Thomas Carnacki is the pseudonym of Berkeley's Gregory Scharpen who can be found lurking around the theater departments of various troupes as a sound designer and creative foil. On occasion, he's also been a member of the live ensemble for irr. app. (ext.) and has even taken the stage during a couple of Nurse With Wound gigs. Far Voyage From A Placid Island collects four of the compositions that Scharpen has created for stage in collaboration with a handful of eccentric Bay Area musicians. The first piece finds Scharpen working with Jesse Quattro for massing of breathy aerations, deep bellowings, and subterranean creakings above a sustained dark timbral hum. At first this piece has all of the acoustic richness of the brilliant Andrew Chalk / Jonathan Coleclough record Sumac bundled with horror film grimness and hymnal vocals from Quattro swathed in reverb. Scharpen's collaboration with Jesse Burson (who is the dapper gentleman from Big City Orchestra) is a much more cacophonous affair collaged from slurps and creaks that sounds like a sucking chest would above chiming bells and shards of glass. Jon Brumit (who you may remember from his exceptional album of recordings from things found at the SF landfill) and Scharpen bring crackling vinyl from 78s (you know how much we LOVE that!!!) to wintery ambience and eerie blurts from distant horns. The final track is a solo work, again featuring that unnerving horn sounds in the distance with cyclical metallic drones that bring Nurse With Wound's Homotopy To Marie to mind; a more accurate comparison would be Metgumbnerbone, but who the hell has heard of them? Very well done indeed!
No Reserve is a limited run release of a radio broadcast care of KALX in Berkeley from the eccentric Thomas Carnacki, whose ooze-riddled sound collages are buttressed by the likes of Gregory Hagan (Common Eider King Eider), Jim Kaiser (NFOrchest, etc.), and Jesse Burson (Big City Orchestra). Carnacki's live performances are notoriously last-minute affairs with the ringmaster collecting his resourceful motley crew of sullen noise makers a few days before any given performance, almost always resulting in spontaneous madness of illogical sounds and colliding electro-acoustics. Strangely, the gigs almost always work wonderfully, and such is the case for this KALX transmission.
At the onset, the quartet finds themselves in a claustrophobic space, with metallic exhalations and looping scrapes reflecting all of the optimism of a bombed-out bunker. Gritty pulsations of electronics build out of residual drones, oscillating two and fro, with a thick clatter of that bunker-powered reverb settling at the bottom of the layering of sounds. Hagan's violin, which adds to those sadder-than-sad moods to Common Eider King Eider, creeps to the foreground at various intervals, amidst the cooing electronics, the crumblings of sand, rock, and debris, and the funereal tolls from a resonant bell. Think early HNAS, Cranioclast, and Nurse With Wound, and you'll be close to the unsettled atmospherics of Mr. Carnacki and his so-called Anti-Memorial Orchestra and Choir.
As described by the eloquent Thomas Carnacki, Oar Of Panmuphle is the 'long-threatened' full album for Mr. Carnacki - the pseudonym of sound designer and audio wrangler Gregory Scharpen who has worked with the likes of irr. app. (ext.) and Nurse With Wound for both projects' live presentations. Not surprisingly, his sensibility of off-kilter collage-based composition is not too far from either irr. app. (ext.) or NWW; but after a couple of teasing short-program discs, it's quite nice to witness a fully formed Carnacki presenting slow-motion, carnivalesque incantations of ectoplasmic horror spiced up with a few strange interludes of comedic appropriation. Clattering machines glide into a murky cut-up of organ-grinding Victoriana muffled by plenty of reverb and shadow to begin the album, leading into a similarly saturated loop from a Screaming Jay Hawkins track, with disembodied whispers, slapstick sound effects, and mechanical howls bounding maniacally alongside the purloined rhythm. With the wind-up springs and wooden percolation of noises on "Bedtime Story For The Most Fragrant Room In The Ward," Carnacki sets a perfectly spooky mood of mechanical toys coming to life and setting forth on an evil plot to revolt against their human creators, before snapping to another lifted sound segment - this time from Jon Ronson talking about his journalistic investigations into psychic assassins. The rest of the album drifts eerily with shapeless clouds of darkened thought with flourishes that hint at a hauntological semi-musicality but always slanted toward the odd and the surreal. Fans of Andrew Liles, irr. app. (ext.), and Nurse With Wound would be well served to check this album out.
Greg Scharpen is an artist who's never without a project at hand. While the bulk of his artistic career has been spent in the sound design realm of East Bay theater and dance troupes, he also dons the Thomas Carnacki pseudonym to conduct various exercises in audio surrealism. Over the years, Scharpen has been a noted contributor to the irr.app.(ext.) live presentations and has even made appearances in the Nurse With Wound's rotating cast. These two figureheads of paratactic collage and bizarro-world atmospherics loom large in the audio vocabulary of Mr. Scharpen, and that of course is a very good thing! The Disappearance Of This Terrible Spool is just the second release by Carnacki / Scharpen, following the 2006 album Far Voyage From A Placid Island. Thus it begins with deep swells of thick reverberations that ascend towards a clatter of indeterminant gizmos, only to collapse into a maudlin half-melody of vibrato drone and lost-at-sea undulation. Think Nurse With Wound circa Shipwreck Radio, and you would not be all that far off. The somber tone of this first track continues through the second, due in part to the central role of a mournful violin performed by Gregory Hagan also of Common Eider, King Eider. The final two tracks embrace the disjointed, disembodied, discombobulated cut-n-paste collage techniques with spluttering electronics and truncated gaspings for air - again NWW, irr.app.(ext.) or HNAS comes to mind. A tad brief at 24 minutes, but not a minute is wasted within!
Quite the tease that Thomas Carnacki, giving us only five copies of this mini-opus for nightmarish collage before declaring it out of print. 40 of these were produced in conjunction with a rare daytime performance at Amoeba Records in Berkeley for the suitably nocturnal Carnacki. Spooky drones culled from electrical hums and jagged artifacts get matched with elongated bowed-metals and haunted violin tones at the beginning of this 20 minute piece, gradually deflating into catacomb-like drips and clanking bells that later get coupled with subterranean moanings and bellowings coming to a ghastly conclusions of varispeed tape machinations churning over strange motorized sounds and elliptical looped patterns. The sonic references to Nurse With Wound, Andrew Liles, and irr.app.(ext.) are still quite evident on these recordings, although the cabal working for, with, under Carnacki (aka Gregory Scharpen who is Mr. Carnacki's doppleganger, Jim Kaiser of NF Orchest & French Radio, and Gregory Hagan of Common Eider King Eider) are building a stronger and stronger case for their own aesthetic in the wide-open field of post-surrealist / post-industrial sound design, which is always haunted and often very compelling. Like we said, super limited - and we only got 5 copies.
