Evening,
Currently I'm compiling and decompiling punctuation and musical asterisks for the first Dangerous Pike artist trilogy album.
It's a bit of a "Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was", just not quite as bleak and blustery.
Expect a pie graph in musical form most parts distant melody, with fractions of movement and textural sustenance.
The 3CD set comprises [3 bonus "name" remixes excluded]
Treacherous Paths CD
Trail CD
Aquarium Jazz CD
The third one at the time of writing is still in progress.
It's partially inspired by animal communications, particularly pikes (snakes). Nothing to do with bad dives at all. Otherwise, a nod to Arthur Lowe and Pike in Dad's Army and their bond in the Home Guard.
Likely been the most life-affirming music I've consciously made since the "Nothing" original.
Keep in touch to see what's cooking here, and be sure to revisit www.focisleft.bandcamp for all.
Cataloguing notable progress of www.subvertcentral.com, with interviews, mixtapes and topical reports.
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Showing posts with label drones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drones. Show all posts
Wednesday, 1 July 2020
Friday, 29 May 2020
Boards Of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children Vinyl
Just got the first (1st pressing) catalogue edition "Skalp" of Boards Of Canada (BOC)'s "Music Has The Right to" LP. I
have wanted to own this artifact on dubplate, acetate or plain record
for more than 15 years. Now I have a dub vinyl. I use the term dub vinyl
because there's little variation from the original pressing, but enough
to keep it fresh.
The pressing quality is good. I got it from
Truck Store Oxford. The vinyl sounds better than the digital. It's of
course warmer, but very clear, at the same time. And punchy, too, but
not so that the drums swamp the mix.
To me
MHTRTC was always BOC's best album. There were two EPs before its
official release in 1995. I think those were "Twoism" and "Hi Scores".
Also very good releases. Especially for "Happy Cycling" and "Oirectine".
For me personally, the early stuff was when they were itchy, untamed and scratchy.
Then as they smoothed out, they got itchy and scratchy but were tamed by then.
It's also worth noting the type of anti-austerity mix and mash of the vinyl sides on this repressing 25 years on.
"Rhombuses
And Triangles", one of the interleaves from Twoism EP, closes side 1 of
4. A fitting serenade. I wanted to provide audio linked in my post like
I used to do, but YouTube's reliance on its subscription is beating me.
So you'll have to make do with these words. It's all very well put
together as incidental music sequences go.
Honestly,
"Music has The Right" is one of the finest albums by older electronic
musicians I've ever come across in life. It's just right. Like it has
the right. And like that it uses that right. The right of music. Giving
plans to children. Even if you never plan to raise children yourself (I
don't want kids), Boards Of Canada provide a good working score. Sit
back with a glass of water, a doctor's apple and a lime and sprinkle
over your glass the essence of true British vim.
One for the home bodies.
Tuesday, 27 June 2017
283: FR Retrograde Reviews - Mick Buckingham - Chihei Hatakeyama - Mirage (Room40, Kranky)
Chihei Hatakeyama, after a healthy decades good exposure in the ambient field as a torchbearer of peaceful drones and sibilance should he strike the strings of his delayed electric guitar, presents “Mirage”, an album in the vein of classics like “Saunter” from 2003 and “Light Drizzle” from 2009. Generally focussing on the possibilities of decay trails, Mirage moves with an unearthly abandon. Field recordings of industrial action and children’s play recalls Chris Dooks, while the ambience is alike to Tom Honey’s Gòod Weather For An Airstrike project.
A summary does never do Chihei Hatakeyama due justice. For all this time I have spent collecting his albums, since his major label releases (Room40, Hibernate, Nomadic Kids Republic I believe were sent demos when BVDub picked up the wings of underexposed drone exports and jet-packed them into real ambient consciousness). Wherever you picked up on Chihei – maybe even as mainstream as Wire magazine and Fluid Radio on the web...I have to assert he’s one of my top 10 droners. That list includes big names like Hakobune, Liz Harris (Grouper), Oophoi, Steve Roach, Stars Of The Lid, Simon Scott (Slowdive), Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Hammock...mmmhmmm...some of my fave “others”.
Opening with the bereft breath of “Sad Ocean”, one immediately realises this is simply breath taking music set to scenic views of ambient scenes. Car windows being opened; cool breezes blowing in; or an early morning 5am walk. Thus quality is athletic styled lather, and the soft emotional heft is rendered like real leather interior design, here lies the elasticity principle of Chihei’s sound. What is supple and you get lost in it just as you would the focus of this sentence if it curved into discussion about fabric only. I’m to question how this music collection is so important that it will soundtrack my entire life comfortably. And it does, it will, it can. This sense of comfort and familiarity one feels when taking a listen to these serene wafts of new ago atmosphere is the opposite of new age kitsch.
The answer to why “Mirage” works so well, lies in a somatic response slowness yet paradoxical freedom. Attitudinal its an escape from life’s stasis field – take the lighthouse beacon sound of “Starlight And Black Echo”. Chihei sounds like he was searching deep within when making this. The strange echoing surfeit calms the nerves and puts pay to the hauntological idea of our memories being captured and left to bounce between the speaker system. Like ghost code, it is an aural monologue...is that the meaning of the mirage, we wonder? Pulsing tones reach a refrain then ebb away into comparable dark matter. It is time to see the light, the gut feeling, the mirror; of really belonging.
Indeed this is an lp conjuring mainly lighter shades on the colour wheel of life. With a fine Eton Mess of strawberry creamed texture cranking the cooker DC until the electronics have buttered us up completely, “Distant Steam Train Whistle” introduces a atmospheric harpsichord to lay the table and create a conversation portal for less hazy, more smoky guitar. The whole thing stands up to criticism of going on too long, as to me about an hour is the perfect length for a drone fest. Given the subtle placations throughout, it is amazing the music sounds so peaceful. I’m truly in awe of its warmth.
When I consider drone benchmarks, I think Budd & Eno – The Pearl is comparable here. Nothing borders on creating non-environmental tuning – the music is subtly weaved, controlled, and never totally knockout visceral. The pastoral essence is bottled and releases in places like a effectively placed land mine...a gaseous land mind, excellently perfumed and fighting the bad odour of cheap petrol-heavy streets where everything gets recorded (unless Chihei really lives far out). Indeed, if made in the 60s, hippies would be getting high around a bong to sounds contained here.
With most of the morass a lost-phase, a haze-dream, a bushy-nature-reserve of ambient logic, the ambience throughout “Mirage” is ripe when viewed through the first year psychology topic of reverse psychology. Why is this? Because the drones are: dense, thick, organic, unfiltered, healthy and extremely nutritious in the context of the drone music lovers palette. Like the aforementioned comparison of Tom Honey’s work, “Anatolia Mirage” hums a short poem of tones – tone poetry, a melodic haiku, with drones that are rather not long-winded, instead they are carried by the wind.
The a plus transcendental introspection created by the soliptic stress-straining slipstreams cajoles the listener’s expectations like kale being filtered through a sieve. Or pillows before bedtime laid out for a siesta or long snooze. Perfect for night and day time, but cornerstone logic is for weightless contexts, in a nutshell. There needs to be music like this made, for certain. I would not mind betting Hatakeyama has a third life from production and field recording for nature program music.
If there is any weakness of “Mirage”, it is as such that it is not very energising. Some would say it is too samey. To me though, when you have mood music as classy as this, sideswipes like that become irrelevancies. It becomes meaningless. When the music is this inspiring and meaningful, on the other hand, your perspective changes. The little man in your head vanishes. At least it does mine. I’m tired of half-assed critics who don’t know what a good opus sounds like. Mark my words, there is no way any educated listener of taste could describe this music as bland.
May we see more fantastic mirages from Japanese artist Chihei in future. The lps on the Kranky repped Room40 imprint after all – it had to be something special. This to me is Chihei Hatakeyama’s most realised work to date – never disappointing, never ghostly...this time, the mirage is permanent.
Tuesday, 9 May 2017
SubVersion Stop 275: SV Recommends Ambientblog Headphone Commute Endorsed Mix
Bit of a mouthful, that title, isn't it? But it's all relevant. SubVersion Ambientblog and Headphone Commute are all ambient publicising blogs. I'm recommending this new "DreamScenes" series mix from Ambientblog, published also on Headphone Commute, and it's a cracker. A real stayer mentally
I cannot link you PvC's kindly provided MixCloud widget, as my blog doesn't allow that. So what I can do instead, is provide you the post I found it from, sent to my email address for press after 7pm.
I cannot link you PvC's kindly provided MixCloud widget, as my blog doesn't allow that. So what I can do instead, is provide you the post I found it from, sent to my email address for press after 7pm.
New show by ambientblog
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Sunday, 8 January 2017
2017 Mrb Poetry - To Myself
Mrb - To myself
Where my mind bleats for quiet, my heart skips for an answer
Where my head loses memories by the second, a whisper is often something I can muster
I muster
To myself
that cold cold chill
That permeates the radium of the world
Turning pipes inside out
Piping hot food used for body charcoal
And the ash of time as a vanguard for nails on a cross.
Where my mind bleats for quiet, my heart skips for an answer
Where my head loses memories by the second, a whisper is often something I can muster
I muster
To myself
that cold cold chill
That permeates the radium of the world
Turning pipes inside out
Piping hot food used for body charcoal
And the ash of time as a vanguard for nails on a cross.
Wednesday, 5 October 2016
Retrograde Reviews: Bonnie Prince Billy & Bitchin' Bajas
"Nature, makes us, for ourselves".
The music on Bonnie Prince Billy's latest rustic folk outing starts melodically enough, before embracing woodwind and the suitably gentile lines "may life throw you a pleasant curve". It's on the second track that the rhythmic focus really kicks into gear, loosening the weight of a breathy introduction. "Nature, makes us, for ourselves".
You see, with a track title aim to be storyteliing meets self-help-provoking, this album can be taken kindly to from the first listen. The meanings spread out like fireflies, meeting a warming destination, a natural concave. Bonnie Prince is ast as the governor of a hundred baritones; instruments serve his plans to assist us in becoming calmer, getting happier.
Much of the sound palette is pure rustic folk, a Johnny Cash meets Joanna Newsome quirkiness abounds throughout. There are no female vocals though, only a journeyman's horn of plenty with guitar chops to match. I first heard about BPB, not so humbly around 10 years ago, so I know he's been about the field for a long time. But at the same time, it's as if he's trod a heavy path through folk and country, meaning he understands how to not complicate a tune.
This is most evident on euphoric closing piece "Your Hard Work Is About To Pay Off. Keep On Keeping On". Incidentally the ending is abrupt, leaving the listener craving a second shot of the honey-whiskeyed atmosphere Bitchin Bajas and Billy create. That's how the record feels essentially, like whisky. It's so addictive I can drown in it, but for the luck of the draw, it's only my sorrows that are cleansed.
Mick R. Buckingham
The music on Bonnie Prince Billy's latest rustic folk outing starts melodically enough, before embracing woodwind and the suitably gentile lines "may life throw you a pleasant curve". It's on the second track that the rhythmic focus really kicks into gear, loosening the weight of a breathy introduction. "Nature, makes us, for ourselves".
You see, with a track title aim to be storyteliing meets self-help-provoking, this album can be taken kindly to from the first listen. The meanings spread out like fireflies, meeting a warming destination, a natural concave. Bonnie Prince is ast as the governor of a hundred baritones; instruments serve his plans to assist us in becoming calmer, getting happier.
Much of the sound palette is pure rustic folk, a Johnny Cash meets Joanna Newsome quirkiness abounds throughout. There are no female vocals though, only a journeyman's horn of plenty with guitar chops to match. I first heard about BPB, not so humbly around 10 years ago, so I know he's been about the field for a long time. But at the same time, it's as if he's trod a heavy path through folk and country, meaning he understands how to not complicate a tune.
This is most evident on euphoric closing piece "Your Hard Work Is About To Pay Off. Keep On Keeping On". Incidentally the ending is abrupt, leaving the listener craving a second shot of the honey-whiskeyed atmosphere Bitchin Bajas and Billy create. That's how the record feels essentially, like whisky. It's so addictive I can drown in it, but for the luck of the draw, it's only my sorrows that are cleansed.
Mick R. Buckingham
Sunday, 31 July 2016
Jo Quail - Five Incantions (Mick Buckingham review)
The uniting factor in Jo Quail's music has always been its all-consuming omnipresence. How it engulfs the listener whether listening loudly or quietly, softly or harshly. Where opener 'White Salt Stag' on this beautifully designed digipak CD edition is earthy and enchanting, closer 'Gold' takes a malleable, shaping of man-made metal angle in the form of Quail's use of electric cello and electronics, and the formulation of solid materials. There is a probability you'll not have a
whisper to it, but a blast, as the mourning strings stretch up through the inner ear and the drones throe-in the low ebb.
I am certainly taken by the 'Five Incantations' theme: take five simple steps, craft five complex tunes with over twice the narrative arcs interwoven. It is spectral music; to borrow Simon Reynolds' term, it creates a "cathedral of sound". A line can be traced like a silken sheet, a thinly woven cloth, a metal wire, all tension and never enough to satisfy in one take. Indeed, the music doesn't sound one take at all. Jo as her name goes knows how to put the work into her rhythms of refuge, her insomniac getaways. The sound art is rife with the kind of aching passion that teased through Greg Haines'
'Until The Point Of Least Resistance' from 'Until The Point Of Hushed Support', 2009. The psychological unease of it all.
Luckily for us there are plenty of moments where the tension reaches satisfying climaxes rather than plummeting us down. This factor makes a good album, in short, especially one that takes mood music so seriously. Mood music has a specific aim:to create that mood, to set one mood, no other mood, and anything else is futile. Resistance from the creator of the music would be his or her achilles' heel in the eyes of a mood music connoisseur. I have spoken of fine lines, and this record
is like a spider diagram, in that respect. Full of bewitching Bjork-esque cello and viola-register harmonies, the genie inside 'Five Incantations' is no fickle spellcaster - that thing has a mind of its own, an organic one, one that grows on you like greed does to a gambling addict. What does this mean? If you have any money left by now, by now, buy it.
www.joquail.co.uk
Mick Buckingham
whisper to it, but a blast, as the mourning strings stretch up through the inner ear and the drones throe-in the low ebb.
