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VIDA DE-sign by Michael Buckingham, aka Mick Muttley

Dear friends (yeah really, one of those) I have become a women's wear designer for VIDA! http://shopvida.com/collections/voices/ ...

Tuesday 4 December 2018

SubVersion Stop 320: Wire Chart 2018

Okay then, here's my sixth (2018) 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 five years’ were: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.

The # marks denote the issues in which the records featured.
___________________________________________________

SubVersion 2018 15

#407 Ariadne - Stabat Mater (Auris Apothecary)
#408 Joan La Barbara - The Early Immersive Music of Joan La Barbara (Mode)
#409 John Cage / Bonnie Whiting - The Works for Percussion 4 (Mode)
#410 Susana Santos Silva - All the Rivers: Live at the Panteão Nacional (Clean Feed)
#411 Eva-Maria Houben - Breath for Organ (Second Editions)
#412 Kamaal Williams - The Return (Black Focus)
#413 Pierre Henry - Polyphonies (Radio France / Decca)
#414 Angélique Kidjo - Remain in Light (Kravenworks)
#415 Serena Butler - We Want Neither Clean Hands Nor Beautiful Souls (Stroboscopic Artefacts)
#416 Gazelle Twin - Pastoral (Anti-Ghost Moon Ray)
#417 Puce Mary - The Drought (Pan)
#418 Guttersnipe - My Mother the Vent (Upset the Rhythm)

+#407 Godflesh - Post Self (Avalanche / Hospital Productions)
+#408 Terre Thaemlitz - Deproduction (Comatonse)
+#418 Black Replica - Dreams Versus Reality (Metaphysik)

Compiled by Jonathan Tait, subvertcentral.blogspot.co.uk
___________________________________________________

Of those, Puce Mary (Frederikke Hoffmeier) now has the very great (!) distinction of being the first artist to make into my yearly lists twice (her previous LP The Spiral featured in 2016). But my favourite record of 2018 is Angélique Kidjo's reworking of Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, which in itself is one of my favourite LPs, and yet Kidjo's version makes it sound comparatively tame. Check out The Great Curve, for instance. And notice that lyrics like “the world moves on a woman's hips; the world moves and it bounces and hops”, which sound pretty naff coming from David Byrne, take on a whole new power when sung by Kidjo. I love this record :)

Saturday 8 September 2018

SubVersion Regression 319: Lyrics

Like, don't hate
Dislike, don't love
It's the way to reach the clouds above

Likes and dislikes
Over love and hate
That way you'll find solace, get through God's gate

SubVersion Regression 318: Important Records 100CD DAT Crate Press Release Stickers

Derek Walmsley in The Masthead of 2016-2019 area wrote about CD stickers. And also, how anti-disposable they are starting to become.
I thought I would do a little promo sticker repository for John and Maurice who sent me this disc collection.

Here is one of those, by Roberto Opalio, on a very Coil-like release:

Roberto Opalio - Chants From Isolated Ghosts



"Roberto Opalio is half of the Italian space duo My Cat Is An Alien. Chants From Isolated Ghosts is Roberto Opalio's full-length debut album recorded November 2004 at home in Torino, Italy, and originally released on his own Opax Records label in a very limited handmade cd-r edition of 100 copies. Don't forget to pick up the brand new My Cat Is An Alien full length titled Leave Me In The Black No-Thing also on Important Records.

Mudsuckers - Mudsuckers CD

Pete Swanson, Gabe Salomon (Yellow Swans)
Tom Carter (Charalambides) & Robert Horton

Swamp noise drone. Feedback is layered like mud on the carcass of song structure. During the torrential rains of 2005 Mudsuckers formed to jam at Robert Horton's place in El Cerrito. After a few sessions, and a whole lot of rain, a band was born.  

