Andrew Sherwell

Andrew Sherwell aka blackstag weaves together Eastern European choral music with a variety of very recent experimental music. Sherwell curates his ideal hour of beautiful music for late night headphone listening.  

Read more at: www.acloserlisten.com

LCNL 077

blackstag  presents "Give me the withered leaves I chose before in the old time"

For my friend Siavash.
Detail from Leading the Life in the West by William Orpen, 1910

Leading The Life In The West (For Siavash Amini)

370 years ago this weekend, Alice Young was the first witch executed in the American colonies (26th May 1647).
Korg Volca Keys and Sample, field recordings and cheap effect boxes edited in Ableton and in desperate need of mastering.

And She Did Smile As She Swung

They are the Dead Days, these days between Christmas and New Year. A quiet, limbo period of between-festive blues, of waiting, of reflection. A chance to reflect on the year passed and the year to come. A chance to enjoy being quiet. Read a book, a quiet book. Listen to music, quiet music. Let go, listen well and you will hear, there is a magic flowing beneath the quiet, beyond the fog, through the Dead Days.
https://coffeeandflapjacks.wordpress.com/2017/12/29/music-for-the-dead-days-two-2017/
Music for the Dead Days Two – 2017
1.	Hands from the Sky – Prairie Lines (Eyes Down Slowdown, Whitelabrecs 2017)
2.	A.cutlerie or how I used to eat my heart – Teleferick (Sixteen Frames, Whitelabrecs 2017)
3.	Skeinan – Autumna (Lutalica, Shimmering Moods 2017)
4.	Light Snowfall – Norihito Suda (Light Snowfall, Fluid Audio/Facture 2017)
5.	Destination – ISM (Imaginary Country, Shimmering Moods 2017)
6.	Bound – Steve Kemner (Gradation Movements, Fluid Audio/Facture 2017)
7.	Ath.rth – David Kolhne (Granular Canvas, Whitelabrecs 2017)
8.	Moments We Have Lost/Tears Roll Down My Cheeks – Jurko Haltuu (And In My Tears And The Heaviness Of Everything I Drowned, Shimmring Moods 2017)

Music For The Dead Days Two 2017

The first of two remixes of Slow Clinic's 'Could Have Been'. The original features on the Elm Records 'A New Leaf' compilation available via the Elm Records bandcamp.

Slow Clinic - Could Have Been (Could Still Be)

Second remix of 'Could Have Been' by  Slow Clinic from Elm Records' 'A New Leaf'. This excellent compilation is available from Elm Records Bandcamp page. Go get it.
Thank you to James Slow Clinic for the tolerance.

Slow Clinic - Could Have Been (But Never Was)

Andrew Sherwell - Ektenia
Release date: 02.10.2018
Format: CD/Digital
Limited Edition, Professionally manufactured high quality CDr's, limited to 60 copies. Handmade packages contains an enveloppe and inside wallet, hand numbered.
Different colors available: Brown Kraft - Off white/Beige - Copper

Order here: https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ektenia

1. Ektenia 01 v4
2. Ektenia 02 v4
3. Ektenia 03 v4
4. Ektenia 04 v4
5. Ektenia 06 v4
6. Ektenia 07 v4
7. Newektenia 01 v4
8. Newektenia 02 v4
9. Newektenia 03 v4

Music by Andrew Sherwell
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu 
Shimmering Moods Records 2018
SHM 081

“They enter accompanied by angels,” was my grandfather’s claim. 

And who was I to disagree? I could certainly believe that they did. In fact, I did believe it and I knew it to be true, much like everything Grandfather told me. 

As the doors opened, I could feel the shock of the cold breeze as the angels flew in. I could see them swoop patterns through the rising clouds of frankincense, caught in the golden beams from the stained-glass windows. 

For much of the rest of the service, I would look for glimpses of them, high in the dome, in the architecture. It’s not as though I could watch the service; I was too short, hemmed in by Sunday Best and hats. Grandfather saw everything. At six feet six inches, he towered over the rest of the congregation, yet he too spent most of the service gazing up. Every now and then he would squeeze my hand and gesture with his head. I tried to follow his gaze, but he could see them better than me. 

