News & Events
Jan St. Werner summons flux and fragmentation on Spectric Acid, building up the record's blistering, locomotive beat structures around the correlation of musical spectra. Their movements triggered in part by peaks in frequency envelopes, rhythms buckle and fracture according to a complex logic that slides past aural perception and harmonic resolution; a “phenomenological alchemy” (Rădulescu) takes shape among unsteady synthesizer whirls and stammering percussive phrases. The effect is deadly, paralytic; but listeners willing to surrender to Spectric Acid’s movement might find themselves taken to wider horizons of trance. Crucially, Werner turned also to the ceremonial rhythms of West Africa in his shaping of Spectric Acid’s bending timescales, and one can hear a clear impress of Vodoo drumming in the way rhythmic patterns cross converse, teeter off-beat, and rapidly redouble.
Though it shares with 2016’s Felder (Fiepblatter Catalogue #4) a desire to spill beyond metric linearity and notated time, Spectric Acid strays from that record’s breathy spatiality towards more pointed concerns with motion and the liberation of rhythm. In pursuit of this new direction, Werner borrows, on the one hand, from the structural techniques championed by the Spectralist school of the 1970s; breaking free of the tempered system through a focus on frequency and timbre, spectral composers like Gérard Grisey and Horațiu Rădulescu introduced sweeping, tectonic temporalities untroubled by notes and intervals, refining what Edgard Varèse before them had evangelized as a fragmentary, atomistic approach to form given to a “[constant] changing in shape, directions, and speed.”
A record both brute in force and exacting in its sensitivity to perception’s effective limits, Spectric Acid offers fresh glimpses of the deft compositional grasp Werner has developed across over two decades of practice, whether in Mouse on Mars and Microstoria or on his growing log of solo records. Treat it less as a document than a potent sonic distillate, to be taken on an empty stomach for full effect.
More information can be found here.
Michael Wells, historically of Greater Than One, GTO, Tricky Disco, Technohead, S.O.L.O., and many more incarnates has unveiled a bunch of new and previously unreleased recordings under the Dataflow Recordings umbrella.
four S.O.L.O. releases have been made available: American Echo's, Low Impact, Silencio (originally recorded in 2012), and Out Is In (originally released in 1999).
Check out the video for "Days Gone By" off American Echo's here.
a new Tricky Disco single, "I Wanna Be Loved" is now available with two older tunes on the Cosmic Tones EP
numerous older and new tracks are available by Technohead
as well as Tech House Collection by G.T.O.
These are all available digitally from the following places:
- iTunes: https://goo.gl/h2zqKn
- Amazon: https://goo.gl/MdQX4e
- Google Play: https://goo.gl/YUiHjr
- Beatport: https://goo.gl/kLzEUE
- 7digital: https://goo.gl/9jc72D
- Junodownload: https://goo.gl/fWcn98
Dataflow @ Beatport: https://goo.gl/GZLiJf
• Researched and executed by 31x artist, including Dean McPhee, Ian Humberstone, and Bridget Hayden.
• Thirty-one track twelve-inch vinyl and download code.
• Fourty page A5 pamphlet includes plantlore and illustrations from artists and herbal medicine section by herbalist Zoe Naylor.
• Twenty eight page pocket A6 booklet Oak, Fern and Daisy: ‘The Folklore, Culture and Magic of the Plant Kingdom’ By Jez Winship.
• Link to the 16mm film 'Pattern of Light' by Mary and David
• All contents housed within a unique plant relief printed hand numbered manilla sleeve
• Contains seed envelope harvested by FT group.
Having been entranced by both Andrew Chalk’s work with MIRROR (and back to his solo works as FERIAL CONFINE, plus multiple collaborations with David Jackman, The New Blockaders, Daisuke Suzuki, etc ) and Timo van Luijk (as Af Ursin, In Camera, La Poupée Vivante, and collaborations with Kris Vanderstraeten and others) for many years, I was naturally intrigued to hear about and hear their duo project ELODIE. The project formed in 2010, and has spanned eleven beautiful albums already, to date.
