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. :)

SubVersion Stop 238: SV Xmas 2014 Drip-Feed 4 - Simon Bean - Lust 320 Mp3 free download

For the fourth part of SubVersion's first Drip-Feed series, we're presented with a fantastic exclusive track from fellow Omni Music producer Simon Bean, who has remixed Eschaton and Foci's Left priorly. Ambient electronica styles in a jungle framework with lots of melodic pad sweeps. :)

http://kapsil.net/muttley/SubVersion/Simon%20Bean%20-%20%20Lust.mp3

Thanks so much to Simon Bean for providing the track. Find more Simon Bean at www.omnimusic.org

SubVersion Stop 237: Wire Chart 2014

In Stop 215, I wrote about “buying one record reviewed in The Wire each month”, culminating in a "proper" Wire chart of 15, comprised of one record per issue for 2013 plus three more I'd bought that were also reviewed that year. I've been carrying that on and hence now have another chart for 2014. The # marks denote the issues in which the records featured.
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SubVersion 2014 15

#359 Logos - Cold Mission (Keysound)
#360 various - The Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners (Sub Rosa)
#361 Anne Hytta - Draumsyn (Carpe Diem)
#362 Sleaford Mods - Divide and Exit (Harbinger Sound)
#363 Dub Spencer & Trance Hill - William S. Burroughs in Dub (Echo Beach)
#364 Tom Chang - Tongue & Groove (Raw Toast)
#365 Jacaszek & Kwartludium - Catalogue des Arbres (Touch)
#366 Electric Funeral - Total Funeral (Southern Lord)
#367 Robert Curgenven - Sirène (Recorded Fields)
#368 Oren Ambarchi & Eli Keszler - Alps (Dancing Wayang)
#369 Pharmakon - Bestial Burden (Sacred Bones)
#370 Mamoru Fujieda - Patterns of Plants (Pinna)

+#361 N.E.W. - Motion (Dancing Wayang)
+#365 David Ross & Clive Bell - Recovery Suite (Ini.itu)
+#368 Darius Jones - The Oversoul Manual (AUM Fidelity)

Compiled by Jonathan Tait, subvertcentral.blogspot.co.uk
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Note that this isn't a “best records of the year” list. There are others that'd make that kind of list, such as...

L'Ensemble Volta ‎– Les Nuages de Magellan (ReR Megacorp)
Morton Feldman - Two Pianos and Other Pieces, 1953-1969 (Another Timbre)
Mortals - Cursed to See the Future (Relapse)
Nu Era - Nouveau Synthetic Compositions (Omniverse)
Dave Phillips - Homo Animalis (Schimpfluch Associates)

Rather, it's a list of records each of which made me go: “this is great!”

If I had to pick one to be my record of the year, it'd probably be either Patterns of Plants (pianist: Sarah Cahill) or Catalogue des Arbres. The flora theme there is quite unintentional.

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 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

SubVersion Stop 234: SubVersion's Xmas Drip-Feed 1 - Gappy Tooth Industries (GTI) ticket offer

The SV Xmas Drip-feed is a new occasional series based on the content extravaganza model hyper-accelerated by the information age. 

First is a simple question to give you more incentive to check out the first-listed monthly independent promoters of Oxford in Nightshift Magazine (www.nightshift.oxfordmusic.net) / http://nightshift.oxfordmusic.net/2014/sep.pdf.

http://nightshift.oxfordmusic.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8352

Question: GTI (Gappy Tooth Industries), running for the best part of 13 years, has for the last 5 years focused on 3 act shows. This show on Friday 12.12.14 differs. How many acts then, are there this time?

Email your answer with the subject 'GTI' to muttley_subversion@hotmail.co.uk (remember the underscore!) Competition closes 12PM Thursday 11.12.14. You must be an Oxfordshire resident.
First to answer correctly wins the ticket, and also a +1 (bring a friend for free!)

(Note: for ease of giving yourself a good chance, read the thread linked - it's that easy).
Only answers via email will be counted.

Hope to see you there!
Muttley (Foci's Left)

SubVersion Stop 233: Little Red + Stuart Clark + Gus Hewlett @ Old Fire Station, Oxford, November 14th 2014

Little Red + Stuart Clark + Gus Hewlett @ Old Fire Station, 14.11.2014

"I know Friday night at a folk club is not a normal place to go" posits Little Red songwriter and night promoter Ian Mitchell in the headlining of this All Will Be Well label launch gig. The aching lack of affluence towards intimacy in a hyper-accelerated city creates a cause for discomfort and movement. It's one thing feeling safe in a packed club but another feeling like you really belong, which is a quality Mitchell and co elucidate on my gig of 2014.

Speaking to Ian before the event, Gus Hewlett, a folk guitarist equal parts Bill Frisell and James Blackshaw is said to have drum'n'bass chops, a contrast that couldn't be anything more sonically different tonight. Through a generous 45 minute length Hewlett hacks at his strings in sophisticated fashion, adapting a Bob Dylan piece for his second tune and elsewhere trailblazing an arpeggio wedge to gently impose his semi-auteur ear for a melody. Worthwhile, in short.

Stuart Clark is a commanding presence mid evening, an arpeggio-heavy storyteller in the vein of "Lady Grinning Soul" Bowie with just guitar for company. Disappearance's rhetoric echoes on one of his later tracks, where stop-start rhythms fuse with a folly towards lonely abstraction. It's not all reverbed abandon though, as he swoops and swoons about subjects as broad as nature creating stopgaps between time and place. There is a definite sense of human body spotlighted. Pristine playing, gently crystallising voice over instrumental backbeat. The audience are generally at ease by a paradoxically uneasy set. One to watch.

Opening with drum-free, acoustic "Cures", the vocal interplay of frontman Ian Mitchell, producer Ben Gosling and the elusive female vocalist parries inflections from Finn and more contemporarily Fink, but is sweet-natured enough in lyricism, "names carved in a tree"-esque as they sing to engrave itself onto this reviewer's memory. It's a tale about where two lovers first met, and the usual bushy beard, folk-centric influence in context of there being woods that can lead either lover astray. This leads into "The Garden", the triplet acoustic, vocal assemblages making things "wrong to right" - here the sound carries further than the "face melting" joke Mitchell coyly nods to later in the performance, about the material not being wall of sound enough for the Friday night gurner massive. "What Say You?" resonates stronger, the lead track on "Sticks And Stones", what Mitchell dubs to me as an EP on the night, even though the 9 CD tracks are filled out naturally for full length status.

Little Red definitely sound like a very new band, but instead of amateurish triptych on behalf of the singers and instrument players, they form a cohesive whole not dissimilar to Duotone or XL's Blue Roses. They close post-"Chapters" (a track from their forthcoming record) with "The Boxer", where Ian sings "I'll still be coming back for more" after metaphors for being a broken man. Given the right studio treatment of the exciting live incarnation, Little red could have a rosy future, and close this night so finely.

http://www.oldfirestation.org.uk/event/original-folk-music-little-red-stuart-clark-and-gus-hewlett/