Category: Year 2: Audiological Transmissions

Audiological exploration by Listening Center.

From the album The Quietened Bunker, which also includes work by Keith Seatman, Grey Frequency, A Year In The Country, Panabrite, Polypores, Time Attendant, Unknown Heretic and David Colohan.

Available at Bandcamp and our Artifacts Shop.

 

Revisitation #4a.

Notes and Scribings:
The Quietened Bunker is an exploration of the abandoned and/or decommissioned Cold War installations which lie under the land and that would have acted as selectively populated refuges/control centres if the button was ever pushed.

They could be seen as once modern fortresses – reinforced concrete and blast doors replacing moats and stone battlements.

However, these subterranean fortresses would likely also have been places of entombment – somewhere that those who once ran the infrastructure and defence of the nation would watch the days pass as supplies dwindled and the inevitable time came when the air filters would give out, all long before the world would become habitable again.

Accompanying the main bunkers in the UK were a network of hundreds of small underground monitoring posts which would report on the size of an attack and the resulting fallout. Manned by volunteers, they were to be operational for just three weeks.

The intention was that these would form part of a network of civil defence and management, accompanied by government issued Protect and Survive leaflets/broadcasts that would have offered advice on how to protect home and hearth via little more than whitewashing windows as blast protection and forming a shelter by leaning mattresses against an inner wall of your house.

Looking back, such preparations can seem a reflection of some kind of madness or delusion in the collective consciousness and the halls of power – a tilting at windmills that was necessary to protect national psyches from the reality and aftermath of the sudden use and descending of mechanisms with almost indescribable destructive power.

Now it can all seem like a dream from another world, one where for a number of decades populations lived under the day-to-day threat of total annihilation and where millions was spent on this network of shelters and defences; preparations to allow fiddling once all had burned, such bunkers possibly being nearer to utilitarian national follies than fortresses.

Indeed, today they are as likely to be signposted tourist attractions as operative defences.

The Quietened Bunker reflects on these chimeric bulwarks and the faded but still present memory of associated Cold War dread, of which they are stalwart, mouldering symbols.

 

Transmissions sent, received, transmitted:

“The Quietened Bunker is an exploration of the abandoned and/or decommissioned Cold War installations (i.e. my favourite places). And (spoiler) it’s brilliant – an absolute contender for my album of the year. Every single track is expressive of the theme, though they all take a different approach to presenting it.” Pete Collins at Both Bars On

“Grey Frequency’s Drakelow Tunnels is comprised of desolate drones like wind whipping through a crumbling building, menacing hums and echoes, and a repeated three-note melody loaded with foreboding… Listening Center combines music reminiscent of 1970s synth pioneers with a darkly experimental edge… David Colohan of United Bible Studies contributes a soundtrack-esque piece that is stark yet beautiful, a sense of hope shining through the abandonment like flowers arising triumphantly through crumbling concrete.” Kim Harten at Bliss Aquamarine

From Rue Morgue, Shindig issue 59 and handwritten scribing by Was Ist Das?

“Over the course of the album, the sounds blend beautifully together,  each seemingly tied to the next by a sense of loneliness and abandonment, creating a very melancholic collection that is very engaging with every artist playing their part in the mystery. To end it all, David Colohan takes the listener on a magical ride as “Waiting for the Blazing Sky” unfolds around you, a soft melodic slice of electronics that seems to float without form or purpose, summing up the cold war relics that inspired this excellent compilation.” Simon Lewis at Terrascope

Other considerations and zeros and ones/frequency modulation broadcasts of the album can also be found at:

Seance Radio Show / Include Me Out / A Closer Listen #1 / A Closer Listen #2 / You, The Night & The Music #1  / You The Night & The Music # 2 / Evening Of Light / Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone / Nick Luscombe at Late Junction / Music Won’t Save You / The Crooked Button Radio Show / John Coulthart’s Feuilleton / Syndae #1 / Syndae #2 / The Sunday Experience / Gated Canal Community Radio / Simon Reynold’s Retromania.

A tip of the hat to all concerned.

