The British Space Group

The British Space Group

Eyes Turned Skyward

UK  Quiet World  Quiet World 51  CD-R  (2015)

By the looks of the strong design of its sleeve, this disc could be an examination of all those sci-fi, weird (or wyrd) 1970s schools programmes on tv, or their soundtracks, and indeed the first track Remote Viewing is built around a recording of a man talking about déja vous in the kind of officious home-counties accent that tallies with my own recollection of Schools & Colleges programming of that time.  Those expecting a Ghost Box–style, hauntological, period pop will be disappointed though; the music on Eyes Turned Skyward is actually contemporary-sounding drone ambient.  As always, the production is clear and glassy, like peering at the reflection of misty landscapes through the panes of an open window at dawn.

Despite the album being credited to The British Space Group, (although no personnel is listed on the sleeve), I suspect this may be the work of the Quiet World label head Ian Holloway alone.  If so, I admire his attempt to develop his own approach to ambient soundscape with today’s recording equipment, while somehow still simultaneously referencing the experimental sonics of past decades.

Haze Of Summer uses organ tones to steadily build up overflowing feelings of goodwill, while Slow Light, composed as it is of electronic chittering, lightly wah’ed bass and swirling keyboard effects steps up the feeling of being stranded on a star freighter light years from home.

Fourth track The Dust Between The Stars is particularly transporting, and strangely comforting, based around a circling figure played on an analogue electronic bass keyboard of unknown vintage.

The Work Of Fire features a distant mildly ring-modulated electric guitar sound somehow referencing spaghetti westerns and space movie soundtracks.  Breath During Sleep is possibly the most kosmische-inspired piece on the album, reminding me of Amon Duul II’s quieter moments.

The final track; the magisterial The Last Of Time, is a beautiful piece of quiet ambience, where nothing seems to happen much, but in a very good way.

On the cover, a rocket orbits a concentric-circle planet while a lone spaceman is sucked into a graphic representation of a black hole.  The spaceman device is nicely carried over from the vortex on the back cover into the blackness of the inside of the booklet.  This title is limited to 50 physical units but is also available from the Quiet World bandcamp site.

http://www.quietworld.co.uk/

https://ian-quietworld.bandcamp.com/album/eyes-turned-skyward

VA AA LR

VA AA LR

Newhaven

GREECE  Organized Music From Thessaloniki  t27  3” CD-R  (2014)

Purchased from Electric Knife Records in Kentish Town just before xmas, here is a document of VA AA LR’s performance at last year’s Fort Process event at Newhaven Fort presented by the consistently excellent Organised Music From Thessaloniki.  Just under 15 minutes, this trio of Vasco Alves, Adam Asnan and Louie Rice produce an abstract sound world unlike very much else these ears have heard under the guise of “music”, if indeed the production of “music” is actually VA AA LR’s intention, or something else entirely.  They appear to me to be sound artists first and foremost, and refer to their own work variously as “often of volatile nature”, “the potential of…the instabilities of a medium” and “disruptive audio material”.  Active only since 2013, other works have appeared on Consumer Waste, Porta, Intonema and Mantile already.

Newhaven sounds like controlled small explosions and things burning, the only clues are the photographs on the fold-over sleeve which depict a lot of smoke coming from somewhere.  For the most part, the boys are content to let whatever devices they use do their own thing in order to produce a kind of process-based performance.  They could have simply been letting off some flares over the cliffs and amplifying the results.  At seven minutes in, there are a couple of loud cracks – followed by the hissing and fizzing of some kind of minor scale ordnance.  As I was regrettably unable to attend Fort Process and witness VA AA LR’s performance and see what they were actually up to, I feel there is little else I can add here except to recommend Newhaven despite its short-ness and urge you to investigate their back catalogue; I heard their recent cassette on Mantile, Ping Cones, recently and that is utterly different but also utterly wonderful.

http://thesorg.noise-below.org/2/

Seth Cooke

Seth Cooke

Four No Input Field Recordings

UK  Every Contact Leaves A Trace  no number  3”CD-R  (2014)

Four delicious slices of noise of identical duration, titled CERO I to IV from Bristolian Seth Cooke.  Cooke may be known to you from his improvisational work with a cut-down sink disposal unit, his involvement with the Bang The Bore promotional entity, his drumming and percussion duties with Hunting Lodge, Defibrillators and UltraHumanitarian or even his previous releases on labels such as Compost & Height, Impulsive Habitat, 1000fussler or Organized Music From Thessaloniki.

The sparse production notes printed on the small sheet of transparency included within the elaborate packaging claim the work was recorded and edited over the course of a year, from October 2012 to October 2013.  The pieces sound like they could be derived from the sort of interference you would get between channels on analogue television receivers in “the old days”, but I suspect Cooke would be offended by such an assumption as I’m sure there is a lot more going on despite the strangely un-credible title Four No Input Field Recordings – an oxymoron, surely?  Or just a rare, (and welcome), case of an “experimental” musician with a sense of humour?  There is a great deal of development from track to track for those who listen closely, and a wealth of detail within the, at first, seemingly impenetrable fizz.  This has the result that the dark energy contained within the music coalesces inside the part of your brain that processes disquiet and enables you to relax fully.  At least that’s what happens to me when I get to the end of CERO IV.

Great hand-assembled multi-part packaging held together with a mini bulldog clip.  The grey card outer sleeve is embossed by what looks like a large sheet of Lego, there’s a digital print of spiral-type design, (see above), with the aforementioned transparency info sheet and disc in its own poly sleeve; all of this encased in a folded second digital print, this time the image is a kind of CAD update of something you might produce using the Spirograph drawing toy.

old covers