In an interview for Re/Search sometime in the early '80s, J.G. Ballard quipped that San Francisco must have the highest population of deviants with college degrees. Back then, the Bay Area did boast a sizable contingent of acid-damaged drop-outs, sexpot performance artists, transgendered punks, mischievous hucksters, members of Caroliner, and the unclassifiables, all flying their freak flags, with those numbers gradually dwindling, relocating, and/or aging over the ensuing decades. The weirdos and the degenerate artists still exist; yes, they do! But San Francisco should be a little ashamed that most of them live in the East Bay. Berkeley denizen Gregory Scharpen is one such character, who sometimes goes by the pseudonym Thomas Carnacki and sometimes is the absurdist bandleader for various minstrels operating under a banner of the same name, that being Thomas Carnacki. A gnomish / wizardly type with an old-growth beard and extraneous tentacles dipped with ectoplasm, Scharpen / Carnacki is a larger-than-life character who toils in film, theatre and sound design, with his expertise finding sympathetic ears and fingers in irr. app. (ext.) and Nurse With Wound.
This split release marks the first slab of vinyl for Carnacki, and finds him / them working in parallel with the equally obtuse but less flamboyant outfit Vulcanus 68. The Carnacki ensemble for this 20 minute track includes stalwarts Jesse Burson and Gregory Hagan (the latter also being in Common Eider, King Eider) and occasionalists Sheila Bosco and Cheryl E. Leonard. What these five are doing in a room is really anybody's guess. Huffing glue and fumbling with Tibetan bowls? Channeling the spirits of grizzled thugs and wrestling with those ghosts? Ripping apart a piano and putting the whole thing back together all wrong? All of these could be the method acting principles behind these nocturnal collages and strange actions of slow-moving events. Oakland's Vulcanus 68 (nee Jared Blum and Dominic Cramp) dial in something not too dissimilar to Homotopy To Marie, with plenty of gurgling noises, radiophonic allusions, backmasked gestures, and hauntologically challenged puffs of smoke. These too could have originated from similarly liver-destroying acts of sound immolation as on the Carnacki side of things. Yeah, this really could have been a United Dairies release circa 1983. Limited to 250 copies and comes with a download.
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To say this record is the most amazing thing I have ever heard wouldn't be all that far from the mark. But at the same time it would be fairly accurate to say that this record is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.
This French duo is definitely metal, definitely on the black side of metal; raspy evil vocals, crazy leads, pounding programmed drums, but with healthy doses of electronics, crazy sound effects, some bizarre lounge style vocals, and some truly questionable cover songs. The record starts off with a fairly straight cover of Ozzy's 'Bark at the Moon', albeit with weird electronic warbles and silly over the top vocals. But then it gets really weird. They tackle the eighties classic 'Maniac' (the theme from Flashdance) and it's nothing short of baffling. So baffling in fact, that I can't even explain it. Then comes a cover of the fm radio classic 'Baker Street' by Gerry Rafferty, the infamous sax melody played by blazing electric guitars. So stupid , but so so great. Seriously. And to finish it all up, they do a truly inspired version of Pantera's 'Fucking Hostile', Phil Anselmo's shouted '1,2,3,4,' segues into a calypso cabaret that has to be heard to be believed, with a lisping chorus '....definitlely hostile...'. Andee recommends this. Above all other things on this weeks list. Everytime we play this in the store, someone laughs hysterically, someone looks perplexed, and someone buys it. You could be one of those people. Or probably all of those people.
Buy it.
In 1979, Nigel Ayers and Caroline K began recording as Nocturnal Emissions, a project then that was spurned by the nascent Industrial Culture of Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, and SPK. Their early recordings - Tissue Of Lies and Drowning In A Sea Of Bliss especially - are classic recordings of information overload aesthetics through abrasive drum machines, electronic noise, tape psychosis, and aggressive sequencing. At the same time, the two began Sterile Records as a means to put out their own recordings and those of likeminded malcontents (i.e. Lustmord, MB, Controlled Bleeding, Konstruktivits, etc.). By the early '90s, Caroline left Nocturnal Emissions to Ayers and disappeared from the public eye; but she did manage one solo record in Now Wait For Last Year.
By the time that Caroline recorded this album, Nocturnal Emissions had grown disenchanted with Industrial Culture, especially all of the blood and horror from the requisite medical imagery that went hand in hand with the punishing electronics. At the same time, Sterile Records had transformed into Earthly Delights promoting an agenda of post-Eno driftscaping. Now Wait For Last Year was actually the first lp to land on Earthly Delights, standing as a fantastic and underappreciated swath of industrially tainted ambience.
Sodden loops of melancholic dronings open the album which all spiral into a 20 minute mantra of murky haze reminiscent of some of the Zoviet France recordings from around the same time period (Mohnomische, in particular), furthered along by a lurching set of mechanical rhythms buried deep in the background. This is followed by a nocturne synthesized from medieval chants and percussion not unlike, the earliest Dead Can Dance or the Fairlight driven works of Coil. The dirge-paced synth number Chearth is more in keeping with John Carpenter score (although certainly less bombastic). Klanggalerie had acquired three bonus tracks from Caroline's estate (she died in 2008), featuring her in more of a Suspiria meets Richard Pinhas vein of mood engineering.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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A brand new cd-r version of the 1999 lp from these demented SF old timey, dayglo, detuned, industrial post bluegrass weirdos...
There was a time a few years back, that if you lived in San Francisco, you could stumble into a bar, or a club, and find yourself transported to some fucked up and freaked out otherworld, an eye popping blacklight, dayglo world of huge cardboard buildings, and weird costumed, big headed characters, a musical world, set to the strains of some sort of demented detuned, industrial post bluegrass, a noise drenched 1800's hoedown, all detuned banjos, screeching violins, wheezing organs, scattered percussive splatter, little bursts of frantic bluegrass with twisted falsetto vocals, set amidst, thick streaks of undulating drones, and shards of crumbling noise, it was a bit like a stage production of Oklahoma, as performed by members of Faxed Head, stumbling and demented and confusional, a massive crumbling sprawl of sonic whatthefuck for sure.
