Erstlaub

Just incase you don’t already have a copy (shame on you!), you can now pick up Broadcasting on Ghost Frequencies here from the ever awesome Norman Records along with some other gems from the MFR catalogue. Here’s what Phil had to say about it.

“We got a bunch of CD’s in this week on the Moving Furniture label. I picked one up with my eyes closed and I got Erstlaub. Nice. It’s called Broadcasting on Ghost Frequencies and that’s exactly what it is! It sounds like a load of harsh white noise with something trying to break through. All I can think of is that small woman from Poltergeist with the creepy voice now. It’s well intense and a total journey if you stick with it to the end of this 48 minute headfuck as you’ll traverse many spectral planes and feel totally drained afterwards. Just like I do now….”

That’ll do me

Hertz

D

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’t 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 ‘In Darkened Corners‘ 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).

<3

D

The ever supportive Lend Me Your Ears site ran a nice little feature on me this week which you can see here. Julian also featured long term associate TVO this week here.

On TVO chat, his FACT top 10 got published here in which he namechecks Ghost Frequencies.

In less cool news, I got a lovely ukuelele for my Christmas so am considering giving up the drones in favour of some twee strumming action (not really, it is fun though).

Hope you are having good festive times and stuff, I’m still battling off a hefty dose of man-flu, feel free to forward me your sympathies //sadface.

Speak soon.

D

Quite a few bits of news from me this week.

Broadcasting on Ghost Frequencies made the man-legend that is The Village Orchestra’s end of year honours list that he was asked to put together for FACT. I don’t think it’s officially posted yet keep em peeled for that. The podcasts are also well worth a punt, great site, good content, nice outlook on things. here

Also linked in with TVO, this month’s Wire magazine features a full page feature on the man along with a couple of my photo’s of him making this my first international published photo credit. Yayy.

Still dragging it’s phantom self around, a nice little review of Ghost Frequencies arose today on Sonomu courtesy of Steven Fruitman.

“This excellent work was inspired by a bit of quackery known as the ”Ganzfeld Procedure” in the field of parapsychology. A subject is blindfolded and equipped with a pair of headphones playing nothing but white and pink noise – static. Out of this aural assault, it is hoped the subject will discern patterns, maybe even hear voices. Maybe even real voices from the past.

More than science, it sounds like a relative to Victorian fancies like fairy photography or Edison´s attempts to hear the voices of the dead via the radio, optimistic hopes that new technology might reveal previously hidden worlds, or at least reveal the otherwise hidden beings that share ours with us.

As music, however, Broadcasting on Ghost Frequencies sits four-square in the contempary field of drone music, which for all its different forms also wishes to put the listener in a contemplative mood, from which he or she will often hear things that are not really there. Or are, but very subtly so.

Erstlaub´s fifty-minute piece appears to be playing the role of the input – the static barrage – and the output - the shapes and colours the mind suggests might appear out of the the flat, prickly monotony. Because he certainly shows an intervening hand by creating sound events which rise and fade away, or are consumed by the greater drone, with regularlity.

In fact Dave Fyans of Perth, Scotland, the man behind the attractive monicker (”first leaves”), proves a very talented composer in a field where patience and taste, knowing just when to change the pitch, send in a reverberating spiral, or add a new thread to the weave of the main drone, is the mark of an artist.

It is really quite beautiful, balancing between both stark and lush in some inexplicable - paranormal? - manner.

http://www.movingfurniturerecords.com” from here.

Finally, I am pleased to be able to announce that I will be breaking cover for a rare live performance on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at the Bowery in Edinburgh as part of the very interesting looking Hidden Door Festival. They are in the process of updating their site so I’ll post more details and times as they are solidified. I will be playing an entirely new set (which I’m also in the process of making visuals for) which at the moment may or may not be floating around in my head with the title of “Sleepwalking into the Underworld” but I can’t be sure yet.