 

A set of intermingled The Quietened Bunker wanderings can be perused via:

Week #30/52: The Quietened Bunker Archives #1; A Lovely Day Out / Not Your Average Des Res

Week #31/52: The Quietened Bunker Archives #2; Songs For The Bunker – The Once Was Ascendance Of Apocalyptic Pop

Week #32/52: Bunker Archives #3: Wargames, Hollywood phantoms and phantasms and the only winning move is not to play

Week #33/52: Bunker Archives #4; Paul Virilio’s Bunker Archaeology and accidental utilitarian art

 

Further details of The Quietened Bunker can be found around these parts here.

 

Transmissions sent, received, transmitted:

Below is a gathering of some of the various considerations and airwaves sendings of The Forest / The Wald…

“…the seasons shift through a dozen tracks that rage and range from the manic Morris Dance of Cosmic Neighbourhood’s ‘Equinox’ to the electronic storm of Time Attendant’s ‘Fantastic Mass’… An album… to listen to in undisturbed sittings, as you pick out the stories that it tells.” Dave Thompson, Spin Cycle at Goldmine Magazine

“…a response to British folk traditions that acknowledges the history without seeming beholden to it…” John Coulthart at Feuilleton

“…The Hare And The Moon offering… a ghostly love note murmured in spectral tidings upon which droning mists descend which once cleared and lifted reveal siren-esque apparitions softly wooing with their beckoning bewitchment…” Mark Barton at The Sunday Experience here and here.

Raffaello Russo has captured the spirit of things rather well at Music Won’t Save You (and we shall not offend his fine, flowing investigations by trying to translate the text here).

The good folk at Shindig have included The Forest / The Wald scribings in issue 62 of the magazine. Peruse that here (and writer Ben Graham’s home in the ether here).

The Forest / The Wald can also be found amongst the zeros and ones and frequency modulation airwaves, in particular via:

Evening Of Light / Golden Apples Of The Sun / Gated Canal Community Radio / You, The Night & The Music and in a circular manner at the phantom seaside radio of The Séance here and here.

Thanks to Oscar, Justin, Mat, James and Pete for those transmissions and a general tip of the hat to all concerned for both the above and ongoing support. Thankyou kindly.

And the album itself? Well…

The Forest / The Wald is a study and collection of work that reflects on fragments and echoes of tales from the woodland and its folklore; greenwood rituals performed in the modern day, fantastical childhood rhymes, sylvan siren calls that tremble through tangles of branches, electronics pressed into the summoning of otherworldly arboreal creations unearthed amidst the creeping thickets and elegies to woodland intrustions, solitudes and seasons.

Audiological explorations by Bare Bones, Magpahi, Polypores, Time Attendant, David Colohan, Sproatly Smith, The Hare And The Moon ft Alaska, The Rowan Amber Mill, The Séance with Lutine, Cosmic Neighbourhood and A Year In The Country.

Peruse it around these parts here.

It is available in physical form at our Artifacts Shop, Norman Records and the Ghost Box Guest Shop and in physical/download form at our Bandcamp Ether Victrola.

It can also be found in less tangible, binary form at most of the multitude of usual places one would go to consider and listen to music in a newer, more fangled, less corporeal manner. So, at the streaming/rent, download/buy and stream/have-the-occasional-interruption-of-almost-surreally-unconnected-adverts (!) likes of Deezer, Spotify, Amazon and iTunes.

 

Audiological exploration by The Rowan Amber Mill.

From the album Fractures, which also includes work by Circle/Temple, Sproatly Smith, Keith Seatman, Polypores, The Listening Center, The British Space Group, The Hare And The Moon ft Alaska/Michael Begg, Time Attendant, A Year In The Country and David Colohan.

Available at Bandcamp and our Artifacts Shop.

 

Revisitation #3a.

Notes and Scribings:
Fractures is a gathering of studies and explorations that take as their starting point the year 1973; a time when there appeared to be a schism in the fabric of things, a period of political, social, economic and industrial turmoil, when 1960s utopian ideals seemed to corrupt and turn inwards.

As a reaction to such, this was a possible high water mark of the experimentations of psych/acid folk, expressions of eldritch undertones in the land via what has become known in part as folk horror and an accompanying yearning to return to an imagined pastoral idyll.