In keeping with their confusional / obscurist approach, Caroliner took on a different name for every record. The Sabre Waving Saracen Wall originally released on vinyl in 1992, found the band christened Caroliner Rainbow Fingers Of The Underground & Their Breakable Bones, and was yet another document of the group's fractured faux historical sonic explorations, equal parts avant rock prankery, pure demented songsmithery, and an unhealthy interest in musics of the past, not to mention a visual aesthetic that fell somewhere between special ed kindergarten and drug addled Keith Haring, all blobby shapes and retina burning patterns, geometric constructions, and of course gallons of dayglo paint. The perfect backdrop for the group's unhinged pageantry. On record, it plays out like some unearthed wax cylinder, a recording of some sort of educational radio play, about the old west, but translated into some alien language, the soundtrack a demented deconstructed noise drenched country / folk, complete with random sound effects, strange voices, and what sounds like a small chamber ensemble wrestling with a bluegrass band, as the various players begin to lose brain function, resulting in a gloriously stumbling, lurching soundtrack, that starts out weird, and only manages to get weirder.
Not sure why suddenly this reissue popped up, but Grux from Caroliner just popped in with a stack, packaged in that distinctly Caroliner fashion, all strange folded multi color papers, glued and photocopied, the sort of packaging that once you open, you can never reassemble, which when you think about it, suits the group's sound to a 'T'. Not necessarily limited, but they are pretty fancy and handmade, so when we run out, it might take us a little while to get more...
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Originally released in a run of just 100 copies, Black Swallow & Other Songs is yet another gorgeous bit of minimal abstract ambient folk experimentation from this prolific musician. We've reviewed several of his releases under the name A Broken Consort, as well as his fantastic Landings record on Type, but that's only the tip of the iceberg, an iceberg consisting of multiple releases, all amazing, meticulously composed, recorded and packaged, each a musical love letter to his wife who passed away in 2004, thus each recording, besides being sonically compelling, carries serious emotional weight, emotion and energy that seeps into the sounds, only making them sound that much more personal and intense.
Black Swallow & Other Songs is a songsuite of dark wistful dronefolk, all spidery tendrils of melancholy melody and the droning buzz of violins and other bowed instruments. Long stretches of muted buzz underpin spaced out slow motion ragas, the vibe darkly contemplative, the arrangements spacious and spare. Lush garlands of dark hues piano are draped over haunting metallic shimmer, female voices surface here and there. The guitars are introspective and plaintive, mediations on loss and loneliness, miniature soundtracks to lives and loves gone but not forgotten. The sound evokes grey skies, wide expanses of rolling hills, skeletal branches on trees having shed all their leaves, a wintery twilight, lit by flickering firelight, these sounds, warm and hopeful, holding off the chill and the ever encroaching darkness. So so lovely.
LIMITED TO 700 COPIES!!!
Celestial Sea is the unlikely collaboration between God Is Myth head honcho Todd Paulson, who is also responsible for Dormant, reviewed elsewhere on the aQ site, and Andrew Curtis-Brignell, of UK black metal one man band Caina. Not unlikely because of the folks involved, it's not hard to draw lines connecting Caina Dormant and God Is Myth, but more for the sound they produce. An epic cinematic post rock more influenced by folks like Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, Isis and Mono than any black metal or even metal in particular.
Granted the crossover between metal and post rock is pretty common these days with folks on both sides of the sonic divide borrowing freely from the folks opposite. And we're never ones to complain, we love both sounds, pummeling metallic crunch, and loping mathy instrumental jams, and the two together, well, you know where we stand.
So here we Have Celestial Sea, a (perhaps) one off, that finds the duo getting super spacey for the opening 5 minutes, simple minor key guitar figures unfurling over long drawn out drones, ratcheting up the tension, creating a brooding post rock ambience, that to be honest, we'd be happy to hear continue for the length of the whole record.
Instead, the band launch into the first proper song, soaring crystalline chords, breathless vocals, simple drumming, all swept up in a shimmering swell, building to a crescendo that instead of introducing crushing downtuned riffage, offers up some super proggy organs, but only for a moment, a few seconds later, the guitars drop, and the band is soaring majestically, and heavily through some epic major key chords, the drumming wilder and more chaotic, before blissing back out soon after.
Track three, "William Bentley's Grave" is another slow burner, with a definite prog vibe, lots of glistening shimmer, finally exploding in another epic climax, not crushing or heavy, just expansive and cathartic.
The closer, "Deep Inside The Cold" is the darkest of the bunch, and the most overtly heavy, sounding a bit like Opeth or Katatonia but more mathy and introspective. The guitars thick, ringing out, long passages of droning looped riffage, and finally the record's big payoff, high end guitars spiraling heavenward, the drums double time, a serious final blowout.
Definitely for fans of rock both post and math, and of course metalheads not averse to some sonic subtlety and lots of pretty pretty melody
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, housed in a plain white sleeve with a paste on cover and a printed insert.
We've been playing catch up on cd-r's lately. We order a bunch, because they're so limited and we won't be able to order more later, but then we end up with way too much stuff to review so lots of those cd-r's end up sitting around for a while. Which is a bummer, but does mean a lucky few of you get a chance to nab some of these loooooong out of print cd-r gems well after the fact.
Take this one, limited to only 50 copies! Of which we had 10 or 12, and now have about 8. This baby has been out of print for over a year! And it's too bad too, cuz this is a slow burning doozy. Languorous sun baked electric guitar, wrapped in wah and delay, a little distortion, the notes and chords allowed to drift and shimmer. Two epic half hours of slow motion psych drift, lazy and blown out, blissy and druggy, the opening track is a lysergic sprawl that eventually builds to full on chaotic cacophony, so in the red, it nearly fried the speakers here. The second track is just as speaker punishing but instead of whit noise skree, it's long billowy stretches of low end buzz, and distorted drone, peppered with brief sprawls of squealing feedback and glitched out amp damage. Killer stuff. Too bad we only have 8 copies. You have been warned.
