Arts,
Middlesex University, London, from 1999 until the end of his life. ==Discography==