Mud Wall
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)
Audio speleologists Loren Chasse (Jewelled Antler, Thuja, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies) and Jim Haynes (The Wire) collaborate on their third album of “broken minimalism,” an exploration of sound possibilities originating from traditionally non-musical materials (copper, stone, glass, sand, shortwave radio, rust, wind, water and mud). Sifting through viscous electrical fields, slumbering vibrations, and aerosolized pricklings, the duo invokes an aggregate of sustained harmonics, continuously evolving sound forms, and broad gestures of textural details. Monumental physicality somewhere between the quiet expressionism of recent AMM and John Duncan’s psychological inquiries.
JULIA ECKHARDT / MANU HOLTERBACH
Do-Undo (in G maze)
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS018) CD $13.00
Do-Undo emerged out of Q-O2 Werkplaats, a sound-art laboratory of sorts based in Brussels, where Julia Eckhardt, one of the artistic directors, has built an archive of recordings of long-form viola pieces played exclusively in G. Sound-artist, field recordist, and ingenious instrument builder Manu Holterbach, who has taken part in several Q-O2 residencies, reconstitutes her recordings which, on their own, seek the rich if occasionally dissonant overtones central to the minimalist works of Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue, and Ellen Fullman. Holterbach populates his compositions with field recordings, turbulent textures and bristling movements that sympathetically weave amid the rasping drones from the viola. On a technical level, Holterbach’s field recordings on his composition “Two stasis made out of electricity” -- an arc lamp, the Parisian subways, an electric powerplant -- all naturally buzz with the same G of Eckhardt’s viola, without the benefit of digital pitch shifting. The resulting drones transcend conceptualism and strategic intent, and instead make no differentiation between the environment (man-made or otherwise) and the academy. Limited edition with letter-pressed covers.
R.K. FAULHABER / JIM HAYNES / SIGTRTYGGUR BERG SIGMARSSON / STEVEN STAPLETON / M.S. WALDRON
Sleeping Moustache
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $13.00
Members of irr. app. (ext,), Nurse With Wound, Stilluppsteypa, and Coelacanth present a psychically unstable landscape where dreams and nightmares wreak havoc upon the drudgery of daily life. Part epiphany of controlled disorder, convulsion of beauty, and cascade of thought from delirious minds, Sleeping Moustache exquisitely manifests sound poetry scattered into a tortuous collage mired in an oblique melancholy. Magnetic tones extracted from the ether, mechanical sounds smeared into lugubrious growls, horns trumpeting straight out of John’s Book of Revelation, ululations sliced into information overload of which Schwitters himself would be proud. The closest audible territory might be the psychoactive constructions of Nurse With Wound’s Homotopy To Marie, although the characters in this drama happened upon an entirely different map of that terrain.
The Decline Effect
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS021) 2xLP $21.00
The Decline Effect continues Haynes’s investigations of “rusting things” with electroacoustic decay through four bodies of evidence left behind from ephemeral aktions, shipwrecked electronics, re-engineered field recordings, and transmissions from the ether. Through a patient suturing of sympathetic elements, whether textural, tonal, visceral, heavenly, sodden, or monolithic, embers foretell a nuclear winter gently wafting upon industrial chorales amassed from an army of fidgeting motors; the sulfur-laden hiss from volcanic vents erupts from an organic thrum into boiling crescendos of environmental noise; Geiger counter palpitations stream along a leaden sea of modulated radio noise; a warm explosion of sun-bleached distortion caresses the evanescent halos from an undulating mesmerism inexplicably not sourced from a guitar and / or digital patch authored by Christian Fennesz. Gatefold jacket, with download coupon. Edition of 350.
Telegraphy by the Sea
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
Rust-tinged artist Jim Haynes prefers to abstract recorded sounds to the point that he can’t remember how he made them, so that it’s impossible to go back and reverse engineer anything. The source material for Telegraphy by the Sea spans four years and several continents. Fragments come from an exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, a marathon six-hour performance at the Diapason Gallery in New York City, and a fortuitous encounter with a rainy stairwell. This breathtaking album of mangled field recordings and droning techniques perches at the allegorical intersection of electromagnetic landscapes and meteorological phenomena, where exasperated blasts of air bellow in harmony with a swarm of mechanical locusts and a tumbling landslide of jagged rock, grounded for the most part in a dynamic play of sinusoidal drones.