SV Progression 317: December's main fight attraction; Tyson Fury Vs Deontay Wilder

On Deontay Wilder Vs Tyson Fury: a heavenly heavyweight matchup which could go the distance. Tyson is walking the talk, so don't condemn him! Even if you don't like Fury (there are subjective reasons not to) he is putting the work in, while some of his so called fans are trashing the comments on social media with inane claptrap. "Crack smoker, washed up, fights bums" - so what, you little trolling gremlins? These gremlins troll boxers and celeb personalities all over the internet, so I wouldn't worry. Many whom have never fought at least amateur in a ring before. Get your facts straight before you rant on to a professional boxer about how bad he is, unless you're joking. You never know, you might just get lucky and get a punch on the nose yourself.

Tyson Fury has two options, he knows it and so do the watchful eyes. He can do to Deontay what he did to Klitschko: hit and not be hit for 12 rounds. Or, he can try and wear Wilder down, and force a stoppage in around rd 6. I've analysed Deontay's resume, he starts open, goes into his shell around rounds four to seven, wakes up again if his opponent is still there (Luis Ortiz could have TKO'd him in round 7 of their pairing), and then uses training smarts to try and close the fight. The problem with trying his usual game plan against someone like Tyson Fury is 1) Tyson for once is the bigger man, two inches taller than Wilder, and 2) Throwing windmills, as Anthony Joshua put it only gets you so far. Once you're put in with fast fluid and stronger opposition than Wilder (he's only 16 stone) then he's going to have problems. The only issues for Tyson Fury are ring rust and motivation, but Deontay could be argued to have had those throughout his entire career. Of course, Wilder's right hand is dynamite, but he only uses his jab as a paw, and to set up a right hook, also noteworthy.

Deontay's been defeated 5 times in the amateurs, and knocked out once in the pros. The KO percentage on his undefeated record is just that: boxers, if they feel undefeated (ie not back to the drawing board) still win their fight, because they won an opponent to fight. This is part of the bookmaker's journalism fix. Deontay's been knocking out people who either never got going, so he capitalised on it (see: Audley Harrison) or low level opposition, regardless of WBC rank (see Dominic Breazeale, not yet fought, whom Joshua jolted into submission). I make a prediction that Tyson Fury wins this fight on points, taking Wilder the embarrassing distance for the first time proper in his career. Bermane Stiverne did it to contend the WBC title he lost, and going the full 12 is also the only official way that "the fight" inside the ring is controlled enough for Tyson Fury to win for a full twelve rounds. Only boxers or martial artists who have fought will understand that bit - if a fighter is cut, i.e the action is cut because they get stopped or KO'd, but both boxers want to continue, then the match is halted, the film reels are sown up, and like after editing, the remainder video for the big screen is a stitch of the best bits.

Personally, I'd also like Fury to win more, just because despite all his controversial remarks over the years in the media, from anti-Semitism, racism, evangelism, bigotry, you name it, he's less of a corrupt dickhead. Anyone (Deontay Wilder) who can throw barbs like "I hope your son will be at the fight [to Dominic Breazeale] so he can look me in the eye as the man about to cripple his Daddy" on social media and in real life, with only a "forgive me for all I may have caused hurt to" on his Twitter after he got called out, presents him as a class A moron who needs his head examined at all costs.

This could be fight of the year, or it could be most disappointing brawl of the century, who knows. Or Wilder will just deck him.

Your choice, Tyson. Go get wilder, or get a career screwdriver.

Sunday 1 July 2018

SV Digression 316: Muttley's Deli 1st July 2018 - A Frashen Ambient Reresher

Muttley's Deli - 01/07/2018 - A Frashen Ambient Refresher

Originally all published by Daniel Crossley editor on www.fluid-radio.co.uk.

The Declining Winter - Belmont Slope LP

"You show me what's wrong with [being] happy", "it's the rain and the cold" and the "long days that turn lonely".