I may not have seen much of the service, but I would certainly listen to it all. I loved it. The priest chanting, the murmured response of the congregation, the sung response from the choir. Oh, the choir! How they filled even that cavernous cathedral. That sound, that glorious sound; it would wash around the structure and reverberate back, repetition upon repetition. Repetition upon repetition. I understood not a word, the language was not mine, but that mattered not. I understood the message. “Just let yourself feel it,” was Grandfather’s advice. 

It was a heady mix; the angels, the frankincense, the singing. Too much for a ten-year old me. I would regularly faint. Maybe the starched collar of my Sunday Best would cut off the circulation to my head as I gazed forever upwards. Maybe, I was just overcome with it all, as the old ladies who fussed me to my feet in broken English would suggest. Maybe, as Grandfather said, it was the gaze of an angel that did it. 

Turns out he was right. 

Turns out I have always been susceptible to angels. And occasionally to demons, for what are they but fallen angels? Angels who have lost their grace, angels removed from the Word. And if angels can fall that far, then surely too can man. And telling angel and demon apart has always been the problem. 

Experience of the numinous is unsettling. Forget the demons for a minute, what about the angels? Not the embarrassingly twee, cloying sentimentality of New Age spirituality angels, but angels of the older religions. Manifestations of the Word, on one hand baby-killers, city-levellers, enactors of God’s wrath, and on the other, bringers of a calm joy inimitable in our ridiculously over-wrought, over-stimulated and alienated society. What could be more disturbing, confusing, traumatic? What could be more overwhelming? It’s enough to make you faint. 

Now I am only rarely bothered by the angels. The demons appear to have completely given up: lightweights. Years of medication and first-class counselling have seen to that. For better or worse, I seem, by and large, to be left to myself, to get on with it. 

But I miss them. They provided glimmer and shimmer in this dark and heavy world. 

Perhaps this album is an attempt to recreate that feeling, the one the 10-year-old me felt. Woozy in the stifling repetition, spotting shapes in the smoke, alert to the whispers of both demons and angels. 

Andrew Sherwell

Andrew Sherwell - Ektenia (Album Preview)

“As the Dust of the Year Settles, There is Still a Shimmering.” (Shimmering Moods 2018)mixed by Andrew Sherwell
00:00 – 10:00 ‘Sarus the Witness’ V I C I M (Convenience)
05:00 – 10:00 ‘Ektenia 06v4’ Andrew Sherwell (Ektenia)
09:50 – 14:55 ‘Fog Clears’ Andrew Tasselmyer (Vantage Points)
13:10 – 17:00 ‘Elegy’ Mind over MIDI (Falling)
15:30 – 19:10 ‘Three’ Boban Ristevski (The Turn of the Screw)
18:10 – 26:30 ‘N60.571260 E30.226697’ Kirill Mazhai (You Don’t Belong)
26:30 – 32:25 ‘Perpetual Goodbye’ Niskogradba (Lies, Deception & Sin)
31:35 – 39:10 ‘PNO’ Thet Liturgiske Owasendet (Novemberregn)
37:15 – 42:30 ‘Week 14’ Olan Mill (Sound of a New Father)
42:11 – 44.50 ‘Forever Young’ Puppy Seeds (Lost at Sea)
44:45 – 50:50 ‘Sawdust and Gas’ Lee Yi (Eslandtika)
46:50 – 50:50 ‘Failure’ Banished Pills (Failure)
50:50 – 57:00 ‘Boiling Fountain’ Adzuki (Undeveloped Land)

https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/convenience
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ektenia
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/vantage-points
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/falling
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-turn-of-the-screw
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/you-dont-belong
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/lies-deception-and-sin
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/novemberregn
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sounds-of-a-new-father
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/lost-at-sea
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/eslandtika
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/failure
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/undeveloped-land