Looking back, culture, television broadcasts and film from this time often seem imbued with a strange, otherly grittyness; to capture a sense of dissolution in relation to what was to become post-industrial Western culture and ways of living.

Such transmissions and signals viewed now can seem to belong to a time far removed and distant from our own; the past not just as a foreign country but almost as a parallel universe that is difficult to imagine as once being our own lands and world.

Fractures is a reflection on reverberations from those disquieted times, taking as its initial reference points a selected number of conspicuous junctures and signifiers: Delia Derbyshire leaving The BBC/The Radiophonic Workshop and reflecting later that around then “the world went out of time with itself”. Electricity blackouts in the UK and the three day week declared. The Wickerman released. The Changes recorded but remained unreleased. The Unofficial Countryside published. The Spirit Of Dark And Lonely Water released.

 

A set of intermingled Fractures wanderings can be perused via:
Fractures Signals #1 / Fractures Signals #2 / Fractures Signals #3 / Fractures Signals #4

 

Transmissions sent, received, transmitted:

“A year in the country quietly go about their business releasing beautifully packaged music that is influenced by folk, electronica, drone as well as by landscape, time and place. These… compilations each have themes running through them, tying the music together and seemingly telling a story as they unfold… It takes a while to fully absorb these releases, their depth and wonders requiring listening to fully appreciate, a task that is totally worthwhile, hidden gems to be discovered on every journey.” Terrascope

“A skillfully weighted blend of dark folklore and synthesised experimentation, Fractures is a bit special.” Electronic Sound

“Another excellent snapshot of current experimental music, showing the coexistence of darkness, strangeness, and profound beauty.” Bliss Aquamarine

The album can also be found amongst the zeros and ones and frequency modulation airwaves at:
Evening Of Light / The Golden Apples Of The Sun #1 / The Golden Apples Of The Sun #2 / The Séance / Radio: More Than Human / You, The Night And The Music #1 / You, The Night And The Music #2 / fRoots Radio / Free Form Freakout,  Project Moonbase and in a circular manner at the Test Transmission Archive.

A tip of the hat once more to all involved.

Further details of Fractures can be found here.

 

Revisitation #1a.

Something of a gathering from the 12 audiological explorations on the album Airwaves: Songs From The Sentinels…

“…radio waves permeate the fog-cloaked air & I am captivated… interference, plain piano song, shimmering electronics, remote listening & shadowy melodies make for an elegant & sinister experience…” Include Me Out

 

Notes and Scribings on Airwaves: Songs From The Sentinels;
A study of the tales told/required to be told by the sentinels/senders that stand atop the land; a gathering of scattered signals plucked from the ether, cryptograms that wander amongst the airwaves, fading, tired and garbled messages which have journeyed from nearby or who knows where…

The Airwaves set of audiological constructs are an exploration that begins with and via silent but ever chattering broadcast towers; their transmissions and sometimes secrets – the songs they weave from their own particular language and emanations.

These stilled, quietly brooding sentinels/senders are part of a network of threads, both corporeal and those less tangible, carrying on their shoulders the weight and responsibilities of passing forward those innumerable stories; of joy, day-to-day life, institutional watchfulness, our entertainments or in conclusion harbingers of storms sent from our own hands.

Airwaves harvests, weaves with and recasts the transmissions found amongst the gossamer strands of that network, intertwining these with and through the medium of cathodic reverberations/mechanisms while also taking ministrations from the wellsprings and flows of an otherly pastoralism, travelling through and amongst the brambled flipside of an Arcadian idyll and the subcultural undergrowth of the wald.

The resulting work, though drawn in part from the beauty and bounty of the landscape wherein these sentinels stand, seems to often summon unbidden some sense of loss, of the ghosts and fractures of a landscape and psyche that still contains the echoes and fragments of cold conflicts and end of days once planned for by national behemoths and those who stood beside them.

 

“…a heart-rending and epic symphony of strings, chilly drones and wintry beauty. And then there is silence, the transmission has ended; yet this album leaves behind a sense of wonder and mood that lasts for long afterwards…” Grey Malkin, The Active Listener

 

Further details and encasements of Airwaves: Songs From The Sentinels can be perused here, ferrous reel entanglements here and Ether Envoy-ing here.