Whether those lyrics were misheard on the second track here, The Declining Winter certainly are poetic to the core of their musical style. Throughout, there is a rich range of focal points and seemingly intentional miss-hit emotional nerves; skirting around a problem to find a bigger lure - the unknown. It's no less prevalent than on the driving Love And Money-esque fourth track here, with its cut-ups of the realm Slowdive would later create for themselves, the very pigments of post-"Pygmalion".

Generally, The Declining Winter's music travels at a stately pace, and does not be so laid back it falls over. I also detect vocally traces of Piano Magic's Glen Johnson: that husky, rich baritone, clear and sharp, with a soft centre, a Grenache cake carousel. Instrumentally, the guitars have simple patterns to play, and these are also stately, a majestic free float. There are no orchestral dervishes like Elbow, but the voice is also poppy like them, and retains a certain anthem quality down to its boots.

I like the album very much. I remember checking "Home For Lost Souls" in 2015 when it was released. I liked that too, but this record to me is better realised for my interests. There's just so much going on in the layers, all the categorisations fly out the window. It's simply good music, that does not fit into a specific category. That is a success alone; to transcend time and space so effortlessly. And the need to appeal has always been pop music's influence, but here, the Belmont Slope just takes pop in the form of an anorak, a coat-hanger, and hangs its own influences upon it. Quite wonderful - an essential purchase CD fans!

Mark Templeton - Distorted Tourist

If you're familiar with the work of Mark Templeton, you'll know he likes to miniaturise and extemporise a context on top. In terms of musical chops, he chooses sounds that fit the rustic ambient palette, and uses contextual signposts to impression something deeper out of the material. This is what academics mean by extemporising, as far as this layman knows - what I do know is that "Distorted Tourist", a fifteen-minute travelogue into the realms of Herzogian theoretics, is a mighty fine artefact to have, here presented as a book stroke disc operation, and without all the philosophical asides, stands without inebriation.

On its own steam the music could dissolve into the aether too quickly, but this is Templeton's knack: he manages to surfeit the purpose of a worthy riff to continue and bubble-build throughout each recording, so that by the end of each phase, we're left with a general happiness about how things have been going, hearing, et cetera and so on. The music is impossible to pin down to a certain few elements, always evolving without nascent unease, and always purposeful. This is the key strength of the release, whereas other producers might leave less brush daubs on the material, and let the potential decelerate into an arcadian decay.

Stylistically Templeton has always been in the same sort of cache as modern composition composers, such as Deaf Center (Huw Roberts and Otto A. Totland) and James Leyland Kirby (The Caretaker). But there's greater urgency to his work than those artists and a revolvent absorbancy on the factors that can make musique concrete so delectable (see Michael Chion, Trevor Wishart, etc). The fact that over the course of five tracks so much is communicated - without the rusticness becoming chokingly soft - this is the compositional genius. I genuinely think this EP, call it that if you must, deserves to be heard by everyone, and if you were a fan of 2008's "Standing On A Hummingbird" LP. Likewise, it's a superb little nugget.

Federico Dal Pozzo - Untitled V20

Federico Dal Pozzo's latest Krysalisound recording is full of minute pleasures, a ice race avoiding the pinnacle of an all out avalanche. Instead, the sound waves are condensed drone designs based on sound design in its purest form: hum and counterpoint.

Much of the music relies on driving ground fissures, trips to metropolis, and like being stuck in a bunker, a firm grasp of the natural architecture of buildings. So in all, the music is wide ranging with all the experimentalism of a electromagnet inside a complex tape loop studio. One just has to tap on "play" to drift off to the hums of wonder within...

My favourite thing about "VZ0" is its concentric circles, its eddies and loops. These loops transform your sonic environment and offset any energy required to listen to them, meaning they are positively enveloping. I find nothing negative about this record, it's very pure, and succinctly put in its stylistic symbolism. It seems to enact a constructed set of poles that keep tessellating among moving waves of dozy sound. And there are washes of rhythmic passivity too, nothing aggressively done, just true float, real drift and weaving, like a spellcasting, mischevious witch, sunning herself in a weather mirror. These sounds move slowly over the lands like rays of the sun, forever sparkling and coming from a much deeper, encrusted whole.