I am certainly taken by the 'Five Incantations' theme: take five simple steps, craft five complex tunes with over twice the narrative arcs interwoven. It is spectral music; to borrow Simon Reynolds' term, it creates a "cathedral of sound". A line can be traced like a silken sheet, a thinly woven cloth, a metal wire, all tension and never enough to satisfy in one take. Indeed, the music doesn't sound one take at all. Jo as her name goes knows how to put the work into her rhythms of refuge, her insomniac getaways. The sound art is rife with the kind of aching passion that teased through Greg Haines'
'Until The Point Of Least Resistance' from 'Until The Point Of Hushed Support', 2009. The psychological unease of it all.
Luckily for us there are plenty of moments where the tension reaches satisfying climaxes rather than plummeting us down. This factor makes a good album, in short, especially one that takes mood music so seriously. Mood music has a specific aim:to create that mood, to set one mood, no other mood, and anything else is futile. Resistance from the creator of the music would be his or her achilles' heel in the eyes of a mood music connoisseur. I have spoken of fine lines, and this record
is like a spider diagram, in that respect. Full of bewitching Bjork-esque cello and viola-register harmonies, the genie inside 'Five Incantations' is no fickle spellcaster - that thing has a mind of its own, an organic one, one that grows on you like greed does to a gambling addict. What does this mean? If you have any money left by now, by now, buy it.
www.joquail.co.uk
Mick Buckingham
Sunday, 24 January 2016
SubVersion Stop 261: subversive titles in Oxfordshire
I have been doing a little disc-tribut-ion of material on disc at Rapture, Witney, hometown of David Cameron and less built up connector between where I live and Oxford city.
So far, the following artwork CD-Rs have been handed over:
1. Carbonara Porcupine EP (includes commissioned remix of Kid Moxie's "The Bailor").
2. Early Riser LP (vocal guitar and piano/synth/bongo half dozen instrument proper mastered disc).
And if I can get proper pass for my reinterpretations (total remix with lyrics from the original) of tracks on this new Internal Dialogue LP - but then this one would be a free giveaway disc in respect of the creators.
A fresh Foci's Left CD-R that I'd need proper copyrights checking to release. It won't happen overnight, but I can share the continuous improvised sounds LP for free on CD.
I find it interesting how larger companies are under such legislation that remixes and reinterpretations don't automatically pass clause 4.0 of copyright, which means when we hsve bought or interpreted music, it's the same as when we sell it. We are performing it, we are living and breathing it, spinning a new web from it, creating our own version, discomputing the score and starting afresh.
And at the same time, we are paying tribute to the creators of the very music that inspired us. It's a healthy relationship if machinery grants you easy access to copying and henceforth disctribution - if it doesn't, maybe things should stay that way.
So far, the following artwork CD-Rs have been handed over:
1. Carbonara Porcupine EP (includes commissioned remix of Kid Moxie's "The Bailor").
2. Early Riser LP (vocal guitar and piano/synth/bongo half dozen instrument proper mastered disc).
And if I can get proper pass for my reinterpretations (total remix with lyrics from the original) of tracks on this new Internal Dialogue LP - but then this one would be a free giveaway disc in respect of the creators.
A fresh Foci's Left CD-R that I'd need proper copyrights checking to release. It won't happen overnight, but I can share the continuous improvised sounds LP for free on CD.
I find it interesting how larger companies are under such legislation that remixes and reinterpretations don't automatically pass clause 4.0 of copyright, which means when we hsve bought or interpreted music, it's the same as when we sell it. We are performing it, we are living and breathing it, spinning a new web from it, creating our own version, discomputing the score and starting afresh.
And at the same time, we are paying tribute to the creators of the very music that inspired us. It's a healthy relationship if machinery grants you easy access to copying and henceforth disctribution - if it doesn't, maybe things should stay that way.
Thursday, 10 September 2015
SubVersion Stop 255: Nissenmondia
New tune is LARGE. Sounds like acid houser Manacles of Acid live mixed with rock bombaism.
http://thequietus.com/articles/18743-listen-new-nissenenmondai
https://soundcloud.com/nisennenmondai/fan
http://thequietus.com/articles/18743-listen-new-nissenenmondai
https://soundcloud.com/nisennenmondai/fan
Tuesday, 17 March 2015
subversion stop 249=250 - subversion recommends muttley: uncertain things (muttley's 27th bday mix)
subversion stop 249=250 - subversion recommends muttley: uncertain things (muttley's 27th bday mix)
feat. altus, asc, vangelis, foci's left (fl), little red, slow club, seconds before awakening, sky residents
(enjoy & eschaton), fanu, simon bean, 36, eveson, grouper; 1h 15 minutes length.
feat. altus, asc, vangelis, foci's left (fl), little red, slow club, seconds before awakening, sky residents
(enjoy & eschaton), fanu, simon bean, 36, eveson, grouper; 1h 15 minutes length.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tkwiw3zez098z40/Uncertain%20Things....mp3?dl=0
/|
poetry by muttley
|/
doctrine of unexpected endings and quelled finalism.
kicking a habit like the smoke was blown out of the room by a vaccum.
diarising over a point-free exponent of the mind.
missing the details where there should be cognition inside.
changing the format as if it were pepperspray across a restaurant table.
finding sinuous connections until we're rarely unable.
controlling uncertain things may be a doctrine of unexpected endings i find.
but it's another thing being just controlled by the tide...
/|
poetry by muttley
|/
doctrine of unexpected endings and quelled finalism.
kicking a habit like the smoke was blown out of the room by a vaccum.
diarising over a point-free exponent of the mind.
missing the details where there should be cognition inside.
changing the format as if it were pepperspray across a restaurant table.
finding sinuous connections until we're rarely unable.
controlling uncertain things may be a doctrine of unexpected endings i find.
but it's another thing being just controlled by the tide...
Sunday, 15 March 2015
SubVersion Stop 248: Audiograft Night 3 - [rout] ensemble feat. Jennifer Walshe, James Saunders, Felicity Ford @ Holywell Music Room, Oxford, 13.03.15
Audiograft's third event of 2015, organised by the
reliable Oxford Contemporary Music and featuring sonic art from Jennifer
Walshe, James Saunders, Felicity Ford and others, proves to be a
remarkable event even just three pieces in. The [rout] based collective
on display tonight forge new paths out of the finish Trevor Wishart, a
pioneer of the term 'sonic art', profligated since musique concrete made
headway from humble origins in the 1930s jazz destructuring, later
advanced by The Radiophonic Workshop.
Recorded by Wire mag types Resonance FM London, this gig makes an oblique statement early: is the room about to explode? Because here the pipe system of the Holywell has been modified to impression springing a multitude of audible leaks. It's engaging enough stuff on the surface - peppered with instrumental sprinklings - but it's the second piece for full group, a dilated worldview organism of a score, that strikes as a collapsing limb trying to admirably rebuild its core aesthetic.
After a segmented voice and movement piece at its best in choral/body matching tendencies, then a 10 minute interval, the amply attended gig takes on a tutorial pattern recognition exercise where chromatic scale is treated as a cornerstone to voice a dual idea from - "A, B, E" - "strum, strum, strum", combining the small acoustic guitar and extrapolative leanings in body direction. A gong-y double bass tone starts out a more moat-mouthed exponent of castle-like sound sculpture. The wailing violin sonar counterpointed with saxophone and Christopher Bissonnette-esque tribal gong sounds like the waves began to play their own tune. The prepared piano sidelines a melodic bridge in higher register, only to be a postcard sent from a forgotten land.
The last piece is testament to [rout] collective's vision - a fantastic old school drama with disharmonic piano and mournful strings, topped off by French vocals. Strangely, for all the craterous pacing, [rout] seem to have their roots in all adventurous places possible.
Mick Buckingham (www.kapsil.net/muttley / www.focisleft.bandcamp.com)
Recorded by Wire mag types Resonance FM London, this gig makes an oblique statement early: is the room about to explode? Because here the pipe system of the Holywell has been modified to impression springing a multitude of audible leaks. It's engaging enough stuff on the surface - peppered with instrumental sprinklings - but it's the second piece for full group, a dilated worldview organism of a score, that strikes as a collapsing limb trying to admirably rebuild its core aesthetic.
After a segmented voice and movement piece at its best in choral/body matching tendencies, then a 10 minute interval, the amply attended gig takes on a tutorial pattern recognition exercise where chromatic scale is treated as a cornerstone to voice a dual idea from - "A, B, E" - "strum, strum, strum", combining the small acoustic guitar and extrapolative leanings in body direction. A gong-y double bass tone starts out a more moat-mouthed exponent of castle-like sound sculpture. The wailing violin sonar counterpointed with saxophone and Christopher Bissonnette-esque tribal gong sounds like the waves began to play their own tune. The prepared piano sidelines a melodic bridge in higher register, only to be a postcard sent from a forgotten land.
The last piece is testament to [rout] collective's vision - a fantastic old school drama with disharmonic piano and mournful strings, topped off by French vocals. Strangely, for all the craterous pacing, [rout] seem to have their roots in all adventurous places possible.
Mick Buckingham (www.kapsil.net/muttley / www.focisleft.bandcamp.com)
Tuesday, 6 January 2015
SubVersion Stop 242: Ideologues Quotes & Clips - 2015 Personal Archive - Pt 1
Ideologues
Quotes And Clips – 2015 – www.kapsil.net/muttley
The
premise is simple: to extend the 'Clipticisms' concept from The
Dastardly Diaries in 2007 with a audio/visual/textual counterpointing
for each piece of information in this www.kapsil.net/muttley
folder. A personal archive and document of 2015. Encompassing music
you should all hear about; texts that are worth reading ornately;
quotes that inspire, self-penned or otherwise.
This
folder-bound project will be the book-styled equivalent of the year,
whereas the 15 Minutes Of Fame Mixes will have another dedicated
folder. That's in the same directory.
Let's
kick things off on an ambient tip with my forte music of choice:
ambient.
http://kapsil.net/muttley/Ideologues%20Quotes%20And%20Clips%20-%202015/001%2036%20-%20Stasis%20Eject%20%28Version%29%20%282m30%29%20%2805.01.15%29.mp3
001
36 – Stasis Eject (Version)
Clip
length: 2:30
Complete
track length: 12:11
From:
"Pulse Dive EP"
Link:
www.3six.net
Clipticism:
"The
immediate future will always be conducive to shallow reward - the
immediate past, less so. It has had time to ferment, to be human"
~SV / www.subvertcentral.blogspot.co.uk
"Ideologues,
Quotes And Clips" will appear throughout the year on that last
address. I hope you gain something out of them.
Tuesday, 30 December 2014
SubVersion Stop 240: SubVersion's End Of Year 2014 Charts
An example of a previous chart:
2012 (7 contributors - 10 entry format)
This year it's a max of 15 extravaganza with the SV Drip-Feed underpinning everything.
I'm at the bottom for reasons of space. :)
Jonathan
01. Favourite track: Tom Chang - Spinal Tap: Goes to 11
02. Favourite album: various - The Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners (Sub Rosa)
03. Favourite label: Dancing Wayang
04. Favourite mixtape: DJ Trax - Mixrace 92-96 mix (for Blog to the Oldskool)
05. Favourite SC thread: In this thread we post tips to decrease apathy
06. Favourite gig: Dave Phillips, Rammel Club, Nottingham
07. Favourite book: Ivan E. Coyote & Rae Spoon - Gender Failure (Arsenal Pulp Press)
08. Favourite food (or Snax): Borders' Dark Chocolate Gingers
09. Favourite guilty pleasure: I'm too old to feel guilty about pleasure.
10. Favourite random moment: looking at the Championship table today and seeing Brentford in third after a 4-0 win
InfiniteSloth
Label (overall): Samurai
Label (for concept and art direction): Weevil Neighborhood
Snax: almond butter and raw cashew cheese tacos
Remix: Hidden Element and Liquid Break - Outsider Blues (Icarus Remix)
Gig: NOizefest, New Orleans
Streaming platform: Spotify
Dig: Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker
Youtube channel: Numberphile
Random moment: Lenny Kravitz strolling down the street while I was walking the dog.
SC thread revivalist: firefinga
Kermit McBollocks Muppet Version 10
Favourite trak - Kermit Ensemble - It's Not Eezy Being Green
Favourite albm - ASC - Troof Bee Told (Soylent Seesawn)
Favourite fred - Kermit's Dictionary Fred, wer I correct der fadar about his grown up werd usage.
Favourite muppet - Muttwee, the ever-stinking ferris Wheel Of Fortune of the internet.
Favwit book - Pool Mackendra - Change Yor Loif In Seven Daze - vewwy moteevational!
Favwit feckwit - Russell Brand, he iz raizin his Sultan status of shitness by der day.
Favoureet telly - Mongrels, so oi can curse at der Nelson for not pimpin der Destinee
Favvit food - caveearr, ho ho ho and a bucket of finest Champagne.
Favourite mix type - Stattzi
Favweet label - Elmo, it bee zee ome of Muttwee's loif in pictures, and in the past tense.
Yelp!
firefinga
*) SC Thread of the Year:
Most "current" sounding subvert dnb made in the 2000's?
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/show...-in-the-2000-
*)Label of the Year:
Euphony's Omni Music, Pinecone Moonshine, Subtle Audio, R & S
*)Mixtape/Radioshows of the Year:
DJ Trax and Nucleus' "Catch A Groove" Shows, Code's "Sublte Audio" shows, both on Jungletrain.net.
Euphony's Omni Sessions, Law's and eXtreme's mixes.
*)Guilty Pleasure 2014:
Reading the News section on Factmag.com and occasionally posting links on here.
