A.F. Harrold - Nothing, Like Something

A.F. Harrold is a poet who makes music. His poetry is also worth a listen, especially if, like me, you enjoyed this year's début album by Dolly Dolly, who created the cover for Nothing, Like Something. It's Been 65 Million Years And The Dead Are Still Dead is also one of the best track titles ever. He describes it as 'an album of imaginary ballet pieces, soundtracks and jauntiness'. Fin de siècle modernism, utterly charming. The Unbeatable Slow Machine album on his Bandcamp page is also excellent, combining classicism with subtle electronics as it does.

His Bandcamp page

Nate Wooley/C. Spencer Yeh/Audrey Chen/Todd Carter - NCAT (Monotype)

From the Monotype website

Why has this LP not been reviewed?
This LP has not been reviewed because?
                                                            It's noisy. The wrong kind of noise.
                                                            It features vocals, screaming, not songs.
                                                            It's "avant-garde" (should that description be locked in quotation marks? If so, why? Perhaps because the author fears it will dissuade potential listeners from giving the album a chance. Also, because he questions the validity of the term in the same way musicians in the 60s questioned "Free Jazz". Yet labels are handy, and Avant-Garde signals a refusal by artists to submit to musical orthodoxy).
                                                            It's not easy to write about music which does not conform to the rules of common genres (although this author realises that someone, somewhere, who is more conversant with avant-garde music than him, could do so with reference to the history of electro-acoustic recordings in an intelligent manner as befits her/his education, which would probably be more impressive than his).

(break)

Fact:

Nate Wooley - trumpet
C. Spencer Yeh - violin
Audrey Chen - cello
Todd Carter - mixing

(break)

The first three artists being musicians, albeit avant-garde ones, which means that to many ears they are not real musicians at all, played concerts whilst in residency at STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam. Recordings of these were sent to Todd Carter, who set about playing the role of Teo Macero working with Miles Davis, i.e., cutting and remixing the music...far more radically, even, than Teo cut Miles...

...here, Carter is more akin to Pierre Schaeffer, perhaps. A digital equivalent? Except that whereas Schaeffer reconfigured relatively conventional acoustic music (along with the sound of trains etc), Carter worked with improvised acoustic sound. This made his job:
                a) easier because there were no formal patterns in rhythm, or melody and harmony to disrupt: or
                b) harder because spontaneously improvised music is already like an aural cut-up.

(break)

Hey, Nate, C, Audrey, Todd, what are you like?

Like the best nightmare you ever had, one which stimulated you to the point of orgasm whilst simultaneously piercing your throbbing heart with icy terror.
Like high-voltage Edgard Varèse conducting sawmill machinery.
Like walking through a shock corridor packed with imprisoned insane patients playing instruments freely.
Like a soundtrack to a sci-fi film in which creatures more terrifying than the Alien stalk astronauts before disembowelling them with razor sharp tongues, then eating their brains, raw.

Lest the wrong impression is given, it must be stated that this is, above all else, a beautifully crafted arrangement of sound, as opposed to a continual Noise manifesto. It is meditative,
                                                                                                          cacophonous
                                                                                                          and musical.

Yeh's violin-playing, as with Ornette Coleman's use of the instrument, already expands the sonic possibilities before being transformed again by Carter's post-production. Whilst the altered acoustic sounds rattle your ears, the electro ocean of sound rises and falls, consumes, and creates a bedrock.

The sound clips below only give a taste. Consuming the whole product is necessary in order to gain full appreciation and highly recommended.

Monotype

Banabila & Machinefabriek - Travelog (Tapu Records)

Appropriately, since I've just been out of the country, Travelog by Banabila & Machinefabriek (Michel Banabila and Rutger Zuydervelt) is getting an airing and mighty fine it sounds too. Having lived with it for a few weeks it's grown and grown, perhaps because there's something old-fashioned in the sound. I mean that in a good way. I mean, amid the electronic elements are touches of percussion and bass, along with tropical samples, and those in the wrong hands can sound like old farts trying to be modern. 