Vieux Silence for Ideologic Organ is their first release presented outside of their own record publishing nook, Faraway Press & La Scie Dorée. However this is not the first encounter between Ideologic Organ & ELODIE: they performed at a night in London I curated in February 2012, alongside Jessika Kenney & Eyvind Kang. Elodie's performance was among the most delicately engaging and savant I have witnessed… so very quiet, with snow falling in London outside Cafe Oto's windows, the audience palpably entered a high intensity listening focus. The impression of this vivid memory is striking, considering how spare each of the individual elements present that night were.
Vieux Silence, and ELODIE in general, provoke a visual imagination in an instant, perhaps filtered through aged watercolour, tape grain, antique lenses, forgotten levels of listening and observational patience. On this gorgeous album, Chalk & van Luijk also collaborate with piano, pedal steel and clarinet (played by Tom James Scott, Daniel Morris and Jean-Noel Rebilly, respectively). Each detail carefully considered and colouring step by step, like an impressionist watercolour.
Out September 8th on Ideologic Organ.
Hood Faire are raising funds to release solo electric guitarist Dean McPhee's third full length album, a collection of free-flowing solo electric guitar instrumentals which combine fluid fingerpicked melodies with atmospheric drones and hypnotic loops.
"Four Stones" brings together remastered versions of three tracks that were only previously available on limited edition tape compilations on the Folklore Tapes label (which are now sold out) along with two new pieces "Dance Macabre" and the epic 14 minute "Four Stones" which sees Dean using a new kick drum pedal to add a percussive undercurrent to his music.
To read a biography and some reviews of Dean's previous albums click here.
Funds pledged will be spent on pressing 500 records. Backers will be kept up to date with previews of the album art as it is finished and with the progress of the vinyl pressing, as well as upcoming launch gig dates and documentation of any live gigs or other events.
After backers have received their copies the finished album will be given a wider release and will be distributed by Cargo Records
Risks and challenges
The tracks are already recorded and mastered and are waiting to be sent to be pressed. The aim is to have the album ready to ship by November.
There are no major issues anticipated except for the possibility of delays at the pressing plant. This risk has been managed by using Vinyl Factory who have an excellent reputation for quality control.
Learn about accountability on Kickstarter
IN THE SUMMER OF 2016 BEN FROST LANDED IN CHICAGO TO WORK WITH STEVE ALBINI. OVER TWO WEEKS - VAST SYSTEMS; UNSTABLE, OVERLOADED, AND ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE - WERE FED INTO AN ARRAY OF AMPLIFIERS INSIDE A CAVERNOUS STUDIO. SHAPES WERE FORMED, SPEAKERS WERE TORN. BEHIND THE GLASS ALBINI COMMITTED LIVE PERFORMANCES TO TAPE; SLASHING AT THEM INTERMITTENTLY WITH A RAZORBLADE. MORE THAN 2 HOURS OF MUSIC WAS RECORDED.
THE THRESHOLD OF FAITH EP IS THE FIRST RELEASE OF MUSIC FROM THOSE SESSIONS.
More information can be found here.
Floating on a plume of pure shoegaze, Lignin Poise conjures nature, specifically the waters and forests of the Cascadia bioregion, as ecstatic reverie. It is a work of deliberate renewal in a time of global tumult. A golden oasis of deep memory open to all seekers; hallucinogenic, like stumbling into one of the verdant, highly-oxygenated upper canyons of the Columbia River Gorge on a late spring morning, soaking in the warm humidity and cool mist.
After the sold-out cassette release of Stanza / Stanza II on Beacon Sound/Baro in 2015, and last year's The Benoit Pioulard Listening Matter on Kranky, Seattle's Thomas Meluch returns with a brand new Benoit Pioulard album of ambient bliss.
Out September 8th on Beacon Sound.
