Bits and Pieceses

Another artschool project to post up here. If you follow the link, it explains the brief and my concept. It is in flash (as per the brief) so apologies to the iPhone peoples as it won’t work.

The more eagle eyed/die-hard among you might have already picked up the rather good 2010 Mixtape from Highpoint Lowlife which features some greatness by some of my favourite musicians such as Erik XVI (with TVO on the dub), some ghostly anti-wobble from Production Unit, some of Mandelbrot’s new noisy as fuck guitar histrionics and the enigmatic legend that is 10-20, everytime I hear new stuff by him it just blows me away, awesome. Oh yeah, there’s also a little bit of new Erstlaub on there which must mean……

Yep, consider this announced! Sleepwalking into the Underworld will be coming out on Highpoint Lowlife this year, plans at present are to do a DVDr release with the full visuals but we still have a few things to iron out before I can say for certain. You’ll know more when I do.

<3

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Doors Hidden…

Just a little (slightly late) note to thank everyone who came out to see me at Hidden Door the other week. Apologies if I didn’t really get to speak to you or you thought I was a bit heavy on the scowls, I do tend to have to get a bit too much mentally “into character” sometimes for it to all come together and, I think I managed to pull it off. Word from the floor was I had a captivated audience of about 30 people or so locked in for most of the 40 minutes (including a couple of Sunday afternoon snoozers!).

Extra special thanks to Alastair Cook, amazingly nice man, new friend and something of a renaissance man for dragging me out of inactivity and asking me to take part, it spurred me on to create a whole new piece especially for it. It was genuinely moving to hear about his personal experience with my music, it’s the sort of thing that actually makes it feel like it’s all worth it. His Malin set was absolutely wonderous, bass heavy, deep, dark, as soon as he started playing, I realised why we’d been getting on so well. He has an exhibition of his beautiful landscape photography on display at the moment in Sutherland, go see it if you can.

A rather nice review of the Sunday afternoon activities over at the enjoyably frank and generally well informed Que Belle Epoque blog.

“This was intended to be a review of the entire extensive programme at the Hidden Door Art Festival this weekend in Edinburgh. Unfortunately, due to a comical projectile vomiting bug (it wasn‚Äôt comical at the time, but it was of the variety that is generally used to comical effect) I only made it down for a few hours on Sunday afternoon. However, I did still manage to catch one of the main reasons for my interest in the event, an Edinburgh debut from Erstlaub, who was showing a new live set.

Prior to Erstlaub it also worth mentioning Alastair Cook’s new Malin project; although I only caught the second half due to some last-minute programme changes. In that short space of time he managed to summon sufficient bass-y growl to send my girlfriend (who had endured the same vomiting affliction) into the bowel-comforting shelter of the poetry room. Malin matched his music to a variety of collected visual recordings, including the familiar view along the East Coast Mainline, focus shifting between the dirty GNER windows and the passing landscape, with the occasional fleeting glimpses of the sea. This worked well with the music, a gentle static patchwork interwoven with passing interludes of children speaking, guitar melodies, hushed vocals and heartier (gut-wrenching?) bass drones. The result was a beautiful scrapbook of field recordings and electronic manipulation. A man of numerous talent, as well as commissioning and curating a number of artists for the event (including Erstlaub), Al has an exhibition of his photography of Sutherland and Caithness opening next week in Helmsdale.

After a wander around the rest of the artwork I returned to the basement for Erstlaub’s set. Dave Fyans, the artist/creator of Erstlaub, describes his music as ‘Scottish drone-based miserablism’ which is enough to pique my interest, a bit of dour ambiance is always lovely on a Sunday afternoon. However this description probably does something of a disservice to his music, which is much more emotionally complex.

He performed a new piece called ‘Sleepwalking Into The Underworld‘, accompanied by a series of wintry images of forests and streams. The volume and depth of the noise he managed to create were difficult to associate with the laptop and array of electronic devices set out on the table before him. These were noises you would associate with much larger entities; the creaking of a forest at the beginning of a storm, wind ripping across a body of water, the hum of distant factories. It is all the more impressive that the sounds were entirely built from modular synthesis, without the help of samples or field recordings.

The set started with a low hum and a re-occurring whipping squall, soon followed by distant tribal drums emanating from deep within the monochrome forest. The drums reappeared later seemingly to mark shifts in the movement of noise as Fyans shepherded his sounds around the projected landscape. Frequencies continued to build and collide into great masses of physical noise; only towards the end of the set a confused and disoriented electronic gurgle appeared to remind you of the real source of the sound. His 40-minute set seemed to drift past very quickly indeed, leaving me to consider what actually constituted ‘natural’ sound.

Get more Erstlaub here, lots of treats to download including the excellent ‚ÄòIn Darkened Corners‚Äò EP. If you enjoy that look out for his releases on the Highpoint Lowlife label, amongst others.”

from here.

In addition to Malin, my other highlight of the festival was a brief performance by the poet JL Williams whose cutup verbal imagery and beautiful American/Scottish tonality cut through my performance anxiety and soothed and held me captive. We’ve briefly touched on the possibility of working together if the right project occurs, lets wait and see.

News coming soon on a reissue of a quite difficult to get album (due to being on a terrible label the first time) on MFR and a possible new release on HPLL to follow once my legal team have finished negotiations (ie. once I get my finger out and reply to some emails/send some discs places).

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