February 2012
2 posts
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THE CARETAKER
Leyland Kirby treats us to a free download of outtakes, extras & exclusives from his recent soundtrack to the film Patience (After Sebald).
<a href=”http://thecaretaker.bandcamp.com/album/extra-patience-after-sebald” _mce_href=”http://thecaretaker.bandcamp.com/album/extra-patience-after-sebald”>Extra Patience (After Sebald) by...
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NICHOLAS SZCZEPANIK
New from Nicholas Szczepanik and his first vinyl release. The long form ambition of the Ante Algo Azul project distilled into ten winter miniatures.
Fans of The Caretaker and Colleen’s Everyone Alive Wants Answers take note.
Order the clear vinyl LP here.
October 2011
9 posts
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WatchBill Orcutt - Is Junk Power Absolute? / Bill Orcutt’s Lament
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E.S./I.S.
E.S. / I.S. “Black Pounds of Happiness” (Excerpt) by foxydigitalis
E.S. / I.S. - “I Saw You Sister, Stand in That Effulgence” (Excerpt) by foxydigitalis
Two excerpts by E.S./I.S. - the Montreal trio of JS Truchy (previously of Fly Pan Am & Set Fire to Flames), John Chang, & Riccardo Lucchesi.
The tape I Saw You Sister, Stand in That Effulgence was...
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SLEEPING DOG
I feel like I’ve seen A Winged Victory For The Sullen written about plenty but that Adam Wiltzie’s other record this year was slightly overlooked…
Stream below and buy here.
SLEEPINGDOG - With Our Heads in the Clouds and Our Hearts in the Fields by Gizeh
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GOLDEN RETRIEVER LIVE
Download a recording of Golden Retriever live at O’Brien’s (Boston, MA) on October 16th 2011.
Courtesy of Spectral Rehab.
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WatchLooking forward to seeing Keith Fullerton Whitman in London this week.
August 2011
6 posts
6 tags
FATHER
This week has seen me bowled over by the debut release from Father; a tape of expansive and intricate drones, dense in texture and rich in movement, reminiscent of Sundog Peacehouse and Blanck Mass.
Sequenced songlike, in shortform, like last year’s Infinite Body LP, tones rise and fall like breathing, a mild sense of euphoria underpinning it all, buried deep among the barely-there choral...
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GOLDEN RETRIEVER
Experimental ½ Hour - Episode XXI: Golden Retriever & The Cysts from Experimental ½ Hour on Vimeo.
Golden Retriever are Matt Carlson & Jonathan Sielaff, a modular synth and bass clarinet duo from Portland, Oregon.
Coming from a similar place musically to Super Receptor faves Grasshopper, the pair have been putting out short run cassettes & CDRs on labels like NNA Tapes and Gift...
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CHARLATAN
When you have a label with such a hectic release schedule as Digitalis it’s easy to get complacent about their high standard of output. So let this Charlatan LP bring it all back into sharp focus for you.
Triangles sits alongside Motion Sickness Of Time Travel’s Seeping Through The Veil Of The Unconscious as the high water mark from the veritable flood that is their back catalogue....
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PULSE EMITTER
Portland’s Daryl Groetsch is responsible for some of the finest ambient synth work I’ve heard in 2011.
Search his Spiritual Vistas LP and the impeccable Forest, Mountain, Valley tape.
Forest by Pulse Emitter
Moonlit Valley by Pulse Emitter
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PURE X
Slow jams for our nonexistent summer from Austin’s Pure X…
Dry Ice by PURE X
Twisted Mirror by PURE X
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COLIN STETSON
Forgive the lack of updates. Life got in the way for a while.
Scope some staggering skronk from Stetson…
New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges by Colin Stetson
June 2011
4 posts
6 tags
STITCHED VISION
Australia’s Jason Campbell runs the cassette label Eternal Solitude and records slow-blossoming synth drones as Stitched Vision.
For some deep enveloping listening check the out of print tapes Open Palms and Ocean Glow which are available for free download here and here.
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JUNE MIXTAPE - "MUTANT SLOW TECHNO AND KEVIN DRUMM... →
(Click the title above to download)
June’s mixtape attempts to group together a recent strain of creeped out low-end music that exists in a place somewhere between industrial influenced techno, the weirder extremes of dubstep and the worlds of noise & drone.
The title is taken from this review.
Emptyset - Plane
Andy Stott - Execution
Old Apparatus - Untitled (Side A)
...
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ANDY STOTT
Andy Stott’s Passed Me By is immersive, disorientating, heavy. An album of “knackered house”, rooted in dub techno, that takes in the deepest of sub bass, short snatches of clipped vocals, pitched down soul samples and a liberal dose of noise and static.