Perhaps one's true intent becomes known from drones like these. In the searches for deeper meaning, and in general deep thought about life, the mirror reflects back on itself to a projection of powerful musical dualism to soothe the soul. A just exercise, given that the music is only heard when humans choose to listen. Krysalisound label is this under the radar that you can afford to give a unassuming drone suite some companionship, and possibly an endorsement, because this particular experiment is very fine indeed. So yes, not an avalanche of white noise, rather some of the quietest yet most ruminative music I've heard in the last 12 months. Recommendable lusciousness for Steve Roach and Robert Rich fans alike, it's sure to put a wry smile on the sleep ambient scene's brow. 

Nadine Byrne - Dreaming Remembering - Ideal Records

Nadine Byrne's latest, "Dreaming Remembering", is a fascinating document. Documentation never glances, constriction never gave us torture. In a way, the prim and proper spared merit of Nadine's curatorial style - short sharp and sweet - is its artistic license to interpret dreams. Like the Antonymes title of that nomenclature, there is much dolallying over thoughtful enterprise here: solid music, melodic integrity, interlocking parts, highly metatarsal movement from the feet up.

Feet or feat? Toe in the water or honeyed experiment? It's the latter, a fortunate answer surely for fans of this label. The lineal direction of the album is to walk a tightrope of strapping synthesiser pads, an atonal sense of harmony and the most sparing use of vocal, that it literally sounds dragged out the other sides of a desert plain. These lyrics, mostly motifs of the titles themselves, deploy a willing, questioning gravitas to the whole operation, as one starts to ponder the gap between dreaming and remembering. Is it just a magical flummox? Something that doesn't make descriptive sense like that comment. Or is dreaming, and remembering, for that matter, further embalmed into the regeneration of the life/death/life cycle than we thought?

Whatever, this is a puzzling dichotomy as musical artifact. Nadine Byrne uses her synthesisers and the placation of musical theatre - a Freudian slip here, an announcement there - to woo her audience in wondrous tapestry, befitting for a time where, in post-apocalyptic trauma exercises of possible third world war over Brexit, is all the more welcome. I enjoy how measured the metres are between each 16-bar phrase, and how metre is often forgotten altogether in favour of random selection. The noises are totally anti-predication, unpredictable, like stepping around an accident waiting to happen put to sound. The only criticism a human could levy here is that there is no glorious mess at the end of the experiment - Highly recommended!

Saturday 30 June 2018

SV Stop 315: Random thoughts on happiness

Happiness, as hypnotist Paul McKenna tells us, is natural. Overthinking then is a killing of that happiness. So, to prevent ourselves from overloading, we need to stop being anally retentive, and relax. Let life flow; chill out to our favourite music; spend time with dearly wanted friends. Whatever it is you like to do, happiness will come to you.

Sunday 3 June 2018

Charlemagne Palestine - Wire Magazine feature for BLAST First (petite)

Best to leave "it" for a while. "It" will be better then.
Never a truer word spoken. It, as in information technology, marriage, and whatever big ideas we have.

Big ideas take a while - take this Wire magazine featured advertisement and artwork by Charlemagne Palestine. I have liked some of his/her (I can't remember seeing a non-artisan photograph, so it could be either), work before, namely the drone style stuff that is similar to Ben Frost and Pauline Oliveros.

Afaik, Palestine is a more multi-layered and tribal noisemaker, taking in African and Chinese music(s), I could be completely wrong, The Wire magazine has unearthed MANY HOOOGGE discoveries for me over the years. The important point is this new release, with a intriguing title - "70th Bearth-Dayze", looks and I imagine sounds very tasty indeed...a 10 hours WAV collection with teddy bears.

And I am a tall lonely teddy bear, so what's not to like?