*)TV Show 2014:
Last season of "Breaking Bad"
*)Movie 2014:
Snowpiercer
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706620/
*)Book 2014
Bernie Krause "The Great Animal Orchestra"
http://www.thegreatanimalorchestra.com/
*)Album 2014:
+)Subtle Audio Vol. III
+)The Bug "Angels & Devils"
+)Dev Null's "Darkside Compilation" on 8205 Recordings:
http://8205.bandcamp.com/album/darks...mpilation-2014
*)Track of the Year:
DJ Trax and Naibu "All Is Silent" on Subtle Audio Vol. III
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q-OvAYtkq0A
Euphony
01. Favourite track: Too numerous, but the following had me groovin' in my undies; Entama - Primeval Forces (Cadence)
02. Favourite album: Cryogenics - Through the Eons LP or Rainforest - Path of the Warrior LP
03. Favourite label: Monochrome
04. Favourite mixtape: Anything mixed by Cryogenics :)
05. Favourite SC thread:
07. Favourite book: Intelligence in nature (Jeremy Narby), Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness (Sheldrake, McKenna, Abraham) and Ninja by John Man
08. Favourite food (or Snax): My delectable spicy casseroles
09. Favourite guilty pleasure: Walking on my own in the rain
10. Favourite random moment: Either: going out for a pub meal and sitting there complaining about the fact that they had to change the menu, as the previous one was really good and better value, and complained to the staff as a result. We also didn't like the way they had re-decorated, but we kept that whinge to ourselves. Anyway, it wasn't until we were driving home out of the village that we suddenly spied the pub we were meant to (and thought we were!) eating in! d'oh!....That's something my dad would do! jaysus....or: Trying to gatecrash Brad and Angelina's film set in Gozo only to be chased away by dogs
J-Breaks, www.omnimusic.org
02. Favourite album: Kontext - Dispersal (Absys Limited). Definitely my favourite release this year! I've come to expect original ideas from Stan for a while now and I'm never disappointed.
Daniel Crossley, www.fluid-radio.co.uk
08. Favourite food (or Snax): It's cooking fillet steak 'asado style' over the grill outside our van in the many wildcamping spots we found throughout Argentina
dionysus
01. Favourite track: Maybe not the greatest song eva! But the track I've listened to the most is:
Dawn Day Night - The Re-Animation of Scottie
Have a good New Year y'all! Off to Barca...
Muttley
01. Favourite track: Grouper - Holding (Kranky, released October 31st 2014).
(1st of Top 20; remainder 19 of Top 20)
Angel Olsen - Windows
Ryan Teague - Scale And Ratio
Digital & Spirit - Wayout
Colo - Doorframe 1
Betty Davis - If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up
Audion - Motormouth
Tropic Of Coldness - Distressing Dilemma Of Rational Choices
Saaad - After Love
Blue Six - No Two Things
Little Red - Down
Bat For Lashes - Skin Song
ASC - Some Other Life
Mizeyesis - Spring Hope
Equinox - Tribulation
VVV - Turn Away
Jo Quail - South West Night
36 - Always
DJ Trax - '89 'Till Infinity
Foci's Left - Anything Becomes Possible With Time
02. Favourite album: Little Red - Sticks And Stones (All Will Be Well)
(1st of Top 5; remainder of Top 5)
Grouper - Ruins
Jo Quail - Caldera
Christopher Willits - Opening
Metamorphosis - Conception 1982
03. Favourite label: For once, as there's too many labels I like to choose from, it's a production house: Novation.
I bought this analog synthesiser in the Summer as a proto-housewarming present, and have since been making several practice live sets with the machine. It looks like this:
http://d19ulaff0trnck.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/novationmusic/products/Bass-Station-II/BS-II-Banner-ii.jpg
Here is the ongoing live sets archive:
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?60699-Foci-s-Left-Live-Set&highlight=foci%27s+left+live
04. Favourite mixtape: Little Red @ Old Fire Station, Oxford, Friday 14th November 2014. Second would be Blevin Blectum's Liveondublab set (on SoundCloud), actually from 2012, while following that is SB81's 92 Hardcore Favourites Mix.
The latter two are reposted at www.soundcloud.com/subversion-2, my and Statto's joint account.
Of my own spurious output it's FTAL 005 - Handling Grief (in the 60,000 unique viewers strong For The Ambient Lovers (FTAL)...review and mixtape archive 001 thread:
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?56404-For-The-Ambient-Lovers-review-and-mixtape-archive-001/page12
05. Favourite SC thread: "today, I..." (begun by Statto in January this year. Because I'm partly a narcissistic bastard).
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?60224-today-I
06. Favourite gig: Little Red + Stuart Clark + Gus Hewlett @ Old Fire Station, Oxford, Friday November 14th 2014.
http://www.subvertcentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/subversion-stop-233-little-red-stuart.html
07. Favourite book: Carlos Castenada - The Art Of Dreaming
(Excerpt from the book, as I haven't really read any other books this year)
"You are not yet ready for a true merging of your dreaming reality and your daily reality", he concluded. "You must recapitulate your life further".
"But I've done all the recapitulating possible", I protested. "I've been recapitulating for years. There is nothing more I can remember about my life".
"There must be much more", he said adamantly, "otherwise, you wouldn't wake up screaming".
I did not like the idea of having to recapitulate again. I had done it, and I believed I had done it so well that I did not need to touch the subject ever again".
"The recapitulation of our lives never ends, no matter how well we've done it once", don Juan said. "The reason average people lack volition in their dreams is that they have never recapitulated and their lives are filled to capacity with heavily loaded emotions like memories, hopes, fears, et cetera, et cetera.
"Sorcerers, in contrast, are relatively free from heavy, binding emotions, because of their recapitulation. And if something stops them, as it has stopped you at this moment, the assumption is that there still is something in them that is not quite clear".
"To recapitulate is too involving, don Juan. Maybe there is something else I can do instead".
"No. There isn't. Recapitulating and dreaming go hand in hand. As we regurgitate our lives, we get more and more airborne".
Don Juan had given me very detailed and explicit instructions about the recapitulation. It consisted of reliving the totality of one's life experiences by remembering every possible minute detail of them. He saw the recapitulation as the essential factor in a dreamer's redefinition and redeployment of energy. "The recapitulation sets free energy imprisoned within us, and without the this liberated energy dreaming is not possible". That was his statement.
Years before, don Juan had coached me to make a list of all the people I had met in my life, starting at the present. He helped me to arrange my list in an orderly fashion, breaking it down into areas of activity, such as jobs I had had, schools I had attended. Then he guided me to go, without deviation, from the first person on my list to the last one, reliving every one of my interactions with them.
He explained that recapitulating an event with one's mind arranging everything pertinent to what is being recapitulated. Arranging means reconstructing the event, piece by piece, starting by recollecting the physical details of the surroundings, then going to the person with whom one shared the interaction, and then going to oneself, to the examination of one's feelings.
Don Juan taught me that the recapitulation is coupled with a natural, rhythmical breathing. Long exhalations are performed as the head moves slowly and gently from right to left; and long inhalations are taken as the head moves back from left to right. He called this act of moving the head from side to side "fanning the event". The mind examines the event from beginning to end while the body fans, on and on, everything the mind focuses on.
Don Juan said that the sorcerers of antiquity, the inventors of the recapitulation, viewed breathing as a magical, life-giving act and used it, accordingly, as a magical vehicle; the exhalation, to eject the foreign energy left in them during the interaction being recapitulated and the inhalation to pull back the energy that they themselves left behind during the interaction.
Because of my academic training, I took the recapitulation to be the process of analysing one's life. But don Juan insisted that it was more involved than an intellectual psychoanalysis. He postulated the recapitulation as a sorcerer's play to induce a minute but steady displacement of the assemblage point. He said that the assemblage point, under the impact of reviewing past actions and feelings, goes back and forth between its present site and the site it occupied when the event being recapitulated took place.
Don Juan stated that the old sorcerers' rationale behind the recapitulation was their conviction that there is an inconceivable dissolving force in the universe, which makes organisms live by lending them awareness. That force also makes organisms die, in order to extract the same lent awareness, which organisms have enhanced through their life experiences. Don Juan explained the old sorcerers' reasoning. They believed that since it is our life experience this force is after, it is of supreme importance that it can be satisfied with a facsimile of our life experience: the recapitulation. Having had what it seeks, the dissolving force then lets sorcerers go, free to expand their capacity to perceive and reach with it the confines of time and space." ~ Carlos Castenada, The Art Of Dreaming, p147-149.
08. Favourite food (or Snax): Beef Rogan Josh, Slimming World Fakeaway Style, with added Chickpeas.
Rogan recipe (For clarity when using Lamb instead of Beef as in the original Slimming World guidelines - just get some fry Beef Steaks or Boneless Beef for the Beef version and cook for the same time)
"This rich and meaty north Indian stew is infused with enticing spices that leave a lovely warmth in your mouth. We've
added carrots and swede, though you could use other root vegetables like potato or parsnip).
Free on Extra Easy and Original SlimmingW plan, 9 1/2 on Green (more vegetable based weight loss plan, the quickest diet)
Ready in 2 hours.
Ingredients
low calorie cooking spray
500g lean lamb steaks, visible fat removed, cut into bite-sized chunks
2 onions, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2cm piece of root ginger, peeled and finely grated
2 cinnamon sticks
2 tsp chilli powder
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp cardamom seeds, crushed
4 tbsp medium curry powder
400g can chopped tomatoes
1 tsp sweetener
600ml boiling lamb stock
2 carrots, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 swede, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
salt and freshly ground black pepper
small handful of finely chopped fresh coriander, to garnish
(Me: you might want to add natural yogurt/creme fresh to cool the heat down).
Spray a large, heavy-based casserole pan (or wok) with low calorie cooking spray and place over a medium-high heat.
Add the lamb and cook for 4 minutes, stirring, or until browned (you may need to do this in batches).
Transfer the lamb to a plate with a slotted spoon.
Spray the casserole pan with low calorie cooking spray again and add the onions.
Cook over a medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring often, until soft and lightly browned.
Add the garlic, ginger, cinnamon, chilli powder, paprika and cardamom seeds.
Stir-fry for 2 minutes then add the curry powder and return the lamb to the pan (or wok).
Stir-fry for 2-3 minutes then stir in the tomatoes, sweetener, stock, carrots and swede.
Season well and bring the mixture to a boil.
Reduce the heat to low and cover tightly. Simmer gently for 1 hour 30 minutes or until the lamb is meltingly tender.
Remove from the heat, scatter over the coriander and serve with rice of your choice.
*
I have had so much amazing food this year, mainly from The First Floor, Cowley, my favourite restaurant in my life so far. Some dishes:
Indian: Mutton Dopiaza / Handi Ghost / Butter Chicken / Chef's Special Lamb / Lamb Madras
Chinese: Szechuan Beef and Sweet Chilli Curry / Lamb in Oyster Sauce / Tofu in Sweet Chilli Sauce / Chinese Seaweed / Chicken in S&S sauce
Thai: Chicken Massaman Curry / Deep Fried Fish / Chicken Satay / Chicken in hot Mustard sauce / Deep Fried Thai Noodles
Other Oxford restaurants that come recommended are: La Cucina Italian (St. Clements); Thai Orchid (St. Clements); Arbat (providing you don't have an unremarkable starter, the Cheese-topped grilled Gammon with a Toffee Madeira Cake for dessert is great - Russian - Cowley); Majiliss (Cowley); Mirch Masala (Cowley); Rice Box (Cowley); The Beehive (Carterton - particularly Puy Lentil & Sweet Potato curry).
09. Favourite guilty pleasure: losing 1 1/2 stone by Summer to take my weight down to a much healthier 16.7. For 6'5 I want to be getting down to a weight that still isn't overweight - hoping to touch 16st next year.
10. Favourite random moment: Favourite and least favourite at the same time - struggling with personal identity and family relationship as to how my family in relation to my friends fit into my world.
11. In light InfiniteSloth's adaptation list I'm adding two optional to others entries to mine, one being: favourite festival. Which is:
Pindrop Performances Presents: Midwinter Drone Fest @ Modern Art Oxford, 11.12.14 (Petrels, Paddox, After The Thought, James Maund, Lee Riley)
Mind blowing event.
12. Favourite below radar movement: Eilean Rec. - https://eileanrec.bandcamp.com/
EOY Charts 2013-2015 SC thread
2012 (7 contributors - 10 entry format)
This year it's a max of 15 extravaganza with the SV Drip-Feed underpinning everything.
I'm at the bottom for reasons of space. :)
Jonathan
01. Favourite track: Tom Chang - Spinal Tap: Goes to 11
02. Favourite album: various - The Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners (Sub Rosa)
03. Favourite label: Dancing Wayang
04. Favourite mixtape: DJ Trax - Mixrace 92-96 mix (for Blog to the Oldskool)
05. Favourite SC thread: In this thread we post tips to decrease apathy
06. Favourite gig: Dave Phillips, Rammel Club, Nottingham
07. Favourite book: Ivan E. Coyote & Rae Spoon - Gender Failure (Arsenal Pulp Press)
08. Favourite food (or Snax): Borders' Dark Chocolate Gingers
09. Favourite guilty pleasure: I'm too old to feel guilty about pleasure.
10. Favourite random moment: looking at the Championship table today and seeing Brentford in third after a 4-0 win
InfiniteSloth
Label (overall): Samurai
Label (for concept and art direction): Weevil Neighborhood
Snax: almond butter and raw cashew cheese tacos
Remix: Hidden Element and Liquid Break - Outsider Blues (Icarus Remix)
Gig: NOizefest, New Orleans
Streaming platform: Spotify
Dig: Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker
Youtube channel: Numberphile
Random moment: Lenny Kravitz strolling down the street while I was walking the dog.
SC thread revivalist: firefinga
Kermit McBollocks Muppet Version 10
Favourite trak - Kermit Ensemble - It's Not Eezy Being Green
Favourite albm - ASC - Troof Bee Told (Soylent Seesawn)
Favourite fred - Kermit's Dictionary Fred, wer I correct der fadar about his grown up werd usage.
Favourite muppet - Muttwee, the ever-stinking ferris Wheel Of Fortune of the internet.
Favwit book - Pool Mackendra - Change Yor Loif In Seven Daze - vewwy moteevational!