 

 

Audiological exploration by Time Attendant from the album The Forest / The Wald.

Transmissions sent, received, transmitted:

Wald considerations can be found at John Coulthart’s feuilleton:
“…a response to British folk traditions that acknowledges the history without seeming beholden to it…”

And amongst the ether / frequency modulation airwaves courtesy of Mat Handley and You, The Night & The Music.

 

Audiological exploration by The Séance with Lutine from the album The Forest / The Wald.

Trees Grew All Around Her can also be found amongst the wanderings, channellings and summonings of The Séance’s phantom seaside radio show. Join them around the cloth covered table amongst the ether and airwaves here.

 

Audiological exploration by The Hare And The Moon ft Alaska from the album The Forest / The Wald.

“…sylvan siren calls that tremble through tangles of branches…”

 

 

Audiological exploration by Polypores from the album The Forest / The Wald.

Preorder 31st October 2016. Released 14th November 2016.

Will be available via our Artifacts Shop, our Bandcamp Ether Victrola and at Norman Records.

 

 

Audiological exploration by Magpahi from the album The Forest / The Wald.

“In amongst The Forest / The Wald can be found expressions of greenwood rituals performed in the modern day, echoes of fantastical childhood rhymes, sylvan siren calls that tremble through tangles of branches, electronics pressed into the summoning of otherworldly arboreal creations unearthed amidst the creeping thickets and elegies to woodland intrustions, solitudes and seasons.”

Revisitation #7.

In the ether field recording is defined as:

“…the term used for an audio recording produced outside a recording studio, and the term applies to recordings of both natural and human-produced sounds.”

Racker&Orphan’s album Twalif X could be considered a form of field recording, although it is more a document of an experimental journey than being strictly a scientifically faithful reproduction.

Back when, I said of it:

“…sometimes it is as though when listening to Twalif X that you are almost next to these explorers and you find that you have travelled with them to the otherly, darker corners of the woodlands and landscape. A work that is both calm and quietly unsettling, experimental with bursts of folkloric melody that appears with the coming of the dawn…”

And that journey?

Well, more specifically It was recorded during a journey through one night, between dusk and dawn on the 12th/13th May 2014 in Robin Wood, Bears Wood, Knott Wood and on Eagle Crag.

You may well know Racker&Orphan by different names:

N. Racker you may know as Samuel McLoughlin and his work as samandtheplants, the album Supernatural Lancashire / releases on Finders Keepers Records.

D. Orphan you may know as David Chatton-Barker and his Folklore Tapes related work, which is described as:

“…an ongoing research and heritage project exploring the folkloric arcana of the farthest-flung recesses of Great Britain and beyond. Traversing the mysteries, myths, nature, magic, topography and strange phenomena of the old counties through abstracted musical reinterpretation and experimental visuals.”

You may well also know/find Racker&Orphan/their work amongst the encasements and releases of Hood Faire.

Previous intertwined wanderings around these parts:
Day #7/365: Folklore Tapes; the ferrous reels of arcane research projects…
Day #32/365: Wyrd Britannia, Folklore Tapes, Magpahi and English Libraries
Day #57/365: A bakers dozen of Mr David Chatton Barker
Day #97/365: Ms A. Cooper, Natural/Supernatural Lancashire and the various nestings of Magpahi…
Day #357/365: Audiological Reflections and Pathways #7; recording explorations through the land/s…

The album can be found around these parts here, at our Artifacts Shop and our Bandcamp Ether Victrola.

 

Audiological exploration by A Year In The Country from the album No More Unto The Dance.

Transmission sent, received, transmitted:

“A taking by the hand journey down dimly lit back alleys into signless word of mouth back rooms and basements where inside sounds come wired to the hive mind pulse of the underground, a place where Add N to X ghost lights prickle with ominous intent amid a palette populated by LFO trancetones, motoric murmurs, psychotronic disturbias, radiophonic echoes, kosmick pulsars, serene ambient flurries and soundscapes siren calling futureworld dystopias.” Mark Barton / The Sunday Experience

 

Audiological exploration by A Year In The Country from the album No More Unto The Dance.