Check this link for more information about the £50 (for everything on 500g vinyl with art and digital extras) project:

 http://blastfirstpetite.com/charlemagne-palestine-schlingen.html




Friday 1 June 2018

SV Stop 313: www.focisleft.bandcamp.com update (Muttley SV musologue)

Foci Left & Foci Right - Iridescence Is Irrelevance Liveset

by FL & FR

  •  
  •  
  • Digital Album
    Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.

     You own this

     

1.

about

The first catalog-stroke-stylistic-mash between the Foci Left and Foci Right aliases, after about 100 public releases on the internet that people sometimes send me money for. It's all infinitely appreciated, of course, but seeing as I ain't motivated by financial gain, I am setting this Sparky New Moon practice run free. It's comprised of my awful voice, boring narrations, plinky plonk piano sounds and abysmal attempts to be guitarist Jon Fahey. 

SV Stop 312: Random Thoughts Instalment 1st June 2018

I'm a pretty liberal person, relating to my last writings, whom likes to see the good in everything, and satirises the bad. What is bad, anyway? It's a fluid question in itself.

It's the same with genderqueer theory, I consider myself gender-fluid, that is the fluidity to be both male and female, but it all sounds so poncy, all these millennial terms applied to everything.

In fact these terms had been going long before the term millennial was invented, of course they were there, it's just the mass groupings of categorisations I don't like. I predicted this with TDD, and the fools have gone arse-about-tit with the predication. That is, instead of being descriptive, they create different terms for the same thing and create confusion for absolutely everybody. Crap trap, meet claptrap, y'knowwhatammeen chavvy?

Unfortunately life is made up of chancers and people who think you have all the time in the world, time enough for life, to unfold, but often, you have less time than them, and they are wasting theirs in a coffee shop somewhere.


SV Stop 311: [Politics] Lord Lawson and the Brexit slurry pit

In typical Partridgean style, enter the Conservative Party "Vote Leave" head operative, Lord Lawson. He ruined last generation's election, he'll do it for the next, and all he wants isn't another baby, it's to keep his French luxury home with a cote du jour amendment to the French residency plea after Britain leaves the European Union.

Yes, that's the long and short of it. Lord Lawson wants to stay living in France, even though he was head chancellor of "Vote Leave" in the UK Referendum that happened not so long ago now.

Hypocritical, isn't it? Yes, it's not French nationality, but that's a cop-out anyway - he's English.

But let's not get waddled in with benign and banal facts; if Henry VIII can tear down several monarchies for the sake of another shag, what really commits these deluded psychopaths that their place in the world is so important?

This type of political shambling has been happening too many times that I don't care to remember, but this really got my goat last night to comment on it. I mean, what a waste of space. What's wrong with the English countryside you so seek to advocate? And furthermore, less dubiously, why do you think it's fine, Lord Lawson to carry on living in a foreign land when Joe Bloggs is UK-stricken?

The aristocratic bastards, I hate the lot of them. Damn you! :shakes fist but it's more like a wanker sign at this point:


Tuesday 29 May 2018

SV Stop 310: Dua Lipa

Got a bit of a thing for Dua Lipa at the mo =)
It's just plain nice pop dance music. Cool implementation of guitar fretwork.
"IDGAF" club mixes hit the spot. They optimise themselves in Dorian mode and do it well.
I can get them from ZIPDJ.com legal subbie. That's my go-to for most club music I hear dreaming.
Glad she won a Brit Award. (The artist)
Same happened for BFL and Saint Vincent, and I've seen/known those performers too.
Real women do it better. Chauvinist pigs and irritating arrogant men aren't where it's at.
Yeah I'm a mincer, but I'd rather be prolife than psychopathic.
Way too many idiots about in hyperspace for my liking. And the reason I stay away from cities.
Why don't you all just go to Benidorm already and get it over with?
That would mean not buying so many six packs to fit your twenty pack bellies though, wouldn't it.
Really though, I've got stories circulating around my arse for where these alienoids come from.