Kreiselwelle
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS016) CD $12.00
Kreiselwelle is the third and final installment of irr. app. (ext.)’s Wilhelm Reich-influenced series. The title translates as “spiral wave,” a structuralist form Reich had observed throughout nature within numerous systems, from the grand arcs of galaxies to the radial symmetries of micro-organisms. Californian sound engineer M.S. Waldron returns to the same collection of field recordings which began this trilogy that includes Ozeanische Gefühle and Cosmic Superimposition; however, he restricts himself here to sounds with spiraling origins: resonating springs, the sounds of the ocean cyclically churning over pebbles on the beach, the wafting of air around various objects, or simply a lamp-shade spinning in place. The result develops as an organic sublimation of one sound transforming from one state into another and then another. Motorized sounds of mechanical toys set askew settle into a tremolo phase pattern of electrical vibrations. These in turn morph into a cauldron of slow locomotive rumbling, which beget one of many glassine drones that float throughout Kreiselwelle. Many of the sounds seem to have origins in objects that are broken, obsolete, or just plain wrong; but through Waldron’s deft alchemy, sounds flourish in a richly dark and oddly serene amalgamation.
Ozeanishe Gerfühle
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
irr. app. (ext.) is the work of California-based sound artist Matt Waldron, who has collaborated with Nurse With Wound and Stilluppsteypa. The post-surrealist sympathetic drones, field recordings, and psychological tension of Ozeanische Gefühle rival such masterpieces as The Hafler Trio’s Kill The King, Jonathan Coleclough & Andrew Chalk’s Sumac, and Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy For Lilith. The heavily processed flutter of sustained woodwinds accompanied by thunderous rumbles disperse amid discordant, Bernhard Hermann-esque string-slashing. Later on, the grotesque pathos of a Wurlitzer organ dissolves into a blackened emptiness that envelopes the complex resonant frequencies of bowls and bells.
We Share a Shadow
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.25
Patrick McGinley’s field recordings of activated environments (e.g. resonant industrial spaces, windswept telephone lines, bowed branches, gasping ventilator systems, etc.) originate in locations from his travels; yet he is far more interested in extracting emotional, transcendent, or metaphysical kernels and recontextualizing them as sympathetic compositions of magnificent dronemusik. We Share A Shadow continues where Husk left off, with its spiraling manipulated field recordings slowly revealing environmental sonorities that go unnoticed each and every day. Limited edition of 300 copies, with hand water-colored artwork and letterpress printing.
Big Shadow Montana
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS020) LP $15.00
After producing a frozen trilogy of intoxicated dronemuzik for the Agency, these Scandinavian gentlemen venture into fictionalized soundtracks for imagined Mondo films and science fiction serials. Slow-motion delirium manifests in occluded smears, nocturnal gasps, and arcane tones from a variety of analogue synthesizers. Flickered impressions flash in conjunction with Breton's Surrealism manifesto in the form of memories from happily drunk escapades in the heart of winter, the sidereal spells cast by innerspace travelers Klaus Schulze and Coil, and the nagging questions of existential portent: "Was that bassline from Goblin, or was it German Oak? Maybe something from Faust IV?" Nilsen, Sigmarsson, and Thorsson elegantly twist and bend fleeting images into a spiraling symphony of bubbling electronics and spectral drones that mutate into lugubrious yet carnivalesque waltzes. When this first appears, it is the echoing undercarriage of a simple melody, bobbing amid rattling chains and cascading cymbal crashes, only to dissolve into sequences of cold-war era tone beacons and empathic swaths of maudlin sound design. At the second occurrence, the melody washes ashore on the Iceland beach, where nude Viking men and women try in vain to get a tan with the sun just barely above the horizon line. It is a pyrrhic jubilation of calliope harmonies set down by organs and synths turning a pale-blue hue in the wake of all that white skin shivering underneath the arctic sky. Includes free download card.
Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
In Scandinavia, it’s not uncommon to hear of someone’s mother, grandfather, uncle, or plumber who drank him- or herself to death at an early age; and the Swedish drone artist BJ Nilsen has felt the alcoholic pangs which may foreshadow his own demise. In recent years, he has turned to his Icelandic neighbors Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson for existential sympathy over the problems of their collective lust for alcohol. Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna marks the second collaborative document of abject minimalism that these three have composed; and like its predecessor Vikinga Brennivin, it is spiked with drunken thought. Any alcohol-induced euphoria has been tempered by perturbing blackouts, moments of cruelty, and an all-consuming nihilism. Beyond their shared Scandinavian heritage, their expressionist urge for the frigid drone, and their penchant for drink, Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa intend this recording as an open ended experience, wandering through their sound without the burden of any exegetical text that may get in the way.
Vikinga Brennivin
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
For the Icelandic electro-absurdist outfit Stilluppsteypa, the near-lethal alcoholic beverage brennivin oozes out of their terminal drones, sputtered rhythms, and atomic fractures. Their clinical minimalism reflects the introspection, headaches, and melancholia of the morning after. Swedish composer BJ Nilsen has rendered the commonplace sounds of wind, rain, and snow as seductive and quietly menacing drifts of frozen sound. Their resultant collaboration is a drunken stumble in a Scandinavian winter night via extended soundfields that breathe with the majesty of distant fog horns and sparkle with the delicate light of countless stars cast down from the black heavens onto the frozen tundra below. Frightening and barren, yet hauntingly compelling, Vikinga Brennivin is an isolationist masterpiece.
Passing Out
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
The final component to a trilogy -- thematically linked by the psychotropic effects of alcohol -- of isolationist compositions for barren field recordings and lumbering electric drones by these Nordic sound artists. With one singular track that spans 60 minutes, a nearly constant thrum and rumble of monochromatic low frequencies casts a grim pall upon the precisely dialed-in modulations and vibrations. Spectral guitars, maudlin tunes from haunted radios, angrily growling voices, and field recordings of wind-whipped snow and ice bury themselves deep amid these subharmonic drones. Letterpress and silkscreen artwork in an edition of 1000.
Tracer
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $13.50
As with the previous works by obsessive electronic composer Clinton Williams, Tracer is an antiquated behemoth, constructed from analogue synthesizers, primitive drum machines, homespun electronics, and numerous effects pedals. Simple wooden rhythms trot, trudge, and even glide along taut metric grids hot-wired with bursts of mechanical splutter and the occasional creak from Pierre Henry’s wooden door. An occasionally menacing, but more often melancholy, orchestration of synthetic tones ripple, flex, and dissolve across the uniform structuralism, creating an ecstatic paranoia rarely heard with such splendor, rigor, and sublime blackness. If sonic references are required, then the Klaus Schulze masterpiece Cyborg is close.
Interceptor
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS012) 2xCD $14.25
New Zealand electronic musician Clinton Williams’s home-spun constructs detour from the sculpted grit and mottled distortion in the work of his countrymen and -women. His opus Quad 3xCD (Corpus Hermeticum, 1998) makes palpable the artist’s contentious argument with his own unwieldy mousetrap of tape-loops, modular electronics, effects pedals, drum machines, and the creaking sounds of his house. Interceptor is the result of an experiment with a portable studio outside his longtime home of Blenheim. With two suitcases of drum machines, effects, and analog synths, Williams recalls being “pissed off with myself wasting time recording this stuff when I was trying to find a job.” His frustrations stripped away much of the grandiose sweeps of ambience and shadow, leaving behind a life-support system grid of overlapping, phase-shifted blip and click. An undertow of hypnotic tonalities pulls those rhythms toward a crepuscular gloom. Williams has always been at odds with his own work, yet his self-doubt continues to deliver magnificent albums which thrive in a symbiotic struggle with mechanical disintegration.
Samoa Highway
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS019) LP $14.75
The heavy-lidded psychedelia of brothers and co-pilots Jon and Brian Pyle (Starving Weirdos, Ensemble Economique) constantly mines the metaphysical properties of their Humboldt County homeland. The brothers channel a psychotropic animism through sound; a swarm of drone guitars announces the opening of the record with a shoegaze wash collapsing into tone purity and bulging through a metallic buzz. Field recordings of airplane take-off and firework explosions punctuate the undulating, bleary smear of the Pyle brothers' guitars. The result is one of levitation, even as RV Paintings seem to be plugging their guitars and electronics directly into the moss, soil, and mycelia of the Humboldt forest. Echo-soaked flutes, maudlin strings, scabrous noises unearthed from the bottom of the Pacific, and cinematic arcs of guitar shimmer complete the beautiful and haunted miasma somewhere between Taj Mahal Travellers, Organum, and The Caretaker. Previous releases on Trinity Rivers and Blackest Rainbow. Includes digital download card. Edition of 500.