Shimmering Moods

“As the Dust of the Year Settles, There is Still a Shimmering.” Mixed by Andrew Sherwell

Andrew Sherwell in the mix for Shimmering Moods @ Resonance Extra #29

1 “Intro” Bartosz Dziadosz & Tomasz 138ca, Black Lake (Reissue forthcoming on Infraction)
2 “In Macdonalds” Burial, Untrue (Hyperdub)
3 “Parafernalia” Jose Soberanes, Luz (Forthcoming on Faint)
4 “Drift” Gideon Wolf, Replicas (Forthcoming Fluid Audio)
5 “Subsiding” Siavash Amini, Subsiding (Reissue forthcoming)
6 Orthodox chant in Aramaic recorded in small mountain church in Georgia
7 “The Black Crow” Songs-Ohia, Love & Works The Lioness Sessions (Secretly Canadian reissue)
8 “Kayak” Ryosuke Miyata, Mizugiwa (Forthcoming Purlieu Recordings)
9 “Magpie” The Unthanks, Mount the Air (Rabble  Rouser)
10 “Phoill Bhing” Ian Nyquist, Cuan (Forthcoming Eilean)
11 “Daughters of Darkness” Francois de Roubaix
12 “Light not Light” Federico Mosconi (Forthcoming Shimmering Moods)
13 “ 1382…..” Akira Rabelais, Spellewauerynsherde (Samadhi Sound)
14 Imo & Bela
15 “Pulling Yellow” James Mcdermid (Forthcoming Shimmering Moods)
16 “Void 5” Jurko Haltuu (Forthcoming Shimmering Moods)
17 “Nocturnal Mood” Polaroid Notes, Sleep Lab 1 Comp (Whitelabrecs)
18 “The Mountain Will Forever Be My Home” James Osland, RTR Sampler 2 (Rusted Tone Recodings)
19 “Headache” Grouper, Paradise Valley (Grouper bandcamp)
20 “Haunted Ballroom” The Caretaker, Haunted Ballroom (V/VM Test Records)
21 “Tsintskaro” Hamlet Gonasvili , Hamlet Album
22 “Nothing (is better than this)” Deaf At Sea (Forthcoming mystery release!)
23 “Who Knows, Who Knew” Niskogradba, Lies, Deception & Sin (Shimmering Moods)
24 “N60.571260 E30.226697” Kirill Mazhai, You Don’t Belong (Shimmering Moods)
25 “Farewell To Angels” Andrew Sherwell, Approaching Illumination (Forthcoming Rusted Tone Recordings)

Shimmering Moods @ Resonance Extra #29: Andrew Sherwell Guest Mix

Selection of newish tracks for Sunday listening.

march not march (Live Mix)

Working only with highly processed recordings of choirs, plus field recordings from churches and cathedrals throughout Europe, Andrew Sherwell’s murky, lo-fi, devotional drones have been released on Whitelabrecs, Shimmering Moods Records and Rusted Tone Recordings.

☆ Andrew's new album "Approaching" is out now on Rusted Tone Recordings ☆
https://rustedtonerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/approaching

Tracklist

00:00 Akira Rabelais - Gorgeous Curves Lovely Fragments (Spellewauerynsherde, Samadhi Sound, 2004)
02:30 Rafael Anton Irisarri - Lesser Than the Sum Of Its Parts (The Unintentional Sea, Room40, 2013)
10:06 Svarte Grenier - Kobbergruve, Endelig Jeg Fant (Til Seters, Miasmah, 2008)
13:05 Ian Nyquist - Phoill Bhig (Cuan, Eilean Rec. 2019)
16:30 Endrjua Servela - hesychasm 04v3 (2020)
22:12 Deathprod - Orgone Donor (Morals & Dogma, Smalltown Supersound, 1997)
29:45 Kreng - Na Da Sex (L’Autopsie… Miasmah , 2009)
33:40 James A McDermid - Pulling Yellow (In Little Swallows, Shimmering Moods, 2019)
38:30 Deaf At Sea - Nothing (is better than this) (2019)
43:24 Elegi - Gejnganger (Bansull, Dronarivm, 2017)
45:20 Juurko Haltuu - Void 5 (Void, Shimmering Moods, sometime in 2019)
54:40 Siavash Amini - The Wind (What the Wind Whispered To The Trees remaster, Room40. 2019)

