Shadowplay

What's The 411?

Enjoy this with the visuals on the halF unusuaL YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/wkS2xkqAu-Y ... 

We recently unearthed a VERY rare set of tin cylinders with some of the creations from my unusually great uncle - dated 1910! I've taken the opportunity to riff on top of his proto-EDM - with sounds WAY ahead of their time! No way would they have found an audience in his lifetime ... Let's try again 😜

Family legend has it that my Great Uncle Crackleton P. Valve was not so much born as assembled! His crib rattled with loose copper coils, his lullabies were hummed through wax cylinders, and his first word was said to be a faint but distinctly glitchy “bzzzzzt” ...

By the turn of the last century, when most men were proud to own a sturdy hat, Uncle Crackleton was already soldering strange contraptions in the garden shed, where every evening the glow of red-hot valves spilled out into the hedgerows. He refused to play the piano “like a commoner,” preferring instead to hammer phonograph needles against tin cylinders until they shrieked, warbled, and sang with a peculiar beauty only he seemed to understand.

The neighbours swore they could hear his experiments late at night: a ghostly stutter of sound, like church bells melting, or a brass band tumbling downstairs. He called it Music of the Future, although others called it a dreadful racket.

It’s said he once built a mechanical echo chamber out of two bathtubs, a bicycle pump, and a dozen mismatched radio valves. When he cranked it up, it produced a looping hiccup that terrified the vicar's cats and made their milk curdle. Even so, he declared it his masterpiece.

Though none of his recordings were thought to have survived, until now (most cylinders were repurposed as makeshift candle holders), family lore insists that without him, modern glitch music would not exist. Every time a record skips, a tape warbles, or a speaker crackles, somewhere, faintly, Uncle Crackleton P. Valve is smiling.

More on the 717th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Generation Gambit — The Assignment: Layer two eras of recordings, one of them imaginary — at https://disquiet.com/0717/

visuals (YouTube)

halF 1910 [disquiet0717]

12 hours, 24 explorations of sound. Artists as far and wide as Nairobi, Oregon, Russia, Portugal, Korea, all knitted together by spawned-from-lockdown collective XOLO.

Half-hourly meanders ranging from ambience and abstraction, through beat-driven exploration, to cathartic noise.

XOLO develops opportunities for sonic and visual artists at the forefront of creative exploration.

www.threadsradio.com

XOLO w/ Jung DJ

Total Stasis - live on c- TV

Personal Music Assistants & Loto Retina @ Kiosk Radio 21.11.2020

Commend Anywhere, broadcasting the inner space into the outer space... this time  with local digital glitch synthesist pent.

@pe_nt__ @commendnyc

Commend Anywhere with pent @ The Lot Radio 11 - 24 - 2020

Osawa Tome is the ‘cosmic Appalachia’ alias of multi-instrumentalist, electronic producer, and North Carolina underground music scene veteran, Zeke Graves (Cold Sides, Datahata, Kinoeye, Northgate Syndicate, Ezekiel Graves, etc.).

Drawing on the vernacular traditions of the region, a love of minimalist and experimental composers, and a deep curiosity towards sound-generating technologies, Graves fashions a unique take on ‘folk music’ that wanders through ambient, drone, and new age territories. In true nomadic style, Graves declines permanent residence in any of these genres, instead opening up a meditative and transitory space where sounds can come and go, structures evolve and decay, and time just as easily run backwards as forwards.

Astute listeners will note the undeniable sway of creative beacons such as Terry Riley, John Fahey, Laurie Spiegel, and Roedelius. However, 'Mountain Minor' is primarily inspired by the Western North Carolina land where Graves was raised. Listen closely for the creek washing over the rocks, the insects chanting on a summer night, and the trees creaking in the winter winds. Take some time on the pathways of 'Mountain Minor' and hear for yourself. 

released January 1, 2021

mastering :: glyn maier

all proceeds to North Carolina Community Bail Fund of Durham :: nccbailfund.org

buy :: https://enmossed.bandcamp.com/album/mountain-minor

Mountain Minor

Osawa Tome - Fern Knee (ENMD02)

Presented as a re-creation of two live sets performed in 2019, Patrick Gallagher deftly melds field recordings, a "fairly standard" synthesis toolkit, and prepared electric guitar into two peerless electro-acoustic compositions comprising his debut album for ENXPL (enmossed x psychic liberation).

As the album's title implies, "Set In the Bardo" embraces indeterminacy in all respects. An extreme range of timbrel variety and complexity is employed, from pure sine waves to nearly-incomprehensible sonic blasts. With a formal education in mathematics, Gallagher's astute arrangements modulate between smooth glissandos and abrupt interruptions, reflecting the compositional process used: salvaging hitherto-abandoned recordings and live snippets from the artist's archive. Post-processing was eschewed on the album in order to preserve the improvisatory nature of a live performance, giving an organic quality to the album which is often lost in academic compositions.

While "Set In the Bardo" was created in pre-pandemic times, it also functions well at this particular juncture of history. We have been 'set in the bardo' ourselves, and Gallagher has made an engrossing set of pieces - encapsulating and unfolding sonic uncertainties as we venture through trying times. Well worth many listening sessions; high volume and high fidelity during playback are recommended.

---

Patrick Gallagher is a sound artist and composer currently residing in Philadelphia, PA. He cut his teeth in the North Carolina avant-garde underground, perfecting his composition processes with numerous live performances as well as releases on Tone Log, Hot Releases, Refulgent Sepulchre, and other independent labels. 

releases January 29, 2021

mastering :: Jack Callahan

cover artwork :: Autumn Casey

design ++ layout :: Robin JM Vanderheyden

a portion of Side A was recorded live at Rhizome (Washington, DC) by Steve Sanford

all proceeds to The Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project (Philadelphia, PA) :: www.yasproject.com

Set In The Bardo

Patrick Gallagher - Untitled [Set In The Bardo Side B Excerpt] (ENXPL05)

From the album "NIMP Preset".
Available here: https://bearboneslaylow.bandcamp.com/album/nimp-preset

Snipbient

From the album "NIMP Preset"
Available here: https://bearboneslaylow.bandcamp.com/album/nimp-preset

Oolemba

Bear Bones, Lay Low

Recent comments

Mihassou (The Small Bladder)

Raymonde

Related tracks