SV Stop 268: Wire Chart 2021

Nine years on this now. When I get to Year 15 I'm going to insist that The Wire print it. Or perhaps a list of my 15 records of the year(s). Whatever. For this year here's my 2021 set of acquisitions, all according to the criterion “buying one record reviewed in The Wire each month” – plus three more to make up a proper Wire 15 chart. For reference, the previous eight years’ worth can be found here: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.

The # marks denote the issues in which the records featured.
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SubVersion 2021 15

#443 Israel Vines - And Now We Know Nothing (Interdimensional Transmissions)
#444 Venus Ex Machina - Lux (AD 93)
#445 Futari - Beyond (Libra)
#446 Various - Miniatures 2020 (The 62nd Gramophone Company)
#447 Hedvig Mollestad Trio - Ding Dong. You’re Dead (Rune Grammofon)
#448 Lauren Sarah Hayes - Embrace (Superpang)
#449 Emma-Jean Thackray - Yellow (Movementt)
#450 Dal:um - Similar & Different (tak:til)
#451 Consorts - Distinctions (Spoonhunt)
#452 Keiji Haino / Jim O’Rourke / Oren Ambarchi - Each side has a depth of 5 seconds · A polka dot pattern in horizontal array · A flickering that moves vertically (Black Truffle)
#453 Phew - New Decade (Mute)
#453 Gordan - Down in the Meadow (Morphine)

+#447 Paranoise - Noizu / The 2nd Act (Skank Bloc)
+#450 Siderean - Lost on Void’s Horizon (Edged Circle)
+#453 Threshing Floor - Threshing Floor (El Studio 444 / Reboot)

Compiled by Jonathan Tait, subvertcentral.blogspot.co.uk
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And my record of the year for 2021: New Decade. Usually when I choose a record of the year, it's quite clear to me what it should be. Not this year. I had to listen to each of the monthly picks again. Phew won out.

[FABRIC] New Fabric CDs, compact discs, all on Fabric label, 20 years of Fabric two-disc

SV Stop 267: Wire Chart 2020

Eight years I've been doing this. BORRITWEM now has its own dedicated blog which gets, on average, zero views. Here's my 2020 set of acquisitions anyway, all according to the criterion “buying one record reviewed in The Wire each month” – plus three more to make up a proper Wire 15 chart. For reference, the previous seven years’ worth can be found here: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.

The # marks denote the issues in which the records featured.
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SubVersion 2020 15

#431 Catatonic Effigy - Putrid Tendency (Iluso)
#432 Tyshawn Sorey & Marilyn Crispell - The Adornment of Time (Pi Recordings)
#433 Chaos Motion - Psychological Spasms Cacophony (Transcending Obscurity)
#434 Jan St. Werner - Molocular Meditation (Editions Mego)
#435 Witch ‘n’ Monk - Witch ‘n’ Monk (Tzadik)
#436 MSHR - Signal Hybrid Recursion (De Player)
#437 Moor Jewelry - True Opera (Don Giovanni)
#438 Maggi Payne - Arctic Winds (Aguirre)
#439 Bob Vylan - We Live Here (Venn Records)
#440 Tashi Dorji - Stateless (Drag City)
#441 Clipping - Visions of Bodies Being Burned (Sub Pop)
#442 Krust - The Edge of Everything (Crosstown Rebels)

+#435 GRID - Decomposing Force (NNA Tapes)
+#439 Hedvig Mollestad - Ekhidna (Rune Grammofon)
+#441 Laura Cannell, Kate Ellis, Stewart Lee, et al - These Feral Lands Vol.1 (Brawl)

Compiled by Jonathan Tait, subvertcentral.blogspot.co.uk
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And my record of the year for 2020: Witch ‘n’ Monk by the duo of Heidi Heidelberg and Mauricio Velasierra. As Brian Morton wrote: “Hard to imagine that voice, guitar and flute could groove so hard and deliver so much.”

SV Stop 266: FL (www.focisleft.bandcamp.com) - Grains Of Sand, Pinches Of Salt LP (Unsigned, Unreleased, 2020) - First previews

https://soundcloud.com/subversion-2/sets/focis-left-grains-of-sand-pinches-of-salt# On this link, dear reader, you will find full ten-track audio for the heavily-trimmed LP newsie by FL, a 41 minute exploration into the connection between what makes sand grainy, and what makes salt salty. Ultimately it's about two different types of flavour, coterminously working together as one. Throughout the album, there are nods to some of I Michael's favourite acts, including Zelienople and Nils Frahm as actual tributes to those artists. While the mood is gentile, the flow is pastoral, ebbing from one wild river into smaller estuaries and back out into a cosmic lake moat mouth. Unlike the motorik, motor-mouthed pull of 70s kosmiche and faux-Neu! and Can, the music is polarised by being firmly connected to Muttley's library music roots: music, quite literally, that is as interesting, alternately, as it is ignorable. The polarisation aspect speaks to the queer identity of the artist, the weirdness of the current contemporary sonic landscape, and the fact that music does not sell these days, only the experience does. If you would like to join in this experience, I ask you not to donate copious amounts of money to me - spend that with viable charities or your mates in pubs and venues instead. No, what I would ask you to do is simply talk about releases like this, and spread the word. Word of mouth goes a hell of a long way if it is positive word of mouth. Support your local record shops too, before they experience only liquidation. It really happens, all the time. We just have to blot out the misgivings of time and space and focus on the pleasantries of the artform. My local record shops, for instance, are The Original Animal Sanctuary Shop in Carterton, as one music charity shop of several selling implausible titles; there are also local supermarkets for the big stuff, of course. But the real jewel in the crown I have to shout out, and all the staff is Rapture, Witney in their Woolgate Centre for visitors and tourists. According to many sources only Rapture and it's base Truck Store remain, Truck in Oxford, while there is a shop called River Man Records in Jericho, Oxford on the outskirts of the main city. I am talking for the outskirts of the Cotswolds; I literally live in the middle of nowhere. It has hence been ancillary and auxiliary minded to book artists for gigs in Oxford since moving here in 2006; more often than not, I am just contributing the same amount of participation as an extra audience member, a signed tour CD or mug/tee and the odd magazine reviews and concert photos. Anyway, enjoy the relationship, as ever, between musical entropy and musical anhedonia.

SV Stop 264: Lobster Records highlight release

 https://lobsterrecords.co.uk/products/aux-88-electro-techno-ep?mc_cid=ed42d40d0b&mc_eid=1d4cacdace

A particularly interesting take on remastered electro, techno and acid. 

 

[FTAL] Simon James French - Soundscapes Radio - Episode twelve

 https://sjfmusic.bandcamp.com/album/soundscapes-radio-episode-twelve

 On this collection of three long-form ambient music tracks for radio transmission environment, SJF creates tonal hues likening him to producers on the Subvert Central forum such as Formication ("Agnosia" EP, but much lighter) and ennui (but much less spacious). 

With a fractal portent that yearns for patient listens, Simon James French has produced another installment of fine musical pieces that are as harmonious as they are beguiling. See the link for more information. 

Pseuds corner: Iron Shackle poem

The scribbles are set
And The Time is wasted?
No
not copied and pasted
rather hastened and slim-waisted
falling like an evergreen curve
around the hips of a parabola
time may make us loners
but too much pride is for stoners
getting stoned to death
and stoned out of their heads
until ash comes out of their ears
and all they breathe is fears
not copied and pasted
rather gripped like life was chastised
tormented, trailed like an iron shackle
attached to the wrecking ball of days gone by.