SOUNDCARRIERS INTERVIEW IN SHINDIG

 

There's a feature on The Soundcarriers and review of Entropicalia in the new edition of Shindig magazine (no.39.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

CAFE KAPUT'S SCIENCE AND NATURE

There's a new release this week on Jon Brook's Cafe Kaput label. Its an anonymous release (stage whisper: "It's Jon !") with the utilitarian, library-esque title, Vol 1. Science and Nature.

Free of the confines of The Advisory Circle, Jon's gone to town on his ever expanding modular synth and put together this compilation of beautiful cues. The references to Chappell and Studio G classics are spot on and the sound sculpting and melodies are an absolute joy. I suspect JB had a lot of fun putting this one together  and needless to say its as beautifully produced as ever. (Artwork by Moon Wiring Club's Ian Hodgson by the way). Get it here or here...



Another digital release this week is by Belbury parishioner, and occasional Belbury Poly drummer, Jim Musgrave aka Land Equivalents . Its an EP entitled Good Morning. Fantastic drumming as always from Mr. Musgrave and his keyboard chops are pretty nifty too, with soaring fuzz pedal synth melodies that make it a free 'n easy, uplifting experience. That one's available here...


 

Cults and Parry

Now that you've got your copy of Pye Corner Audio's Sleep Games and you're wondering what to spend this month's record money on, I'd highly recommend either of these LPs, kindly sent to the vicarage by two of my favourite record labels.

This first comes from Trunk Records and is a re-issue of a rather obscure but rather wonderful privately pressed album by The Cults Percussion Ensemble.  Assembled from several Aberdeenshire schools in 1976 by percussion teacher, Robin Forbes and made up of female students with an average age of 14 including one Evelyn Glennie.

Its a surprisingly delicate and hypnotic sound, which as Jonny Trunk points out in the liner notes is not dissimilar to Carl Orff's Schulwerk records. Beautiful Cover art by Paul Flack and expertly remastered by Jon Brooks. I haven't found the obligatory Trunk Records typos yet, maybe they've been specially reserved for the CD version. Preview and buy it here .

The other one from Public Information Records is a marvellous compilation of music cues from the Canadian library label Parry, Tomorrow’s Achievements: Parry Music Library 1976-86.

The album is geared toward melodic, electronic tunes and features a who's who of international library artists.
"Johnny Hawksworth, Robin Artus, Paul Kass, Nino Nardini (close allies with Roger Roger) are on board Tomorrow’s Achievements . At the same time we have a little known Canadian Library musician who features heavily, one Harry Forbes.Forbes is the real driving force of our Parry-Love; a master of imminent, hummable melody, sublime synth miniatures baked in sweetness. Elsewhere we revel with the other players in proto-Balearic house, groovy electronic disco, spooked choral drone, freaked-modular scorch, weird Radiophonic bleep. These are the soundtracks to movie car chases never known, lost kids TV shows never realized, radio-ads never broadcast – music to make your ears sing for more." say Public Info. Get it here .



And apart from anything else both LPs have pleasingly complimentary covers.

Pye Corner Audio and Stratus

This October Ghost Box will release a new album from the latest addition to their roster, Pye Corner Audio. Its titled Sleep Games and it'll be available on vinyl and CD with sleeve notes by Mark (k-punk) Fisher. Clips, dates and more info soon here and at the Ghost Box website, but meanwhile here's a rare peak at some of Julian House's developing artwork concepts.

Martin Jenkins of Pye Corner is also one half of the filmic, psychy, expansive sounding Stratus and their new self release album is available now on download and CD here. This is a beautifully produced and massive sounding album,  that you really should check out.

The title As the Crow Flies is not to be confused with the Advisory Circle album of the same name - by a remarkable coincidence and unbeknownst to each artist both albums were titled at exactly the same time. Both groups stuck to their guns agreeing to take it as an auspicious sign that they were on to something good.

The Ghosts of Bush

Some of you may be familiar with Robin the Fog from Jonny Trunk's wonderful OST show on Resonance FM, but Robin (Warren)'s day or more usually night time job was as a studio manager at the BBC's World Service in Bush House, in London.

Before the BBC finally left Bush House in July, Robin put in some long and late hours haunting its massive Portland stone corridors to capture the sounds of the building and produced a Radiophonic sound collage of the results in one of the basement studios. I use the word "Radiophonic" in its strictest sense here, given that the album was produced entirely on tape using found sound sources and hand edited and produced in a BBC studio. Although not an official BBC recording, I think its fair to say that this may be the very last piece of true Radiophonics that will ever be produced. There's an interview with Robin at The Quietus here , and below is a clip from a World Service programme about the making of the album.


