Third in the series is ‘The Ruin of Tallis’ from Broken20 art director David Fyans. with his Erstlaub alias currently MIA and, geographically dislocated from the landscapes that usually inspire him, it finds him in a newly introspective state, mirrored in his recent visual and audio works. The release is a collaboration with writer Gareth E Rees whose text is entitled ‘A Vision Of Duncan Sharp’.
Fyans again provides the imagery for the release. He continues his recontextualisation of found objects used on the first couple of releases in the li_series - TVO’s ‘Installation Pieces’ and Dirty Hope’s ‘Storm Katie’ - as his unified “visual language” continues to accrue. Sonically, ‘The Ruin of Tallis’ takes influence from a host of drone forebears. It builds from a gentle fade into subtly pentatonic shifting sands, replete with ebbing harmonics and flowing counterpoint, calling to mind LaMonte Young and Alvin Lucier. The pace of change is undoubtedly glacial, but Fyans states that “I wanted to focus on that idea that if you can get over the relative fixed nature of the drone, the amplitude and harmonic structures start to define it.”
Rees runs www.unofficialbritain.com and is the author of  'Marshland: Dreams & Nightmares on the Edge of London’ (Influx Press), which he describes as “a time-travel journey through the Lea Marshes, weaving together supernatural stories, local legends, weird histories and tales of my own encounters and mishaps.”. In ‘A Vision Of Duncan Sharp’, he describes an uncanny experience revolving around a park bench, a maniacally laughing ghost and the underlying strangeness of our everyday existences. Moving outwards from the marshes, Gareth E Rees has spent the last 3 years living and writing around Hastings and the South East Coast.
The audio progresses over a narrative based on a series of tidal washes, as volumes build and break in slo-mo sequence, but its development is aided by subtle arcs that move in different cycles, generating ever-new combinations of tone and colour. In the piece Fyans attempted “a sort of take on my idea of Thomas Tallis-esque choral music, by means of investigating the notion that something can do very little on the surface, meaning that you get lost in the details and textures that remain.” The piece can be approached as one would a sculptural work, imploring the listener to map the surfaces, the shadows and light in an attempt to grasp the whole from a passing temporal viewpoint.
For his accompaniment, Rees sought to investigate “the way objects take on spiritual significance”, echoing the art for the li_series. By its close, there’s a clear sense of release, of sorts, and of having snatched a glimpse of the crazed inner logic of nature and time. This matches the feeling of spiritual deep cleanse that tends to accompany Fyans’ best work, where its meditative aspects lead to redemption and closure.
Like previous li_series releases, the thematic overlap between text and sound is only partial; a feeling in the gut more than a tick-box exercise in matched content. The full series, released in monthly instalments, will run to 10 editions throughout 2016.

B20_23 li_series 03 David Fyans - The Ruin Of Tallis clip

Laica is the pseudonym of Cambridge’s Dave Fleet, co-owner of the Arrell imprint and a prolific recording artist in his own right. 

A single 22 minute track, ‘One Quarter Dust’ evokes the personal tribulations and ultimate redemption that bore it. As Fleet puts it, “this is my catharsis record. After some difficult times, it took me an age to get my head around making any kind of music, as I saw it as part of the reason for those upheavals.” The piece bears this out, spanning eerie gossamer strands, degraded half-heard echoes and deeply unerring maximal drone, before engaging a sense of release in its final, juddering death throes. 

It calls to mind none so much as Broken20’s outgoing art director Erstlaub aka David Fyans, in the segmented yet holistic approach that spans numerous discrete sections yet feels entirely selfcontained. It’s clearly proved to be a fruitful exercise, with Fleet now working on a collaboration with Graham Dunning, scoring a documentary film and a remix of Chra from her ‘Empty Airport’ album [Editions Mego]. 

As Fyans departs, David Coyle (davidcoyle.co.uk) joins Broken20 as art director.

