David Yow is releasing his debut solo LP this June 25.
Yow was the frontman for The Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid, the latter of which is one of the main reasons I learned an instrument, formed a band, and became heavily invested in music.
Colour me excited.
Halcyon Days is the latest release from Savaran/Mark Walters – a musician who manages the impressive combination of being Welsh, very talented, and an extremely nice guy all at once. The seven-track EP is mastered by Wil Bolton and dedicated to Mark’s late dog Tess, a clearly beloved companion.
In Mark’s words:
“The Halcyon Days tracks evolved over five months between November 2012 and March 2013. For some reason my most subtle, deep, emotional and dark works always seem to be produced in the suppressed light of Winter. Perhaps the enforced isolation and incarceration in the studio due to the inclement weather figures in this, but I know that I also take a lot of visual and audible cues from the landscape and nature at this time.
The EP essentially describes a number of locations visited during the Winter months in the UK and my response to them in musical form. ”
Halcyon Days was released by the Assembly Field netlabel, and though I confess I hadn’t heard of them before (I haven’t been keeping very current lately), it’s a young label that looks very good indeed, with a compilation that I’m going to be sure to check out next.
Anyway, Mark’s EP is great stuff as always and well worth a listen.
Introducing Darwin, the seven month old Dachshund we recently adopted. He’s settling in very well and seems to get on with Finley and Luna just fine.
A rare work plug:
the artist Christo (of Christo and Jeanne-Claude fame) has unveiled his first work since the death of his wife. The installation is titled “Big Air Package.”
I wrote about it here
anddd … I’m back.
I’ve been having some hand/wrist trouble which prevented me from playing guitar or typing very much (never a good thing for someone who writes for a living.)
It’s still not completely healed, but I can drive and work, so I figured it’s time I got back to updating this website again.
In the last few months I’ve filled my time listening to the above song a lot, exploring the wine selection of my local supermarket, reading classic Russian literature, and watching Twin Peaks. Oh, and I’m also attempting to learn Spanish.
I haven’t written any music in far too long and still have an “almost finished” album lying around since last year, so in an attempt to get back into gear I threw together something last night…
The track comprises ebow improvisations on the aluminium kramer guitar and a series of field recordings I made on the last trip to Spain. We tied a Zoom H1 recorder to some cheap fishing line and lowered the Zoom down a mineshaft (shown above) for about 90 feet. The mine complex itself is fantastic, and a complete deathtrap, dating back to pre-Roman times - it was apparently very heavily mined by the Romans and the gold dug up would be floated all the way back to the Tiber.
When listening back, you could hear several layers of life in the mineshaft: first, there were several very angry pigeons, then the poor Zoom appears to have fallen into something dead, as there were really loud flies (and, presumably, maggots), then finally, rats. Amazingly, the Zoom survived.
Anyway, though it doesn’t really live up to the above description yet, a very rough sketch track was made from the sounds and uploaded to SoundCloud here.
Jonathon Keats is an artist, writer and experimental philosopher previously behind such endeavors as the opening of a porn theater for plants and the application of string theory to real estate development, in order to buy and sell properties extra-dimensionally.
In his new project, Keats purports to offer the general public the chance to see, and perhaps own, his yeast-based “clones” of celebrities, which include Lady GaGa and Oprah Winfrey.
As the clones are made from yeast, they’re not going to look anything like their forbears, however Keats is still confident that the yeast cells are up to the job of functioning on the same high level which we have come to expect from modern day luminaries like Ms Gaga.
Jonathon Keats’ Epigenetic Cloning Laboratory is opening its doors from September 13 to October 27 at the AC Institute, New York City.
Twice Removed Records is an independent record label based in Perth, Australia which releases varying styles of underground music which fall broadly under the ambient/drone/noise genres and has thus far been responsible for some releases from artists like Listening Mirror, Bengalfuel and Cycle~ 440. Label boss Gavin sent some recent releases my way and so here are some hastily jotted down thoughts…
First up is Bengalfuel with Roeblin. Bengalfuel is the project of duo Lou DiBenedetto and Joe LiTrenta. The pair have had a run of strong previous releases on Hibernate Recordings and Rural Colours and a selection of other similar labels. Roeblin’s atmosphere is probably what most artists of the type hope to convey when they describe their work as ‘dark ambient’, though in all honestly work labelled as such usually leaves me cold. However, Roeblin definitely does not fall into this camp and its dark, spacious tones really get under your skin over the eleven tracks and fourty-five minutes of the albuym, resulting in repeated and attentive listens.
Craig McElhinney’s Sore Loser was the other album sent over by the label and thankfully it keeps up the quality offered by Bengalfuel. I’ll confess to not knowing too much about McElhinney and I don’t think I’ve come across his work before, but the one long-form track here is strong enough to pique my interest and make me want to seek out more. Like Bengalfuel’s album, Sore Loser also starts off pretty dark and minimal but the artist ratchets things up and produces lots of buffeting noise in a release which packs in quite a bit of variation - my own personal highlight was the guitar strumming somewhere around mid-point.
To hear more from the label, check out their bandcamp page:
http://twicerememberedtwiceremoved.bandcamp.com/
It’s been a busy few weeks but we’ve finally finished moving into this place.
My friend (and onetime collaborator) Leonardo Rosado recently returned from a work related trip to find that his home had been broken into and burgled. In addition to the obvious invasion of privacy and the loss of several expensive items, Leonardo lost his main music computer from which he both creates his own music and runs his labels.
In the hope of raising some extra funds to buy a replacement laptop, Leonardo has released his album The Blue Nature of Everyday on Bandcamp for just 6 Euros. It’s a great album and its sale will hopefully enable Leonardo to purchase a new Mac soon and get back to music-making.
