Erstlaub

The Last Few Seconds Before Sleep picked up a nice little post over at Drowned in Sound this week. Here’s what Rory Gibb says.

“Sound sculptor Erstlaub’s new release reprises a similar theme to that of his last Highpoint Lowlife release, Sleepwalking Into The Underworld, and a similar sonic palette. His music is characterised by beautiful long periods of droning ambience punctuated by tiny flickers in the backdrop and drawn out climaxes, like the final second before a massive dancefloor track drops stretched out to a 45-minute eternity. The title fits the soundworld perfectly; during the final few seconds before dropping off the mind heads off into free-associative freefall in which consciousness remains for the briefest of moments, a sensation the album accurately recreates in wind-tunnel greyscale. Erstlaub has just recorded an excellent new mix for Broken20’s podcast series, BrokenCinema, which brings together film soundtrack music that’s inspired the label and works as a nice counterpart to the album. Download it here.”

In other news, I got my results for 3rd year of my TBA degree and I got an A1. There’s some debate about whether that mark’s ever been given out before so I’m feeling very surreally pleased about the sketch. Bring on the chaos and intensity of 4th year, already starting to seed some pretty big plans for what may well become a masive and all consuming project but I’ve still got a ton of research to undertake before I start to manifest it.

For the completists among you, you can get a wonderful digital copy of Issue 4 of Satellite here, the largely awesome DoJ student produced zine which I have something of a habit of contributing to. There’s a pseudonymously published piece in there that I wrote, as a sort of psychogeographic primer. Enjoy.

Thanks to the people that inspired and kept some semblance of sanity around me throughout 3rd year, you know who you are.

D

A couple of reviews surfaced over the weekend for The Last Few Seconds Before Sleep. Annoyingly due to a vague technical distro issue, the running time is being reported/referenced a few places at 28:46 although the album definitely has a running time of 42.55. Just one of these things.

The Last Few Seconds Before Sleep (Excerpt) by Erstlaub

First up, Resident Advisor who gave it a 3.5/5.

“By means of modular synthesis”—that’s how Scottish drone artist Erstlaub describes the providence of his work, and it’s hard to think of a string of words that signifies more in this context. They speak to literal process, of course, but maybe even more so to the kind of granular attention—to texture, timbre, tone, etc.—that gets paid by those who get really, really, really into sound. For just a little less than 30 minutes, “The Last Few Seconds Before Sleep” stays static and evolves, planting a pole in ambient stillness but following a through-line that moves in minute ways. It sounds a bit like Gas with rusty water towers in place of trees, or even more so like the product of a lot of listening to Eliane Radigue. The title doesn’t fit especially well: there’s too much tension suggested here, or at least implied, to fall into slumber.”

Then a nicely fuzzy and glowing review from Boomkat. Pretty pleased to be mentioned in the same breath as Jeck/Kirby/Koner.

“The latest transmission from Ruaridh TVO’s Broken20 imprint is an extended workout from drone specialist Dave Fyans AKA Erstlaub. The album is apparently is inspired by the sound that enters Fyans’ mind in the brief moment between wakefulness and sleep. “Aware of this clarion call but powerless to act”, he says. “I know this sound inside out, a minute piece of sonic cartography that contains all the information in the universe, like the whirring of a vast organic hard-drive as the processor performs a memory dump between logic and something much bigger…much weirder. Delay lines feed back to Omega Point; choirs of particles stream towards event horizons. Perceived time holds no sway here; this vast but tiny sound contains all of time and space and possibility.” Though in truth we have no freaking idea what this sound he’s banging on about is, the music that it seems to have inspired is wonderful, and yes, it vividly evokes the liminal space opened up as unconsciousness beckons. There’s real grace and poise to this half-hour piece, dubbed-out percussion rubbing against drones of near-liturgical heaviness, its richly detailed but somehow very pure atmospherics carrying the listener from dank underground interrogation chambers to celestial heights and back. Inner space investigations rarely come as deep or as absorbing as this, and Erstlaub’s real talent is in coaxing big emotion out of subtle, miasmic drift. A hearty recommendation for fans of Leyland Kirby, Thomas Koner and Philip Jeck.”

You can purchase it for the really almost too good to be true price of £4.99!! from the Boomkat link above. Thanks for the ongoing support.

D

ps. I just realised after copying over the RA review that I’ve never actually heard Radigue although I’ve seen her name around quite a lot. It’s a pretty good comparison, I’ll probably check out more of her stuff but, alas, it will always be Delia that rules my heart when it comes to amazing temptresses of sound.

pps. after a wee bit more research on Radigue, the whole thing seems to resonate entirely to my theory of post-cultural premonition. Despite having not actually heard her before yesterday, I can REALLY see the connection, even down to her method of working (all modular, one continuous take, etc) So if anyone out there fancies buying me a Buchla and an ARP2600 then I’ll be more than happy to test out the continuity.