French artist Colleen is fearless in her willingness to explore new sounds and new ways of creating music as a solo performer. On her new album A Flame My Love, A Frequency she introduces the most drastic change to her music since she began singing on her fourth album. A chance encounter with a Critter and Guitari synthesizer at King Britt’s Philadelphia studio on the Captain Of None album tour cracked the compositional model wide open. Colleen bought a Critter and Guitari Pocket Piano with the aim to use it through a newly-acquired Moog filter pedal to create new and interesting rhythms to accompany her voice and viola da gamba. But it turned out the sounds of this viola and rhythm combination was not what she was looking for, so in typical Colleen fashion, she set the viola da gamba aside altogether and picked up an additional Critter and Guitari synth, the Septavox, dug out her her trusted Moog delay and dove right in.
Words used to describe her muse Arthur Russell are equally applicable to Colleen (multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott). Schott's compositions can be in turn pop or experimental, vocal or instrumental, and acoustic or electronic. She has drawn on baroque sounds of a classical instrument using the most modern pedals and looping techniques. Shape shifting as she does, the pieces are always distinctly her strong and utterly unique musical voice. A constant across Colleen's albums are delicate extended melodies, minutely detailed soundscapes, and explorative unbounded compositions. Colleen's work is a direct result of her core belief that in order to keep growing as an artist, you need to continue to be willing to experiment and to embrace drastic changes.
The music of A Flame… is the closest Colleen has come to a concept album, a reflection upon one year in her life that began in the Autumn of 2015. The album‘s central theme is the inescapable fact that life and death always walk hand in hand. Schott is an avid bird watcher and her home and studio on the coast of Spain allow for frequent trips out into the wilds. As any naturalist knows, extreme beauty and vitality go hand in hand with brutality. This symbiosis was made more personal when, on the way back from visiting a very ill relative in France, she decided to spend the night in her former home of Paris in order to take her viola bow for repair at a luthier in the Republique area. It was late afternoon and she remembers the beauty of Paris and people sitting and enjoying the cafés. That was November 13th and a mere 4 hours later these very same cafés were the scene of utter terror and death.
A few weeks after the events, Colleen started composing the songs that make up the album. She recorded each song live with minimal edits and vocals were recorded without overdubs, creating a symbiosis between the machine and the performer that mirrors the album’s core concept. The personal narrative of the year in question yields a more vulnerable sound than any previous recordings by Colleen. "Separating" is an emotional response to being overwhelmed by the inevitability of death. Feelings of fear are never far from feelings of joy as they are in "Winter Dawn" with its propulsive thump and ominous lyrics "I came home with a fistful of fear," that manage to shift towards hope with "Love alone is your home." Joy and hope are strongly present throughout the album, the catalyst that lifts us out of the darkness as inevitably as night to day. We are shown the wonderment of "Another World," and through the metaphors of light, shown joy as in the title track. A flame my love, a frequency is an album that finds optimism in the face of tribulation, a meditation on humanity’s ability to prevail. It is a beautiful, complex album by a singular and remarkable musician.
More information can be found here.
It's been nearly 18 years since the first Brown Acid Caveat was issued to a million hippies in a field at the first Woodstock Festival. In these dark, more-knowing times, The Tear Garden felt it was the perfect moment to mark their 30th Anniversary with a similar warning , especially as their first album back in 1987 bore the declaration, "We Will Pour Our Jars in Reservoirs" on the cover.
In fact , we were joking. Despite the madness you may perceive all around you right now, those jars were stashed on the highest shelf of a kitchen cupboard and the key was tossed into the ocean. Our sole wish is to introduce beauty to the medieval landscape we appear to be trapped in right now.There will be no brown paint splashed around. Beauty survives, even underneath the ugliest, heaviest rock.
This is The tear Garden's 8th record and is testimony to an enduring friendship that spans the aforementioned ocean. After 8 years, The Tear Garden (the psychedelic/experimental/electronic project of Edward Ka-Spel of The Legendary Pink Dots & cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy) return with The Brown Acid Caveat, the culmination of the duo's 31 years of working together. Psychedelic electronic melancholia , fearless experimentation & improvisation combine to take the intrepid listener on a mesmerizing voyage of the mind. Feel the Love. Don't touch the brown acid.
Out July 7th on Metropolis.
