Five weeks. It's been a good month for this lil' newsletter.
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Strange Mountain - Glass Clouds II
This purports to have been recorded in Canberra 1989-1991, Wassenaar 1994-1995 and Perth 2002-2003 but I'm not sure I can believe that. The music is gloriously melancholic though.
William Selman - Urbanism and Ecology
Really interesting release from just before Christmas. "Modular-based, slow moving, polyrhythmic dub." Lots of intriguing percussive patterns and sounds.
Normal Human Woman / Electronic Visual Laboratory - Degradation / Eversion
An artist called Normal Human Woman with track titles like 'I don't feel real again' - it all just fills me with <3.
Christian Michael Filardo - Fake Leather
Isn't this artwork delightfully creepy? J&C Tapes (formerly Jehu & Chinaman) just dropped four releases at once, and I could pick any of the four here, but this painting won me over. The opening track here, 'Late Night Phone Call', is eerie, spoopy, terrifying and heartbreaking, not to mention brash and noisy and downright offensive to boot. Snuggle up.
Nomis & Maribor - Wardrobe Malfunction
Damn if it's only a snippet, but this does for Jay-Z what Finn did for Aaliyah and Ginuwine with 'Keep Calling'. Killer.
Nisennenmondai - A
I'm going to CTM in Berlin this weekend and I'm going to see these guys on Sunday. Should be a riot. This is 12 solid minutes of pummelling beats and guitar, soaring shreds floating far away overhead. Really great stuff.
Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst - Recruit
Originally fashioned (geddit) to accompany the exhibition of Cottweiler's autumn/winter 15 collection at the Alison Jacques Gallery in London, this lengthy piece from Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst surfaced this week as if from nowhere. You can read more about the collection here, while basking in the aural oddities that abound.
lacosapreziosa - In Apnea
This (alas too) short piece is made up of field recordings taken in Clare on the west coast of Ireland last summer. It's quite gentle and ponderous but ends with a splash of verve. Wonderful.
Rinse FM podcast - Hessle Audio w/ Ben UFO + Lena Willikens - 15th January 2015
Is it cheating to post this? Lena Willikens played a banger of a mix and it deserves as much shine as it can get! Shackleton at 33 was simply inspired, and that's just for openers.
tINI and the gang podcast 08 pres. ELI VERVEINE
I spent a morning this week listening to Frank & Tony and Francis Harris - masterful purveyors of "sleepy house", as I put it. Responses were as follows: Dreamy; elegiac; gorgeous deep house roller; Very sleepy much low tempo such dreamy. Anyway after that I later put on this superb mix, swollen with dank and sultry grooves from this Swiss DJ of many years' standing.
Strict Face - Alice (Peace Edit)
Based in Australia, Strict Face is a world away from yer Boxeds and yer Butterzes. That said, he's managed to make a name for himself, releasing on Gobstopper and Tuff Wax, as well as appearing on that immense Different Circles Weightless comp. This take on (DJ Jurgen presents) Alice Deejay's 'Better Off Alone' appears on another comp, Peace Edits on Mr Mitch's aforementioned Gobstopper. 'Alice' is fraught with longing and tension, taking that famous riff and immersing it in the cold swell of Mitch's 'Peace world. Strict Face he plays with it, improvising riffs and then dropping notes here and there. Immediate reload status, this one. PS Check this one too.
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Finally this week, the gloriously productive ambient/dub techno/experimental label Silent Season have shared their 2007-2010 Back Catalog [sic] with the world, and it's a real trove of wonder. I've been particularly taken with Vitalis Popoff's Valley Of The Shadows. "Be sure to look up the artists on Discogs and support their other releases," they said on Twitter. Can't say fairer than that..
See you on the other side,
Aidan