Sleepwalking got a really nice write up courtesy of Matt Poacher over at the always awesome The Liminal last week, even when they aren’t writing nice things about me, the quality of writing and the things they cover make it a daily read for me, go suck up their rss feed:

“Traditionally, a sigil was a unique symbol created for a specific magical purpose. It tended to be made up of several discrete elements, each charged with meaning and intent, each working toward the larger effect of the whole. It might be used as a hexing medium, or a way of summoning or conjuring a spirit or demon. I wasn‚Äôt aware of the notion of a hypersigil before listening to Erstlaub‚Äôs latest record, Sleepwalking Into The Underworld but it was an idea popularised by Grant Morrison with his epic comic series, The Invisibles, the idea being that the work was an ongoing rite of sigilization, formed with the express intent of actually augmenting or even altering reality.

Hokum aside, this idea of a sustained meditative process, built or performed with the express purpose of causing a shift in behaviour or consciousness, is peculiarly suited to music, and is to some extent already implicit in the creative process – and even more so with something created from disparate systems and ‘let go’ such as the method Erstlaub has used over various releases. As the artist has put it himself, this method involves “ taking an idea, feeling or element of will or intent and translating into sound by means of taking individual modular elements and focusing, refining and condensing them into self contained, autonomous systems, usually with an inbuilt “fail” system removing the technical purity and adding a more organic edge.” These autonomous systems are gradually worked into a whole – the sigil or hypersigil – with the entropic ‘fail’ device ensuring an element of uncertainty. In the case of Sleepwalking into the Underworld the result is a 45-minute single take experiment (alongside a feature length video accompaniment – see below) that results in a glorious unspooling and interlocking series of humming drones, the disparate elements working with and against one another to form a single shimmering thread.

Sonically, a comparison I keep returning to is Keith Fullerton Whitman, especially the Whitman of Lisbon and Playthroughs. There is both a similar technical aesthetic at work here, and a similar sense of elemental warmth about the extended drones – the sense of a magmatic liquid hum beneath the surface of things. Yet Erstlaub’s method has a stronger environmental feel to it, as befits the subject matter, with each ‘section’ of the hypersigil based around the ancient idea that bodies of water are portals to the underworld. The accompanying video piece makes this link explicit, with sections of the whole playing out across black and white images of different, distant watery landscapes. At times it’s easy to forget that these are all synthetic sounds, as often the inner ear scans the dense clamour and picks out what could be field recordings – rainfall, storm surges, solar wind. There are periods where the effect is so total, so immersive it’s as if you’re inside the fabric of the recording.

You could argue that the added theoretical bulk Erstlaub has brought to Sleepwalking into the Underworld gives it something of a literary weight, something that both adds and detracts from the experience of actually absorbing it as a whole; it also puts the whole piece under fairly intense pressure in terms of scrutiny, and widens the field of scope to include mystics such as Austin Osman Spare and David Tibet, and the darker magick of bands such as Coil. All of which asks the question of whether or not Sleepwalking into the Underworld can cope with this weight of expectation. And the truth is, it can. As a stand-alone piece of music it’s huge, dense and affecting; and as an installation, complete with the film and the wider occult speculations, it has real resonance and enough ambition that it should hopefully reach a wide audience.

As an aside, Sleepwalking into the Underworld is also something of a requiem for the Highpoint Lowlife label, which after 10 years of trading is to ease into retirement. You can still purchase the SITU DVD at the label‚Äôs website.”

You can still pick up copies from the usual channels but I’d recommend getting it straight from the label here if you so desire.

In other areas, this week has been spent in sanity entropic repetition continuously bouncing 45 minutes of audio between 2 cassettes 45 times for a project I’m about to wind up titled “The Decline of Physical Memory” and making a scrying mirror for ‘The Magnificent Psychomanteum” busy busy busy (but at least I guess it keeps the scary thoughts from creeping in). More on both these projects soon. In the meantime I have an asston of reading to do seeing as I foolishly decided to write my dissertation on the evolution of Psychogeography. WTF!

I ought really to also just mention a few cultural ley lines that have recently occurred. First of all, after years of vaguely being aware of the name, I finally got around to checking out the films of Bela Tarr. The Werckmeister Harmonies and Damnation immediately had me clearing shelf space next to Tarkovsky for them due to the utterly awe inspiring combination of pure cinematic beauty, non specific narrative and shear metaphysical weight. I really can’t recommend them both highly enough.

