Born in Australia, Laurie's formative musical experience was in improvisation and experimental music, as well as the influences of Folk, Jazz and Contemporary Classical music. Laurie worked as a trainee graphic artist on the Sydney Morning Herald, during which time, with school friend pianist Serge Ermoll, he played a regular stint at the legendary El Rocco jazz venue in Sydney. Also with musicians John Poche, Dave Levy, George Neidorf, Fred Payne, Tony Ansell and others.This set the tone for future cross discipline experimental work in improvisation, graphic scores and multi media production.

He worked closely with Cornelius Cardew on various collective projects after he arrived in UK 1965. Archive recordings on CDs "We Only Want the Earth" (2002) and "Consciously" (2007) put some of these historic events with Peoples' Liberation Music and Progressive Cultural Association on record.

1977/8 he composed/produced the music for two animations, Latrec and UBU by Geoff Dunbar, the latter considered a cult movie today.

What is Music Ensemble has been developed with Robert Evans, involving open strings and natural harmonics resulting in "Liquid Metal Dreaming" CD (2008). While back in Sydney The Baker / Barnard Duo have performed at several experimental concerts. Various performances are on YouTube.

"Gracility" double CD features four of Laurie's compositions from earlier times involving Derek Bailey, Keith Rowe, Gavin Bryars, Evan Parker, Jamie Muir, John Tilbury and many people associated with the Scratch Orchestra, was released 2009. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.