Andy Stott - Passed Me By by modernlove
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AQUARELLE
Aquarelle is 25 year old Ryan Potts of Minnesota.
Students of Decay are putting out his first vinyl release Sung In Broken Symmetry in an edition of 300, with the first 50 copies pressed on clear vinyl. Pre-orders go up in two weeks time and you can stream the album below.
Aquarelle: “Sung in Broken Symmetry” by Students of Decay
May 2011
2 posts
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CABOLADIES
Caboladies are Chicago duo Eric Lanham and Chris Bush.
Sitting aside from their peers with their resolutely hi-fi take on the synth-revival sound their tracks overflow with ideas and invention.
The stream below is clips from a forthcoming LP on Students of Decay. Due next month, the album is to be released in edition of 300 copies, with the first 50 pressed on orange vinyl.
Following that is...
April 2011
8 posts
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KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN
A blissful live take from Keith Fullerton Whitman recorded just a few days ago.
2011.4.18.11.21.32 by Keith Fullerton Whitman
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WOO
Through the eighties and into the early nineties brothers Mark and Clive Ives put out a series of albums as Woo.
The music they made was almost proto-folktronica; gentle cyclic melodies comprised of acoustic guitars and bucolic synths. These are very English-sounding records, like a more pastoral strain of what Flying Saucer Attack dubbed Rural Psychedelia.
Download their 1990 cassette Into...
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CLAMS CASINO
23 year old New Jersey resident Michael Volpe records as Clams Casino.
There’s a lot of talk online already, so I’ll just let the fact that his first vinyl releases are forthcoming on Type and Tri Angle speak for itself.
Download his Mixtape here, a B-Side Instrumentals & Remixes compilation here and listen to Motivation below.
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JOHN CHANTLER
John Chantler’s first solo LP for seven years is an absolute joy.
Fizzing electronics chatter & churn and spark off scattershot but the record remains warm, inviting and hugely listenable.
Pressed in a edition of 320 LPs housed in silk-screen sleeves… Order here.
Untitled #2 by John Chantler
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MAXXI & ZEUS
Seriously feeling these neo-new age jams from Maxxi & Zeus.
M&Z is a new(ish) project from Quiet Village’s Matt Edwards and Joel Martin who put out two twelves on the International Feel label last year.
American Dreamer by Maxxi & Zeus
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EMA
Gowns’ 2007 LP Red State was an utterly bewitching and beguiling listen. And one I find myself returning to often.
Next month sees former member Erika M. Anderson setting the sprawl off on Souterrain Transmissions, with a new solo album as EMA.
Past Life Martyred Saints is released on May 10th. Stream debut single The Grey Ship, which is backed by a 16 minute cover of Robert...
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MOTION SICKNESS OF TIME TRAVEL
Three of the four March releases from Rachel Evans’ Motion Sickness Of Time Travel project are now available for name-your-price download on her Bandcamp.
A Disembodied Voice In The Darkness was an edition of 47 cassettes on Teosinte.
100 tapes of Slow Architecture (a split with husband Grant’s Nova Scotian Arms) were put out by Sweat Lodge Guru, the label affiliated with the...
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GROUPER
Ahead of Grouper’s two new albums, Dream Loss and Alien Observer, due out later this month…
You can stream the title track from Alien Observer here.
And watch this recent live set filmed for Portland’s Experimental 1/2 hour.
March 2011
13 posts
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MUSIC FROM SAHARAN CELLPHONES VOL 2
The excellent Sahel Sounds has posted a second instalment of their Music from Saharan Cellphones series. I played the first one to death, so this comes highly recommended…
“Vol. 2 — more of the same, if not an increased selection of sounds from Mauritania (referred to as “Jagwa” collectively east of Shinqit). Again, all mp3s collected in the town of Kidal, the quintessential desert...
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MARCH MIXTAPE →
(Click the title to download - to retain track order please create a new playlist in iTunes and drag the file into it to import)
1. Rene Hell - E.S. Des Grauens In Fifths 2. Broken Water - Peripheral Star 3. Peaking Lights - Key Sparrow 4. Breatherholes - Be Calm 5. Sex Worker - Rhythm Of The Night 6. Karen Cooper Complex - We Saw Waves 7. Mandelbrot & Skyy - TT Races 8. Doug Hream Blunt...
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OLD APPARATUS
I still can’t get enough of this twelve…
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BELATED FEBRUARY MIXTAPE →
(Click the title to download - to retain track order please create a new playlist in iTunes and drag the file into it to import)
I made this at the time but never got chance to upload it. Better late than never though. Oh, and January was a write off, so forget about that one. March’s is coming tomorrow.