Have a good listening.

deep breakfast

Deep Breakfast 012 - Andrew Sherwell

Andrew Sherwell - Without 03 V3
Taken from the forthcoming album "Without"

Releases November 4, 2019

Pre order here: 
https://shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/without

Limited Edition / 75 copies / Hand Numbered / Hand Made Packages / Brown Kraft Wallets / Professional duplicated cdr

Music and photos by Andrew Sherwell 
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu 
Shimmering Moods Records 2019

https://soundcloud.com/andrew-sherwell

Andrew Sherwell - Without 03 V3

I nodded ascent and began to stare. Of course, I did. I always followed Grandfather’s instructions. As did almost everybody else. 

I concentrated on the flame. Grandfather spoke, but what, I cannot remember. Then I heard him move. He stopped, spoke again, and walked slowly on. Now I lost track of him, lost to the flame. The flickering grew brighter and brighter, the darkness around me swelled. Suddenly, I was aware that the blackness held within it colours that changed in waves. But still I stared. And then I could smell…Grandmother’s perfume, a bonfire of leaves, then new-mown grass, freshly fallen snow…. I tried desperately hard to remember them all, I knew that this was something Grandfather would want to know. 

I awoke sometime later. Grandfather had draped a travel blanket across my shoulders. It was warm and tickly. When he saw me stir, he got up from his chair by the dying fire. “Bed, I think, yes?” 

As he tucked me in, I told him of the colours (gold, blue, red, and green) and the smells, although by then I couldn’t be certain of any. He smiled. “Good.” 

In the doorway, he stopped, silhouetted against the landing light. “Next time, no candle. You are ready to see.” 

He was right. I did. I still see them now. 

As above, so below. 

Music & artwork – Andrew Sherwell 

Mastering – Stephan Mathieu 

With thanks to Ophelia, Cameron, James Armstrong, Steve Fors, Paul SMR, and Stephan Mathieu for constant support and friendship. 

“As the shadows closed in, the stars came out.” Derek Jarman 

Releases December 4, 2020

Available on CD, Cassette (limited editions) and Digital
Pre Order: Soon @ shimmeringmoodsrecords.bandcamp.com/music

Soon

Andrew Sherwell - Above Below (Album Preview)

~ Deep Breakfast 099 by https://soundcloud.com/andrew-sherwell ~

Tracklist:
01. Wil Bolton – Too Soon (Cumulus Sketches, Home Normal)
02. Yasu Ether – Burntbeach (All That’s Here Will Be Sunlight, Shimmering Moods)
03. Linus Schrab – The Sun And The Shape Of The Moon (It Must Have Been Love, Shimmering Moods)
04. Havenaire – Silenced (Nightlifer, Shimmering Moods)
05. Hotel Neon – 02 Oct 11 (Moments, Sound In Silence)
06. Bu.re – Slowly (On Grieving, Elm Records)
07. Altarmang – Resonans (Moth Star, Hypnagoga Press)
08. Hotel Neon – Toward A Distant Shore (All Is Memory, Fluid Audio)
09. Ivano Pecorini – Ice Cream Truck (Barons Court, Mahorka)
10. James Osland – And the I’d Turn My Thoughts Back To Linger Memories (Almond Drive, Rusted Tone Recordings)
11. Anthéne – Away from Your Shadow (Away From Your Shadow, Home Normal)
12. Abul Mogard – Clouds (In Immobile Air, Ecstatic)
13. Benoit Pioulard – Gold-Limned Hills (Soundcloud)
14. Slow Reels – Miya (Farewell Islands, Morr Music)
15. r beny – Mamiya (Natural Fiction)

Have a good listening.

Photography: Natalie Dmay

Andrew Sherwell

Adrien