Super limited one sided live lp from these psychedelic headz. One sidelong blown out dub drenched psych rock heavy freakout, a dense layer of blurred buzz and sprawled static riffage oozes into thick billowing clouds, over which the drummer lays down a heavy groove, spare but seriously powerful, the instrumental backdrop isn't so much riff and rhythm as it is heavy swirls of sound, pulsing and driving. We weren't actually expecting vocals, but they bubble to the surface, heavily effected, doused in delay and reverb an echo, occasionally dubbed like crazy, the last word of a line spend spinning into the murk, it seems like an obvious homage to Japanese psychedelic heavies Les Rallizes Denudes, this jam has the same sort of loose feel, the vocals weirdly feral and abstract, all of the various sounds gradually seeming to blur into one heaving wall of churning psych, total drugged out zoner bliss, and as the track/side progresses, the band seem to gradually crank the sound, louder, faster, more frantic, everything cranked, even the vocals, wilder and more maniacal, all building to a frenzied final freakout. Super rad. Obviously fans of Burnt Hills, Carlton Melton, White Hills, The Heads, and all of those sort of psych combos will flip for this. Housed in an old school black and white bootleg style paste on sleeve, with a photocopied insert. And super limited, as in LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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European import hand delivered by the charming Mr. Chadbourne hisself. Duets with Derek Bailey, Han Bennink, Charles Tyler, Volcmar Verkerk, and John Zorn.
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Eugene brought these in himself last week. Here he teams up with the original Mothers of Invention drummer in a tribute to Captain Beefheart.
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Circa-1980 recordings from this fun pair. On Derek Bailey's improv label.
ATTENTION FINNISH ROCK OBSESSIVES!!! It's time for another strange missive from the Finnish combo known as Chainsmoker, a band created from the bits and pieces of Finnish legends Sweetheart. But where Sweetheart were a corrosive guitar based rock band, Chainsmoker are more of a dramatic, sort of gothic new wave band. If these guys were living in NY and going to all the right parties, getting remixed by DFA, partying with Fischerspooner, they'd be huge. Touring with the Scissor Sisters and screwing Lindsay Lohan and Ashley Simpson. But alas, they are marooned far away from the glitzy nightclubs and drugged out dancefloor kids who would be dancing and fucking and fighting the nights away to their spacey new wave techno groove rock. But there's more to it than that, these guys are Finnish after all, so it goes without saying that they have a bit of a twisted take. They incorporate morose vocals, saxophone, swirling outer space FX, Nick Cave like dramatic crooning, strummy acoustic guitars, cinematic synths, fuzz guitar, full on casiocore freakouts and pretty much anything else they can think of into their jet set, cocaine party, private jet, Studio 54, faux fur, dead of winter, NYC via Paris via Finland, Fischerspooner and Pet shop Boys in a back alley knife fight dance party!
We often talk about the heaviest, the fastest, the loudest, and the most fucked-up musics, as we cram more and more letters into the word doom to express how much we love this record or that. Yet when it comes to the minimalist beatitudes crafted by the British drone engineer Andrew Chalk, our hyperbole fails us. With a humility and a reclusive demeanor, Chalk's work stands as an elegant document of what you can do when striving for anything excessive.
For years, Chalk has impressed upon us that few artists have been able to craft something as simple as a drone with such a pristine balance between impressionistic abstraction and phenomenological precision. Starting out the mid-80s recording toxic noises under the moniker Feral Confine, Chalk joined David Jackman in the seminal project Organum for a couple of melancholic recordings of acoustic minimalism. Shortly thereafter, he founded Ora with Darren Tate and Colin Potter; and more recently, Chalk and Christoph Heemann established Mirror. Nowadays, Chalk is venturing out on his own to remarkable success after a couple of beautiful recordings that he's self-released on Faraway Press. Blue Eyes Of The March is the third cd from Chalk's own label, and has been entirely crafted from piano. Given the dreamy soft-focus that Chalk has applied to the instrument, there's very little of the piano's instantly recognizable hammered attack that remains. It's as if he stretched all of the piano's strings across the bow of a Victorian cruise ship, deliberately sank it, and then recorded the sounds deep in the blackened sea off the northern coast of England. Haunted, subaquatic, and timeless, Chalk's swirling sounds spiral effortlessly into a ghostly antiquity whose references may be found in the equally elegant re-constructions of Bartok and Satie by Akira Rabelais on Eisoptrophobia, but done through analogue and not digital processes. As with his previous recordings, Chalk has spared no expense with the packaging, offering a stunning duo-toned silkscreen design upon shimmering silver paper.
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Andrew Chalk's haunting drones (from his work with Organum and Jonathan Coleclough) have become favorites here at Aquarius. And this collection of his earliest recordings from the late '80s is no exception. The influence that Brian Eno's ambient work had upon Chalk becomes apparent with the emergence of a few fragile arrangements for piano and decidedly synthetic spacey keyboard sounds. But even at this stage in Chalk's development, his talent at constructing textural collages of bowed metal and hazy tonal reverberations is as solid here as on his recent recordings. This disc includes contributions from David Jackman (Organum) on one track and a remix from Christoph Heemann. Highly recommended.
Easily, one of the most important reissues of 2006, East Of The Sun available again though Andrew Chalk's own Faraway Press, complete with breathtakingly resplendent packaging: a silkscreened and embossed printing. These recordings originally came out in 1994 as a cassette, released through Ora's in-house label, Ora being an early collective that revolved around Chalk, Colin Potter, and Darren Tate with occasional assistance from Jonathan Coleclough, mnortham, Lol Coxhill, and a handful of like-minded British drone enthusiasts. A few years later, the Italian label Hic Sunt Leones convinced Chalk to reissue the cassette in digital form. That CD version of East Of The Sun compressed the two sides of the cassette into a single 50 minute piece and was flushed out with some complementary dronescaping. Chalk was never happy with the Hic Sunt Leones version; and thus his reissue of the album returns to the original version found on the cassette, now gloriously remastered in its entirety. For those persnickety types, the 17 minutes or so which concluded the Hic Sunt Leones version is not here; but that is a minor loss compared to the pinnacle of drone-based minimalism found here.
Sure, Eno's ambient records On Land and Thursday Afternoon were milestones in the realm of ambient music, setting an impressionist context through which any number of the images, thoughts, and ideals could be imagined; but that strategy was perfected by Andrew Chalk on a couple of records. There was his ephemeral album Sumac in collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough, there was the first Mirror album Eye Of The Storm, and there's East Of The Sun. Very dark without becoming unbearably cold, East Of The Sun is a constant bloom of nocturnal frequencies, whose origins may be thoroughly blurred bass guitar or possibly some resonant artifact from Chalk's acoustic work in Organum. Regardless, the resultant drones drift with no beginning and no end, merely rippling, reflecting, and turning upon themselves in a perpetual, very slow motion turbulence. Leaves tumbling in autumnal twilight. Fog spilling over coastal hills. Moonlight tickling the agitated surface of a pond. Any of these organic references for meditation on simplicity to reach the sublime and the profound could easily apply to Chalk's East Of The Sun. Not just recommended, this is required listening.