Have a nice holiday season or whatever,

D

Had a crappy few weeks lately of things breaking and ended up having the most boring weekend ever while both my xbox and my macbook were out of commission for repairs.

I used the downtime as best I could though and caught up on some films that’d been on the to do list for a while and some reading.

I’ve been making the most of the wonderful programming at the DCA and seen two amazing Jean-Luc Godard films. The part hard boiled pulp fiction gumshoe / part sci-fi proto Blade Runner epic Alphaville. It has one of most beautiful casts apart from the awesome Eddie Constantine who plays lead protagonist Lemmy Caution whose face looks as though it was rendered in rough cement or something. Although this was made back in 65 and made on a tiny budget with no special effects, it shows this wonderful dystopian near future far more believably than many of todays absurd CGI heavy big budget idiotfests.

Next on the DCA menu was Le Mepris, another Godard affair. Cue another stunning cast, most notaby Bridgit Bardot’s arse which is on screen far more than it technically should have been and the legendary Jack Palance who for me is one of these guys who just embodies a certain type of character. He just seems to ooze this charming, calm exterior with pure mobster rage just bubbling under the surface. There were a few moments in Le Mepris that made me feel like I’d tapped into the roots of certain Lynch moments, most notably the audition scene of the dancer in the red dress that I kept having to double take as the looks and demeanour were so close to Sherilyn Fenn’s stunning Audrey Horne it was uncanny. Georges Delerue’s swooping string lament that has been overused on a million wanky perfume adverts really fell into place as a heavy lament to a relationship falling apart within the film production that is also disintegrating. Haunting. The spaghetti ghost town of the italian film studio at the start was also pretty appealing. Wall to wall good to the extent that I’m considering buying the huge Godard DVD boxset.

I’m reading Sculpting in Time, the book in which Tarkovsky talks frankly about his work and inspiration and the like so I figured it’d be best to bone up on the remaining films I hadn’t seen yet. Over the course of a few nights I watched Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublyev and The Sacrifice.

Ivan’s Childhood featured some stunning locations which, as usual with this master of cinema, felt like being in the middle of an Ansel Adams photo.

Andrei Rublev is one of the films that took me two attempts/sittings to get through. It’s incredibly long and covers a chunk of Russian history albeit from the fringes rather than an epicentre. My attention did drift a few times in the first half but the second felt more compact and to the point.

The Sacrifice, his last film, is up there with my favourites, it has one of these calm, hyper real feels to it interspersed with magic and absolutely unbelievably good set pieces. My only criticism lies with the actor who played Alexadner’s wife who I felt overegged the “hysterical wife” role a bit.

For a bit of light relief I rewatched Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns which still just rock, I’ve had the danny Elfman themes laser etched into my young mind I think. Jack Nicholson’s scenery chewing Joker is still an interesting take on Batman’s nemesis. Also, I don’t think my 12 year old brain was quite capable of appreciating Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in her filthy goodness at the time. Meeeowwwww!!!

I caught up on a pile of stuff actually; Gonzo, The Baader Meinhoff Complex (damn those were some sexy looking terrorists!!), V for Vendetta, Room for Romeo Brass and although I find most of his films just too full of cheese to properly enjoy, Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

Readingwise, having got really into DC via Grant Morrison’s involvement in 52, I got the thirst to work out what led up to and follows that series so I’ve done Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Countdown to Final Crisis along with Arkham Asylum: A serious house on serious earth and Frank Miller’s All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder which is a nice pulpy reboot forgoing most of the established history and origin. I’m waiting for Final Crisis and Morrison’s run on All Star Superman to arrive. I also managed to rip through V for Vendetta in a day rectifying the unusual hole in my graphic novel list.

On the non comic book front I’m enjoying little bits of David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again which is full of razor sharp observation and commentary, it’s very funny in places and in the main, the way he uses language is a bit like him punching you in the brain every time he makes a point. Really enjoyable but I can only digest it in smallish chunks which is handy as that’s how the book is broken up.