It's an ever-shifting landscape, as befits the image of flight. White fluffy clouds give way to sandstorms of static and the pulse of a Los Angeles inhabited by Rick Deckard. Narita is ambient in the Eno travelogue sense, whilst Debris is a black hole of static noise which despite being edgy displays the fine touches evident throughout the album. 

Just when I think I've got a sense of everything this album has to offer, new layers emerge upon listening again. That's what I mean by 'old-fashioned'. Banabila and Zuydervelt have made a piece of work with great care and in a world where frequently shallow Darkness and trendy Noise come easy, that's a good thing.

Concrete Fence - New Release (1) (PAN)

New Release (1) is meaty, sometimes beaty, very big and not quite bouncy. Regis and Russell Haswell form a Concrete Fence so high you can't get over it, so low you can't get under it. No hint of tension between the pure Noise merchant (Haswell) and pile-driving Techno artist (Regis); instead, the pair cement (ha-ha) their musical relationship on equal terms. This filthy techno porn is so good that the government might consider banning it, but on what grounds I'm not sure. Corruption? Degrading others who might try something similar? I don't know. I do know that every time I press 'play' and Industrial Disease gets going I get the kind of buzz I used to get from No U-Turn and Metalheadz records. In fact, the ghost of Doc Scott at his best may well haunt this beast, consciously or otherwise. Pitched perfectly between stripped down, iron-clad sound waves and rigorously crafted rhythms, it's a shape-shifting predatory monster. Magnificent.

Shapednoise - Until Human Voices Wake Us (Opal Tapes)

Shapednoise unleashes a battalion of evil alien killing machines designed to annihilate all within listening distance - resistance is futile. Although Until Human Voices Wake Us is almost a direct quote from the final line of T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock this music translates the stanza's talk of 'sea-girls' into a very different scenario. Whilst Eliot imagines a dreamy aquatic realm, the 'chambers of the sea', Shapednoise creates a terrifyingly seductive soundscape of mechanoid mayhem. 

Brutal yet sleek, rhythmic and riotous, it begins with the pounding of a heart under attack and never lets up. But the internal logic to all this noise ensures that it succeeds in fusing Industrialised techno with textures that might otherwise prove too punishing. Like a homage to Futurism, it revels in the power and glory of speed machines which roll through the pastoral landscape of easy listening, laying to waste soporific tranquillity as they do so. The minimal use of old-fashioned beats lends a lean, muscular feel to the whole affair, aided further by moments of stripped-down sound. 

Lithuanian Lady Boys - Demonic Possession In Post-Industrial Britain

Lithuanian what? Possibly the most stupid name ever created, but the 44-minute darkside exploration of sonic possession is worth hearing, journeying as it does through ever-changing passages of various tonal moods. It culminates in what might be considered the clichéd ominous thump of a ritualistic drum, but it works. I can't say more than when a track this long holds my attention you'd better believe it's good.

Buying the limited (23) edition 2-disc version (in a slim DVD case) gets you 10 tracks from the session. This whole package has the feel of lads messing around (especially with a name like that) but the music, whilst not exactly being complex, has some clout. Like a homage to both the Radiophonic Workshop's heavier work and Demdike Stare, then some. No names attached, simply LLB1 and LLB2.

Their previous albums, especially Structure 1, are worth getting too. The other is JG, a tribute to J.G. Ballard.

Their Bandcamp page

From the Demonic Possession In Post-Industrial Britain sessions:

Seth Nehil - Lair (Draft Records)

Enter the Lair, if you dare - it's not for the feint-hearted, nor is it bog standard dark horror ambient fare, the kind drooled over by electro-Goths flirting with Old Nick. I shouldn't even mention the genre, but with titles such as Filmy, Blade and Dense you might think Seth Nehil's in that realm. Bulk, for instance, has the feel of Morricone's best horror scores, complete with wordless female vocals, but Nehil creates much more than a simple homage.

It's more like being stuck in a lift with Francois Bayle and Pierre Henry in a bad mood - yes, that good. But unlike Bayle's epic compositions, Nehil's are bite-sized, the longest being 4.20. He packs a lot into short spaces though, so perhaps it's best to mention Dense, in which hobgoblins chatter, the earth rumbles and beasts seem to prowl.