Another stunning album from British composer Andrew Chalk. While our man started out smashing acoustic noise through bowed cymbal skree and wild tape machinations in the mid '80s through his Broken Flag alias Ferial Confine, Chalk quickly settled down into the heavy gravity of the drone supreme. The albums that followed in the Ora / Mirror axis and his solo work conjured some of the finest drone mesmerism that we've ever heard. Oh, and we've heard a lot of dronemuzik! Chalk conjures sounds that are shimmering yet lucid, controlled yet open to all possible movements, occasionally dark yet always beautifully sublime. And now, after some 20 years of working with long-form composition, his love affair with the drone seems to be waning. In its place is a restrained impressionism for subtle melodies from a bleary piano, soft filigree of shadowy organs, and the occasional smeary echo of burbling cosmic-synth drift, as can be heard on the elegant fragmentation of albums like Violins By Night, Ghost Of Nakhodka, and The Cable House. Chalk continues that trend on Forty-Nine Views In Rhapsodies' Wave Serene in which he stitches 49 separate miniatures of delicate ambient passages into what could be seen as Andrew Chalk's take on Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Chalk's flickered melodies and soft focus ambience have the rich gold hues and nitrous oxide weightlessness found on Aphex Twin's classic, but Chalk's sounds express none of the midi-fired digitality or sequenced precision. Instead, Chalk's subtle gestures are clearly wrought by human hands, molded through arcane means, and slipping through his cottage industry in a moss-encrusted part of England. Satie and Eno also cozy up nicely to these Forty-Nine views. As with all of the albums that Chalk releases on his Faraway Press imprint, the packaging is equally as lovely as the music. Of course, it's recommended; it's Andrew Chalk!
BACK IN PRINT, WITH DIFFERENT ARTWORK!!!
Here's the cd reissue of a 2009 cassette from the emissary of British dronemusik, Andrew Chalk. That cassette, like this cd version, had been released by the Japanese imprint Siren Records, although it seems that Chalk himself did all of the printing as with all of his Faraway Press productions. So, it certainly looks as lovely as it sounds. The album opens with a 22 minute abstraction of piano tones, smeared, stretched, and warbled by a process that seems more attuned to tape decay techniques than the placid smooth surfaces that have come from Chalk's recordings as of late. This has the sound more of the misty psychedelic ambient tapestries from Natural Snow Buildings or the hauntological loops of Indignant Senility. There's something very prescient about this track, as if Chalk were responding to many of the divergent streams of drone-based constructions that are happening throughout the world right now. The rest of the album is definitely a detour for Chalk, as he presents a series of sad, sodden snippets composed on guitar, koto, synth, piano, and field recordings. Unlike so many who attempts an album of gossamer, minimalist sounds, Chalk seeks the same chromatic hues through his sources. It's the same melancholy which runs through his impressionist drones that can be found in an ellipsis for untreated acoustic guitar or a melody upon cosmic-minded synth or an atypical strum upon his koto. That makes for quite a remarkable album for Mr. Chalk, once again.
You may be thinking, there was an album by Andrew Chalk with this exact same title. And you would be correct but for one small distinction - the 2009 album was called Ghost Of Nakhodka and this 2015 album is Ghosts Of Nakhodka. Ah, the difference of plurality! The album is pegged as a sister to that 2009 album though Chalk has implemented a different set of tools on this one. Instead of piano and guitar laced with placid droning effects that was found on the singular Ghost album, here he's using a monophonic synthesizer occasionally dappled with field recordings and a few choice effects.
It becomes very clear this a Chalk record through the albums' impressionist fragments spilled across 13 tracks, each rich with his languid sense of space and his elegant timing in placing this free-roaming kosmische blorp here and that swollen ambient blur over there. Brian Eno's Discreet Music and Apollo would be the closest references to what Chalk is up to here, though his production methods are qualitatively rough hewn in the synth manifestation of melancholic nostalgia with little of the portent that Eno imbues into his work. The miniatures presented are exquisite jewels coming from a craftsman keen on showcasing his work to a select few and within an deliberately intimate setting. It would seem far out of Chalk's character to broadcast works such as these at the Guggenheim or even the ICA. Instead, a humble English cottage with a sod roof and a console-sized cathode ray television as the only means of transmission. Ah, the wonders of Andrew Chalk never cease.
Goldfall is Andrew Chalk's highly anticipated new vinyl-only album, released on his own Faraway Press imprint. After pretty much of all the Mirror records had been released as super limited vinyl-only editions (with a couple of those getting reissued later on cd), Chalk's recent solo endeavors have been extended droneworks that weren't suited to the LP format. He's clearly outdone himself with the packaging on this return to vinyl, as he's situated the thick slab of vinyl within a dense cardstock sleeve with a die cut opening exposing silkscreened print beneath; and he's sealed the sleeve in a delicate piece of tissue paper that also features an elegant print reminiscent of Shoji screen prints. In contrast to the floral artwork, Chalk's sound production within is a far darker and heavier experience. Sourced from the meandering piano interludes of Vikki Jackman, Goldfall is a dark, shadowy record of protracted reverberation and timbral rumblings. In comparison to Chalk's previous piano album Blue Eyes Of The March or to other exceptional piano abstractions (i.e. Jonathan Coleclough's Period or Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon), Goldfall is downright ominous. And you all should know that Andrew Chalk + ominous = highly recommended. But you should also know that Goldfall is limited to 300 copies.
This is the CD reissue of Andrew Chalk's "Over The Edges" which originally came out in 1999 as a vinyl-only release in a somewhat reasonable edition of 545 copies. Having composed "Over The Edges" in a single day at Colin Potter's ICR studio using only two strings of an acoustic guitar played with an E-Bow, Chalk brings a raspy, magentic buzz to his typically sublime, drone hypnosis. Here, subharmonics undulate beneath a chorus of static guitar-string vibrations, and shimmering waves of feedback elegantly flutter throughout. Not immediately as expressive as "Sumac" or some of the Mirror recordings done with Christoph Heemann, "Over The Edges" recalls the purist minimalism of long string composers like Alvin Lucier and Ellen Fullman.