Erosion of the Analogous Eye
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS015) CD $12.00
The studio of Matt Shoemaker is alive with electricity: impossibly complex wirings channeling signals in and out of analog synth modules; an array of curious aluminum boxes with unmarked knobs; Slinkies strung from ceiling to floor creating a set of giant spring reverb units; accelerometers attached to consumer electronic errata; and even a few conventional tools like guitar stomp boxes and a bruised computer. Yet for all the convoluted engineering that goes into his equipment, the resulting mesmerism seems effortless and strangely organic. Shoemaker's ever-evolving album of mutant dronemuzik and electrical seas of synthetic bristling undulate with placid regularity. Brain-melting psychedelics contort into cancerous, atonal bellows. Out of his allotropic shifts, irradiated static transforms into the graceful chime of temple bells; and electrical phase patterns slip into deep forest murmurings dotted with narcoleptic birds calls. On one hand, this album is prescient of the revival for progressive electronics currently underway in the flood of US post-noise projects; it's easy to triangulate this between Emeralds and Heldon. But on the other hand, Erosion of the Analogous Eye is the continuation of Shoemaker's early work on Trente Oiseaux, with its grotesques exaggerations of field recording. Artwork features unique, hand-dyed abstractions mounted on letterpressed paper. Limited edition of 300 copies.
Spots On The Sun
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $12.00
A grotesque, sonic landscape with details exaggerated out of proportion and narratives folded upon themselves in a magnificent abstraction of electro-acoustics, rarefied field recordings, and particulate matter plucked from ether. While the familiar sounds of encircling birds, turbulent weather, and temple bells litter Shoemaker’s recordings, the sonic topography describes a vulgar and hostile landscape where fits of delirium and circadian arrhythmia are common human responses. In many ways, Shoemaker’s Spots in the Sun could be mistaken for Bernard Parmegiani at his most focused or even John Duncan at his most gracefully brutal.
Ananta
(Helen Scarsdale - HMS017) 2xCD $15.00
Hitoshi Kojo (aka Spiracle) finds it difficult to fall asleep. Ananta urges the listener toward a dreamless sleep-state, while reflecting the glowing warmth of a blossoming sunrise. To finely tuned drones extracted from a Dilruba and a Sarangi, Kojo merges sympathetic field recordings and other tonal interferences alongside the instrumental sounds. The results are elliptically static drones that brightly shimmer with hues of gold, crimson, and aquamarine. One of the two variations of Ananta was released in 2006 as a micro-edition CDR through Mystery Sea; tiny churning textures stream along a linear path, nearly achieving infinity, which happens to be the translation from Sanskrit of "ananta." If you find Roland Kayn, Yoshi Wada, or Charlemagne Palestine hypnotic, you'll want to check this out. The Strato Version of Ananta is previously unreleased. It bends and undulates around a fundamental drone, while maintaining the sun-flecked glints magnified in the Mystery Sea version. Limited to 300 copies
Stereo Telepathy Academy
(Helen Scarsdale) CD $13.25
The San Francisco-based Spoonbender 1.1.1 outlines itself as the “tele-ambient dream self” of the critically-acclaimed, “populist avant-tronics and media group” I Am Spoonbender. Stereo Telepathy Academy takes spoken text from one film and overlays it onto images from another film; the score was composed while viewing a third unnamed film. As images of Cronenberg’s rarely seen Crimes Of The Future flickered, Spoonbender 1.1.1 radiated an inverted telekinetic minimalism of undulating tones supporting the third piece of the puzzle: spoken text from Cronenberg’s Stereo, a faux-documentary detailing a surgical procedure for the advancement of telepathic communication. The result is a sort of Wizard Of Oz / Dark Side Of The Moon for the mimetic engineering mindset.