SubVersion Stop 328:

I wanted to write an article, on a brighter note, for this publically redundant site. So, here I am. FTEL Valentines '20. FTEL peeps (Electronica lovers) know Burial music, and yesterday saw the public release of his compendium of 2011-2019. Burial tracks like "Loner", "Come Down To Us" and "NYC" still give me shivers. This stuff sprung from the post-everything but especially post-dubstep continuum. 130-145 beats-per-minute dub and acid techno music with wonky, buckle bent riffs.

This compendium is spread across 149 minutes and 17 tracks over 2 compact discs. It retails around £14.99. Much cheaper than vinyl of a 2LP, probably destined to be around £24.99 at least. The lacqueur manufacturing costs we know. Timeless electronic music with as much gravitas as early Omni Trio, Rufige Kru and Rob Playford.

Speaking of Goldie related music, his 4CD DJ Mix is really, really good. Early jungle thru hardcore styles, rave-o-matic jacket potato overdubs and Skrillex antidote dubby bombers. There are very few red herrings, rubber ducks or mind-numbing areas to be had. Of course I am referring to the brain-drain of rave music; an assault on the senses (at the best of times) often needs an anchor to rely on. Cliffy Goldie's mixing chops are pretty good, he doesn't train wreck the tracks or lazily mix them, and it's pretty damn fun while it lasts.

When I think of Goldie in later years, I think The Heritage Orchestra he played with, a full, rich sound with an oddity value. Oddity value is also a part of the electronically-sequenced and tracked Texas Sun project by Leon Bridges. It's a highly addictive four-piece EP of electronic big band country, with a dub and urban-centric undercurrent. Think Michael Kiwanuka's latest record with a dash of Jimmy Hendrix and you get the picture. Hendrix and contemporaries are very crucial to the eclecticism and growth of taste among non-electronica musicians; note the additional "a" next to electronic, as it's elements of computer manipulation that make this stew work.

Electronic manipulation is Katie Gately's speciality on her latest album, "Loom" (part of serpentwithfeet). It's a good record, very astute and encroaching on the drone axis, with lots of mellifluous field recordings; some partially there, some lost in the fog. Identification becomes a story to be told rather than a misnomer, there's a special atmosphere in this CD, which at times veers into the colossally brain-shaking. That feel, of defiant rejection and alertness, comes, it would seem, naturally as a jig around the Maypole. Like an old past-time, there's chances of things going sour, but it never does. The drones are crisply bubbling, encapsulating the growl of a wolf, or a shriek of a banshee, cast off into the distance like a tropical storm coming to an end.

That's another thing with this update's batch of music(s). These feel ever-tied to the neural centrifuge of understanding natural phenomena like Storm Ciara, Storm Denys and Hurricane Michael before it. Basically as long as we stay rooted to our origins, we can break away when we allow ourselves - ideally. Case in point: I haven't written an article worthy of Fluid Radio, Wire, hyponik, Soundium, A Closer Listen, Dogs On Acid, ATM et al, for some time. Mainly, because I've been afraid to be myself - as Leon Bridges sings, "chained to my sin". Music makes us forget all that woe behind inactivity.

SV Stop 327: Altruism And The Power Of One

I was feeling a few different ways in the last few months about more than just music. It was a lifestyle thing. Altering lifestyle for the better, not just eating a healthier diet.

For some, or lots of subverts, depending on their viewpoint (reader, poster, critic, editor, et al), altruism, the "power of now", "power of one", basically another way of saying transcendence too, became part of all this hypothetical stodge, a stew of hefty energy. 

Altruism, to me, is truancy of a belief system, or many belief systems. A "because obviously" kind of thought soon follows. But it's so essential to doing basic tasks, being, basically any bloody form of living.

In this thread we aim to collect all the balls about altruistic principles, from Brian Enosification, to mood music effects and techniques, just because I'm too lazy to work my fat Cartman ass into writing a prequel book about life and death parchment.

So feel free to join in. No pressure though, having me waffle on in a self-propelled space. Hey, you might even have an idea for your own book project from this. Mine was simply going to be called Book 3 of the Freeze Dry series: "Altruism Failure".

Hugs and sneezes

Muttley

 

PS: Subvert had a 500 Internal Server error when I posted this; the maintenance of the site is still ongoing, long may it continue; not everyone is an admon here. 

SubVersion Stop 326: Wire Chart 2019

Somewhat belatedly, here's my seventh (2019) 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 six years’ were: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.

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

SubVersion 2019 15

#419 Éliane Radigue - Oeuvres Électroniques (Ina-GRM)
#420 Black Thought - Streams of Thought Vols.1&2 (Human Re Sources)
#421 Alvin Lucier / Trevor Saint - Ricochet Lady (Black Truffle)
#422 Wendy Eisenberg - The Machinic Unconscious (Tzadik)
#423 Mopcut - Accelerated Frames of Reference (Trost)
#424 The London Sound Survey - Thames (Persistence of Sound)
#425 9T Antiope & Siavash Amini - Harmistice (Hallow Ground)
#426 K-X-P - IV (Svart)
#427 Olivier Messiaen / Linda Catlin Smith / Apartment House - Quatuor pour la fin du temps / Among the Tarnished Stars (Another Timbre)
#428 Haino / Merzbow / Pándi - Become the Discovered, Not the Discoverer (RareNoise)
#429 Zonal - Wrecked (Relapse)
#430 Eve Risser - Aprés un Rêve (Clean Feed)

+#420 Hedvig Mollestad Trio - Smells Funny (Rune Grammofon)
+#427 Pharmakon - Devour (Sacred Bones)
+#429 Morton Feldman / Philip Thomas - Piano (Another Timbre)

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

And my record of the year for 2019: Harmistice, which is available for streaming at The Wire website, or you can go and actually buy it via the Hallow Ground bandcamp. “A cross-continent project inspired by a nightmare” seems pretty damn appropriate for 2019.