Favwit feckwit - Russell Brand, he iz raizin his Sultan status of shitness by der day.
Favoureet telly - Mongrels, so oi can curse at der Nelson for not pimpin der Destinee
Favvit food - caveearr, ho ho ho and a bucket of finest Champagne.
Favourite mix type - Stattzi
Favweet label - Elmo, it bee zee ome of Muttwee's loif in pictures, and in the past tense.
Yelp!
firefinga
*) SC Thread of the Year:
Most "current" sounding subvert dnb made in the 2000's?
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/show...-in-the-2000-
*)Label of the Year:
Euphony's Omni Music, Pinecone Moonshine, Subtle Audio, R & S
*)Mixtape/Radioshows of the Year:
DJ Trax and Nucleus' "Catch A Groove" Shows, Code's "Sublte Audio" shows, both on Jungletrain.net.
Euphony's Omni Sessions, Law's and eXtreme's mixes.
*)Guilty Pleasure 2014:
Reading the News section on Factmag.com and occasionally posting links on here.
*)TV Show 2014:
Last season of "Breaking Bad"
*)Movie 2014:
Snowpiercer
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706620/
*)Book 2014
Bernie Krause "The Great Animal Orchestra"
http://www.thegreatanimalorchestra.com/
*)Album 2014:
+)Subtle Audio Vol. III
+)The Bug "Angels & Devils"
+)Dev Null's "Darkside Compilation" on 8205 Recordings:
http://8205.bandcamp.com/album/darks...mpilation-2014
*)Track of the Year:
DJ Trax and Naibu "All Is Silent" on Subtle Audio Vol. III
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q-OvAYtkq0A
Euphony
01. Favourite track: Too numerous, but the following had me groovin' in my undies; Entama - Primeval Forces (Cadence)
02. Favourite album: Cryogenics - Through the Eons LP or Rainforest - Path of the Warrior LP
03. Favourite label: Monochrome
04. Favourite mixtape: Anything mixed by Cryogenics :)
05. Favourite SC thread:
07. Favourite book: Intelligence in nature (Jeremy Narby), Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness (Sheldrake, McKenna, Abraham) and Ninja by John Man
08. Favourite food (or Snax): My delectable spicy casseroles
09. Favourite guilty pleasure: Walking on my own in the rain
10. Favourite random moment: Either: going out for a pub meal and sitting there complaining about the fact that they had to change the menu, as the previous one was really good and better value, and complained to the staff as a result. We also didn't like the way they had re-decorated, but we kept that whinge to ourselves. Anyway, it wasn't until we were driving home out of the village that we suddenly spied the pub we were meant to (and thought we were!) eating in! d'oh!....That's something my dad would do! jaysus....or: Trying to gatecrash Brad and Angelina's film set in Gozo only to be chased away by dogs
J-Breaks, www.omnimusic.org
02. Favourite album: Kontext - Dispersal (Absys Limited). Definitely my favourite release this year! I've come to expect original ideas from Stan for a while now and I'm never disappointed.
Daniel Crossley, www.fluid-radio.co.uk
08. Favourite food (or Snax): It's cooking fillet steak 'asado style' over the grill outside our van in the many wildcamping spots we found throughout Argentina
dionysus
01. Favourite track: Maybe not the greatest song eva! But the track I've listened to the most is:
Dawn Day Night - The Re-Animation of Scottie
Have a good New Year y'all! Off to Barca...
Muttley
01. Favourite track: Grouper - Holding (Kranky, released October 31st 2014).
(1st of Top 20; remainder 19 of Top 20)
Angel Olsen - Windows
Ryan Teague - Scale And Ratio
Digital & Spirit - Wayout
Colo - Doorframe 1
Betty Davis - If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up
Audion - Motormouth
Tropic Of Coldness - Distressing Dilemma Of Rational Choices
Saaad - After Love
Blue Six - No Two Things
Little Red - Down
Bat For Lashes - Skin Song
ASC - Some Other Life
Mizeyesis - Spring Hope
Equinox - Tribulation
VVV - Turn Away
Jo Quail - South West Night
36 - Always
DJ Trax - '89 'Till Infinity
Foci's Left - Anything Becomes Possible With Time
02. Favourite album: Little Red - Sticks And Stones (All Will Be Well)
(1st of Top 5; remainder of Top 5)
Grouper - Ruins
Jo Quail - Caldera
Christopher Willits - Opening
Metamorphosis - Conception 1982
03. Favourite label: For once, as there's too many labels I like to choose from, it's a production house: Novation.
I bought this analog synthesiser in the Summer as a proto-housewarming present, and have since been making several practice live sets with the machine. It looks like this:
http://d19ulaff0trnck.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/novationmusic/products/Bass-Station-II/BS-II-Banner-ii.jpg
Here is the ongoing live sets archive:
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?60699-Foci-s-Left-Live-Set&highlight=foci%27s+left+live
04. Favourite mixtape: Little Red @ Old Fire Station, Oxford, Friday 14th November 2014. Second would be Blevin Blectum's Liveondublab set (on SoundCloud), actually from 2012, while following that is SB81's 92 Hardcore Favourites Mix.
The latter two are reposted at www.soundcloud.com/subversion-2, my and Statto's joint account.
Of my own spurious output it's FTAL 005 - Handling Grief (in the 60,000 unique viewers strong For The Ambient Lovers (FTAL)...review and mixtape archive 001 thread:
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?56404-For-The-Ambient-Lovers-review-and-mixtape-archive-001/page12
05. Favourite SC thread: "today, I..." (begun by Statto in January this year. Because I'm partly a narcissistic bastard).
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?60224-today-I
06. Favourite gig: Little Red + Stuart Clark + Gus Hewlett @ Old Fire Station, Oxford, Friday November 14th 2014.
http://www.subvertcentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/subversion-stop-233-little-red-stuart.html
07. Favourite book: Carlos Castenada - The Art Of Dreaming
(Excerpt from the book, as I haven't really read any other books this year)
"You are not yet ready for a true merging of your dreaming reality and your daily reality", he concluded. "You must recapitulate your life further".
"But I've done all the recapitulating possible", I protested. "I've been recapitulating for years. There is nothing more I can remember about my life".
"There must be much more", he said adamantly, "otherwise, you wouldn't wake up screaming".
I did not like the idea of having to recapitulate again. I had done it, and I believed I had done it so well that I did not need to touch the subject ever again".
"The recapitulation of our lives never ends, no matter how well we've done it once", don Juan said. "The reason average people lack volition in their dreams is that they have never recapitulated and their lives are filled to capacity with heavily loaded emotions like memories, hopes, fears, et cetera, et cetera.
"Sorcerers, in contrast, are relatively free from heavy, binding emotions, because of their recapitulation. And if something stops them, as it has stopped you at this moment, the assumption is that there still is something in them that is not quite clear".
"To recapitulate is too involving, don Juan. Maybe there is something else I can do instead".
"No. There isn't. Recapitulating and dreaming go hand in hand. As we regurgitate our lives, we get more and more airborne".
Don Juan had given me very detailed and explicit instructions about the recapitulation. It consisted of reliving the totality of one's life experiences by remembering every possible minute detail of them. He saw the recapitulation as the essential factor in a dreamer's redefinition and redeployment of energy. "The recapitulation sets free energy imprisoned within us, and without the this liberated energy dreaming is not possible". That was his statement.
Years before, don Juan had coached me to make a list of all the people I had met in my life, starting at the present. He helped me to arrange my list in an orderly fashion, breaking it down into areas of activity, such as jobs I had had, schools I had attended. Then he guided me to go, without deviation, from the first person on my list to the last one, reliving every one of my interactions with them.
He explained that recapitulating an event with one's mind arranging everything pertinent to what is being recapitulated. Arranging means reconstructing the event, piece by piece, starting by recollecting the physical details of the surroundings, then going to the person with whom one shared the interaction, and then going to oneself, to the examination of one's feelings.
Don Juan taught me that the recapitulation is coupled with a natural, rhythmical breathing. Long exhalations are performed as the head moves slowly and gently from right to left; and long inhalations are taken as the head moves back from left to right. He called this act of moving the head from side to side "fanning the event". The mind examines the event from beginning to end while the body fans, on and on, everything the mind focuses on.
Don Juan said that the sorcerers of antiquity, the inventors of the recapitulation, viewed breathing as a magical, life-giving act and used it, accordingly, as a magical vehicle; the exhalation, to eject the foreign energy left in them during the interaction being recapitulated and the inhalation to pull back the energy that they themselves left behind during the interaction.
Because of my academic training, I took the recapitulation to be the process of analysing one's life. But don Juan insisted that it was more involved than an intellectual psychoanalysis. He postulated the recapitulation as a sorcerer's play to induce a minute but steady displacement of the assemblage point. He said that the assemblage point, under the impact of reviewing past actions and feelings, goes back and forth between its present site and the site it occupied when the event being recapitulated took place.
Don Juan stated that the old sorcerers' rationale behind the recapitulation was their conviction that there is an inconceivable dissolving force in the universe, which makes organisms live by lending them awareness. That force also makes organisms die, in order to extract the same lent awareness, which organisms have enhanced through their life experiences. Don Juan explained the old sorcerers' reasoning. They believed that since it is our life experience this force is after, it is of supreme importance that it can be satisfied with a facsimile of our life experience: the recapitulation. Having had what it seeks, the dissolving force then lets sorcerers go, free to expand their capacity to perceive and reach with it the confines of time and space." ~ Carlos Castenada, The Art Of Dreaming, p147-149.
08. Favourite food (or Snax): Beef Rogan Josh, Slimming World Fakeaway Style, with added Chickpeas.
Rogan recipe (For clarity when using Lamb instead of Beef as in the original Slimming World guidelines - just get some fry Beef Steaks or Boneless Beef for the Beef version and cook for the same time)
"This rich and meaty north Indian stew is infused with enticing spices that leave a lovely warmth in your mouth. We've
added carrots and swede, though you could use other root vegetables like potato or parsnip).
Free on Extra Easy and Original SlimmingW plan, 9 1/2 on Green (more vegetable based weight loss plan, the quickest diet)
Ready in 2 hours.
Ingredients
low calorie cooking spray
500g lean lamb steaks, visible fat removed, cut into bite-sized chunks
2 onions, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2cm piece of root ginger, peeled and finely grated
2 cinnamon sticks
2 tsp chilli powder
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp cardamom seeds, crushed
4 tbsp medium curry powder
400g can chopped tomatoes
1 tsp sweetener
600ml boiling lamb stock
2 carrots, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 swede, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
salt and freshly ground black pepper
small handful of finely chopped fresh coriander, to garnish
(Me: you might want to add natural yogurt/creme fresh to cool the heat down).
Spray a large, heavy-based casserole pan (or wok) with low calorie cooking spray and place over a medium-high heat.
Add the lamb and cook for 4 minutes, stirring, or until browned (you may need to do this in batches).
Transfer the lamb to a plate with a slotted spoon.
Spray the casserole pan with low calorie cooking spray again and add the onions.
Cook over a medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring often, until soft and lightly browned.
Add the garlic, ginger, cinnamon, chilli powder, paprika and cardamom seeds.
Stir-fry for 2 minutes then add the curry powder and return the lamb to the pan (or wok).
Stir-fry for 2-3 minutes then stir in the tomatoes, sweetener, stock, carrots and swede.
Season well and bring the mixture to a boil.
Reduce the heat to low and cover tightly. Simmer gently for 1 hour 30 minutes or until the lamb is meltingly tender.
Remove from the heat, scatter over the coriander and serve with rice of your choice.
*
I have had so much amazing food this year, mainly from The First Floor, Cowley, my favourite restaurant in my life so far. Some dishes:
Indian: Mutton Dopiaza / Handi Ghost / Butter Chicken / Chef's Special Lamb / Lamb Madras
Chinese: Szechuan Beef and Sweet Chilli Curry / Lamb in Oyster Sauce / Tofu in Sweet Chilli Sauce / Chinese Seaweed / Chicken in S&S sauce
Thai: Chicken Massaman Curry / Deep Fried Fish / Chicken Satay / Chicken in hot Mustard sauce / Deep Fried Thai Noodles
Other Oxford restaurants that come recommended are: La Cucina Italian (St. Clements); Thai Orchid (St. Clements); Arbat (providing you don't have an unremarkable starter, the Cheese-topped grilled Gammon with a Toffee Madeira Cake for dessert is great - Russian - Cowley); Majiliss (Cowley); Mirch Masala (Cowley); Rice Box (Cowley); The Beehive (Carterton - particularly Puy Lentil & Sweet Potato curry).
09. Favourite guilty pleasure: losing 1 1/2 stone by Summer to take my weight down to a much healthier 16.7. For 6'5 I want to be getting down to a weight that still isn't overweight - hoping to touch 16st next year.
10. Favourite random moment: Favourite and least favourite at the same time - struggling with personal identity and family relationship as to how my family in relation to my friends fit into my world.
11. In light InfiniteSloth's adaptation list I'm adding two optional to others entries to mine, one being: favourite festival. Which is:
Pindrop Performances Presents: Midwinter Drone Fest @ Modern Art Oxford, 11.12.14 (Petrels, Paddox, After The Thought, James Maund, Lee Riley)
Mind blowing event.
12. Favourite below radar movement: Eilean Rec. - https://eileanrec.bandcamp.com/
EOY Charts 2013-2015 SC thread
Sunday, 28 December 2014
SubVersion Stop 239: Tropic Of Coldness - Personalised For Muttley Live Session 17th December 2014
SV Xmas Drip-Feed Pt 5, exclusively available in For The Ambient Lovers (FTAL) archive.
Tropic of Coldness are an ambient and electroacoustic superduo with former members from psychedelia/electroacoustic band Fuji Apple Worship. They've careened their complexity in disparate, streamed arrangements into "Demography Of Data" as Tropic of Coldness, a highlight album of my 130 subjects on www.fluid-radio.co.uk (under my penname). That LP is available here in CD and digital formats for an inexpensive price - make sure you check it.
https://organic-industries.bandcamp.com/album/tropic-of-coldness-demography-of-data-oi014
If you like what you hear and want something the duo made for me personally, under their agreement I'm dripping this for Xmas 2014. It's a 28:33 long live session with somnambulant, sleepytime bent. Recommended if you like Eno's "Music For Airports", Harold Budd & Robin Guthrie's "After The Night Falls" and ASC's "Truth Be Told", all timeless records in Muttleyland.