This is sound art psychodrama of the highest order, loaded with little details which ensure that repeat plays are rewarded. There are even brief bursts of sub-bass, but Nehil's never going to be mistaken for anything like a post-Dubstep or Dance avant-gardist.

Have a look at his Bandcamp page (Knives & Furl are recommended).

His site is here

Draft records

Yves De Mey - Metrics (Opal Tapes)

Right up my alley - an alley where predatory cyberghosts inflict the vestibular disorder known as neurotechnoid reconfigurement  upon unsuspecting victims who believe their shadow presence to be mere hallucinatory effects created by the night & urban paranoia but soon find themselves seduced & succumbing to stealth impregnation of bass waves designed to spread sound contagion via the ear which spreads rapidly until the whole body sings an electric anthem causing their eyes to be spliced by visions of both ancient & futuristic utopian & dystopian worlds in which they dance like somnambulistic mechanical marionettes.

Various Artists - No End of Vinyl (Cronica)

Vinyl's had countless funeral's since the arse-end of the last century...cue silence as the needle of fate (!) glides over the run out groove before the arm finally comes to rest in peace...

But wait, a revival?! Yes, you've all heard talk of it, probably since this new century began. Everyone will be a star for fifteen minutes and everything shall be revived - Goth (what do you mean 'It's not dead!'?), Mod, cup cakes, fanzines, Arsenal winning trophies (ha-ha!) etc.

Vinyl's never died for me, but it's come close a few times since I packed up DJing. Now I just buy odd things that appeal, usually because of the cover and cover price. Whilst kids (and almost everyone else who's into music) frenzy-feed on MP3 files, men of a certain age (approaching Middle?) lash out on lavish limited vinyl editions. It's akin to baby boomers buying motorbikes, but a bit cheaper, only a bit. You have to be financially buoyant to buy new vinyl, but it recaptures that old feeling that the medium carries a very special message, presumably. Numero Group wrote an article about the phenomenon for The Wire in June.

Cronica's compilation of tracks inspired by Pure's 1999 album, The.End.Of.Vinyl (free download) is worth a listen. JSX's Biological Agents of Vinyl Degradation gets my vote for the title alone, although it's a worthwhile sonic slap 'round the ears. @c's zweiundneunzig (für Pure) is another highlight, acousmatic for the people - well, people like me who are fond of some sensory rearrangement. Rashad Becker's Take Me To Your Lead Out is another superb traditional song for a notional species.

Generally, a solid set of post-Glitch-drone-beat (ha-ha) for you modern swingers.

Rashad Becker - Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. I (PAN)

Field recordings from a distant planet; one that's inhabited by bio-mechanical mutant varieties of flying, crawling, slithering, walking, climbing beasts, in a jungle filled with exotic and terrifying plants capable of consuming humans attracted to the irresistible odours they emit, which resemble chocolate, and Chanel No.5. 

Here, as heard on Theme IV, one-eyed, furry babies come gurgling and crying into the world, wrenched from vomiting mechanical-human hybrids, watched over by hovering robo-doctors courtesy of Benway Incorporated.

Dances I presents music from an orchestra of psychotic automatons playing free-form on rusty trombones and cracked computers as well as vocalising; all spliced together by Pierre Schaeffer's ghost and viewed in a hall of mirrors. On Dances II they are joined by a cellist bred from the genes of Paul Tortelier and the Predator.

A fantasmagorical thrill for open ears.

Rashad Becker also makes other people's music sound good as an employee of Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin. If you want to know his thoughts on the process read this interview conducted by Robert Henke.

Basic House - Caim In Bird Form (Digitalis)

Basic House. Basic House? A moniker so dubious it piqued my interest....

Long ago I'd be in my natural habitat, the record shop, and boys would be in there because that's was where boys liked to be, a stack of Dance Music 12s on the counter, the assistant playing snippets of them - the start and middle, awaiting the nod or shake of the customer's head. Next! And so on - fascinating to me since all those House records sounded the same - basic House to these ears...