SubVersion Stop 325: DJ Muttley - Beauty And Anxiety Mixtape (December 2019)

https://soundcloud.com/subversion-2/mixcloud-muttley-beauty-and-anxiety

MixCloud wouldn't let me upload this, funnily, because they didn't seem to pass it as a DJ mix.

Well, it is a sound collage, but PvC does loads of them, as does Dave Michuda, and they're both allowed to put stuff on MixCloud, they've both followed this blog from the start, and I'm sure they will enjoy this festive mix along with subverts.

I have a rough track list for this - reverb added to some tracks in Mixcraft 6 tracker software.

01 FL - Beauty And Anxiety Music Box Intro
02 James Murray - In Your Head
03 Marsen Jules - Beautyfear I
04 Brian Eno, Roger Eno & Daniel Lanois - Always Returning
05 Kyle Bobby Dunn - Tout Voyeurs
06 Lexithimie - Glass And Blood
07 Steve Roach - Towards The Blue
08 One Day Soon - Beyond The Veil Of Past And Present
24:00 end

Enjoy the glimmer of hope.
Mick Muttley

SubVersion End Of 2019 Highlights: Muttley

Pokemon TCG Trainer Club - www.pokemon.com/tcgo
The Plough Inn, Alvescot - www.tripadvisor.co.uk
Random encounters with old acquaintances
Understanding marriage
Understanding soulmates
Understanding triggers
Recapitulation of the what when where hypercube
Ambient labels being more sharity alike
Less trash media
Mixing with the right people, at the right time (staying offline!)

SV Stop 324: The Maddening Of The Situation

...the maddening of the situation is, that I just don't understand it.

It's very saddening how dead this forum is at the end of 2019. The regulars still post, and yes Jon Ben and Matt, the spirit is still there, but everything just feels, no offense...lifeless? Every time I visit here there's nothing new, and that's depressing, like, no offense again, everything's in a veritable karma coma. Mixes get posted...releases sink. Everything sinks. Everything festers, and everything starts to stink. We know that's not good.

The point is simple: we're all trying our best, and it is good enough. But most of us went elsewhere, and all of us have busy lives. Indeed, I'm mostly offline, or away from social media, because it's become the opposite of social media, it's become Nazist and control freak oriented. People with their happy clappy startup businesses and SEO overloads from the dribbling sociopath masses. I just saw Nicola Sturgeon's bigoted ignorance about the buffoonery of Johnson, putting another spanner in the works of social cocksure activists. This is what a lot of the masses are like unfortunately - Hitler may have been incredibly evil, but he did know they believe without questioning anything.

Braindead generation.

Roll up, roll up, welcome to the braindead generation. You will be fed at least three meals a day. All fats are good. You are "body positive!" Your beautiful! Note I said your, it is strict code to act illiterate. You will engage in bickering matches on Facebook and Twitter. You will troll anyone who's not in your "gang". You are the future. Only your opinion matters. Let's not all be friends, let's be two faced enemies with no real opinion of our own.

I digress :deep breath:

But yes, people do piss me off. A lot. That's why I partially live on the internet, but not on social media. My neighbours are all recluses, and we are all mates. But then, we're old enough to know enough. We know which side our bread is usually buttered. It's the same with people who flocked to SC, but none of us chose to become sheep. Full circle, is now the explanation. Everyone left and went away to work hard on pushing the message. Plurality. Multiple websites, just like the SC blog SubVersion, the subject here.

I don't need a virtual hug, it would be nice to know if friends are still well though, that's the main thing.

I haven't been doing many spoken gigs of late, you can tell.

I love it tho.

New posts added - check em out. www.subvertcentral.blogspot.co.uk

Maybe we could end the year with an aggregated end of year selection list.

SV Stop 323: Ambient Digest Winter 2019

Time flies. A year has passed since my last post. I've been busy making a lot of ambient music, publishing stuff on Bandcamp and SoundCloud, and generally not relying on word of mouth to get stuff out there, because the audience is there always.

Something that made me want to check up on blog reading again was the new album by James Murray on Krysalisound - "Embrace Storms". It's a gallant little swivel through the debris of hum and peace that passes one ide into the next, and another idea into the very ideology of continuum theory.

Other labels that continue to send me stuff have expanded mightily: Silent Season has more limited editions; Sound In Silence is putting out some of the most angelic ambient out there; Eilean is steadfast as is Home Normal, Rural Colours and Whitelab Recs, and Krysalisound and of course Denovali have plateaued in their strength as constabularies of electro acoustic music.

A common theme is representing nearby scenic labels in a scenic way. Much like Ambient blogs and magazine websites, artist newsletters feature more mentions of other artists than ever before - a good thing that does not dilute the message, it just makes the original message more powerful.