One Quarter Dust

Buy at store.broken20

B20_33 Laica - One Quarter Dust (stream)

Broken20 return with their second in a run of 3” CD releases, Ordeograph's field recording and found sound odyssey, 'Transparencies'

Originally released via a netlabel and a short run of self-made CDrs in 2006, 'Transparencies' is comprised of sound captures from in and around London.

Ordeograph is one of the aliases of Andy Myers, who describes the tracks' gestation: “After a depressive breakdown and recovery and during a period of creative block with various other projects in the summer of 2006, I began to make field recordings with a very cheap stereo mic and a HDD recorder with the intention of finding interesting snippets to loop and process into my existing projects.”

“I decided to use the recordings in a more sculptural way to explore texture and space, and the capabilities of the software I was using. Each piece was worked on quickly and with a light touch using a handful of effects with the intention of revealing the ambience of each place by blurring the details.”

In download form (also included with the physical release) 'Transparencies' spans a mammoth two and a quarter hours, embellishing the original five tracks with a further four from the same sessions and two newer pieces including one written especially for The Dark Outside broadcast in 2017.

The CD features a bespoke mix of the tracks by Broken20's TVO, building a narrative through the cavernous non-rhythm of 'Thunderstorm' and reaching an eerie climax with queasy melodies that had hitherto lain hidden in plain sight among the source material.

Physical copies will follow on from the format of Laica's 'One Quarter Dust', the 3” CD sleeve once again transcending its limitations by folding out into a visual feast from art director David Coyle.

b20_34 Ordeograph - Transparencies Continuous mix

Broken20 return with the third in a run of 3” CD releases, Stephanie Merchak’s timely societal commentary cloaked in deep, foreboding drone, ‘The Prospect of our Annihilation’.

All four tracks were created using field recordings recorded by Merchak on construction sites in Lebanon. The recordings were processed beyond recognition to depict through sound an apocalyptic future where the earth has become inhospitable. Merchak writes: “This concept piece was inspired by some worldwide alarming news: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault partially flooding after permafrost melted, 1.12 trillion tons of iceberg breaking away from the Larsen C ice shelf and drifting to open waters, an Anthrax outbreak in western Siberia after an unusual heatwave melted permafrost releasing spores, a study by Chris Thomas and his colleagues at the University of Leeds warning that a quarter of land animals and plants may be doomed by 2050 due to global warming...”

She continues: “One of the culprits of climate change is the construction industry, which is one of the biggest sources of emissions and energy consumption. Humans keep building and replacing forests and green spaces with concrete thus endangering hundreds of species, increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and contributing to soil erosion. In summary, humans are destroying their home.” As the contemporary activity is extrapolated to an apocalypse in Merchak’s vision, so the field recordings are morphed to their logical conclusion. Hence sonically, the sense of mechanical dread is manifested in lumbering semirhythmic motifs that stagger on- and offstage like drunken actors, playing on unsteady stage-boards of atonal drone.  In contrast to the glacial crawl of most  dark ambient productions, nothing in  ‘The Prospect of our Annihilation’ remains static for long – except the tone and its implied warning. Physical copies will follow on from the format of previous Broken20 3” CDs by Laica and Ordeograph, whereby the inner sleeve is crafted to disrupt its physical limitations, bringing forth further visual interpretations on the source material and its underlying message.

The Prospect Of Our Annihilation

B20_35 Stephanie Merchak - The Prospect Of Our Annihilation

b20_40 Z_GNG_SLMNDR Teaser

Broken20 is a new label from ruaridhTVO, with assistance from production unit and erstlaub

Broken20 will release all sorts of music. Rather than be genre-tied, we will be releasing music rooted in a particular aesthetic – releases concerned with decay, erosion, entropy, mistakes and errors, line noise and tape hiss, hum and buzz.

We’ll primarily be a digital download label, although there will be forays into highly limited cd- and dvd-r variants of our releases. We hope to eventually release some vinyl editions.

Ruaridh Law