1. George ‘Shortbuckle’ Roark - I Ain’t A Bit Drunk 2. Iceage -...
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BREATHERHOLES
Give It To U by Breatherholes has me all caught up in it.
Songs like sketches. Spilled out spontaneous in early hours.
You are listening to Nebraska skipping on the record player in the other room while your daughter sits banging a glockenspiel on your lap.
Float Together by Breatherholes
The tape is a solo project of Austin, Texas’s Lew Houston, who previously fronted Wild...
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DOUG HREAM BLUNT
The big one for me this week has been Doug Hream Blunt’s LP Gentle Persuasion. A recently rediscovered album of hazy outsider funk that sounds like it was made either in the early 80’s or the last 12 months.
The only background I have been able to find on the guy is this interview and this review on the Aquarius Records site.
The album was apparently recorded in San Francisco in...
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BROKEN WATER
Olympia’s Broken Water, whose 2010 record Whet made my albums of the year, have just released a new EP titled Peripheral Star on Perennial.
Heads up nineties fans.
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PEAKING LIGHTS
Been loving Peaking Lights’ 936 lately and this video is totally fascinating…
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EMERALDS
Emeralds on VBS & Motherboard’s excellent Electric Independence…
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Bvdub
Bvdub (who I last wrote about here) has just made previously ‘lost’ album available for free…
“3 years ago I made an album titled “One Last Look at the Sea”… As many of you know, it was supposed to be released on Somnia, but the label closed. Then it was supposed to come out on 2 other labels, one of which also closed, and the other of which went on an...
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GUEST MIXTAPE - ANDY JACKSON →
(Click the title to download - to retain track order please create a new playlist in iTunes and drag the file into it to import)
This is a guest contribution from fellow Crouch End resident Andy Jackson, who I have known since his days in The Murder Of Rosa Luxemburg and House Of Brothers. The gent has impeccable taste and his compilation is beautiful. Here’s what he had to say on...
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TIM HECKER
This Tim Hecker live set from Montreal on Feb 10th 2011 is mostly made up of material from his devastating new album Ravedeath, 1972. So you definitely need it.
Download
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UNIVERSAL SWIMSUIT
I’ve been intrigued by Harry Sanderson’s musical output since his Divine Coils days, back when we both still lived in Oxford. Now south London based and a member of Young Athletes League, alongside Pierre Vaux, he recently posted a new album online album as Universal Swimsuit, titled I Dream of Floating on Whales off the Nigerian Coast. Existing only as a mediafire link on a...
February 2011
6 posts
7 tags
SISTERLAND
Leicester’s Sisterland were kind enough to give me the exclusive on this fuzzed out & full pelt cover of the Red House Painters song New Jersey.
New Jersey by Sisterland
The three piece are made up of ex-members of the great Tired Irie, and released their debut late last year on Fear & Records, which you can also stream below.
A new 7” is forthcoming on Too Pure in the...
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GUEST MIXTAPE - ADAM GNADE
Following on from Ben’s, I asked Adam Gnade to put together a guest mixtape for me.
Here’s what he came back with…
“Fuck What You Know About Americana When I tell people I play “Americana” I think most of them get the wrong idea. In the spirit of clarification, this is the stuff, the real Americana, the backbone. We start with pre-blues field recordings...
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DEAF CENTER
Six years since their debut (and Type Records’ first release), Deaf Center’s second LP Owl Splinters came out last week.
The record is heavy. These are dark modern-classical pieces, steeped in foreboding. But so well crafted that when the pockets of respite come, they feel like exhaling breath that you hadn’t noticed you’d been holding in.
Deaf Center - Owl Splinters...
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ADAM GNADE
One of my good pals Adam Gnade has a rarities collection out this week which you can stream below.
Adam is responsible for one of my all-time favourite records in Run Hide Retreat Surrender. So if you’re not familiar with his work then check his biography here. Look out for a mixtape from him on the blog next week.
Titled From Farmhouses To Tour Vans, the new album is “a complete...
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GUEST MIXTAPE - BENJAMIN JOHN POWER
A guest mixtape kindly submitted by my friend Benjamin John Power…
“There’s a period of Dancehall from the early to mid 80’s where electronic instrumentation and sampling became a lot more prominent. The Sleng Teng Riddim, produced on Casio MT 40 was the first use of digital rhythm, and artists such as Cutty Ranks, Burro Banton and Tenor Saw were also gaining recognition...
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QUIET EVENINGS
For anyone who, like me, is still totally wrapped up in Motion Sickness Of Time Travel’s Seeping Through The Veil Of The Unconscious, here are some more Rachel Evans-related tracks.
Quiet Evenings is a minimal synth-drone project with husband Grant.
Stream the most recent tape Easy Listening Circles above or click through to Bandcamp for eight name-your-price album downloads.