Now with a trillion files to hear the surfeit of sound sucks us into snippet listening - click - 20 seconds - click - 20 seconds - click - thinking appraisal is possible in the briefest of sonic encounters and for us more experienced listeners, it usually is, but even the best ears can be wrong. We test sound via samples on sites like Boomkat, determined to endure their embedded bleep, presumably created to prevent...what, exactly? Someone downloading a 1min 30sec sample?

Boomkat is where I spotted Basic House, of course, being my favourite 'shop', these days. This week they recommended Caim In Bird Form, which has just been reissued by Digitalis, originally being on limited cassette. Basic House is Stephen Bishop, whose Opal Tapes label specialised in limited cassettes before recently moving on to vinyl. I welcome this new digital(is) release, not being one for collecting tapes or vinyl. I say that with some shame, after all, I wholly support the DIY ethic in printed or sonic form, theoretically. But like many of you, perhaps, that support seldom stretches to actually purchasing products, especially musical ones, on awkward formats such as tape, and olde-revived vinyl.

Bishop is one of those types lurking in the shadows at the metaphorical club, not dancing, watching, shrewdly listening out for something special. Between the dance floor and the depths of sound beyond, these creatures swim to and fro, hybridising something in their heads that might acknowledge both worlds without strictly belonging to either. The pop mechanics of mutated sound is made manifest by the likes of Nick Edwards and Dominick Fernow's Vatican Shadow, connecting with Modern Love and their sound world, where Techno, Drone and Avant-Electronics are alchemised.

Whilst supposedly 'experimental' or 'progressive' forms of any genre frequently take the form of mild tinkering that belies the limited vision and creative ability of aspiring artists, Bishop's Caim In Bird Form is better than that. Aspirin Telepath's dark, psychotic speech sample slowed right down lends it a feeling of the best horror soundtracks before we're dragged into I Found U. Despite the Prince-like title, it's anything but Funky or romantic, more I-found-you-in-the-darkest-corner-of-a-nightmare, and a such, delivers a restrained exercise in dread electronics. I Don't Remember Acid (if you remember Acid House, you weren't there?) paints a picture of the come-down experience in the ruins of Detroit via Mars, perhaps. 64 Bummer (another reference to bad tripping?) maintains the mired-in-electro-murk mood, with more depth plus mind-strafing effects.

So it goes, never really faltering in quality, from the post-Kosmische (TV Illness) to the Subotnik-inspired Ultra-Misted. The stand-out title track taps into Horror again and matches the best of Demdike Stare, complete with what sounds like knives being sharpened. Any critics hearing this album shouldn't be sharpening theirs.

Mika Vainio - Kilo (Blast First Petite)

According to The Staple Singers in 1971, Heavy Makes You Happy, and so it came to be when Mika Vainio's Kilo landed with an almighty THUMP! on my PC last week - honest, the hard drive trembled. A weighty (oh, ha-ha) album for sure, but 'too rock' according to The Wire if the Blast First site is to be believed (I couldn't find a review in my copies). Too rock? I almost know what the writer means, but Vainio has ditched the guitar in favour of a 3-ton synthesizer made from granite so should you fear anything like Black Sabbath-meets-Pan Sonic, don't fret.

It's inspired by the shipping container industry. Yes it is. And that, you have to admit, is original. Picture Mika stood dockside watching huge crates being loaded...the automated heavy industrial machines doing their job...the enormity of the vessels...thinking 'I'm inspired! Their movement, weight and size will form the basis of my new album!'

Yes, it's heavy; more than a kilo. On a scale of 1 to 10, it must be 8. If we equate heaviness with density of sound, as we surely must, I don't own many heavy albums. But gravitas is another matter, and in that sense I consider Ornette Coleman's The Shape Of Jazz To Come a very heavy album. To continue the nautical/industrial theme, you might like to include Robert Wyatt's Shipbuilding, or Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic. Then there's Drexciya's briny sci-fi mythology...well, this album's like a trip with Doctor Blowfin to the very depths...feel the pressure....we're twenty thousand leagues under the sea...Sub-atlantic (one of the finest tracks).