Last week I also saw Patrick Keiller’s Robinson In Ruins. With London and Robinson In Space already being massively significant pieces of work in terms of my general psyche, I’ve been excited about its existence since reading about it being shown at the BFI Festival in London back in October and our gemlike DCA made my year (well January anyway) by screening one showing of it. All Keiller’s trademarks are there, it’s a slow, mystifying, beautiful piece of cinema. I was really aware of the lack of Schofield, ‘The Narrator’ and travelling companion of Robinson in the previous two and just didn’t feel the same connection to his replacement Vanessa Redgrave as had existed before but the whole piece still endures, a week later, there are still scenes I’m picking apart and narrative strains that keep echoing around.

Finally, a short comics series by the behemoth that is Warren Ellis titled Supergods. It’s just amazing and reminds you why he is one of the best writers in the world today, regardless of medium. Rustle up a copy, you shouldn’t be disappointed.

Take care.

D

Here’s what some people have had to say about Sleepwalking Into The Underworld:

The Milk Factory:

Scottish musician and sound artist Dave Fyans, who has been officiating as Erstlaub for over five years, returns to Highpoint Lowlife, this time with a full audio-visual project which combines a forty minute film and its accompanying soundtrack, available as a very limited DVD release. Built as one long evolutive piece, where various segments seamlessly slip into one another, their boundaries blurred beyond recognition, and ultimately resulting in one fluid narrative. Similarly, the video takes various black and white footage of bodies of water (rivers, ponds, puddles) and wooded areas, each one roughly corresponding to a defined sound set.

Fyans has worked with similarly monolithic forms in the past, carving deep introspective soundscapes from stark and arid sources, shaping them into beautiful textural pieces. Very much like was the case on Broadcasting On Ghost Frequencies (Moving Furniture, 2009) orOn Becoming An Island (Highpoint Lowlife, 2007), space is intrinsically part of the overall sound contingency of the piece, but there is here an impressive density which, while already present on Broadcasting, reaches here an entirely different level. The piece opens with a simple and smooth drone, lightly polished, with a hint of white noise at the back, but this is rapidly disturbed by a bubbling form which appears to relate to running water in the video, but which could as well be the crackle of an empty radio signal or a swathe of grinding noises smoothened by layers of fog. In the next few minutes, this is submitted to an intense process of leveling and pressurization, bringing the overall piece back toward more hospitable grounds.

Whilst applied with various strength, this process very much continues throughout, at times revealing moments of deep emotional intensity as elements of almost orchestral grandeur are layered in the foreground, at others diving into rather dark and threatening territories, where corroded sounds slowly decay and contaminate healthier structures, or centred around deeply fragmented components. Although created as a unit, the music can work independently from the video, its extreme variations and continuous flow contributing to its strong evocative character. Indeed, there is enough triggers throughout to generate self-induced dream sequences, yet the added imagery is as hypnotic and enigmatic as the music itself, bringing another layer of introspection to the work.

One of the last scheduled outputs to come out of the excellent Highpoint Lowlife, which is due to shut down later on in the year, Sleepwalking Into The Underworld is yet another might fine demonstration of strong sonic processing from Erstlaub. The impressive cinematic form which has become Dave Fyans’s mode of expression, shaped into one long evolutive piece, reaches its most intense stage yet. Highly recommended.

4.8/5

Always Everything:

Another new release from Highpoint Lowlife that locks directly into the Always Everything axis, this time from Broken20 co-conspirator Dave Fyans, who records ambient drone asErstlaub:

Sleepwalking Into The Underworld was sent to me billed as a full audio/visual piece, exploring the malleability of time and chaos theory. If that all sounds a little arch and conceptual, the piece itself – and the film that accompanies it – can just as easily be taken apart from the thoughts that drove its creation. Appropriately, given its watery theme, it’s a surprisingly immersive forty minutes, passing through curtains of static and strange ripples generated when different elements play off against one another. Shot in monochrome, the film itself leaves its imprint on the music – when absorbed by itself afterwards, it’s hard not to visualize unmoving columns of evergreens stretching into the distance.

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‚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).

<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 ‚ÄùGanzfeld Procedure‚Äù in the field of parapsychology. A subject is blindfolded and equipped with a pair of headphones playing nothing but white and pink noise ‚Äì 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 Рthe 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‚Äôve 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 ‚Äúwhere 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‚Äù. It reminds me of that other album of ghost frequencies I‚Äôve been listening to of late, William Fowler Collins‚Äôs 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‚Äôs growing, glowering greatness. It is available now from Moving Furniture ‚Äì 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