Erstlaub

Just a little note to point out that my man TVO has posted an entirely free collection of remixes/exclusive dubs here. ‘Outside the Circle Looking In’ clocks in at around 90 minutes and features unheard tracks, hard to get rarities and remixes of the notably absent Izu (we miss you Ronnie), Dextro, LJ Kruzer and some boring drone twunt called Erstlaub. Get on it!

I’ve had the privilege of getting a sneaky preview of his next HPLL release which is going to be ridiculously good, he’s even titled one of the pieces ‘Fyans, Lost” in tribute to a miscommunication on a London Derive a few years ago, immortalized in song, how delightful!

On more the more egocentric front, I’m having the rather lackluster premiere showing of the full version of the ‘Sleepwalking into the Underworld’ DVD at ‘Visualyse‘ at Dundee Student Union, Floor 5 next Wednesday starting from 9pm. The organisers have kinda chibbed me on how it’s getting displayed which will probably ruin the immersive point it tries to make but hell, I’ll be there to get drunk and moan about it anyway so please come say hi.

I’m going to be playing Braes in Dundee in May or June with the nice people from n_ilk but we’ve yet to get our diaries out to firm things up. Details will follow soon.

Cheers

D

Back in a previous life, I worked with Liam Frankland on a long running collaboration called Somniscope. He’s just managed to dig out a version of the site from a deep grave somewhere and put it online.

somniscope

The first thing you notice is how small screens were back then and how Youtube/Vimeo weren’t really much use for embedding and the like. If you can see it squashed away in the corner there, have a look around. It’s odd to remember those days, a lot happens in 5 years I guess.

Nostalgically,

D

Not blogged for a little while but I finally got around to uploading the video of me performing Roses Made of Time which I did back in November to Vimeo.

D.Fyans - Roses Made of Time from Erstlaub on Vimeo.

Not much else to report at present apart from this slightly psychotic flash sketch which is the first attempt to realise chunks of a puzzle that seems to have begun to reveal itself to me. I’ve no idea what this is or why but as more things present themselves, hopefully their purpose will become more apparent.

Sorry

D

This is a meditation on the layers of time, both real and constructed, which exist within a landscape. Shot on a Nikon D90, edited in FC Pro, the soundtrack was created using a field recording of a train commute along with modular synthesis elements.

This piece is a response to a brief titled “Landscape and Intervention”.

Thierry Lemmers over at EARlabs posted his thoughts on Ghost Frequencies this week.

“Erstlaub’s great 2007 release “On Becoming An island” was one of my favorite releases of that year. Part of its charm was derived from the fact that it provided an exhilarating mixture of ambient and melodic noise which I had not heard before. Has Erstlaub succeeded to prolong his adventurous style of making music ?

After last year’s mysteriously titled “I Am the Line Drawn in the Sand between the Living and Dead”, Erstlaub returns to us with another of his static-laden drone works,“Broadcasting on Ghost Frequencies”, which was most generously packed away to me by Moving Furniture Records, a small record-label owned by Earlabs’ own Sietse van Erve.

As always, Dave Fyans, the man lurking behind the Erstlaub moniker, treats us on a lengthy dunking into a well filled with white noise that gently bounces and rocks around the auditive spectrum like a raft carried away on a frothing rapid. After a few minutes of gritty, subtle feedback, the music bottoms out in a more tranquil flow of drones overlapping a current of shifting sounds which seem to curl and coil in various hypnotic patterns.

The watery textures certainly make for a pleasurable ride but they sometimes lack a certain cohesion which enables the different fragments to come together in a comprehensive way. At one point, I am strangely reminded of Wolfgang Voigt’s more sedate GAS-moments but after a few moments, rumbling drones interfere to shake me out of my reverie.

However rude those awakenings may sometimes be, they do provide a sense that Erstlaub does not want to stick to comfortable patterns. As with his previous releases, the music changes pitch constantly, exploring different sound patterns and therefore avoiding tedious repetition.

As such,“Broadcasting on Ghost Frequencies” certainly deserves praise. Although the different parts often seem to collide with another, the resulting chemistry more than makes up for it. With a single piece which clocks around forty minutes plus, Erstlaub has managed once more to keep his presentation fresh and daring, which is no mean feat by all means considering the duration. For the near future, I’m certainly game for more of these rocky rides, but I do hope that inertia does not creep in from behind.”

from here

I was deeply saddened to hear about the loss of Dani Baquet-Long of Celer at just 26. Celer made some of the most beautiful music I have come across in years.

“Lord Naoshige once said, “There is nothing felt quite so deeply as giri. There are times when someone like a cousin dies and it is not a matter of shedding tears. But we may hear of someone who lived fifty or a hundred years ago, of whom we know nothing and who has no family ties with us whatsoever, and yet from a sense giri shed tears.”

from the third chapter of the Hagakure

myspace link

Sad day indeed, my thoughts go out to everyone affected.

D

So, some unaccountable screwup leads me to starting all over again having lost all my posts. Ah well. A chance to look forward rather than back maybe?

I’m in the process of trying to sort stuff out so prepare for broken things for now. If you should be linked on my blogroll or whatever, give me a shout and I’ll deal with it. If you notice any links that I am missing, shout also.

Anyone that gets an rss feed might have to update, I don’t know, bit of a nightmare but it at least got rid of my skanky assed old theme I guess.

Normal moaning will resume shortly.

Hertz

D