"The Ghosts of Bush" is a beautiful monument to the work of the World Service during its 70 year tenure here and more importantly perhaps to this awe inspiring building. Declared the most expensive building in the world when it was built in 1929 and said to be the inspiration for Orwell's Ministry of Truth.  The soundscape is more mournful than ghostly to my ears, really capturing a sense of loss - with beautiful moments when mechanical and ambient sounds swell out with an almost choral or orchestral feel. All the more impressive when you consider no artificial reverbs or other digital effects were used. I get the sense that this love letter to a building has been recorded and presented with great humility by Robin - light on concepts, ego,  mission statements and artifice (unlike a GB project )  and topped off with a pleasingly daft tip of the hat to Eno and Byrne in the title.



You can listen to the project below and also download here on Robin's blog where you can  pre-order a very limited edition vinyl copy of the album. Please pay generously for this as all proceeds will be donated to BBC Media Action (formerly The World Service Trust), helping  to 'harness the power of media and communication to help reduce poverty and assist women, children and men to claim their rights'.

The Seasons on Trunk

A very exciting new release on Trunk this week, its The Seasons by the BBC Radiophonic workshop's David Cain and poet Ronald Duncan.

Trunk says: "Originally made as part of the BBC’s Drama Workshop broadcasts, this album was meant for educational purposes. Coming in the later period of what is commonly known and remembered as “Music and Movement” or “Movement and Mime Classes”, the album was issued briefly as a teaching aid for the modern thinking 1960s classroom. The idea was to play the album and get the school children to dance, improvise, think and create to the sounds and words."

David Cain

The original is now worth around £200 and probably one of my luckiest ever charity shop finds a few years back.(In your face Sue Ryder ! ). Its an album that's very much part of the DNA of Ghost Box; the perfect example of the spooked educational media we  reverence and reference so often. A few familiar sounds here to BBC RW aficionados, with much more besides. There's a disitnct folksy / early music feel with Ronald Duncan's icy, not quite child friendly poetry running throughout.

A long time in the making for Jonny Trunk, this one but lavishly kitted out with photos of the original slides made to accompany the record, notes by Mr. Trunk, Jon Brooks and an interview with a surprisingly curmudgeonly David Cain by Julian House. This one definitely will be on the exams so make sure you get a copy. Vinyl and CD in the Trunk shop now or through the usual iffy channels for those of you on the Trunk mailing list.

FACT Magazine Mix and Chat

Kiran and Tim from FACT magazine dropped in to the vicarage the other day for a chat and a pot of tea and left with some valuable spiritual guidance, several pamphlets, and this Mix...

Belbury Poly's mix for FACT

You can read what we talked about here. The Mix includes another exclusive preview track from The Belbury Tales and an a completely new one by The Advisory Circle.  A couple of other tunes maybe familiar to Radio Belbury listeners, who might also be relieved to hear that my tiresome and factually inaccurate links are absent this time.

Black Mill Tapes: Volume 3 - coming soon

The Head Technician at Pye Corner Audio kindly sent me a promo of the latest Volume in The Black Mill Tapes series and it seems he's save the best till last. This is the most fully realised of the lot so far and really cements the Pye Corner Audio sound in a world of  rain swept, industrial spaces and forlorn dance floors. That's not to say this is a bleak or miserbalist affair - the tunes range from melancholy to awe-inspiring to damned funky.
  

Another of the vicar's partisan reviews maybe - but I strongly recommend you give this a try. You can get it here on 24th January.

Also I'd like to share the exciting news that Pye Corner Audio are working on an album for Ghost Box, hopefully to see the light later this year.

Striped Paint for the Last Post

The new album from Moon Wiring Club, Striped Paint for the Last Post is finally here. Like the previous two Moon Wiring Club albums its a window onto a world created by artist and musician, Ian Hodgson. Its a glamorous, yet parochial world of  Edwardian parlour hip hop, saucy occult rituals, supernatural sleuths and boiled sweets. At the heart of Hodgson's world is the town of Clinkskell, a kind of Royston Vasey re-styled by Biba and Hammer. Its populated by a huge cast of characters: chimeric animal headed magicians, sinister svengalis and impeccably tailored electronic musicians.

These 22 tracks form a kind of psyched out narrative of a parallel world England where the south is obliterated by flooding and a new and surreal monarchy is established in the North. Fuzzy voices with clipped accents rescued from lost VHS tapes of  British TV drama pepper these mannered and spooky tunes, giving us just enough hints as to what might be happening.  This is helped along by a bonkers little CD booklet full of beautifully imagined advertisements, and magazine clippings. Like all Blank Workshop output this is designed and illustrated by Hodgson himself.

In Striped Paint  bright synth clarions and big echoey basses alternate with hazy recycled keyboard washes and TV sound FX. Its all buoyed along by jaunty and unashamedly strident trip-hop style beats, which drop (in and out) at all the right dramatic moments and propel events forward at an easy, ominous pace. Hodgson achieves a sound world that's comical and creepy in equal measure making Moon Wiring Club perhaps more worthy of the  "H" word than anyone else these days. Needless to say this is hugely popular with all the youngsters at the Belbury Youth Club.

Striped Paint for the Last Post is available from the Blank Workshop giftshop.