Whilst the palette's minimal, the interplay between layers of density demands attention. As you'll know from his work in Pan Sonic, Vainio understands space as well as the best dub engineers, and proves it on Load, where the briefest drops into negative space (near silence) heighten the dramatic build-up towards ear-pummelling electronics. Along with Alberich's recent release, it's good to have another weapon to use against workman who insist on digging up the road outside my window.

New Mix: Espace/Escape

My latest mix...non-stop pop sounds for the Way-In crowd...

Espace/Escape by Timewriter on Mixcloud

Alberich - Machine Gun Nest: Cassette Works, Vol. 0 (Hospital Productions)

Machine Gun Nest: Cassette Works, Vol. 0 - what a bleedin' racket - ear-bleeding racket - so much so that the workman in the street who was drilling as if trying to compete gave up - ha! Kris Lapke, Hospital's engineer, knows how to fine-tune electronic fire, spraying audio lead all over us...and we like it, well, I do, when I'm in the mood.

And sure enough, art imitated Life (or the other way 'round) when 'Image Of Progress' just happened to play whilst the workman was still tearing up the tarmac. It's one of the best tracks on this compilation - that's very best, not just one I happen to like because it doesn't contain the rabid Dalek vocals, although that's true too. When Lapke exterminates legibility vocal-wise, perhaps that's a good thing. He may, after all, just be ranting about how his Mum pissed him off by refusing to take that basket of washing...though that seems unlikely.

So the Vatican Shadow/Alberich axis of power continues to perpetrate sonic war crimes against all that is saccharine and blood-sucking about modern Pop. If their means and mythology lack subtlety, they make up for that by brutally forceful deployment.

Another piece of music featuring machine-gun imagery...and the acoustic equivalent of Alberich in the form of Peter Brotzmann's saxophone-as-heavy-artillery...

Boards Of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest (Warp)

Boards of Canada obviously need some help publicising this, their second album in 27 years (or something), and knowing how influential this blog is I'm only happy to oblige. 

You probably don't know that BoC consists of two men. I think they're Scottish. They don't do many interviews, a fact that has gained them a following so devoted that should Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin urge them all to commit suicide on June 28, they would. 

Previous to the release of Tomorrow's Harvest a 12" was released (only two, or perhaps ten), one of which recently sold on eBay for £251,000 and 3 pence (congratulations, you are the highest bidder! It sure pays to add those extra odd pence)...something like that. Also, the duo set up a Da Vinci Code-like labyrinth of links which, once found and configured, allowed the online sleuth to be able to download this album which, by the way, is also encrypted with subliminal messages that reveal the true meaning of Jack Vettriano's Dance Me to the End of Love (something to do with the alignment of the figures correlating to certain stars which in turn, when translated into the page numbers of The Necronomicon reveal  an evil alliance between The Pope and Primark). True.

Imagine my surprise, nay, queasy horror, when ascending from the bowels of London Town the other day I saw an advert for this album slide past me on the escalator! I am now officially part of...something...the mainstream? Surely not! Not I, who takes such pride in being a purveyor of 'outsider' electronica like Daft Punk and The Chemical Brothers - no-o-o-o! I've sold out! I have succumbed to the lure of listening to what other people listen to instead of artists like Ekoplekz and Vatican Shadow (OK, a few other people listen to them, but I've never met one, and the fact that I have no friends and never go out has nothing to do with it).

Have Boards of Canada caught up with recent musical history or vice versa? After all, in today's Guardian interview  it's suggested that labels such as Ghost Box have been mining the same H****ological terrain since 9BoC, along with others. Yes, we all know that sampling 70s Horror (in the case of UK artists, cult kiddies TV) and referencing Italian slasher films has been de rigueur for years now. Have BoC been listening to Pye Corner Audio? Martin Jenkins surely listened to BoC. I'll be honest, the whole world seems have to listened avidly to BoC whilst these ears have been unimpressed, or at least never impressed enough to hail them as geniuses. You have to be a genius, after all, the be allowed out of the electronica ghetto and into the BBC studios for the John Peel show...don't you?