It remains to be seen if the duo of Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heeman will ever collaborate again, after rumors surfaced describing an acrimonious falling out in the wake of an ill-conceived Mimir / Mirror performance. Sure, Mirror has certainly produced some amazing recordings; Eye Of The Storm, in particular, is an impeccable document of droned-out environmental eerieness. But in all honesty and fairness to Christoph Heemann, Andrew's solo albums are where he really shines. Yet after all of his collaborations with Organum, Ora, Jonathan Coleclough, Giancarlo Toniutti, The New Blockaders, et cetera, his solo output is woefully thin, and almost entirely out of print. Fortunately, Chalk salvaged two recent cd-rs (Shadows From The Album Skies part one and two) from terminal obscurity as they had originally been released on the Mirror imprint Three Poplars in editions of less than 100. Both of the chapters of Shadows find Chalk channelling extended guitar mantras into a beautifully rich minimalism that could easily be confused with the work of Phill Niblock or Eliane Radigue. Both tracks here are constructed from slowly revolving patterns of delicate harmonics floating around an omnipresent timbral drone, with one being considerably darker thanks to an emphasis on low-end frequencies. For all of the times that we've referenced Mr. Chalk's work in describing somebody else's dronings, it's very nice to actually hear something from the master himself. Oh yeah, all of the copies have handmade sleeves and have been signed by Chalk himself. Very highly recommended.
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The arrival of a new Andrew Chalk album is always a cause for celebration, doubly so when it's one of his scarce productions on vinyl. Mr. Chalk has long stood as one of our favorite drone composers over the years, beginning with his early contributions to the more placid Organum recordings, through his exemplary collaborative work in Mirror and Ora, and onto his near perfect catalogue of solo recording self-released through his Faraway Press. Through the more recent recordings Goldfall and Time Of Hayfield, the timbre of Chalk's work has brightened a bit, even as that brightening occurs between the spectrum of shadowy grey to sodden blue. Like Goldfall, The Cable House is an album sourced from piano; but where the notes on that earlier album loosely trailed amidst a gossamer web of bleary dronings, The Cable House has a considerably more purposeful set of melodic structures, pushing Chalk's work much closer into the realm of Satie's Furniture Music than ever before. Nonetheless, Chalk is masterful at extracting soft ringings of echo, restrained attack, and muted reverberations from his piano. It would be hard to imagine even someone like Eno or Basinski being able to craft something more elegant, more shimmering, more beautiful.
The artwork features hand printed woodblock prints, rendering each piece just slightly different from one another. As a result of the laborious printing process, Chalk has only made 300 copies.
Andrew Chalk records are the jewels of the English underground. The noise of Ferial Confine gasped with an existential blurt of obstinate tactility, violent in their self-immolation but never directing a rage outward. The gaze was inward. Then, when the drone grounded much of Chalk's classic works in the '90s and '00s, these slippery, elegiac croons of sonic impressionism dripped with an opalescent beauty that also spent a fair amount of time splashing around in the mud. More recently, Chalk has been exploring the poetic fragment, cracking the lens of British avant-folk eccentricity and scattering the results on stunningly beautiful albums like The Circle Of Days. The curious introductory track here sports a clattering of wood, recorded in situ with longtime collaborator Daisuke Suzuki, with a church nearby, whose bells chime the solemn Westminster Quarter melody. The following track pools rounded tones from Chalk's open-body electric guitar, finding a counterpart in the stoner-folk of Tom Carter's early work in the Charalambides. Piano, chord organ, and more guitar flesh out further tracks of nocturnally impressionist details that hang like constellations in the night sky, curving steadfast against the traffic of satellites, planes, and planets. The course of the second side reprises that of the first, with equally wandering expositions of intimate ambient swath, gossamer half-melody, and the soft-spoken mystical charm that has graced many an Andrew Chalk record! Very highly recommended as with everything that Chalk touches.
Yup, it appears that Andrew Chalk has retained the impressive workload he and Christoph Heemann had managed for their now defunct project Mirror. The River That Flows Into The Sand is the second album in as many months to emerge from Andrew Chalk's own Faraway Press. Like it's predecessor Shadows From The Album Skies, this album is a reissue of a cd-r originally released in a very small edition. However, Chalk has decided to truly develop Faraway Press into a viable cottage industry, encasing all of his work in elaborately hand-packaged constructions, that rival the original Zoviet France assemblages in terms of innovative design. How he managed to print these is a bit of a mystery, although Cup and Jim think it to be a form of decalcomania, in which an image is delicately transferred from one surface to another. Regardless, it doesn't hurt that Chalk again has produced an immaculate drone album housed within the beautiful packaging.
For many years now, the guitar has been the instrument of choice for Chalk's minimalist explorations; and here on The River, he's tightroping between the ghostly impressionism of Keiji Haino's Nijumu project from many moons ago, the narcoleptic atmospheres of Maeror Tri / Troum, the oceanic ambience of Boris' Flood, and the time-reversal qualities of Eliane Radigue. Undulations of extended sounds cascade from his guitar, occasionally rippling with beautiful half melodies. This is a a drop dead gorgeous album, and may even be better than the aforementioned Shadows From The Album Skies. We can't recommend this album enough!
The sequel to the River That Flows Into The Sand had originally been released through Andrew Chalk's Faraway Press imprint as a super-limited edition cassette in early 2006. We never managed to get a hold of those cassettes; and it goes without saying that they disappeared before we could even blink. Thankfully, Chalk has re-released all of that material on cd, remastered by the inimitable Colin Potter. As on the first part of The River, Chalk picks up the guitar for his minimalist explorations tightroping between the ghostly impressionism of Keiji Haino's Nijiumu project from many moons ago, the narcoleptic atmospheres of Maeror Tri / Troum, the oceanic ambience of Boris' Flood, and the time-reversal qualities of Eliane Radigue, all the while putting to shame every upstart drone artist with a cd burner and an Echoplex.
Just as the first River cd meanders through five variations of the cascade sound, Chalk produces another five tracks of rippling drones on this disc. Similarly, he has packaged the disc in the dotted decalcomania which graced the first cd. The major differences can be found in the gritty, growling distortion which exists just beneath the surface of these glassine drones. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!
Andrew Chalk has long been one of our favorite drone composers here at Aquarius Records (if not THE favorite!!!). Even though Mr.Chalk has been busy releasing cds in recent years, Goldfall (from early 2006) was actually the last new piece of work that this master of the drone had produced until this one, Time Of Hayfield. His work is slowly shifting toward a brightly cast sensibility, even as he continues to emply soft focus impressionism of his ringing overtones and dynamic vibrations. Again, as on Goldfall, Chalk employs the talents of Vikki Jackman on the piano as some of the source material here. The airy, ethereal ambience of Chalk's drones shimmer as if they were the reflections of the sun striking the windswept body of water of your choice. For us, it would obviously be the cold waters off the Northern California coast; but for Mr. Chalk living in the northeast of England, it's the North Sea. There's something bitingly cold about this album; but the slippery icy drones that evolve and tumble in their organic cycles enjoy a beauty so profound as to ameliorate anything threatening and hostile. A beautiful, airy, and meditative drone record.
