News & Events
Drew McDowall’s back story reads like a primer of psychedelic fiction woven into statements of the unbelievable, superhuman and outright insane. Somewhere in the chaotic madness, comes an artist such as McDowall with total control and absolute calm within his songs and artistic method.
Growing up in the gangs of 1970’s Scotland, Drew McDowall started to shy away from the daily violence once punk took hold of the counterculture youth. Drew McDowall quickly scrambled to form his own punk band in 1978 with his then wife, Rose McDowall, called The Poems. Shortly lived, the Poems released a single and various tracks but more importantly, the band allowed McDowall to network with other local musicians in Glasgow, such as Orange Juice, and allowed him to travel down to London thus forming friendships with Genesis P-Orridge, David Tibet and countless others, bringing Drew into the fold of the experimental revolution happening in the UK brought upon by Throbbing Gristle and executed by bands such as Psychic TV and Current 93.
During the 1980’s, McDowall found himself in the ranks of P-Orridge’s Psychic TV and collaborating with the mysterious duo comprised of former Throbbing Gristle creator Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson and the enigmatic John Balance who had been creating esoteric and progressive electronic music under the title of Coil. It was during his formative collaborations with Coil that McDowall saw himself shift from occasional contributor to austere full-time member of the arcane outfit. McDowall’s impact on the band’s sound was apparent as the releases transformed from their previous avant pop signature to a more complex and methodic electronic imprint accompanied by even more abstruse subject matter than previous years. McDowall would continue honing his compositional skills with Coil until the release of the band’s two most broad-minded albums, Astral Disaster and Musick to Play in the Dark.
Dais Records approached Drew to solidify his standing as a leading electronic musician with the recording of new material neatly wrapped up in his debut album entitled Collapse. Recorded in 2015 in Brooklyn, NY, McDowall’s synonymous modular synthesizer compositions are augmented by obtuse sampling cut-ups and contributions from Nicky Mao (Hiro Kone / Effi Briest) rounding out the lumbering sequential knot work that has become synonymous with McDowall and craft.
More information can be found here.
Nearly a year in the making, and including a cast of thirty musicians, J.R. Robinson delivers his towering third album as Wrekmeister Harmonies titled Night Of Your Ascension, set for release on November 13.
The cast of all-star players on Night of Your Ascension includes heavyweights Chip and Lee Buford from The Body, Alexander Hacke from Einstürzende Neubauten, members of Indian, Bloodiest, Anatomy of Habit, Twilight, and more, along with members of the indie and classical community such as Cooper Crain (Cave, Bitchin Bajas), Chris Brokaw (Come, Pullman), singer Marissa Nadler, harpist Mary Lattimore, composer Olivia Block, and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm.
Robinson has long been pre-occupied with society’s unwanted, observing the horror of their acts while trying to identify with their conflict. Night of Your Ascension is a commentary on our own fascination with bloodlust and our seemingly insatiable appetite for lurid depictions of depravity. The music on Night of Your Ascension is as hauntingly beautiful as it is brutal.
More information will soon be found here.
For synthesizers, sine tones, amplified violin/viola/cello, field recording and custom software.
Written/recorded/reconfigured/mixed July-October 2014, New Orleans.
Dedicated to Pitre's family: past, present and future.
Bayou Electric is the final installment in an unplanned trilogy, with Feel Free and Bridges making up the first and second installments in the series, respectfully. All three works share similar characteristics, compositional processes, alternate tuning schemes, instrumentation and a certain ethos that the composer views as cohesive whole. There is a progression toward refinement over the course of this trilogy, in the overall "sound" of the albums and in their dependence on other musicians to realize them (each less dependent than its predecessor). Bayou Electric, which contains a single, calming and cathartic composition (of the same title), brings this cycle to a gentle and unhurried finale.
The field recording utilized in Bayou Electric was captured on a late night in August, 2010 at the edge of Four Mile Bayou; Louisiana land that has been in Pitre's family since January 14, 1922. Upon listening to what he'd captured, Pitre become enthralled by the fabric of sound that the wildlife on this waterway had created. It evoked many feelings--such as how past generations of his relatives lived amongst these same sounds and walked the same land--creating a powerful connection and a sense of timelessness.
Pitre was set on finding a way to use this field recording in his music, but wanted to do so without simply adding it to a composition as just another layer of sound or by molding it (via 'processing') into something easier to work with. Instead, Pitre decided to start with the unaltered field recording and build the instrumentation around it, in a highly sympathetic manner, with the musical portion becoming accompaniment to the sounds of this remote land. This was the catalyst of Bayou Electric and of primary importance to him, as a way to connect to his Cajun heritage in his own artistic way.
More information can be found here.
