DOOM AND THE DOOMS
Saturday 27 September 2025, 8pm
QEH, Southbank Centre
Oliver Leith builds a nostalgia-tinged sound-world in his imaginary concert by a fictional band, performed by guitarist Sean Shibe, GBSR Duo and 12 Ensemble.
Guitarist Sean Shibe begins his residency at the Southbank Centre with GBSR Duo and 12 Ensemble, both in their Southbank Centre debuts, for Leith’s Doom and the Dooms. The work imagines Doom and the Dooms performing their greatest hits, in a concert that takes in melancholy harmonies, fast-paced rock, distortion and microtonal string writing. Shibe takes the mantle of the lead guitarist, with strings and keyboard standing in for a singer. The result is a bittersweet evocation of a history and music that never was. Leith says, ‘The guitar has cultural baggage, so I’m embracing it, rather than avoiding it. Its baggage is material.’
‘Deadpan, subversive, quietly anarchic, disarmingly
heart-sore and sweet-sour music’
- Kate Molleson on Oliver Leith, BBC Radio 3​
Doom and the Dooms
for electric guitar, keyboard, percussion and string ensemble
"The piece is a transcription of a gig that happened at some point, some time ago. These aren’t the original players; it is a recreation of this gig, scored out as accurately as possible. This is an archaeological dig and presentation of bones, compiled from bootlegs, footage and hearsay. There are imperfections – for example, we do not quite know whose voices are on the recordings, nor who the line-up was at the time, so some lines may be misattributed. The band was called Doom and the Dooms. There was a moment in time where this sound, and even instrumentation, was becoming a genre. There were copycats, even similar setups with singers from quite famous bands. There was traction, – it might have stayed, could have been a movement, bands might have looked like this now. Instead, it was swept away by other bands of the time. People preferred lyrics and more beautiful people, which is fair."
- Oliver Leith, composer
Oliver Leith is a London based composer making acoustic music, electronic music and video. His works have appeared at the BBC Proms, Tanglewood Music Centre, Wigmore Hall, Aix Festival, Transit Festival, the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Heidelberg Festival, Riga’s White Night Festival and Liszt Academy (Budapest). Accolades include an Ivor Novello award for Honey Siren (2019), a 2016 British Composer Award for A Day at The Spa, and the 2014 RPS Composer Prize.
​
He was previously Guildhall School of Music & Drama’s Doctoral Composer-in-Residence at the Royal Opera House. This led to the creation of Leith’s acclaimed debut chamber opera Last Days, which premiered at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre in 2022 with a sold-out run of performances. It returns to there this Winter with a run of 16 performances.
Praised for his innovative programming, Sean Shibe is a classical and electronic guitarist who continues to prove himself as an original mind at the frontier of contemporary classical music. Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre this season, Shibe is a former BBC New Generation Artist, a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship winner, Leonard Bernstein Award winner and a multi-GRAMMY nominee.
​
An ardent supporter of contemporary classical music, Shibe has worked with a number of composers to experiment with and expand the guitar repertoire. Among the many premieres he has performed are works by Thomas Adès, Oliver Leith, Cassandra Miller, Shiva Feshareki, Julia Wolfe, Freya Waley-Cohen, Mark Simpson and Tyshawn Sorey.
"12 Ensemble first worked with Oliver Leith commissioning Honey Siren in 2019, a mesmeric work that features on our second studio album Death and the Maiden. We gave the premiere at the Barbican and immediately felt a unity with Oliver's writing - it was beautiful, sad, glistening, full of gloom. The piece went on to win an Ivor Novello award.
​
Since then we've continued to collaborate; performing in his acclaimed first opera Last Days at the Royal Opera House (2022), recording his aria Non Voglio Mai Vedere Il Sole Tramontare with the sensational pop singer Caroline Polachek, and commissioning a special new arrangement of the aria for solo violin and strings for our recent album Metamorphosis.
​
We premiered Doom and the Dooms alongside Sean Shibe and GBSR Duo in June 2024 at London's Wigmore Hall and also gave a performance at this year's Norwich and Norfolk Festival which was recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3's New Music show.
​
In Doom and the Dooms, expect gliding strings, screaming guitar, scrunching broken ceramics, whistling, heavy thick distortion and heart-breaking downward trembling glissandi..."
​- Eloisa-Fleur Thom, 12 Ensemble