Find the live session as #300 in FTAL (For The Ambient Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001)
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?56404-For-The-Ambient-Lovers-review-and-mixtape-archive-001/page13
28:33 / 320kbps
Tropic of Coldness' track "Distressing Dilemma Of Rational Choices" is included in SubVersion's End Of Year 2014 Charts in my contribution. :)
https://organic-industries.bandcamp.com/album/tropic-of-coldness-demography-of-data-oi014
If you like what you hear and want something the duo made for me personally, under their agreement I'm dripping this for Xmas 2014. It's a 28:33 long live session with somnambulant, sleepytime bent. Recommended if you like Eno's "Music For Airports", Harold Budd & Robin Guthrie's "After The Night Falls" and ASC's "Truth Be Told", all timeless records in Muttleyland.
Find the live session as #300 in FTAL (For The Ambient Lovers...review and mixtape archive 001)
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?56404-For-The-Ambient-Lovers-review-and-mixtape-archive-001/page13
28:33 / 320kbps
Tropic of Coldness' track "Distressing Dilemma Of Rational Choices" is included in SubVersion's End Of Year 2014 Charts in my contribution. :)
Thursday, 18 December 2014
SubVersion Stop 236: SV Recommends Muttley - Take Me Where The Giver Grows Mix (December 2014)
http://kapsil.net/muttley/2014/SV%20Recommends%20Muttley%20-%20Take%20Me%20Where%20The%20Giver%20Grows%20%28December%202014%29.mp3
SubVersion Xmas Drip Feed Pt 3.
If you're interested, don't listen with a look at the tracklist to start with. It sinks in deeper this way. When you look at the tracklist after, it makes more sense. ;)
A birthday present for my 2014 linkworker Jo this is. But it's universal enough to warrant publishing. All Muttley / Foci's Left sets have concepts.
For the tracklist, see the ID3 tag.
Enjoy :)
SubVersion Xmas Drip Feed Pt 3.
If you're interested, don't listen with a look at the tracklist to start with. It sinks in deeper this way. When you look at the tracklist after, it makes more sense. ;)
A birthday present for my 2014 linkworker Jo this is. But it's universal enough to warrant publishing. All Muttley / Foci's Left sets have concepts.
For the tracklist, see the ID3 tag.
Enjoy :)
Sunday, 14 December 2014
SubVersion Stop 235: SubVersion Xmas Drip Feed 2 - Foci's Left - Everywhere (Ad Music) EP - Nightshift forum exclusive
SubVersion Xmas Drip-Feed 2 - Foci's Left - Everywhere (Ad Music) EP - Nightshift forum exclusive
*EP Exclusively available in this Nightshift thread*
'Everywhere (Ad Music)' is a collection of short tracks, or 'vignettes' for advertisements worldwide, marking 9 years of Foci's Left sound and music production.
For this project I'm joined by critically acclaimed top 20 album artist, the Italian Bruno Bavota, who lends his light touch to the piano keys on "Everywhere (Interlude)".
Opening the EP meanwhile is "Future Past", a fully realised part for "Grumpy Love" LP, my debut album.
Not previously included in the published project, this track is a personal Foci's Left favourite with synthetic guitar, strings and acoustic bass. Find Nightshift's review of "Grumpy Love" in 'Reviews' here:
http://nightshift.oxfordmusic.net/2013/oct.pdf (Little Fish's Juju and Candy Says on the cover of this one).
"Ball Of Wool I" made part of the Nightshift acclaimed "Eternal Sands" "epic 15 minutes", in "Derelict Career" LP (http://nightshift.oxfordmusic.net/2014/sep.pdf) as a layer, whereas here it's a standalone eerie composition. Dave at http://www.lowlightmixes.blogspot.com likes it too. Check out his ambient mix blog.
"Holding Pattern" is a soporific tune dedicated to my linkworker Jo. Elsewhere two other dedication pieces, "Artemis Song" and "Statto's Song" for two very close friends introduce choral and overdubbed new age elements but without cheese.
Some tracks here are offered as .wav, so you can do stuff to them in highest quality, but if you'd like Mp3s let me know.
This EP has come about as a free download ultimately as thanks for the support. I genuinely appreciate it, as one of the few pushing ambient and drone into different places in the local Oxford establishment.
Recommended if you like or love: After The Thought / Water Paegant / Lee Riley / Paddox / Reidenol / Indica Blues / Flights Of Helios / Manacles Of Acid.
Download and comment here
*EP Exclusively available in this Nightshift thread*
'Everywhere (Ad Music)' is a collection of short tracks, or 'vignettes' for advertisements worldwide, marking 9 years of Foci's Left sound and music production.
For this project I'm joined by critically acclaimed top 20 album artist, the Italian Bruno Bavota, who lends his light touch to the piano keys on "Everywhere (Interlude)".
Opening the EP meanwhile is "Future Past", a fully realised part for "Grumpy Love" LP, my debut album.
Not previously included in the published project, this track is a personal Foci's Left favourite with synthetic guitar, strings and acoustic bass. Find Nightshift's review of "Grumpy Love" in 'Reviews' here:
http://nightshift.oxfordmusic.net/2013/oct.pdf (Little Fish's Juju and Candy Says on the cover of this one).
"Ball Of Wool I" made part of the Nightshift acclaimed "Eternal Sands" "epic 15 minutes", in "Derelict Career" LP (http://nightshift.oxfordmusic.net/2014/sep.pdf) as a layer, whereas here it's a standalone eerie composition. Dave at http://www.lowlightmixes.blogspot.com likes it too. Check out his ambient mix blog.
"Holding Pattern" is a soporific tune dedicated to my linkworker Jo. Elsewhere two other dedication pieces, "Artemis Song" and "Statto's Song" for two very close friends introduce choral and overdubbed new age elements but without cheese.
Some tracks here are offered as .wav, so you can do stuff to them in highest quality, but if you'd like Mp3s let me know.
This EP has come about as a free download ultimately as thanks for the support. I genuinely appreciate it, as one of the few pushing ambient and drone into different places in the local Oxford establishment.
Recommended if you like or love: After The Thought / Water Paegant / Lee Riley / Paddox / Reidenol / Indica Blues / Flights Of Helios / Manacles Of Acid.
Download and comment here
Saturday, 14 June 2014
SubVersion Stop 228: Holykindof - Stay / Sea (Eilean Rec, 2014)
Holykindof – Stay / Sea (Eilean
Rec, 2014)
A musical love
letter from BJ Nilsen to Gavin Bryars, Holykindof's "Stay / Sea"
touches base with music concrete – several whooshing reversed vinyl
noises pervade the atmosphere; lo-fi drone – the entire three
pieces encumber around a type of linear erosion; and mood aligned
with lysergic pensiveness. Running to 40 minutes, the pace never
feels laboured or forced toward a gear-shift. Yes, the atmosphere is
rickety, thanks to the noisy-scratchy nature of the sound sourcing,
but in general it's in third lever and never breaks a sweat, and
doesn't cause you to perspirate.
The scratching is
to an un-attuned ear disconcerting over time, whereby you need to
have listened to enough other musics before listening to bypass its
irregularity. It subsumes the languid cello playing stylishly and
gives a welcome change to the landscape of otherwise 'regular' sound.
In an age of wanton experimentation, where musicians continually
gambit for a break from the ordinary, "Stay / Sea" is not
oxymoronic of its title, being strong and steadfast like the waves of
an estuary. It is rooted in traditional orthodoxy of instrumentation,
yet contains an alien edge. This is due to its potent fixation
quality of repeating chords. It is needed, in compositions that rely
on the wealth of sublimative, subconscious mind-shaping harvest that
pulsates from thought to action.
The shorter the
track in this release, the less effective the results. The crop is
always worthwhile, a melancholic cloaking device for the emotions.
That dial alters in resonance every time you hear it. Like Bryars'
"The Sinking Of The Titanic", "Nocturne In S Major"
is ruthless in its intention and paints a sullen, purposeful backdrop
to much-a-do-about-nothing periods. "Stay / Sea" turns in
the covers of sleep like a coastguard watching the blue grass crash.
Monday, 9 June 2014
SubVersion Stop 227: InfiniteSloth is: "Looking for repetitive drone-like compositions"
This thread was posted in the first week of June 2014 on Subvert Central - here's the link:
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?60547-Looking-for-repetitive-drone-like-compositions
"Maybe sparse, but mostly a repetition of the same note or chord" Nic TVG, aka InfiniteSloth begins. It's an interesting subject this - there is an awful lot of drone about, but the trend in the last 5 years - 2009-2014, has been to fragment structures of ambience into more abstract, yet paradoxically song-based compositions. Just look at how "And Their Refinement Of The Decline" from 2007, posted by me, by landmark artists Stars Of The Lid (Adam Wiltzie & Brian Mcbride) has become "a start" for this topic. As an expert in the ambient field I was humble enough to avoid including my own compositions, and also because they're not entirely drone-based. Yet artists all over have lost the holy grail of minimalism over time - just the other week for instance I was suggested to be "stretching ideas too thin" - I was changing stuff around quickly, not letting it time to ferment and develop potency. This pattern has scatter-gunned throughout the ambient, drone and contemporary classical mecca, and no one no longer stands for a specfic style of drone.
Drone being what constitutes ambience in all music, it's all in the feedback for starters. So I thought: "you want ultra minimal? Try some Paul Bradley then". Here's the link to one of the best minimal drone LPs out there, as recommended by Dave at Low Light Mixes:
http://paulbradley.bandcamp.com/album/anamnesis
Nic said he wanted stuff like this, so hopefully more contributions from far and wide will follow. :)
"If the first 50 seconds of Greg Haines - Snow Airport were looped for several minutes, but played by a human and not synthetically looped. That's what I'm on the hunt for."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM4gA0MTQK8
Statto references lauded composers Eliane Radigue and Pauline Oliveros. "Naphta posted a video of Eliane Radigue on June 2nd (on Facebook), which was the first I had heard of her.
Eliane Radigue - French
Pauline Oliveros - American
Daphne Oram - British
...and all composing from the 50s on." states Nic.
The post by cube references long-time industrialists Coil (Peter Christopherson passed away in 2010) with a video for the LP "Time Machines". I haven't heard this yet but I loved "Musik 2 Play In The Dark". He also posts one of his own tracks as ennui (I have a download of his "Mindstate Disposition").
The newest post just before publishing this leads the reader into finding out Nic's Another Timbre interest has yielded some repetitive drone fruits. Stay tuned (or dissonantly tuned) for more.
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?60547-Looking-for-repetitive-drone-like-compositions
"Maybe sparse, but mostly a repetition of the same note or chord" Nic TVG, aka InfiniteSloth begins. It's an interesting subject this - there is an awful lot of drone about, but the trend in the last 5 years - 2009-2014, has been to fragment structures of ambience into more abstract, yet paradoxically song-based compositions. Just look at how "And Their Refinement Of The Decline" from 2007, posted by me, by landmark artists Stars Of The Lid (Adam Wiltzie & Brian Mcbride) has become "a start" for this topic. As an expert in the ambient field I was humble enough to avoid including my own compositions, and also because they're not entirely drone-based. Yet artists all over have lost the holy grail of minimalism over time - just the other week for instance I was suggested to be "stretching ideas too thin" - I was changing stuff around quickly, not letting it time to ferment and develop potency. This pattern has scatter-gunned throughout the ambient, drone and contemporary classical mecca, and no one no longer stands for a specfic style of drone.
Drone being what constitutes ambience in all music, it's all in the feedback for starters. So I thought: "you want ultra minimal? Try some Paul Bradley then". Here's the link to one of the best minimal drone LPs out there, as recommended by Dave at Low Light Mixes:
http://paulbradley.bandcamp.com/album/anamnesis
Nic said he wanted stuff like this, so hopefully more contributions from far and wide will follow. :)
"If the first 50 seconds of Greg Haines - Snow Airport were looped for several minutes, but played by a human and not synthetically looped. That's what I'm on the hunt for."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM4gA0MTQK8
Statto references lauded composers Eliane Radigue and Pauline Oliveros. "Naphta posted a video of Eliane Radigue on June 2nd (on Facebook), which was the first I had heard of her.
Eliane Radigue - French
Pauline Oliveros - American
Daphne Oram - British
...and all composing from the 50s on." states Nic.
The post by cube references long-time industrialists Coil (Peter Christopherson passed away in 2010) with a video for the LP "Time Machines". I haven't heard this yet but I loved "Musik 2 Play In The Dark". He also posts one of his own tracks as ennui (I have a download of his "Mindstate Disposition").
The newest post just before publishing this leads the reader into finding out Nic's Another Timbre interest has yielded some repetitive drone fruits. Stay tuned (or dissonantly tuned) for more.
Monday, 12 May 2014
SubVersion Stop 226: What's been happening in the world of Foci's Left (May 2013 - May 2014)
Instead of spam with multiple postings, I'm collecting all of the essential Foci's Left publicity from May 2013 to May 2014 into one post, upon release of my third album, "Derelict Career".
A lot can happen in a year...in reverse chronological order:
Foci's Left - Derelict Career LP (Foci's Left LP 002)
.jpg)
01. Pathological Darkness
02. Anything Becomes Possible With Time
03. Eternal Sands [The Shapeshifter's Reprise feat. Eschaton] (Album Version)
04. Talking With Birds Lament
05. Liez
06. Wandering In A Bright Spot (For Advertisements)
07. The Light You Shine Prevents Me From Being Uptight
08. Seeing The Sights (For Film)
09. Spared Merit (Vocal Version)
10. A Rose In The Desert Wind (Simon Bean Re-model)
Released: 12 May 2014
Price: £5
http://focisleft.bandcamp.com/album/derelict-career-lp
The album is called "Derelict Career". Concept: the ambient music protagonist (me) sees that ambient-exclusive musicians are fit for a "derelict career", as besides Brian Eno, the style has no sustainable capital powering it; it must stay a hobby. Ambient is Eno''s invention and to have success, musicians must look outside their niche to move through different styles. Ambient has been going since the 1950s - it is often mixed with new age as a genre, music for Tai Chi, and healing/therapy medicine. So the point to make is to, jokingly so, try and avoid a "derelict career", in order to progress and have an audience - the most important faculty for me; money isn't important, people are.