That’s all I can be bothered typing, for now anyways.

D

Scott over at Mapsadasical dropped a glowing review of Ghost Frequencies this week, as follows.

“I’ve featured some solo HPLL grade Erstlaub on here before, and am pleased to find that this new release for Moving Furniture is hewn from the same dark gritty stone as I Am The Line Drawn In The Sand Between The Living And The Dead. The opening is pure Psycho, window wipers beating a lashing rain off the windscreen, while an ominous whine builds in the background. Just as a storm warning is issued, I think I hear some rumbling bass and tolling bells appear from amidst thick clouds of crackling static. Or do I? Erstlaub sought inspiration from the Gantzfeld Procedure whereby “where the participant is deprived of visual stimulus and bombarded with white/pink noise drawing the mind to form patterns in the chaos often hearing voices from the past or inventing entirely new constructs within their consciousness”. It reminds me of that other album of ghost frequencies I’ve been listening to of late, William Fowler Collins’s Perdition Hill Radio. Too soon, with a screech the dial is pulled off the set, leaving the listener trapped amongst pulsating drones and whining feedback, before it fades to an eerie near-silence. Apparently recorded in one take, this is another demonstration of Erstlaub’s growing, glowering greatness. It is available now from Moving Furniture – go there for a full stream too.”

The full article also features The Village Ochestra’s - I can hear the Sirens Singing which is the first of all the coverage to acknowledge the rest of the folks involved which is nice.

Cheers Scott.

D

Frans De Waard over at Vital Weekly had this to say about Ghost Frequencies.

“ERSTLAUB - BROADCASTING ON GHOST FREQUENCIES (CDR by Moving Furniture Records)

Back in Vital Weekly 601 we first heard the music of Erstlaub, also known as Dave Fyans from Perth, Scotland. On ‘On Becoming An Island’ Fyans composed everything live, without processing or multitracking using a Nord G2 synthesizer. I don’t know if that’s the case here too on ‘Broadcasting On Ghost Frequencies’ but its again a single track, this time lasting almost forty-nine minutes. That’s not the only link to the previous release. This new work sees him continuing on the thematic approach of drone music.

A nightmare like soundscape. The sky tonight is covered with clouds, no moon, no stars. But the clouds drift on the howl of wind. One can barely see a thing - no street lights are on. Apparently Fyans is inspired here by the Ganzfeld Procedure ‘where the participant is deprived of visual stumulus and bombarded with white/pink noise drawing the mind to form patterns in the chaos often hearing voices from the past or inventing entirely new constructs within their consciousness’. I hear voices too, but they are real: they come from the outside. No clouds, just lots of sunshine. This might be the wrong moment to hear this? It works well, except that its not chaotic at all. Its a beautiful piece of drone music. Nothing new under the pitch black sky, done however with great care. (FdW)
Address: http://www.movingfurniturerecords.com”

There’s still copies available from the above link.

D

Julien over at Lend Me You Ears did a little profile/interview of me this week and featured some downloads and the like.

“Ethereal/rumbling, soothing/menacing, mysterious/lucid - Erstlaub’s intense, affecting drones are rich enough (&, yes, long enough) to make room for these kinds of oppositions, though they tend to a dark, windswept beauty. They also draw, as the man explains in a thoughtful, rewarding interview below, from a deeply Scottish well (bagpipes included, though not directly…).

One of the glories of the fine Highpoint Lowlife label, Erstlaub is preparing new albums both for Moving Furniture & HPLL (the latter together with a cast of thousands, including the previously LMYE-featured TVO & Production Unit).

Besides these & other future plans, the discussion takes in musical tradition, first steps & methods, the nature & fit of drone, & his notable commitment to performance. He also touches on collaborations, remixes & other listening (Steve Reich, Basic Channel, Kranky - an LMYE hall of fame).

Sincere thanks to Dave for taking the time & participating so insightfully.”

The rest is here