infraction.bandcamp.com – I can’t remember if they were having a sale or whether I just heard a bunch of things I needed to own immediately. Probably the latter. An excellent label, well worth your attention. Also, they provide superb service.

Past Inside The Present, who can be found at pitp.bandcamp.com – I suspect I’m going to be doing some deep digging into their back catalogue soon.

A Finnish label who do not use Bandcamp, and who do not sell downloads, but simply offer limited samples on Soundcloud.

Descriptions of their offerings can go like this: “An outlandish touch ignites the earth-bound stellar components into bi-directional currents. Abstract electro-acoustic currents, coarse drone ambience and meditative rhythms guide onward on the pathway eating itself. Telemorphic-statues are burning, spectral-horizons collapsing into sub-atomic states which linger omnipresent among the threads of blooming semblances.”

Therefore I had to drop a lot of money on a bunch of their stuff, and it was totally worth it. And they threw one in for me!

One of my favourite labels. homenormal.bandcamp.com is where I buy my materials from Home Normal, a currently Brighton-based team with marvellous ears. Being on Bandcamp means you can stream everything before you buy it, so just go and have a listen around their list this week.

We have here: LOST RITES by Silent Vigils, 山水 / Sansui by Norihito Suda + Stijn Hüwels, and hochu-ekki-tou by Tomoyoshi Date + Stijn Hüwels.

Number 4 is still on back order. Not sure I’ll ever feel the need to own all of this series? I think there are sixteen of them. But right now they’re a fascinating sound diary of a working life in art, during what I find to be a particularly interesting period.

There are two copies of this left at forged-river.com as I write this. Or you can buy the digital download. Mark Williamson is among our most important British landscape artists, and also our most inventive ambient musicians. I feel very lucky to have been able to grab a copy of this.

I saw this, I think, in the early 90s, on what was probably its second terrestrial transmission. It files next to ARTEMIS 81 as one of those genuine curiosities of British video. (Director Jamil Dehlavi is Pakistani/French, but he was based in Britain for a long time and much of his work was produced and/or funded here, like this one, which came out of FilmFour as I recall.)

I haven’t seen it since. But while looking for something else I came across this limited-edition release, and, hell, I’m in lockdown, and I can have the occasional film if I want. Hoping for a clear couple of hours some time next week when I can sit down and watch it.

Peter Firth has always had a quirky career, and has done ambitious and off-centre things apparently just because he’d like to try them and thinks they should exist. Suzan Crowley’s entire career has been weird; she’s one of the great rogue actors of our generation. Nabil Shaban, who co-stars, is a powerhouse.

At this point, I should probably just give Sub Rosa Label my bank account details, as they can apparently sell me anything.

“Belgian electronic music composer André Stordeur born 1941. His musical career started in 1973 with a tape composition for the soundtrack to a film on Gordon Matta-Clark titled Office Baroque. Later in the 1970s, he participated to avantgarde music ensemble Studio voor Experimentele Muziek, founded in Antwerp, Flanders, by Joris De Laet. Since 1980, Stordeur composes exclusively on Serge synthesizer, either a Serge series 79 and a Serge prototype 1980, which was especially built for him by Serge Tcherepnin himself. In 1981, Stordeur composed the music of Belgian film director Christian Mesnil’s documentary Du Zaïre au Congo. He studied at IRCAM in 1981 with David Wessel and then flew to the US to study with Morton Subotnick.”

Three CD set with sleeve notes and booklet. Nice.

“Letters To The Farthest Star is an ambitious and deeply personal dispatch: a far-reaching sojourn into the diverse ambient/electronic influences that helped shape the last three decades of Fang’s unique “Fourth World” style. Like messages from a universe without geographic borders, these pieces shift from dark, organic ambient passages to emotional, melodic interludes. 

projektrecords.bandcamp.com to the rescue again.

We do like a bit of Hakobune.