I Abused Animal is Heather Leigh’s first proper solo studio album after solo releases on labels Golden Lab, Not Not Fun, Fag Tapes, Wish Image and Volcanic Tongue. Renowned as a fearless free improviser, I Abused Animal is a breakthrough work showcasing Heather Leigh’s songwriting prowess, foregrounding her stunning voice and her innovations for the pedal steel guitar. Warmly recorded in a secret location in the English countryside, the album transmutes the power of her captivating live performances to a studio setting, capturing her tactile playing in full clarity while making devastating use of volume and space. Heather Leigh explores themes of abuse, sexual instinct, vulnerability, memory, shadow, fantasy, cruelty and projection. I Abused Animal is a personal, idiosyncratic and deeply psychedelic work, ranging from almost Kousokuya-scale black blues through the kind of ethereal electro-ritual of Solstice-era Coil. At times the intimacy of the recordings makes you feel like she’s singing directly into your ear, playing just for you.
The daughter of a coal miner, weaving a trail from West Virginia to Texas and now residing in Scotland, Heather Leigh furthers the vast unexplored reaches of pedal steel guitar. She’s performed and released music since the 1990s as a solo artist and with a wide range of uncompromising collaborators from Peter Brötzmann to Jandek and has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Her playing is as physical as it is phantom, combining spontaneous compositions with a feel for the full interaction of flesh with hallucinatory power sources. With a rare combination of sensitivity and strength, Leigh’s steel mainlines sanctified slide guitar and deforms it using hypnotic tone-implosions, juggling walls of bleeding amp tone with choral vocal constructs and wrenching single note ascensions.
She’s played/performed/released music with Ash Castles On The Ghost Coast, Charalambides, Scorces (a duo with Christina Carter), the Dream/Aktion Unit (a group with Thurston Moore, Paul Flaherty, Chris Corsano and Matt Heyner), Taurpis Tula, Jailbreak (a duo with Chris Corsano) and Jandek, as well as collaborated with Peter Brötzmann, Lynda (as Termas), Stefan Jaworyzn (as Annihilating Light), Richard Youngs, Blood Stereo, MV & EE, Robbie Yeats of The Dead C, John Olson of Wolf Eyes, Smegma, Jutta Koether, Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Baer and many others.
More information can be found here.
Pinkcourtesyphone sends you a Sentimental Something from the depths of its obsessed heart. A sonic love note of smudged ink. Joined by the otherwordly Evelina Domnitch, friend and former cover model/vocalist on Description of Problem LP. On the central core "Tears of Modernism" Miss Domnitch wields her dark magic on Theremin, weaving a mournful kiss on the envelope from beyond.
PINKCOURTESYPHONE BIO:
Pinkcourtesyphone is a continuing project by Los Angeles-based sound artist Richard Chartier (b.1971).
He is considered one of the key figures in the current of reductionist sound art which has been termed both "microsound" and Neo-Modernist. Chartier's minimalist digital work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening itself.
Pinkcourtesyphone is a more emotional, dare one say musical side of his work. Pinkcourtesyphone is dark but not arch, with a slight hint of humor. Pinkcourtesyphone is amorphous, changing, and slipping in and out of consciousness. Pinkcourtesyphone operates like a syrup-y dream and strives to be both elegant and detached.
Pinkcourtesyphone's recent critically acclaimed work Description of Problem (LINE, US) features guests/collaborators: Cosey Fanni Tutti, Kid Congo Powers, AGF, William Basinski, and Evelina Domnitch.
Chartier's sound works/installations have been presented in galleries and museums internationally and he has performed his work live across Europe, Japan, Australia, and North America at digital art/electronic music festivals and exhibits. In 2000 he formed the recording label LINE and has since curated its continuing documentation of compositional and installation work by international sound artists/composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism.
More information can be found here.
Sunn O)))’s Stephen O'Malley delivers an incredible solo work for Demdike Stare’s DDS imprint, recorded together with French 35-piece improv orchestra ONCEIM.
The dark interpreter, Stephen O'Malley ov Sunn 0))), presents his towering debut orchestral composition Gruidés; commissioned by French 35-piece improv orchestra ONCEIM - l'Orchestre de Nouvelles Créations, Expérimentations et Improvisation Musicales - and released thru Demdike Stare's DDS label.
In early 2014 O'Malley was approached by pianist and composer Frédéric Blondy to write a work for the orchestra, comprised of exceptional musicians from the fields of contemporary, jazz, experimental, improvisation and classical. Understandably intimidated by the prospect, but encouraged to "just be punk rock about it," the preternaturally gifted composer has conceived a technically demanding - for the players at least - and richly rewarding longform drone piece intently focused on harmonic experimentation and overtone study. During its 35-minute lifespan, Gruidés requires the musicians to sustain pitches for several minutes (which is difficult enough for strings, and a real feat of endurance for woodwind), yielding a gloaming spectra of eliding dissonance rent in sliding tone clusters and lucent geometries punctuated by a similar whipcrack percussion as used in his Scott 0))) collaboration. It makes great use of the acoustic qualities of Saint Merry church, central Paris, as captured in the recording of IRCAM's Augustin Muller and mastered by Matt Colton with a detached spaciousness evocatively distilled in the cover art by Jean-Luc Verna. It’s an incredibly immersive piece that comes highly recommended if you’re into the work of Phill Niblock, Alvin Lucier, Ellen Fullman, Harley Gaber and, indeed, Sunn 0))).