Tranmission sent, received, transmitted: Dave Thompson in his Spincycle section at Goldmine Magazine:

“…never loses sight of the beat, the heartbeat that every great club has (or had), that gave every one its own sense of purpose and desire, be it a prohibition speakeasy or a chill-out room in a rural barn.

“Such imaginings are haunting, layering one another with emotional imagery that cannot help but lead the ghosts onto the floor, a disco queen here, a rave scene there, the scent of northern soul, the smell of teen spirit.  By the time it’s over, you feel as though you’ve been dancing all night; by the time you’ve recovered, you want to do it again.”

Tip of the hat indeed.

 

Audiological exploration by A Year In The Country from the album No More Unto The Dance.

No More Unto The Dance transmissions sent, received, transmitted: amongst fine company at The deXter Bentley Hello GoodBye Show.

Tip of the hat to Mr Bentley…

 

 

Audiological exploration by A Year In The Country from the album No More Unto The Dance.

“…the world in which this recording was made does still come alive at night but it is more likely to be the nocturnal foraging and wanderings of wildlife rather than in a low-ceilinged basement lit by a strobe light…”

Available to pre-order on 19th September 2016 at our Artifacts Shop and our Bandcamp Ether Victrola. Release date 3rd October 2016.

 

Audiological exploration by A Year In The Country from the album No More Unto The Dance.

“No More Unto The Dance is a reflection of nightlife memories and the search for the perfect transportative electronic beat, a collection of reverberations that have fragmented with the passing of time; a mixtape that envisions echoes of times lost in the once seemingly endless dreams of a club…”

 
Available to pre-order on 19th September 2016 at our Artifacts Shop and our Bandcamp Ether Victrola. Release date 3rd October 2016.

Also will be available from Norman Records.

More details here.

 

Revisitation #6.

We thought it would be nice to wander back to Howlround’s Torridon Gate which was produced in the following manner:

“All of the music on this album was created from a single recording of a front garden gate on Torridon Road in Hither Green, London. These sounds were captured using a contact microphone and processed, looped and edited on three reel-to-reel tape machines with all electronic effects or artificial reverb strictly forbidden…”

Transmissions sent, received, transmitted…

Back when there was a fair amount of considering and scribing about the album. Below is a selection of just a few of such things:

“…the missing link between Ekoplekz and On Land, or  Stahlmusik gaseously expanded into Kosmische Musik…”
Simon Reynolds at Blissblog.

“Torridon Gate is a different beast, essentially a manipulated field recording of a garden gate. But what a gate!… The Torridon Gate is a sonic symbol of a time and place, preserved by Howlround as a reminder not only of durable things, but of durable memories.  Few would recognize this as a field recording; it comes across as an experimental electronic piece, haunted by echo and hum.  The expected creaks are present, yet in these recordings, one can also hear ghosts… If one’s gate sounded like this, would one venture outside to close it?  Perhaps not.  But one’s gate does sound like this; we’re simply unable to hear it.  This is the whole point of A Year In The Country’s Artifact Shop –  to uncover what is veiled, even if it remains beyond our comprehension.”
Richard Allen at A Closer Listen.

“Torridon Gate will transport you – from Jupiter’s Moons to the Mines Of Moria. You might be led to believe that the Gate is an extraterrestrial artifact to fold space and time, but in fact, it’s just an ordinary garden gate.”
Forest Punk

“Beautifully different, utterly chillingly and curiously affecting. …There is something… at play here; a desire to manipulate sound, twist it into shapes that emote, that frighten, entrance and ultimately affect the listener on a deep, instinctive, physical and emotional level…”
Grey Malkin at The Active Listener

“The gate’s squeaks become sounding mountains, and clouds of melodic atmospheres float through the piece. It’s an ordinary object made hauntingly strange.”
Louise Gray at Music Works.

“Howlround’s recording succeeds by obfuscating the source, rendering the ‘real’ unreal and transforming the ordinary into an other-worldly phenomenon…”
Robin Tomens at Include Me Out.

