Well, Blogger just ate a long post about Non Ferric Memories and the PoMo Swindon event as documented by the ever industrious Cloudboy but the essence of it was - I'm pleased that oddworlds like this can still happen
I've just bought this little stunner (Cloudboy does great cover art) and think possibly you ought to investigate these guys too, especially if you like Hacker Farm / Ix Tab etc...
Actually, just realised my colleagues over at Freq have reviewed it already....
Also, I was reminiscing about the Ice Bird Spiral at The Croft (here and here) which then got me wishing that Nick would reinvent/relaunch Gutterbreakz (I often think that): c'mon, Nick... It's been years now.... those wounds have healed... get yer Gutter on!
This came in, slipped under the door like a thin slice of cranial pie...
A friend of mine was prone to petit mal seizures, seizures of absence, slow-wave spikes. They'd often occur in the middle of a sentence; she'd just... go away for a few moments, sometimes long minutes, sometimes the last word she was saying would simply repeat and slurrrrrrr ad infinitum: "The thing with Feynman is that he he he he he he he he he he he he he he..." and then sometimes she'd pop back, continuing the sentence, sliding seamlesssly into the world again "...always knew exactly which knot to start untying..." while at other times her eyes would close and she'd drift away for a few more moments, the echoe dying, the dark coming in.
My favourite track on Please Let Me Back Into Your House, Ship Canal's debut on Kek's nonnanononboutique label 19F3, reminds me of her.
Fog (what is it with fog these days? I'm hearing fog everywhere) and shipwrecked audio and Lilith drones crossover and pulse and then this voice, this slurring, cracked voice appears, a man swallowing himself with language; a kind of absence with automatism, like an electronic divination, a table turning... it's one of the best things I've heard all year; it just works (cf these guys - in fact, these releases might be rough twins) in a way that lots of this kind of stuff just... doesn't.
If it catches you as it caught me - 7 AM, wind, rain, mist - then this will speak to you. It's dredged music, perhaps incomplete (I like the way some of the female siren sounds just kind of cut------ when you'd expect them to drift away) but powerful and quite... beautiful, in parts.
I've seen Ship Canal's kit: ugly PCs, ugly-hackkneed software, ugly cables... but he's making a right Schwitters out of this slop, this detritus. The last release on 19F3 (I take it we're not counting the Hacker Farm stuff - the politics of consciousness always seems tangled where Kek's concerned!) was the gentle machine chattering hum of the Werneck Wretchmond release (which I covered here); this new one is a step (just one step) away from the machines towards a very human breakdown...
Perhaps not fully available yet but here's a place to start snuffling.... There's also this little slice of the olde worlde, which has other stuff... maybe more on this later, the floppiness will need another headbubble to get around.
Poundland wreaks tiny little havocs. Electronic ape gulps, scales and scrapes; all shrouded in deep echo... Lots of tracks start like they're dying.
West country voices occasionally drift up - voices you don't hear often, ghosts of Holloway (Ian and the prison)... there's hidden tinkles and micro melodies that never quite reveal themselves... the hi-hats sound like aerosol sprays... this sounds like music from a country that's just discovered electricity, is still in it's thrall, is wondering if nature could ever tame such a beast...
I know their equipment: the close-miked toys, appendages, shower caps, broken machines... and it does sound like all of those... Steve keeping the beats just in check, Kek flinging himself softly at piles of pure matter... but this is more, er, musical than you might expect... these guys aren't altogether sane or altogether willing to compromise or altogether but... you get the feeling this is a great group, that they've found a way to stitch their two approaches together...
You want superficials? TG is an influence, of course and a lot of this - the violins, the shudders, the leftover electronics and drums; but this is X-TG, none of the Gen(eric) egoings... there's a hint in one section of a West Country version of Peter Christopherson's solo contribution to DOA, for instance... The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death...
Some of it sounds like being inside a giant Zardoz skull; with weapons replaced by cornstalks, sweet wrappers, puffballs...
It's music for a Riddley Walker boar hunt (we're going on a boar hunt, we're going to catch a big one, what a beautiful day; we're not scared....)
Except....we're too fucked to spear, we're rooting for vegetables, snuffling for hallucinogenic fungi alongside the bird squawks (these birds feed on badger carcass)... we're fogfucked, we're wandering...deep in the wud... and there's a glimmer, somewhere up ahead, it's a man with, God, he.... those mirrors, they are blinding... He... shit, he seems to be kicking what looks like a... No... Christ...
Loving the latest Xylitol double 3", one of my favourite things released so far this year. It's not a remix album. It's a reimagining. It's a remix album in the same way that Aphex Twin remixed Nine Inch Nails on Further Down The Spiral i.e. it's not a remix album. It sort of is a remix album, even though I don't generally like remix albums (that Neubauten one put me off forever). It is maybe perhaps isn't.
It's varied but it's more or less all wonderful... though see here for a review of a track (not saying which one but you might be able to guess) by my wife (she's right, and i like it because it sounds like that...)
Highlights: The NWW circa Rock N Roll station snare tumbles w/added Groove Is In The Heart bounce; the odd choirs, violin scratches and Cosey Cornets; the glacial kosmische melting soundtrack; the ever-so-slight Trance touches; the snatches of detourned Krautrock - a little feathering of rock era Kraftwerk added to the lunatic electo fizz; the stuttering vocals, eating themselves whole; the gentle Radiophonic loping; the supremely mental rapping; even the pops and crackles between the lines of some of the more superficially straightforward tracks...
sleevnotes, gutter press ramblings from Martin, photographs (apparently, I can't see any!) by Nina Power...
The 2 x 3" format is a slight bit annoying but I'm guessing this is either a) a deliberate attempt to engage the listener with the music by forcing them to confront the lack of symmetry on the 'sides' or b) a consequence of someone winning the 'shed load of 3" CDs' item on eBay...
Still, I've already listened right the way through four times and I can't think of many recent albums that I could say that about.