Fact is BoC show their age on a few tracks here by using some beats that they seem to have found down the back of the sofa in their rural recording studio ('Nothing Is Real'), and 'Sundown' is pure New Age cheese (get out of that country shack and into the city gutter, boys!) which, if played to anyone blind would not  be recognised as the work of Great Electronic Artists. Then again, perhaps they're be knowingly cheesy by recreating the mood of a John Carpenter cue to accompany a lull in slashing and shooting. 

'Come To Dust' is already a big record at sunset on beaches all over Ibiza and others will surely be used on the next series of Top Gear (as '1969' from Geogaddi was, apparently). I look forward to Monty Don sewing Hydrangeas on Gardeners' World to the sound of 'New Seeds'. Smart, really, pimping your tracks to anyone, thus buying more time in the studio.

I've been enjoying a fair chunk of this album, you'll be surprised to learn, but the pleasure diminishes with each play, which is a weird circumstance considering it's usually the other way around. Familiarity breeds contempt? They should have pushed themselves more. Instead, the track sequence suggests two middle-aged blokes starting out all full of vim and vigour before slumping, exhausted from their efforts and saying 'Oh, fuck it, that'll do' when age takes over. I know the feeling because I get it when trying to run round the block and grinding to a halt halfway up the third street. Boards of Canada also only get three-quarters 'round the block, but they've presumably had a lot more time to prepare.

Thanet - Receiving Calls (Mordant Music)

As the second anniversary of this classic album approaches I feel it my duty to remind you of it's existence. Receiving Calls by Thanet deserves to be recognised as one of the best things released over the last five years, at least...maybe 10 (or 20, what does it matter?).

And why not celebrate a 2nd anniversary? It seems absurd, perhaps, when traditionally at least five should pass before a recording merits the anniversary status. Or in Dubstep, five months, but that's another matter. As befits the modern world, time is shrinking, especially in relation to music. Was it last week that you downloaded the complete Merzbow for nothing, or last year? When was that album by Luc Ferarri (which you also downloaded for free) released anyway? '67? '61? '51? Eh? No time to even register the title in the digital gold rush.

Never mind celebrating two years, how about two minutes? Hold on, is that possible? I suppose so, if you wrote a review at 12.02 on the day of a release. But that would be silly.

Surfing for words about Receiving Calls I didn't find many, which struck me as criminal (well, tragic, at least). Why wasn't this set hailed and written about by everyone interested in modern electronic music? Why, also, wasn't it one of my Albums of the Year for 2011? Did I create a list for that year? Can I find one? Am I real, or just a detached digital voice?

The reason I haven't mentioned this album before is because although I recall seeing the sleeve two years ago I didn't give it a listen, or listen properly. Just yesterday, however, 'By Day And By Night' cropped up on a comp, so I investigated, time-travelled, if you like, all the way back to 2011, where I found this 21-track epic of absolute splendour. Mordant Music, of course, although I'm not sure if this is The Baron's work, or someone else.

Two tracks deserve a special mention; 'Submit I.Q.' for its sustained mood of twilight on the beach just after The Bomb, and '1932 Nightmare', where a single bass note becomes swamped by reverse-tape old-time radio orchestration (The Caretaker made nightmarish) evolving into 'The Sun Has Got His Hat On' (which was recorded twice in 1932) before another, electronic passage.

There's enough radiophonic-ethereal-electronic-waveform wonderment on the beach of washed-up transistorised transmissions here to last you a very long time...as you wander the digital shoreline...your feet lapped by all manner of sonic goodness. If, like me, you missed it first time 'round do investigate.

The Focus Group - The Elektrik Karousel (Ghost Box)

Psycho-hippy freek festival for retromaniacs...broken toys...music box mosaic...harpsichord...Jazz drumming...sonic jigsaw pieces found down the back of the sofa...LSD & sherbet dips...sitar... saxophone...surf Beat?...fairground melodies...Hall of Mirrors sound distortion...ballroom organ loop...urbane pastoral kaleidoscope...phantom orchestration...Joe Meek musique concrète...17th century space-age pop...singing ringing echo chamber music...Julian House, I salute you...The Elektrik Karousel is a wonderful thing...