“This third album from London’s finest manipulators of magnetic tape, Howlround, is a slow burning, deeply atmospheric corker.  Produced entirely from recordings made from the gate referenced in the title, the duo of Robin (the Fog) and Chris (Weaver) have coaxed a dizzying array of unsettling and even sorrowful sounds from this most functional of objects and have layered them to astonishing effect.”
Ian Holloway at The Quiet World.

 

Howlround related wanderings around these parts:
Day #142/365: Fog Signals/Ghost signals from lost transmission centres

Day #296/365: Howlround’s ether handbill… and a hop, skip and jump to curious links between mirror world reflections of our times, the work of previous audiological explorers, certain English gents and printed/bound spectral considerations…

Day #356/365: Audiological Reflections and Pathways #6; fading vessellings

 

Howlround can be found in the ether here. Erstwhile Howlround-ers Robin The Fog and Christopher Weaver can be found here and here.

The album can be found at our Artifacts Shop and our Bandcamp Ether Victrola.

 

Revisitation #5.

Now, we have something of a soft spot for this here track and its companion.

In amongst the A Year In The Country releases it may well be a turning down more overtly folk horror (or should that be folk noir, more of which in a moment?) pathways, accompanied by the phantasmagorical remembering of childhood rhymes to be found in Molly Leigh, which is inspired by Ms Rocola’s…

“…personal folklore and that of her home town; childhood experiences of chasing her playmates around Molly Leigh’s grave and the rhymes which accompanied such games. It is an audiological conjuring of hazy, sleepy small-hours memories and dreams from those times.”

Transmissions sent, received, transmitted: the single garnered some rather fine considerations and scribing, a pairing of which are below:

“She Rocola conjures one the most bewitching releases of the last few months… Burn The Witch” begins with urgent stabs and wails of violin and an immediate sense of foreboding. Rocola intones the witches’ fate, vocal harmonies layering ghostlike amidst the baroque setting, her voice endlessly repeating “make her leave my mind”… a subtle but powerful spell. Inspired by “childhood memories and by formative viewings of late-night folk-horror films from in front of and behind the sofa” this is a hallucinatory and haunting piece of folk noir.

“Second track “Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town” is a music box filled shimmer of dread, acoustic guitars casting spectral shadows under the repeated nursery rhyme mantra of the verse. The voice of the witch speaks, intertwining with the sounds of the children’s twisted game. It is both utterly unique and completely hypnotic; this is gothic folk like you have never heard before.”

By Grey Malkin (of The Hare And The Moon) at The Active Listener.

“… few 45s of the last couple of years can catch up with this one… Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town” is the kind of nursery rhyme you never learned at your mother’s knee, but which buried itself in your memory regardless, to peer out of the soil whhile you’re hopscotching past, and wrap bony fingers round your ankle; “Burn the Witch” is freakish fiddles (by Andrea Fiorito) that scratch behind She’s icy vocal and spectral harmonies, a Hammer film condensed to two minutes of sound and effects.”

By Dave Thompson (author of many a tome or two or hundred or so) at Goldmine.

 

Burn The Witch wanderings around these parts:
Day #39/365: Burn The Witch by Ms She Rocola, a stately repose amongst the corn rigs and Victorian light catching

The Victorian light catching in question is the photograph of Ms Rocola that accompanied the release, by Zoe Lloyd:

“…a stately repose amongst the rural landscape and corn rigs, a folkloric meandering through the textures of Sarah Moon and Deborah Turbeville (this particular entrancing of the soul was created using light catching techniques from previous eras – traditional wet plate to be more precise)...”

Night, Day, Arising, Owl Light and Dawn encasements:

Day #273/365: Artifact #39/52; She Rocola Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother town CD released – Night / Day Editions

Day #280/365: Artifact #40/52; She Rocola Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town; The Arising Edition – archival print and 3″ CD released

Day #304/365: Artifact #43/52; She Rocola Burn The Witch / Molly Leigh Of The Mother Town CDs released – Owl Light / Dawn Editions

 

Burn The Witch (2014):
Words; She Rocola. Music: Andrea Fiorito. Vocals: She Rocola. Violin: Andrea Fiorito.

Recorded and produced by Joe Whitney and Andrea Fiorito.

Elsewhere in the ether: She Rocola. Mr Whitney.