As with all of his self-released records on Faraway Press, the packaging is as immaculate as the sounds within; but there's a twist to the packaging. Chalk printed at least six different covers, each with a replication of a pastoral painting depicting some vintage slice of British country life. All are very nice, so there's no reason to fret!
Sometime back in 2005, Andrew Chalk manufactured a tiny edition of what had been rumored to be the soundtrack to a self-produced film entitled Vega. When several journalists published their findings about the magnificent drones housed within that instantly out-of-print cd-r on Brainwashed.com and in The Wire, many of Chalk's die-hard fans were left disappointed at the existence of what might have been one of their favorite Andrew Chalk recordings had they ever had the opportunity to actually hear it.
While Mr. Chalk maintains a very quiet demeanor and hardly ventures into the public eye these days, he's been hard at work ensuring that his recently formed Faraway Press actually keeps up with the orders for the records that he's been recording. Vega is one such record that he so dearly wanted to re-release sooner, had it not been for the inevitability of delays. It's clear to see why delays would have been incurred on the packaging for Vega, as the original cd-r was housed in a filigree of black lace surrounding a paper sleeve, which amounted to a delicate and frustratingly time-consuming process in terms of putting together each cd-r. Hence, with the second edition of Vega, this time a proper CD, Chalk has expedited the hand-assembly process with an elaborately printed piece of heavy cardstock, sporting a similarly elegant lace pattern.
As for the music within, Vega is simply stunning. Far more vaporous and free-floating than the previous solo outing The River That Flows Into The Sand and certainly more so than any of the Mirror recordings, Vega acts as an aural narcotic, sedating the listener through a constantly shifting, slow motion churn of chiming guitar drones, almost resembling the kosmische-tinged melancholia heard in the Aeolian String Ensemble's dronescaping. As bleary and amorphous as Chalk's drone-clusters are, he's always had the knack for keeping them just dissonant enough so that they do not fall into the ambient trap of background music. Sublime as ever. Recommended just like all of his other work.
Yeah. It's $45.00. But when you see the stunning packaging, you'll understand why. There's the outersleeve hand-wrapped in bookbinders cloth with a hand-printed reproduction of a Bosch-like etching of wolverines or badgers engaged in cocktail party conversation, and printed text all in Japanese. At the opening of the outer sleeve, you will notice a thick wooden dowel mounted to a thick piece of paper. This assembly houses the innersleeve which in turn houses the very thick vinyl. It's quite a feat of engineering that Mr. Chalk manufactured all of this in his cottage in the north of England. It should also not be a surprise that this album is ridiculously limited, and the production of which has been hampered by the amount of time each object takes to fabricate. So know now that we will probably not be able to get any more copies of this stunning objet d'art, which was released in an edition of just 350 copies.
Then, there's the music, which is equally sublime. The work of Andrew Chalk has become synonymous with the drone supreme, but one that shifts from the tonal aggression that Tony Conrad and LaMonte Young would conjure, and toward something impressionistic and melancholy. As Chalk developed his craft on long-form masterpieces like East Of The Sun and Sumac (in collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough), he began to explore the nuances of melody through a rainy-day kaleidoscope of repetition. At the same time, Chalk has been mastering techniques of source abstraction which are entirely his own, creating haunted smears that are curiously inviting, reminiscent of the tape-loop effects that Basinski would generate, but with less reverb and delay. On such recent work as Ghost Of Nakhodka and The Cable House, Chalk's immaculate drones have been compacted into Eno-like miniatures of mirage, shadow, and filigree, all leading to the quiet, impressionist beauty of Violin By Night. The album might be sourced from piano, guitar, field recordings, and / or synths, but with Chalk's ability to twist any sound into his particular shades of grey, a discussion of origin is irrelevant. Each of the tracks on Violin By Night fade in and out of darkness like communications from a lonely satellite, whose existence is spent transmitting mundane blips down to earth with nothing being sent back in return. As the passing orbits cross the night sky, the transmissions come into focus revealing their muffled melodies only to dissolve as the satellite ventures into more desolate territories, such as the vast tundra of Siberia or some nameless island near Antarctica. There is a wonderful poetry hidden within these flickering tones and dissolving melodies that yearns for human contact and cast with maudlin hues when that contact is lost. Worth every penny and then some.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann have been collaborating extensively as Mirror over the past year, so it seems odd that the two of them have suddenly decided to release an album under their given names. It would make sense if they deviated from their work as Mirror. The source material for this album, bowed bells, gongs, and distant guitar drones, differs, and while the overall beauty and concept reveal a definite Mirror-like desire to capture an elusive spirutual voice through the resonance of drones. Extended organ chords, gentle creaking of an old wooden floors, and long reverberations of breathy flutes make for a more baroque tonal quality than the typicalChalk / Heemann sound. "The Mirror Of The Sea" is a beautiful picture disc with drawings by Andrew Chalk on each side. Of course, it's recommended.
Andrew Chalk released In Faxfleet Clouds in 2009 as a tiny edition of vinyl, something like 300 copies. We were not fortunate enough to get a hold of any of those lps; but we do have the cd to offer. It's another collaboration with Daisuke Suzuki, who has long contributed field recordings and sympathetic tones to many of Chalk's productions, dating way back to those legendary Ora recordings some twenty years ago. The album opens with a 13 minute piece that interlocks a series of brightened tones which emit the pastoral, summery glow of Cluster's cosmic synthesis, lifting above a sodden floor of recordings that sound like a bubbling stream or maybe a delicate clattering of wooden objects. Chalk has always had an exceptional way of abstracting his sources while retaining a 'natural' aura to those sounds, and those skills may certainly be in use on the undercurrent of softened noises. But those rounded, elegant, church-organ like tones that Chalk manages from whatever synth he's got a hold of are just simply gorgeous. All of these tones hang with the signature melancholy that resonates through so many of his recordings. The second piece is a bit more nocturnal in hue, due in part to the field recordings of crickets and the minor key ambience from synth and very distantly situated piano. A brief three minute track stands as the finale, with distinctly cosmic tones, gently strummed guitar, and impressionist piano. At a hair under 25 minutes, this is a rather short excursion for Chalk, but very very lovely.