SV Stop 309: Syncopathic Recordings new project ANMA

https://syncopathicrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/surrounded-by-silence

Amidst the dust and decay of retrostylin' dial-up lagtime in thought and handling internet processes, I am actually understanding the admins at SC give me about 5 fresh topics a day to keep me entertained. Generally it's non-crapper stuff, Dastardly Exposure/Twitter/FaceBook style projects of algorithmic fortuity. And also very non-crapper is this exceptional jazzy electronica from various artists related to SC and Syncopathic Recordings respectively.

Sounding professional to a tee, this kind of Ekziel Honig style multi-instrumentalism is no coffee table interloper, preferring to swoon and swoop at the fringes and eschelonic practices of rhythm against solitude. Tilman Ehrhorn and Murcof, Matmos and Animal Collective also spring to mind. All very organic stuff, and that piano hits joyous notes in my heart. The great thing is that the music could be slapdash and untidy all the time but it chooses to be elegantly arranged and absorbant, like a wet kitchen towel to a beer spill. By track three we get washes of delay and pinpoint piano precision, raspy electronic crackles and annotated bassline zorbing. This trend continues through a cracker of a release. Check out straight away, you won't be disappointed!

SV Stop 308: Flying Vinyl Podcasts

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/flying-vinyl-podcast/id1308018781?mt=2

I'm having all sorts of things go very very slow with my operating system recently. Lawwwd 'aaaaav mercy on the man.
I know I am on 2GB internal storage 20GB secondary slave on this lappy, but it's pretty bad.

In optimistic terms, I came across this for the fourth time in my email newsletters. Eventually I will get it to load. It's the @FlyingVinyl podcast for iTunes.

Highlight generally of the show is the fluidity and high ideals conceptualising of the label owners - something that got them to break artists like Regina Spektor.

If you don't know FlyingVinyl, they are basically an ongoing £20 a month subscription series that ships you out a box of 5 double-sided seven-inch singles per month with a picture disc and booklet, sleeves etc. It's a quality deal, the music is great, and the artwork matches it nicely.

Bands included Willie J Healey, Black Honey, InHeaven, and more. Many more.

In growth, you HAVE TO respect the original artists. The people who made your music for you. Regardless that you invest in it, you are basically being paid to listen to it.

So, check out Craig Evans cause this week Subverts, I'm sure you'll find something to like.
I did not write this on SC because we're basically a ghost blog on there now, only bots visit there.
Cheers



Friday 25 May 2018

SV Stop 307: Stop With The GDPR Email Baloney From 300 Addresses Please?

Is it because you use my content to publish under other people's names? Yes. Is it because you make money off of it? Yes. Is it because you are crooks? Yes. Funny how you don't see me doing that, and I earn less than minimum wage per day.

Just a thought.

Wednesday 23 May 2018

SV Stop 306: FL (FOCI LEFT) - Tapas_Mosaic_LP (April 21st-May 19th 2018 - FREE RELEASE)

Hi decent people of les miserablenets

For a limited time only. "Tapas Mosaic LP", the long-planned follow-up to "LUV LP" from 2015, also a release created on holiday. Spain, The Canary Islands, both one and the same, both totally different at certain times. I am making this available for free here, and may update with a BC link.

Here is the weTransfer link...

https://we.tl/BkmbTPaUid

Spain was incredible. But in the end, I was incredibly exhausted by just how hard work it was to live there day to day. Mentally, I was more sane than ever, however. The property was heavenly to stay in, very clean and modern with a wicked Blue Tooth Speaker. As well as really bad separation anxiety with my long time soulmate and friends back home, and general detachment from local amenities that involved my long time parents using a car at all times to carry me around, I will cherish the memories, but not because it is early days, I just have a premonition that having been there for a full secure month with my housing officers notified, I felt better, but it was a massive expense, and that is very discouraging, and so I feel I may never encounter such a test of patience.