Interpretations On F.C. Judd - Various Artists (Public Information)

'His life included an early and abiding interest in radio and communications, RAF service in WW2, the establishing of his home electronic studio in the 1950s, and continued writing about radio, tape recording and electronics throughout his career.
His contribution to the sci-fi puppet series Space Patrol, which first aired in 1963, is the first on British TV to feature a complete electronic score for each episode. His music and sound effects are integral to the atmosphere, and were created with tape manipulation and electronic tone generators.'

This is a Public Information broadcast.

On Interpretations On F.C. Judd Fred gets 'Wrecked' by Ekoplekz and sampled (speech), naturally, because the sound of an Englishman from the olde days of v-neck sweaters and pipes discussing electronic music is irresistibly both quaint, amusing and incongruous, isn't it?

'By the start of 1963 Fred had designed and built his own prototype synthesizer – a simple voltage controlled, keyboard-operated unit for generating, shaping and switching electronic sounds – a small but significant development in the history of the synthesizer, as it pre-dates the Synket, Moog and Buchla instruments.'

He wasn't German, American, Dutch or French, and didn't belong to a state-sponsored futurist music lab. Like Daphne, he ploughed a lonesome furrow fuelled by an obsession with the potential for new music in the popular mechanics mode of DIY space-age sound. The golden age of tape technology as techno hobbyist heaven provided work for some in writing (Judd wrote several books) and the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, of course - all before The Future became redundant and little more than glorious nostalgia.

Ian Helliwell's devotion to ensuring that Judd is not forgotten earns him the right to remake the man's music and he does so here in fine style, providing a lovely sample of Fred directing his wife (?) on where to stand for a recording - she's out in the kitchen when Fred directs her into the living room, instructing her to talk, to which she responds 'Yeah, all right, I'm standin' 'ere talkin' to meself' - classic - the sound of tomorrow rewritten as a sitcom.

Leyland Kirby's contribution is as good as you'd expect, an electrical storm of reverb, and Mordant Music typically loops the loop until it almost disintegrates, conjuring a kind of demonic Dr Who scenario from the tomb of time. Perc and Peter Rehberg both do justice to the source, the latter evoking behind-the-sofa soundtracks to 60s sci-fi that spooked my generation. Everyone involved does a great job.  It's a wonderful compilation, where past and present intermingle, as befits music from time gone by that spoke of what was to come.

Released on May 20th

Paranoia Department - Apparitions (Entropy Records)

29 tracks of murky dub techno, moody atmospherics, meltdown rhythms and more twisted beats are just what you need - legally free here at the Entropy site. Demdike Stare meets Basic Channel...almost that good anyway....

Found via Had To Call It Something blog.

New Mix: Descent Into Deep Time

Another treat for lovers of deep listening, unless you prefer Beyoncé, in which case, what are you doing here? Something of an acousmatic thread runs through this, although other musics feature, such as The Haxan Cloak, who I accidentally omitted from the listing. His 'Dieu' appears after 'Intensites'. No mix is ever perfect just as a work of art is only ever abandoned, as Jack Vettriano or some other great artist said.

Listen on Mixcloud or download here

Descent Into Deep Time by Timewriter on Mixcloud

Chemical Imbalance - W. Murch
1 Descent Into Deep Time - A Dontigny
2 Fleure - Autechre
3 Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station - Emptyset
4 Dynamique Resonance - B. Parmegiani
5 Cristaux Liquides - M. Rodrigue
6 Tar - H. Vaggione
7 Lethe - Dhomont/Krebs
8 Intensites - A. Yterce
9 Archives - L. Ferrari
10 Bédé - R. Normandeau
11 Repons - P. Boulez
12 Portrait - C. Calon
13 A Sign Of Tension - Paranoia Dept
14 Belli Machina - Tetreault/Mori/Labrosse
15 Derailment - Marclay/Yoshihide
16 Wrekwahn - Ensemble Skalectrik
17 Autour - C. Schryer