The album artwork is an exclusive commission from William Rye, a young artist who curated the Unconscious Volume exhibition in Kent, UK in 2012, in memory of my uncle John Buckingham who died age 45 from Motor Neuron Disease. The image has a special clarity for our family, my father being a painter, as I once was, with the brush being melted into the book representative of my career choice to be a writer, whether of tracks, songs, lyrics or poetry. So far I have been successful at this, with my dream jobs becoming more reality than ever before. With each sale, a percentage is donated to William, and the remainder helps to cover any CD packaging / gear upgrading as I venture further into music production. Thank you immeasurably for your time and support.
Reviews
"The long track is great, as well as those which concentrate on soundscaping. But (as you'd probably expect
)
I don't like the vocal tracks at all. Anyway, just because I don't like
the vocal tracks doesn't mean other people won't". ~ Jonathan Tait,
Subvert Central Recordings owner and published letter writer in The Wire
2013 concerning Meredith Monk.
"Overall it seems you're still searching for a sound, but tracks 1-4, 8 and 10 are the way to go in my opinion. Of course you should not really adapt based on one person's opinion ~ better to collect a group of opinions and go from there!" ~ Richard Allen, www.acloserlisten.com editor and central writer.
"Listening to Pathological Darkness right now - really liking it.
Like how the brighter synth emerges (1:08) as the track progresses but still with the darker sounds infiltrating the mix. It does really make you feel like you're inside a gloomy, distracted mind. Given the title, that's mission accomplished." ~ Code, Subtle Audio label owner (Mary Anne Hobbs / Aphex Twin featured).
"I like the sound design going on" ~ Nic TVG, Pinecone Moonshine owner (Equinox, Icarus, Macc et al).
"I listened. And this remind me even more of The Residents. But much much more spooky. Some scary atmospheres in this one. I notice something interesting in your tracks. You don't start slowly and build the tracks - like most of the ambient/drone artists - but instead from the start you insert the listener into your soundscapes. Eternal Sands (The Shapeshifters Reprise) I like the most so far." ~ Kristian (Fyhwds), Noise For Blues For Noise artist.
Credits
Mick Robert Buckingham - all synths, keyboard work, processing, mastering, except "A Rose In The Desert Wind" which is re-modelled by Simon Rametse.
Artwork commissioned exclusively from William Rye, from the "Unconscious Volume" 2012 exhibition, dedicated to my uncle John Buckingham, who died of Motor Neuron Disease in 2002.
Tags
ambient foci's left label omni music simon bean dark drone electroacoustic emotional pianism second self-released lp third album vocal harmonies yin & yang Oxford
Foci's Left - 15 Minutes Of Fame Pt.1 - I Want To Touch The Sky - Derelict Career Promo Mix (May 2014)
01. 00:00 The Inventors Of Aircraft – Early Morning Trauma (Earthtones Vol.1, Tessellate Recordings, Bandcamp, 2013)
02. 01:40 The Angling Loser – Night (Author Of The Twilight, Time Released Sound, 2013
03. 07:45 Abdul Mogard – Studded Procession (Futuresequence, Sequence 7, Bandcamp, 2013)
04. 07:50 Metatag – One Dream Lost One Dream Found (Transmisson LP, Bandcamp, 2014)
05. 09:20 Eeem – Shores Of Midgard (Futuresequence, Sequence 7, Bandcamp, 2013)
06. 15:40 Foci's Left – Pathological Darkness (Derelict Career LP, Foci's Left, Bandcamp, 2014)
07. 17:00 Boards Of Canada – Reach For The Dead (Tomorrow's Harvest LP, Warp, 2013)
08. 21:20 Grouper – No Other (A.I.A: Dream Loss LP, Yellowelectric, 2011)
09. 23:50 Duncan O'Calleiagh – Low Across Dawn Waters (Distant Voices, Still Lives, Parvo Art, 2009)
10. 23:50 Foci's Left – Anything Becomes Possible With Time (Derelict Career LP / Tara EP, Foci's Left, Bandcamp, 2014)
31:34 end
http://kapsil.net/muttley/2014/Foci%...%202014%29.mp3
Enjoy people.
Mick
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?60487-Foci-s-Left-15-MOF-Pt-1-I-Want-To-Touch-The-Sky-Derelict-Career-Promo-Mix-%28May%29
https://soundcloud.com/subversion-2/...rumental-remix
Foci's Left - Life In A Less Southern Town (Omni Music Ohm Series 02)
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?60331-OUT-NOW-The-Ohm-Series-Foci-s-Left-Life-in-a-Less-Southern-Town-LP-%28Ohm02%29&highlight=southern
#6 in the drum 'n' bass bestsellers one week in March 2014, #32 for the month from hundreds (it's not even d'n'b, it's at best electronica).
#Supported by Niels Roosen (www.jungletrain.net owner), Jonathan Tait (Subvert Central Recordings owner), Simon Rametse (Simon Bean, Omni Music), amongst others.
#Critically acclaimed by seasoned www.nightshift.oxfordmusic.net writer David Murphy in print.
#Collaborative effort with a Brian Eno collaborator - Simon Scott of Slowdive - and Mike Twelve (Seconds Before Awakening / The Giraffe And The Tree).
The LP is based on emotions I experience writing music in the town of Carterton, Oxfordshire; additionally Oxford, as a means to express myself - as opposed to Rochester, Kent, where I could express very little. "Life In A Less Southern Town" runs the gamut of the ambient, drone, synthesizer and modern classical worlds to offer something unique.
"Erratic Pathway" is remixed on the disc by Simon Scott of Slowdive. Scott worked with Brian Eno on the group's "Souvlaki" LP in the early 1990s.
The disc comes with 4 bonus tracks. CDs ship immediately (please put your address in the Paypal notes and I'll send your copy).
Many thanks for your support - an audience means the world to me.
Mick Buckingham (Foci's Left)
www.omnimusic.org
reviews
"There are two sorts of ambient music. One gets you relaxed, and one makes you uneasy; one's a warm duvet and one's a chill breeze; one's a forgiving hug and one's a suspicious glance.
Although the second album by Oxford musician Mick Buckingham covers both ambient strains, it's definitely better when leaning towards the latter. The most satisfying element of this record is its density - where many ambient composers are happy to let things run, Buckingham has created a CD of real sonic depth, with a lush textural variety, from the pitched-up honks at the opening (that remind us of "Galleons Of Stone" by The Art Of Noise) to "In Our Lives, There Have Been Many Terrors", in which distant metallic clanks are borne on zephyrs through crumbling ruins.
Occasionally the sounds are just too well worn, and the ear can't help but associate echoey piano with lachrymose US soaps, and sawtooth synth hums with encroaching Silurians, but in general this is a well-constructed thoughtful slice of musical atmospherica.
Perhaps "Transistory Stringency" - yes, the titles are best ignored, frankly - is thin and meandering, but in general this record marries the amicable bubbling of early Global Communication with the elegant austerity of Tim Hecker or Leyland Kirby.
The record ends with some unexpected drum 'n' bass action, and if the breakbeat tweaking is a little ham-fisted, the mournful Aphex horns underneath embody the record's true, dark heart. Good stuff, in short, but more misery next time, please, Mick; perhaps we should have written a bad review, to get the ball rolling." ~ David Murphy, Nightshift reviewer, April 2014. (www.nightshift.oxfordmusic.net)
"It reminded me of Vangelis. It's better than your first album. :)" ~ Jonathan Tait, Subvert Central Recordings and published The Wire Letters contributor concerning Meredith Monk. (www.subvertcentral.com)
"That's pretty out there man. I didn't dislike it, that's for sure, but the main thing I took from it is it was very adventurous in what it tries to do." ~ ASC on "Love Never Fails", producer mentioned by Joe Muggs in The Wire 2012 Rewind as breaking new ground. (www.auxiliarymusic.com)
"First impression: your music is very strong compositionally and sonically, very well made and beautifully executed. :)" ~ Pascal Savy, Fluid Radio.
"Yes I liked it. You've got a real talent there. I think you're an innovator." ~ Geoff Brooks PhD, clinical psychologist, hypnotherapist and Reiki healer.
"I like the mood of the release, which I would classify as darkly contemplative. It's always good to play to your strengths, so my recommendation would be to continue further down this path." ~ www.acloserlisten.com
"I like it :) Suddenly starts to get moody when the organ comes in." ~ Shiva, Bitrate Music on "With Aid Of The Assertive" [CD-R Bonus Track] (www.bitratemusic.com), attendant of Technicality raves in the ongoing jungle / drum 'n' bass revival.
"I thought is was nicely meandering without losing its focus." ~ Bob Macc on "Love Conquers All", jungle track in 4/4 and 5/4 time signature. (Outsider, Paradox Music, Subvert Central, Breakin, www.subvertmastering.com)
"Sounds like a good lead into a d'n'b track. The arrangement is very pleasant to me." ~ Nic TVG on "In Our Lives, There Have Been Many Terrors" percussion section. (www.pineconemoonshine.com)
"I like the part where the drums start to fall apart the best." ~ Nic TVG, Pinecone Moonshine label owner (Macc, Icarus et al) on "Love Conquers All".
"Nice ECM style album cover as well!" ~ James Sargeant, Moshka promoter, Oxford.
reviews
"Introducing ‘Not Seeing Reality’ – the wayward, often mysterious journey that defines the pathway of what we call life. For many, reality is totally dependent on individual perception. The notes begin their life in innocent infancy, but by their teens they have snaked their way into the more unruly, dissonant territory, interacting with one another until a harmonious chain reaction ensues; one that started off with a primary note – a single heartbeat, the survivor in the battle of selection – but one that quickly brings in a thousand more.
Reality is then able to shape-shift into a sporadic, sparse piano line, accompanied by a gorgeous wave of crimson synth. Only, a line doesn’t quite work; it is bloated enough to feel pregnant with the baby bump of melody, oozing out of the thicker line and then submerging the original, vulnerable piano with new life.
Foci’s Left is the alias of Fluid Radio’s own Mick Buckingham, a name that regular Fluid readers will know very well. Told as a chronological tale, Grumpy Love isn’t nearly as dishevelled or as depressed with the state of things past and present as its grumpy name would seem to suggest. It is, in fact, shrouded by heart-felt sensitivity and deep personality. It is very much the opposite of grumpy. After all, there are two words up there; the oh-so-thin space that divides the first word from the second, ‘love’, is close enough to be considered intimate.
Love never fails. Love conquers all.
Grumpy Love is a beautiful, personalized painting, left to hang at a slight angle on the uneven canvas of life, with both enjoyable and difficult moments that come to claim every man. When linked together, they reach a teenage crescendo. ‘Piano Paint’ introduces some beautiful synths that jut into the piano, coating it with an intoxicating harbour of nostalgia – the nostalgic element traces a radiated line of melody, as if the early memory on which it was based has physically escaped, deceiving what we all thought of as reality and instead containing itself within the music as a precautionary measure. It cocoons itself against the decline that age brings and the mood swing of swift change that can affect our recollections as one decade passes into another.
Saturated in the vintage, ambient warmth of pure tone, when the genre itself was in its infancy, the synths are a mesmerising serenade. It shares the same angelic timbre that made the early Brian Eno classic, Music For Airports, such a lovable listen. You can tell instantly that Grumpy Love is a deeply personal recording just from this synth alone. The later drums seem to propel the passages of life forward, with no pause for reminiscing. That comes later on, because Grumpy Love has some beautiful, open spaces ideal for reflection. Life may, at times, feel like ‘An Upwards Slope’, but listening to the music here is to know that the inner serenity of peaceful ease is always there. Always. Here, a thinner drone is disguised as Cupid himself, but the darker echoes of possible distress lie just beyond the doorway. It is the tense, anxious sound of the unknown; a place where dusty road-signs are always blank with unmarked destinations.
‘For Fluid’ is a loving piece of music that is as much a generous tribute as it is a personal reflection. Grumpy Love narrates the passage of life with painstaking thought. The older hand outlines the black tail of a nurtured note like the embrace between a newborn and a parent. In this picture, the thin brush gives life to the paint. It holds itself in the palmed trust of the future, while taking one last look back at the past – this is the final dedication." ~ James Catchpole, Fluid Radio
www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2013/09/focis-left/
"After the disconcerting dissonance of his last demo (FTAL Attraction), Foci's Left - the solo work of occasional Nightshift contributor Mick Buckingham - casts forth a full album set on a far less turbulent plane.
Nine tracks of stretched-out electro-acoustic ambient pianism and electronic minimalism drift and shift with soporific intent, microtonal drones morphing and gradually mutating with precision-restrained variation. Best of the pieces here is the drone-drift of "Decompress The Magnet", while it's marginally more imposing twin "An Upwards Slope" dovetails into it seamlessly. "Regurgitated Impulses" adds a necessary glitchy interlude, while "Piano Paint" is both light in tone and texture but random enough to be distracting.
Where the album occasionally falls down is a lack of brevity on a few of the tracks - "Piano Paint" for example has run its course long before it concludes - while "For Fluid" is anything but and simply sounds like Mick's plonking random keys on his piano, but beyond such lapses, "Grumpy Love" is a neat enough addition to the ambient drone cannon." ~ Ronan Munro, Nightshift Magazine ed.
(www.nightshift.oxfordmusic.net, October 2013)
"I find you on Bandcamp and I'm listening right now "Grumpy Love". This is strange music so far :) Dark soundscapes and atmospheres but lighten up with childish imagination coming from the piano playing (currently I'm at the ending of the second track). Interesting. " ~ Kristian, Noise For Blues For Noise.
