Category: library

“Amalgaam is a raw and unpolished album. Which doesn’t mean that it’s blunt or trite. The grainy, textural sounds on this record have a fleeting, cinematic quality to them, combining spaciousness with a sense of intimacy – at times interrupted by noisier outbursts. The album is based on a series of improvisations on a very hands-on hardware setup, with an old tone generator, effects pedals, dictaphones, contact mics, etc. This material was then mixed and edited into the pieces on this album, while retaining the liveliness of the source material.”

Ordered a couple of things from a recent sale at projektrecords.bandcamp.com and they threw one in for free! Thank you so much! Projekt Records, if you’re not aware, do amazing service for ambient and deep listening music. Sam Rosenthal started that label in 1983 and still apparently runs it by his own hand today.

This sale was how I discovered Alio Die, who has his own Bandcamp page which I will get into later in the week.

Ian Holloway just sent me, by surprise, a box of close to his entire library. You can find him at ian-quietworld.bandcamp.com – I’ve mentioned him here before, I love his work. He claimed he just had some doubles in his storage space. I’m knocked flat by his generosity. Thank you, Ian.

From the geniuses at Glacial Movements, who somehow got this out early despite the lockdown.

“This album was recorded live in one take, over ten months, on the tenth of each month. Each in memory of a time the world lied.”

It’s been a great mail day so far.

My previous copy of this was a not-great DVD transfer that didn’t play on some devices for no good reason. So fuck it, I splashed out a little bit. Space is the place.

(UK) (US)

Arrow Films are having a sale. They have battled through the pandemic to bring me these goods. It’s going to be a good day after all. (And, look, I finally replaced my rotted old VHS copies of TETSUO.)

Heard this for the first time a few weeks ago. Released in 2010. Hunted down a CD copy on Discogs. Give it a listen on Bandcamp.

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“Fully immersive electronic music by US composer Maggi Payne, inspired by the arctic winds. Maggi Payne’s sound worlds invite the listeners to enter the sound and be carried with it, experiencing it from the inside out in intimate detail. The sounds are almost tactile and visible.

“The music is based on location recordings, with each sound carefully selected for its potential—its slow unfolding revealing delicate intricacies—and its inherent spatialization architecting and sculpting the aural space where multiple perspectives and trajectories coexist. With good speakers, some space in your schedule, and a mind-body continuum willing to resonate with Payne’s electroacoustic journey, but then it will take you to places that other music can’t reach.

“From the sounds of dry ice, space transmissions, BART trains, and poor plumbing she immerses the listener in a world strangely unfamiliar.”

I believe this now completes my collection of the available work of Forndom on CD.

Give them a listen for yourself at forndom.bandcamp.com.

“The culture, history, traditions, and melancholic landscapes of the rural parts of central Sweden is the main elements within the musical universe of Forndom.”

I remember sitting in front of the VCR with a brand new tape in hand, getting ready to record this off its BBC 2 transmission. Which might have been its only transmission? Directed by Alex Cox, featuring Peter Boyle giving every appearance of enjoying the hell out of himself, and an intense young Christopher Eccleston. An approach very strongly inflected by European and South American comics, in my memory, and also a perverse bit of the Warren Beatty DICK TRACY film. I remember being one of the few people genuinely delighted by this presentation, and when I tripped over a copy of a DVD release online the other day, I knew I had to have it.

Alex Cox, wherever you are, thank you for this.

DEATH AND THE COMPASS (UK) (US)