Of course, it is early days. With such a huge natural wonder (search Morcilla on www.subvertcentral.com for a currently 2 page thread) it is easy to be down, as a downwards spiralling anxious person. It is so easy to forget all the trials of walking, hiking, restauranteering, pool playing, beaching, partying (nerd style not Gangnam), siestas, evening candles, pool table snoops, sun lounger and swim time. My fave place, out of the whole trip, thankfully, was where we stayed. Then, I felt it was sometimes nice to socialise, to be extroverted, as long as it didn't break me.



Tuesday 22 May 2018

SV Stop 305: Attn Statto

while we're having security issues accessing the sc server on my network (my bytefence anti-crapware tool says it's full of malicious content, yada yada) I thought i'd continue a thread I started on subvert central on the roundup blog, subversion.

"attn. statto" has a long philological history on sc. not only is it the standard sort of 'attention' thread and re-tread over recommendations, it makes it easy for me to be specific to my friend statto, aka Jonathan, second contributor of this blog.

(if you're wondering why I removed lata and khal, it's not because I fell out with them, quite the opposite; it was because I was worried I was privately overburdening them. bless em).

anyway...here is a little "opening up" to the big subversion audience of spirits about what's on the stereo at the moment.

Sky City (Tom Carter, Robert Horton, Lisa & Lee Ann Cameron) - Sky City (Important Records)

this is a psychedelic big shamble, full of foiled attempts to craft a car mot. it's utterly bent, and utterly captivating. sounds damn fine in the studio lounge. I had a few carter things beginning in 2007, whatever they were called, but the rest are new names to me. shifts about like a mouse with a blindfold on, in the nature of sounding like an ebowed guitar, played in the dark.

imprec@importantrecords.com for cd copies.

David Terry (LP on Opal Tapes)

"sorrow lp"...what a release! full of funereal dirge in the best sense. tripped up organic rhapsody; church organ tendrils hitting like tonsillitis. very throaty bass lines on the album give a crepuscular sheen to the whole shebang. lots of anti-static yet shiver inducing ultramundanity. a recommended high (or if it's too early pink Floyd for you, low).

From The Mouth Of The Sun - Sleep Stations (LP on Bandcamp)

another very fine asking of transcoded instrumental compositions by jasper tx and aaron martin. a bit of a dream duo if you ask me, this stuff was made available last week and all the tapes on bandcamp (including mine) have sold; they're dubbed on both sides so i'm really looking forward to kicking back to that.

...so yeah, just a few releases to keep you ticking over. remember to search on www.bandcamp.com for a greater thrill than direct links. there's also a chance you'll find something else as good if not better. we love bandcamp at subversion, it was very helpful for getting the solo fl stuff careered.

(p.s if you're wondering why sv wasn't updated for a couple of months, I was on holiday from 21st april to 19th may, in spain of all places, and however spectacularly therapeutic it was, I am very glad to be back home. I was starting to have really bad separation anxiety, even though my carers were with me. there's a thread about the whole trip over 2 pages currently on the sc front page - search "morcilla").

Friday 9 February 2018

SubVersion Stop 304: Wire Chart 2017

I'm a bit behind with this one but, belatedly, here's my fifth (2017) set of acquisitions, obtained 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 whoever's interest (or not), the previous four years were: 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

The # marks denote the issues in which the records featured.
___________________________________________________

SubVersion 2017 15

#395 Ariel Guzik - Cordiox (VON Archives)
#396 Bobbie Johnson - You & I (Escape Route Media)
#397 Harriet Tubman - Araminta (Sunnyside)
#398 various - Total Reggae: Special Request (VP)
#399 Dopplereffekt - Cellular Automata (Leisure System)
#400 Dead Neanderthals - Craters (Consouling Sounds)
#401 Sarah Angliss - Ealing Feeder (Bandcamp)
#402 Bill Orcutt - Bill Orcutt (Palilalia)
#403 Maggi Payne - Crystal (Aguirre)
#404 Myra Melford Trio - Alive in the House of Saints (hatART)
#405 Melaine Dalibert - Ressac (Another Timbre)
#406 Wadada Leo Smith - Najwa (TUM)