Chalk and Daisuke Suzuki have known each other for many years now, as Suzuki runs the Siren label out of Japan and had released Sumac, Chalk's masterful collaboration with Jonathan Coleclough. Suzuki is also responsible for one of the very few published interviews with the somewhat reclusive Chalk. Their friendship certainly runs deep, and out of this friendship came the impetus to collaborate once again (both Suzuki and Chalk had contributed to the now defunct Ora project well over a decade ago). Slippery drones open the album, declaring that Andrew Chalk is definitely a principle author of this album and mimicking many of the fog-enveloped sounds that Chalk brought to Mirror's Eye Of The Storm. While these sounds quiver like a distant mirage out on the open desert for a passage of time that could be 5 minutes or it could be 25, the long-string drones begin to separate into a series of alien plucks which bear more than a passing resemblance to the expressionist poetics of Keiji Haino at his most introspective. Echoes and vibrations of these plucks ripple underneath in the shadowy reflection pool of echo and shimmer. As the album progresses, the enveloping opiated drone wrapping around cold, cold, cold field recordings of arctic winds racing across a seashore becomes the center piece, reflecting just how good Andrew Chalk's sounds are. Lo and behold, it's another excellent Andrew Chalk record.
Andrew Chalk's well revered around these parts for sheer impressionist beauty of gauzy drones and spellbinding minimalism, but Tom James Scott is a new name for us, even though this British composer has a number of releases on the avant-everything label Bo'Weavil. A classical guitarist by training, Scott tickles the keys of the piano on Wild Flowers, handing over a set of recordings he made for Chalk to augment with his own strings and treatments. We're told that the two have performed together a few times in the past, in what must have been a live performance as part of a quartet alongside Jean Noel Rebilly and Timo Van Luijk. The former produced an album with Chalk and his partner Vikki Jackman not too long ago, and the latter records with Chalk under the moniker Elodie. It's all starting to sound very Jewelled Antler, especially with the results consistently being some of the best rainy day albums for tea-drinking melancholy and vivid introspection we've heard. Even in Chalk's repertoire, the piano is a recurring sound object, and he's long proven deft in blurring the notes elegantly into languid reverberant pools of liquid gold and silver. Where his work with Vikki Jackman would highlight the creakiness and antiquity of their living room piano with all of its flaws and warbles, the recordings from Scott seem impeccable in origin. The richness of the piano at Scott's disposal shines in these recordings, even as Chalk softens the edges and creates a beautifully oozing sadness from these pastoral, Satie-like clusters of notes. Limited to 300 copies.
Our favorite Finnish label and perhaps one of our favorite labels anywhere on the globe go into the vaults for this one and we're so happy they did. Chamellows (aka Sleeping Bags) is the scrappy, playful, naive pop side of Lau Nau (Laura Naukkarinen, whose Locust release from a few years back was a big AQ favorite!) and visual artist Mikko Kuorinki. Pulled from various limited edition 7"s and cassette only releases these are recordings that date back as far as a decade ago. This is sweet and demented lo-fi pop with lively experimentation and an answering machine quality recording that suits these songs so perfectly. Had us thinking of what Ariel Pink might sound like if he were from Finland. Or The Shaggs and Daniel Johnston brought into a vacant house in the middle of Finland with some ragtag equipment and some yummy psychedelics on the tip of their tongues. So warped and wonderful!
Changeling are another band we've been wanting to hear more from, having so far only gotten our ears on half a tape from these guys, a tape they shared with AQ faves Quetzolcoatl, which should give you some idea of where they're coming from sonically. Where as Quetzolcoatl (and Q-offshoot Bonecloud) tend to explore vast dronescapes a la Taj Mahal Travellers, Changeling seem to exist in some alternate universe where time functions differently, where everything is slowed down, lazy lugubrious low end sonic sprawls, where melodies take minutes to unfurl not seconds, and vocals are more indistinct blurs, or haunting moaning drones, it's almost like Changeling are the avant garde underground cd-r DJ Screw, taking gorgeous tranquil freefolk and shimmery soft soundscapes, and slowing them waaaaaaay dooooooooown, sometimes adding effects, reversing some sounds, a warped sonic funhouse mirror, everything warbly and subtly twisted, a dark, sprawling musical crawl, everything oozing and drifting glacially, tones turned inside out, overtones allowed to ring out forever, a dreamy and divine world of soft slow motion ambience.
As with all Twonicorn, gorgeously packaged, pro printed tapes, textured paper sleeves, and of course super limited, ONLY 100 COPIES!! Each tape hand numbered.
Automatic Music Volume II, as the title suggests, is the second in a series of recordings from Australian organist / soundscaper John Chantler, who has played with loads of folks, from Lawrence English to Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and who here presents two extended pieces of electronic music, obviously indebted to early electronic pioneers, but equally obviously quite modern, mixing glitchy fields of bleeping and blooping, with wildly chaotic bursts of noise, all laid atop a bed of super serene wheezing organs, it's almost like listening to the past and future collide, a man with a primitive pump organ, jamming with some twisted floorcore weirdo, or some brainy scientific soundmaker, surrounded by a mad scientist concoction of synths and electronics, blasting this sci-fi din, while right outside, a huddled figure hunches over a sruti box, the two inadvertently creating some sort of alien sonic ritual, heady and hypnotic, haunting and seriously out there, imagine Zomes remixed by the Radiophonic Workshop! Awesome.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Christophe Charles previously collaborated with Markus Popp on the Oval album "Dok," probably the most abstract piece of glitchery in the Oval catalogue. Judging from the liner notes of his new "Undirected Dok" album, Charles was probably responsible for the indeterminant nature of that Oval disc. Charles proposes his idea of 'undirected music' as a means of attaining tonal harmony through the absence of structure, a concept that references both the music of John Cage and the the fog sculptures of Nakaya Fujiko, among other things. For the most part Charles' electronic collages on "Undirected Dok" succeed in their lofty goals.
As can be expected from all releases on the Ritornelle label (experimental subsidiary of Mille Plateaux / Force Inc), Charles embraces the closed-circuit feedback logic of fellow lowercase technicians like Taylor Deupree and Coh; however, Charles escapes over-exposure to computer screen irradiation by venturing out to capture some fabulous field recordings of subterranean waterworks, bustling train stations, and children at playgrounds, which he then adds to the alienated sounds of digitial glitch processing.