Via Boomkat.
After a string of Natural Snow Buildings reissues, each more elaborate (um, longer) then the last, Ba Da Bing presents our first ever release of NEW material from the band. For a group known for its use of horror imagery and lyricism, perhaps the most shocking thing of all is that this album clocks in at just under 45 minutes. If there ever was an album that served as the proper entry point for Natural Snow Buildings, Terror's Horns is it.
It would be a stretch to call this Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte's pop record, for Terror's Horns continues in the duo's tradition of combining many layers into sometimes blissful, sometimes contemplative, often menacing conditions. Stringed instruments trill, percussion gongs, feedback hisses and vocals maintain near monotone as if in a cultish trance. The songs still pride themselves on a slow development, and the album's progression lends the impression of descending down through the depths, past hidden cavities and chambers that you will never unsee once experienced. Featuring new artwork by Gularte which pays tribute to the backwoods horror of massacres involving chainsaws.
More information can be found here.
The end of 2013 saw the reformation of one of the most revered and respected late '80s UK alternative bands, LOOP. The group, founded by Robert Hampson, hadn't played together since the early '90s, but got together to curate a night at the legendary All Tomorrow's Parties at Camber Sands. US dates followed in 2014 and they then got back in the studio to start recording. The result is three brand new releases coming over the next year which see the band return to their hugely unique and era-defining sound whilst sounding fresh and exciting.
The first release is Array 1, four tracks and 32 mins of haunting, aggressive, beautiful noise. "Precession," "Aphelion," "Coma" and "Radial" are the first songs to be heard from their recording session done in Sub Station Studios in Rosyth in Scotland with the current line-up of Robert Hampson (vocals/guitar), Hugo Morgan (bass), Wayne Maskell (drums) and Dan Boyd (guitar). With only an early version of "Precession" having had any previous outing (at a show at the Garage in London at the end of 2014), this is the very first new music from the band since their third album, 1990’s lost classic A Gilded Eternity.
The next tracks will be released in the autumn in keeping with Loop's previous habit of putting out music in batches: Hampson describes it as "one project, with the same concept, delivered in bulletins."
More information can be found here.
September 2015 will see the release of Thighpaulsandra's 7th full length album The Golden Communion, his first since 2006's The Lepore Extrusion. Well over a decade in the making, this is his debut for Editions Mego. It comprises 10 new songs, running well over two hours with individual pieces clocking in between 4 and 28 minutes. Featured musicians on the album include regular collaborators Martin Schellard and Sion Orgon, plus the odd guest/ghost from bands Thighpaulsandra has worked with in the past.
If you have heard any of Thighpaulsandra's previous albums, you will know that you'd best approach this record with no fixed set of expectations, because once again he changes genres and defies easy classification, sometimes more than once within one song. Drawing on his long-time background as a key member in such diverse groups as Coil, Spiritualized and Julian Cope's band (in each case arguably at the height of their creative prowess) and his work as producer and sound engineer for an even larger variety of customers, you'll find classical passages next to hard rock riffing, krauty experimental work-outs turning into super catchy, almost radio-friendly songs and more.
Many adjectives have been used to describe Thighpaulsandra’s work: epic, challenging, timeless, idiosyncratic, but certainly never predictable or boring.
Possibly his most rewarding album yet and a welcome and unusual entry, in the Mego catalogue, which will entertain and astonish listeners who are fond of having their mind severely altered by sound.
More information can be found here.
London-based experimentalist Luke Younger (a.k.a HELM) returns to PAN with Olympic Mess, a record born of destructive practice, competing desires, and troubled optimism.
Where his previous effort, 2014's The Hollow Organ, dealt in dense, distressed sonics, Olympic Mess is Younger responding to a period spent engaged with loop-based industrial music, dub techno, and balearic disco. These musical references, all of which can induce hypnotic states and feelings of euphoria, inform ten evocative aural landscapes which unfurl over the course of an hour and act almost as a counterpoint to the turmoil that spawned them.
"It's about exploring a perverse desire to pull the rug from under yourself, and the struggle to achieve a healthy equilibrium between one’s personal and artistic lives," Younger says. "Dealing with the problematic consequences of pushing your own limits, forming and dissolving relationships, transient lifestyles, physical and mental exhaustion, excess, and other kinds of personal chaos."
Crafted using an array of heavily processed samples, found sound and electroacoustics, personal conflict manifests in "I Exist In A Fog" and "Outerzone 2015," where visceral noise disintegrates into veiled, ambient strata. The disquieting crescendos of "The Evening In Reverse" and "Fluid Cloak" offer no such relief, while the title track and "Don’t Lick The Jacket" are mineral, multilayered abstractions twisting around a brittle pulse.
Following a period of extensive touring throughout the States and Europe, which included 20 dates in support of Danish punk group Iceage, Olympic Mess was recorded in London, New York and Berlin by Sean Ragon, Luke Younger and John Hannon.
The album is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, pressed on 140g 2xLP and CD. It features photography by Kim Thue and artwork by Bill Kouligas.
More information can be found here.