+#396 Tanya Tagaq - Retribution (Six Shooter)
+#402 Jo Thomas - Sunshine Over Nimbus (Bandcamp)
+#405 Anji Cheung - Spirit as Creature (Utech)

Compiled by Jonathan Tait, subvertcentral.blogspot.co.uk
___________________________________________________

My favourite of those has to be Bill Orcutt's LP of standards ripped out on solo electric guitar. Go listen to Lonely Woman if nothing else.

Friday 2 February 2018

SV Stop 303: Fractals And Auditory Hallucinations


Hi friends and acquaintances,



Working on a type of think piece on auditory fractals. This simple example:



  • Something playing on the stereo, can be transduced as something else.
Filling this out: it's understanding auditory hallucination. It does help that my "out of it / drunk 24/7" state does lend me a certain cloudiness. Importantly though, anyone can listen to a tune on someone else's stereo and think "hang on, x sounds like y". "Then z, maybe", after they've assessed the gap between reason and logic.

Since the concept of perception is logic and reasoning based anyway, and each person has more of one reptilian brain variable than the other, the monkey-brain and neocortex are responsible for y and z decisions. That for one is simply because the amygdala reptilian brain processes things first, then the two smaller brains within the brain come up with other options. Plus other three-brained options. And so on and so on.

  • Depends on amount of possible timbres, pitches, and algorithms possible at any 1-2 bar interval.
1 bar, 2 bar. Space between takes in all of these certain typesets in music. The timbre is the type and quality if sound. The pitch is its melodic consonance and key. The algorithm is the particular processing of sounds.

  • Losing data (lossy Mp3s?) can transduce the idea that something is not quite normal.
Personally it's one of the most intriguing notions in music today - generation and regeneration in digital files whatever the format (CD, vinyl, Mp3, FLAC, et al)...machine code being manipulated.

  • Also the repeat function (fn) on music players changes the tone sometimes.
  • Whatever the musical content, the idea of lateral (mapping) thinking onto another thing is relevant.
  • It’s related to cross-examination in law, but importantly the point of it is to uncover deeper facts.
  • Conclusively I do not need to listen to a huge amount of “surface different” music to get a good fill.
  • This type of thinking could be argued to have stabilised the music industry of “tried and tested” method.

Sunday 7 January 2018

SV Stop 302: Path Optimist - When I Awoke songsheet / lyrics / chord structure (free to remix/rework)

path optimist - when i awoke (live recording)

riyl: gordon lightfoot, zelienople, james blackshaw, ags Connolly

key variations
c suspended 4th, c suspended 7th
d minor, e major, f major
g major, g dominant 7th, a minor 9th

title themes
"your rhythm is my woe" / "my mind is my rhythm (i make my own decision)"
"connect four and we know the score" / "drawing dots on a matrix of course"
"station to leave, embankment to erode" / "are all the lines once drawn by a candle wax flow"
-"candlestick, match / candlestick, wax, lose all your recrimination and set fire to my sights"
- "waxwork, pedestal, recriminant, old girl, my old girl is a rhythm inside my mind"
"so i leave, that station wasn't very merry, it burnt half a lid of glue over the cesspool"
"planted next to my sherry, when I awoke".
i recorded a 5 minute .m4a file on my samsung s6 pc phone and the guitar is rich and crisp.
because the song is sung with backing vocals in style and timbre (no mic) i need a female vocalist.
or rather, i should make a request for a female vocalist to trigger a youthquake (my word hahaha, i do come out with some bs
on facebook randomly in my keyboard warrior troll ways - then it became a new word in the oxford urban dictionary in 2016).
the point of writing all this is endemic to a growth of rhythm and blues guitar music with an abstract vox edge to it. yours truly, your neighbourhood spaceman.