"It is very...interesting :)
Well at times I really like the aesthetic and the goofiness of the sounds. Sometimes it is a tad too much for me I have to admit. Maybe it is something I have to listen to more carefully. But it is very inspiring at times." ~ Nils Frahm, Erased Tapes Records.
"It's pretty amazing. I really like 'Decompress The Magnet' and 'An Upwards Slope', they are my favourites. I'm going to have to burn it to CD for the car." ~ 247, Futurepast Fanzine ed.
"Well done Mick. Congrats!" ~ ASC
"I really like 'Decompress The Magnet' :D" ~ GlassBox
"'Decompress The Magnet' really is outstanding." ~ Roo Stercogburn, Omni Music.
subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?59592-Foci-s-Left-Grumpy-Love-LP-(my-debut-album-OUT-NOW)
"It has a nice flow to it" ~ Roy Buckingham, my grandfather on "For Fluid".
"I am very impressed, the Grumpy Love LP, it really has a lot to offer. 'Decompress the Magnet' has a depth of creativity, emotion and inspiration resonating from it. 'An Upwards Slope' has a feeling of a eternal dose of mystery and passionate adventure of abstract life just breathing in and out through the song... I wish the LP had a fixed price on it because it is of good value. Brillliant work love it!" ~ Simon Bean, Omni Music via Facebook.
A lot can happen in a year...in reverse chronological order:
Foci's Left - Derelict Career LP (Foci's Left LP 002)
02. Anything Becomes Possible With Time
03. Eternal Sands [The Shapeshifter's Reprise feat. Eschaton] (Album Version)
04. Talking With Birds Lament
05. Liez
06. Wandering In A Bright Spot (For Advertisements)
07. The Light You Shine Prevents Me From Being Uptight
08. Seeing The Sights (For Film)
09. Spared Merit (Vocal Version)
10. A Rose In The Desert Wind (Simon Bean Re-model)
Released: 12 May 2014
Price: £5
http://focisleft.bandcamp.com/album/derelict-career-lp
The album is called "Derelict Career". Concept: the ambient music protagonist (me) sees that ambient-exclusive musicians are fit for a "derelict career", as besides Brian Eno, the style has no sustainable capital powering it; it must stay a hobby. Ambient is Eno''s invention and to have success, musicians must look outside their niche to move through different styles. Ambient has been going since the 1950s - it is often mixed with new age as a genre, music for Tai Chi, and healing/therapy medicine. So the point to make is to, jokingly so, try and avoid a "derelict career", in order to progress and have an audience - the most important faculty for me; money isn't important, people are.
The album artwork is an exclusive commission from William Rye, a young artist who curated the Unconscious Volume exhibition in Kent, UK in 2012, in memory of my uncle John Buckingham who died age 45 from Motor Neuron Disease. The image has a special clarity for our family, my father being a painter, as I once was, with the brush being melted into the book representative of my career choice to be a writer, whether of tracks, songs, lyrics or poetry. So far I have been successful at this, with my dream jobs becoming more reality than ever before. With each sale, a percentage is donated to William, and the remainder helps to cover any CD packaging / gear upgrading as I venture further into music production. Thank you immeasurably for your time and support.
Reviews
"The long track is great, as well as those which concentrate on soundscaping. But (as you'd probably expect
)
I don't like the vocal tracks at all. Anyway, just because I don't like
the vocal tracks doesn't mean other people won't". ~ Jonathan Tait,
Subvert Central Recordings owner and published letter writer in The Wire
2013 concerning Meredith Monk."Overall it seems you're still searching for a sound, but tracks 1-4, 8 and 10 are the way to go in my opinion. Of course you should not really adapt based on one person's opinion ~ better to collect a group of opinions and go from there!" ~ Richard Allen, www.acloserlisten.com editor and central writer.
"Listening to Pathological Darkness right now - really liking it.
Like how the brighter synth emerges (1:08) as the track progresses but still with the darker sounds infiltrating the mix. It does really make you feel like you're inside a gloomy, distracted mind. Given the title, that's mission accomplished." ~ Code, Subtle Audio label owner (Mary Anne Hobbs / Aphex Twin featured).
"I like the sound design going on" ~ Nic TVG, Pinecone Moonshine owner (Equinox, Icarus, Macc et al).
"I listened. And this remind me even more of The Residents. But much much more spooky. Some scary atmospheres in this one. I notice something interesting in your tracks. You don't start slowly and build the tracks - like most of the ambient/drone artists - but instead from the start you insert the listener into your soundscapes. Eternal Sands (The Shapeshifters Reprise) I like the most so far." ~ Kristian (Fyhwds), Noise For Blues For Noise artist.
Credits
Mick Robert Buckingham - all synths, keyboard work, processing, mastering, except "A Rose In The Desert Wind" which is re-modelled by Simon Rametse.
Artwork commissioned exclusively from William Rye, from the "Unconscious Volume" 2012 exhibition, dedicated to my uncle John Buckingham, who died of Motor Neuron Disease in 2002.
Tags
ambient foci's left label omni music simon bean dark drone electroacoustic emotional pianism second self-released lp third album vocal harmonies yin & yang Oxford
Foci's Left - 15 Minutes Of Fame Pt.1 - I Want To Touch The Sky - Derelict Career Promo Mix (May 2014)
01. 00:00 The Inventors Of Aircraft – Early Morning Trauma (Earthtones Vol.1, Tessellate Recordings, Bandcamp, 2013)
02. 01:40 The Angling Loser – Night (Author Of The Twilight, Time Released Sound, 2013
03. 07:45 Abdul Mogard – Studded Procession (Futuresequence, Sequence 7, Bandcamp, 2013)
04. 07:50 Metatag – One Dream Lost One Dream Found (Transmisson LP, Bandcamp, 2014)
05. 09:20 Eeem – Shores Of Midgard (Futuresequence, Sequence 7, Bandcamp, 2013)
06. 15:40 Foci's Left – Pathological Darkness (Derelict Career LP, Foci's Left, Bandcamp, 2014)
07. 17:00 Boards Of Canada – Reach For The Dead (Tomorrow's Harvest LP, Warp, 2013)
08. 21:20 Grouper – No Other (A.I.A: Dream Loss LP, Yellowelectric, 2011)
09. 23:50 Duncan O'Calleiagh – Low Across Dawn Waters (Distant Voices, Still Lives, Parvo Art, 2009)
10. 23:50 Foci's Left – Anything Becomes Possible With Time (Derelict Career LP / Tara EP, Foci's Left, Bandcamp, 2014)
31:34 end
http://kapsil.net/muttley/2014/Foci%...%202014%29.mp3
Enjoy people.
Mick
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?60487-Foci-s-Left-15-MOF-Pt-1-I-Want-To-Touch-The-Sky-Derelict-Career-Promo-Mix-%28May%29
Goldfrapp - Stranger (Foci's Left Instrumental Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MnySVVID3agFree Mp3 download on the SubVersion SoundCloud:
https://soundcloud.com/subversion-2/...rumental-remix
Published on 3 May 2014
Bonus audio from the soon-arriving "Derelict Career" LP by Foci's Left, the solo project of Mick Robert Buckingham from Oxford, UK. Due to respect of copyright this original version is online as a stream and not on the paid download of my third album.
The LP will be available at: www.focisleft.bandcamp.com for an inexpensive £5.
Please buy Goldfrapp's records. "Tales Of Us" is a fantastic record closely followed by their debut "Lovely Head" and then "Seventh Tree". You can find Goldfrapp's music available on Amazon, iTunes, and more reputable stores.
Don't forget to check www.goldfrapp.com
Thanks for listening.
http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?60331-OUT-NOW-The-Ohm-Series-Foci-s-Left-Life-in-a-Less-Southern-Town-LP-%28Ohm02%29&highlight=southern
#6 in the drum 'n' bass bestsellers one week in March 2014, #32 for the month from hundreds (it's not even d'n'b, it's at best electronica).
#Supported by Niels Roosen (www.jungletrain.net owner), Jonathan Tait (Subvert Central Recordings owner), Simon Rametse (Simon Bean, Omni Music), amongst others.
#Critically acclaimed by seasoned www.nightshift.oxfordmusic.net writer David Murphy in print.
#Collaborative effort with a Brian Eno collaborator - Simon Scott of Slowdive - and Mike Twelve (Seconds Before Awakening / The Giraffe And The Tree).
The LP is based on emotions I experience writing music in the town of Carterton, Oxfordshire; additionally Oxford, as a means to express myself - as opposed to Rochester, Kent, where I could express very little. "Life In A Less Southern Town" runs the gamut of the ambient, drone, synthesizer and modern classical worlds to offer something unique.
"Erratic Pathway" is remixed on the disc by Simon Scott of Slowdive. Scott worked with Brian Eno on the group's "Souvlaki" LP in the early 1990s.
The disc comes with 4 bonus tracks. CDs ship immediately (please put your address in the Paypal notes and I'll send your copy).
Many thanks for your support - an audience means the world to me.
Mick Buckingham (Foci's Left)
www.omnimusic.org
reviews
"There are two sorts of ambient music. One gets you relaxed, and one makes you uneasy; one's a warm duvet and one's a chill breeze; one's a forgiving hug and one's a suspicious glance.
Although the second album by Oxford musician Mick Buckingham covers both ambient strains, it's definitely better when leaning towards the latter. The most satisfying element of this record is its density - where many ambient composers are happy to let things run, Buckingham has created a CD of real sonic depth, with a lush textural variety, from the pitched-up honks at the opening (that remind us of "Galleons Of Stone" by The Art Of Noise) to "In Our Lives, There Have Been Many Terrors", in which distant metallic clanks are borne on zephyrs through crumbling ruins.
Occasionally the sounds are just too well worn, and the ear can't help but associate echoey piano with lachrymose US soaps, and sawtooth synth hums with encroaching Silurians, but in general this is a well-constructed thoughtful slice of musical atmospherica.
Perhaps "Transistory Stringency" - yes, the titles are best ignored, frankly - is thin and meandering, but in general this record marries the amicable bubbling of early Global Communication with the elegant austerity of Tim Hecker or Leyland Kirby.
The record ends with some unexpected drum 'n' bass action, and if the breakbeat tweaking is a little ham-fisted, the mournful Aphex horns underneath embody the record's true, dark heart. Good stuff, in short, but more misery next time, please, Mick; perhaps we should have written a bad review, to get the ball rolling." ~ David Murphy, Nightshift reviewer, April 2014. (www.nightshift.oxfordmusic.net)
"It reminded me of Vangelis. It's better than your first album. :)" ~ Jonathan Tait, Subvert Central Recordings and published The Wire Letters contributor concerning Meredith Monk. (www.subvertcentral.com)
"That's pretty out there man. I didn't dislike it, that's for sure, but the main thing I took from it is it was very adventurous in what it tries to do." ~ ASC on "Love Never Fails", producer mentioned by Joe Muggs in The Wire 2012 Rewind as breaking new ground. (www.auxiliarymusic.com)
"First impression: your music is very strong compositionally and sonically, very well made and beautifully executed. :)" ~ Pascal Savy, Fluid Radio.
"Yes I liked it. You've got a real talent there. I think you're an innovator." ~ Geoff Brooks PhD, clinical psychologist, hypnotherapist and Reiki healer.
"I like the mood of the release, which I would classify as darkly contemplative. It's always good to play to your strengths, so my recommendation would be to continue further down this path." ~ www.acloserlisten.com
"I like it :) Suddenly starts to get moody when the organ comes in." ~ Shiva, Bitrate Music on "With Aid Of The Assertive" [CD-R Bonus Track] (www.bitratemusic.com), attendant of Technicality raves in the ongoing jungle / drum 'n' bass revival.
"I thought is was nicely meandering without losing its focus." ~ Bob Macc on "Love Conquers All", jungle track in 4/4 and 5/4 time signature. (Outsider, Paradox Music, Subvert Central, Breakin, www.subvertmastering.com)
"Sounds like a good lead into a d'n'b track. The arrangement is very pleasant to me." ~ Nic TVG on "In Our Lives, There Have Been Many Terrors" percussion section. (www.pineconemoonshine.com)
"I like the part where the drums start to fall apart the best." ~ Nic TVG, Pinecone Moonshine label owner (Macc, Icarus et al) on "Love Conquers All".
"Nice ECM style album cover as well!" ~ James Sargeant, Moshka promoter, Oxford.
credits
released 02 March 2014
Mick Robert Buckingham - all synths, instruments and processing, except on "In Our Lives, There Have Been Many Terrors" where Mike Twelve contributes the middle part. All mastering by Foci's Left, except "Love Conquers All" which has additional mastering by Bob Macc (www.subvertmastering.com)
Mick Robert Buckingham - all synths, instruments and processing, except on "In Our Lives, There Have Been Many Terrors" where Mike Twelve contributes the middle part. All mastering by Foci's Left, except "Love Conquers All" which has additional mastering by Bob Macc (www.subvertmastering.com)
tags
license
all rights reserved
Foci's Left - Tara EP (Foci's Left EP 003)
Tara
"Moose" Buckingham, our 16 year old Colly / Alsatian cross, died on
January 9th 2014 of kidney failure. There was nothing more we could do,
it was her time. Me and my close family enjoyed 8 years with her. She
was a rescue dog from the RSPCA.
As a way to mark this loss cathartically, and as a tribute, I present "Tara EP", a four track chronological excursion of Tara into the afterlife ("Anything Becomes Possible With Time"), emotions in lament ("Non-Corrosive String Solution"), the memorandum ("For Tara"), and finally, my belief she may come back as a woman one day ("To The Woman With No Name"). This is an EP of very personal emotions, from the one who was ironically least close to her because of my own illness.
The EP is an inexpensive £3, being sold as a whole, as it is meant to be heard. 50% of proceeds will go to our local Animal Sanctuary shop, where "Moose" as she was infamously called every day (due to her appearance) was took for walks regularly.
I hope you enjoy the music. Here's to you Tara, hopefully we'll speak again someday.
SPECIAL OFFER
Order "Life In A Less Southern Town LP" on CD-R and "Tara EP" for £10. Email mbucki07 at hotmail dot co dot uk or send your Paypal payment to this address clearly labelled "Special offer" and I'll send both releases to you digitally. :)
REVIEWS
"It reminds me of early(ish) Pink Floyd :)" ~ Jonathan Tait, Subvert Central Recordings on "Anything Becomes Possible With Time".
"My favourite artist at the moment...classic releases!" Simon Rametse, March 2014.
"i like it. i wonder what it would sound like if it gets a bit more complex. nice one anyway. " ~ logburner, Subvert Central forum on "Non-Corrosive String Solution".
"it's rhythmic very odd – it sounds as though everything is always slightly behind the beat – disturbing :)" ~ Jonathan Tait on "Non-Corrosive String Solution".
"I like it, very interesting, I'm going to show the rest of the gang and I let you know what everyone thinks." ~ Shiva, www.bitratemusic.com on "Non-Corrosive String Solution".
"It's nice. It sounds like an improvisation :)" ~ Jonathan Tait on "To The Woman With No Name".
credits
As a way to mark this loss cathartically, and as a tribute, I present "Tara EP", a four track chronological excursion of Tara into the afterlife ("Anything Becomes Possible With Time"), emotions in lament ("Non-Corrosive String Solution"), the memorandum ("For Tara"), and finally, my belief she may come back as a woman one day ("To The Woman With No Name"). This is an EP of very personal emotions, from the one who was ironically least close to her because of my own illness.
The EP is an inexpensive £3, being sold as a whole, as it is meant to be heard. 50% of proceeds will go to our local Animal Sanctuary shop, where "Moose" as she was infamously called every day (due to her appearance) was took for walks regularly.
I hope you enjoy the music. Here's to you Tara, hopefully we'll speak again someday.
SPECIAL OFFER
Order "Life In A Less Southern Town LP" on CD-R and "Tara EP" for £10. Email mbucki07 at hotmail dot co dot uk or send your Paypal payment to this address clearly labelled "Special offer" and I'll send both releases to you digitally. :)
REVIEWS
"It reminds me of early(ish) Pink Floyd :)" ~ Jonathan Tait, Subvert Central Recordings on "Anything Becomes Possible With Time".
"My favourite artist at the moment...classic releases!" Simon Rametse, March 2014.
"i like it. i wonder what it would sound like if it gets a bit more complex. nice one anyway. " ~ logburner, Subvert Central forum on "Non-Corrosive String Solution".
"it's rhythmic very odd – it sounds as though everything is always slightly behind the beat – disturbing :)" ~ Jonathan Tait on "Non-Corrosive String Solution".
"I like it, very interesting, I'm going to show the rest of the gang and I let you know what everyone thinks." ~ Shiva, www.bitratemusic.com on "Non-Corrosive String Solution".
"It's nice. It sounds like an improvisation :)" ~ Jonathan Tait on "To The Woman With No Name".
credits
released 02 March 2014
Mick Robert Buckingham - all synths, piano, strings, processing and mastering, except "To The Woman With No Name" which is mastered by Bob Macc (www.subvertmastering.com)
Mick Robert Buckingham - all synths, piano, strings, processing and mastering, except "To The Woman With No Name" which is mastered by Bob Macc (www.subvertmastering.com)
tags
I, Mick
Robert Buckingham first met hypnotherapist and alternative
medicines/therapies specialist Geoff Brooks in 2010, when I was going
through a transition in diagnosis from bipolar and psychotic depression
to schizo-affective disorder. Within 1 session I felt really at ease and
liberated by Geoff's emotive techniques with positive affirmations and
anxiety disorders. He trains in imaginal realities, psychotherapy, dream
work, EFT (emotional freedom technique), hypnotherapy and Reiki
healing.
With 3 degrees with distinctions to his name, I was motivated by my deteriorating 2013 health to seek guidance from Geoff once again. After this particularly resonant opening session to the series - on the subject of dreams and activating their merits - Geoff commented since I was recording these sessions for my personal use if we could make them publically available to be bought on the internet. This not only increases Geoff's audience just by having audio online, but benefits both of us as we split any profits from downloads equally.
The price for the first 51 minute, carefully mastered (by myself) hypnosis session is £15, since Geoff's sessions, lasting roughly 90 minutes each, are £40 each. I hope this gives you a taster into the curated content discussed by me, Foci's Left and Geoff in the session, gives you an insight into what I want to create, a showcase of Geoff's remarkable skills in his respective fields, and maybe motivates you, if you are within reach of Swindon, UK, to look up the Shaftesbury Centre where he works to arrange a session of your own.
With 3 degrees with distinctions to his name, I was motivated by my deteriorating 2013 health to seek guidance from Geoff once again. After this particularly resonant opening session to the series - on the subject of dreams and activating their merits - Geoff commented since I was recording these sessions for my personal use if we could make them publically available to be bought on the internet. This not only increases Geoff's audience just by having audio online, but benefits both of us as we split any profits from downloads equally.
The price for the first 51 minute, carefully mastered (by myself) hypnosis session is £15, since Geoff's sessions, lasting roughly 90 minutes each, are £40 each. I hope this gives you a taster into the curated content discussed by me, Foci's Left and Geoff in the session, gives you an insight into what I want to create, a showcase of Geoff's remarkable skills in his respective fields, and maybe motivates you, if you are within reach of Swindon, UK, to look up the Shaftesbury Centre where he works to arrange a session of your own.
credits
released 05 November 2013
Mick Robert Buckingham (Foci's Left) provides base subject matter, Geoff Brooks (hypnotherapist) weaves a dialogue to New Age background music. Carefully mastered by Mick Robert Buckingham.
Image is a free online take by Bat For Lashes' Natasha Khan of the coastline while she was on a US tour with her band. www.facebook.com/batforlashes
Mick Robert Buckingham (Foci's Left) provides base subject matter, Geoff Brooks (hypnotherapist) weaves a dialogue to New Age background music. Carefully mastered by Mick Robert Buckingham.
Image is a free online take by Bat For Lashes' Natasha Khan of the coastline while she was on a US tour with her band. www.facebook.com/batforlashes
Foci's Left - Dumping The Rock EP (Foci's Left EP 002)
"Dumping
The Rock" is a varied showcase of the Foci's Left sound, but aims
specifically to disperse any aggression of past releases toward
something more mellow and beautiful. You can map different tracks
together in a Foci's Left playlist with this release.
Artwork: "Cyclist" by Antonymes (Ian Hazeldine), who took this picture especially for me upon the release of his album "The License To Interpret Dreams".
Purchasers will receive a bonus Modern Classical piece called "The Calamities Of Confusion [21.12.12] (For Lata S.) in their download.
Total EP running time 13:52.
Artwork: "Cyclist" by Antonymes (Ian Hazeldine), who took this picture especially for me upon the release of his album "The License To Interpret Dreams".
Purchasers will receive a bonus Modern Classical piece called "The Calamities Of Confusion [21.12.12] (For Lata S.) in their download.
Total EP running time 13:52.
reviews
"This is breathtaking man" ~ 247, Futurepast Fanzine ed. on "Overdriven Terrain".
"Love it :)" ~ DJ Trax (Moving Shadow) on "Overdriven Terrain".
"Ah, 'The Calamities Of Confusion' - I like this one". ~ Jonathan Tait, Subvert Central Recordings.
"Love it :)" ~ DJ Trax (Moving Shadow) on "Overdriven Terrain".
"Ah, 'The Calamities Of Confusion' - I like this one". ~ Jonathan Tait, Subvert Central Recordings.
credits
released 19 August 2013
All tracks written, produced and engineered by Mick Robert Buckingham (Foci's Left).
All tracks written, produced and engineered by Mick Robert Buckingham (Foci's Left).
tags
Foci's Left - Grumpy Love (Foci's Left LP 001)
Dedicated to my sister, the beautiful Joanne Buckingham. Modicum: to raise a smile. This is a soundtrack of my llife so far.
Artwork is "Leopards" by Niomi Jackson.
Artwork is "Leopards" by Niomi Jackson.
reviews
"Introducing ‘Not Seeing Reality’ – the wayward, often mysterious journey that defines the pathway of what we call life. For many, reality is totally dependent on individual perception. The notes begin their life in innocent infancy, but by their teens they have snaked their way into the more unruly, dissonant territory, interacting with one another until a harmonious chain reaction ensues; one that started off with a primary note – a single heartbeat, the survivor in the battle of selection – but one that quickly brings in a thousand more.
Reality is then able to shape-shift into a sporadic, sparse piano line, accompanied by a gorgeous wave of crimson synth. Only, a line doesn’t quite work; it is bloated enough to feel pregnant with the baby bump of melody, oozing out of the thicker line and then submerging the original, vulnerable piano with new life.
Foci’s Left is the alias of Fluid Radio’s own Mick Buckingham, a name that regular Fluid readers will know very well. Told as a chronological tale, Grumpy Love isn’t nearly as dishevelled or as depressed with the state of things past and present as its grumpy name would seem to suggest. It is, in fact, shrouded by heart-felt sensitivity and deep personality. It is very much the opposite of grumpy. After all, there are two words up there; the oh-so-thin space that divides the first word from the second, ‘love’, is close enough to be considered intimate.
Love never fails. Love conquers all.
Grumpy Love is a beautiful, personalized painting, left to hang at a slight angle on the uneven canvas of life, with both enjoyable and difficult moments that come to claim every man. When linked together, they reach a teenage crescendo. ‘Piano Paint’ introduces some beautiful synths that jut into the piano, coating it with an intoxicating harbour of nostalgia – the nostalgic element traces a radiated line of melody, as if the early memory on which it was based has physically escaped, deceiving what we all thought of as reality and instead containing itself within the music as a precautionary measure. It cocoons itself against the decline that age brings and the mood swing of swift change that can affect our recollections as one decade passes into another.
Saturated in the vintage, ambient warmth of pure tone, when the genre itself was in its infancy, the synths are a mesmerising serenade. It shares the same angelic timbre that made the early Brian Eno classic, Music For Airports, such a lovable listen. You can tell instantly that Grumpy Love is a deeply personal recording just from this synth alone. The later drums seem to propel the passages of life forward, with no pause for reminiscing. That comes later on, because Grumpy Love has some beautiful, open spaces ideal for reflection. Life may, at times, feel like ‘An Upwards Slope’, but listening to the music here is to know that the inner serenity of peaceful ease is always there. Always. Here, a thinner drone is disguised as Cupid himself, but the darker echoes of possible distress lie just beyond the doorway. It is the tense, anxious sound of the unknown; a place where dusty road-signs are always blank with unmarked destinations.
‘For Fluid’ is a loving piece of music that is as much a generous tribute as it is a personal reflection. Grumpy Love narrates the passage of life with painstaking thought. The older hand outlines the black tail of a nurtured note like the embrace between a newborn and a parent. In this picture, the thin brush gives life to the paint. It holds itself in the palmed trust of the future, while taking one last look back at the past – this is the final dedication." ~ James Catchpole, Fluid Radio
www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2013/09/focis-left/
"After the disconcerting dissonance of his last demo (FTAL Attraction), Foci's Left - the solo work of occasional Nightshift contributor Mick Buckingham - casts forth a full album set on a far less turbulent plane.
Nine tracks of stretched-out electro-acoustic ambient pianism and electronic minimalism drift and shift with soporific intent, microtonal drones morphing and gradually mutating with precision-restrained variation. Best of the pieces here is the drone-drift of "Decompress The Magnet", while it's marginally more imposing twin "An Upwards Slope" dovetails into it seamlessly. "Regurgitated Impulses" adds a necessary glitchy interlude, while "Piano Paint" is both light in tone and texture but random enough to be distracting.
Where the album occasionally falls down is a lack of brevity on a few of the tracks - "Piano Paint" for example has run its course long before it concludes - while "For Fluid" is anything but and simply sounds like Mick's plonking random keys on his piano, but beyond such lapses, "Grumpy Love" is a neat enough addition to the ambient drone cannon." ~ Ronan Munro, Nightshift Magazine ed.
(www.nightshift.oxfordmusic.net, October 2013)
"I find you on Bandcamp and I'm listening right now "Grumpy Love". This is strange music so far :) Dark soundscapes and atmospheres but lighten up with childish imagination coming from the piano playing (currently I'm at the ending of the second track). Interesting. " ~ Kristian, Noise For Blues For Noise.
"It is very...interesting :)
Well at times I really like the aesthetic and the goofiness of the sounds. Sometimes it is a tad too much for me I have to admit. Maybe it is something I have to listen to more carefully. But it is very inspiring at times." ~ Nils Frahm, Erased Tapes Records.
"It's pretty amazing. I really like 'Decompress The Magnet' and 'An Upwards Slope', they are my favourites. I'm going to have to burn it to CD for the car." ~ 247, Futurepast Fanzine ed.
"Well done Mick. Congrats!" ~ ASC
"I really like 'Decompress The Magnet' :D" ~ GlassBox
"'Decompress The Magnet' really is outstanding." ~ Roo Stercogburn, Omni Music.
subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?59592-Foci-s-Left-Grumpy-Love-LP-(my-debut-album-OUT-NOW)
"It has a nice flow to it" ~ Roy Buckingham, my grandfather on "For Fluid".
"I am very impressed, the Grumpy Love LP, it really has a lot to offer. 'Decompress the Magnet' has a depth of creativity, emotion and inspiration resonating from it. 'An Upwards Slope' has a feeling of a eternal dose of mystery and passionate adventure of abstract life just breathing in and out through the song... I wish the LP had a fixed price on it because it is of good value. Brillliant work love it!" ~ Simon Bean, Omni Music via Facebook.
credits
released 19 May 2013
All tracks composed and recorded by Michael Robert Buckingham (Foci's Left), with additional production on "Decompress The Magnet" by Mike Twelve (Seconds Before Awakening / The Giraffe And The Tree).
All tracks composed and recorded by Michael Robert Buckingham (Foci's Left), with additional production on "Decompress The Magnet" by Mike Twelve (Seconds Before Awakening / The Giraffe And The Tree).
tags
license
all rights reserved.
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