The Blue Hour

Bandcamp

Chantal Michelle - Excavator

February's episode of The Slug Farm. This month I was very gassed to have a killer guest mix from @bladeblanc (out of Bergamo, Italy) take over the full hour of the show. Expect an hour long trip cycling through mutant bass, experimental club, drum n bass & more. 

Bladeblanc is fresh off the back of a wicked EP released on ESKA titled 'Unstable Terrain'. If you haven't already, run that up cos it's dope as hell. 

Lots of love to Bladeblanc for putting together a sick show and love to Dave for linking us up and ofc to @noushy__g (insta) for slaying the artwork <3

Tracklist:

L_ue - Loutioreitaer
Kal0an - Flox Mõ
Consulate - Warlock
Trois-Quarts Taxi System - Forma
HiromaKeo, Gent1e $oul - Heavy $h1t
Mauoq & F.Ich - Hek Legacy
Beatrice M. - Wick (Maquis Son Sistèm Remix)
Mauoq & Decta - Five 0 (Decompression Dub)
Jan Loup - Admit Defeat
J-Shadow - Arsu
Eusebia - The Crossing
talpah - GUN DEVIL feat. Jenn
Chrizpy Chriz - China Town
elsewhere - (zero)996
Homelander - Lux Taal
Cawd Slaydaz - Viva El Paro Nacional
Kliptown - Luca
Porter Brook - The Proposed Roads
Portway - BkBk
Mauoq & Bredren - Staircase
Lårry - In Water
Stacktrace - Heatwave Riddim
Puncta - Treats (Original Mix)
G Sudden - Have Enuff Friend

Noods Radio | The Slug Farm w/ Bladeblanc | 09.02.24

John Chantler And Daniel M Karlsson - 6.12.23 [excerpt]

Hi on Tek

@geierausstahl

Archetype - The Ick
Vinyl/Streaming/Digital
- 27.03.24 -

The Ick — a sense of sanity amidst the storm of information. This album by Archetype is an abstract scream for something quite fragile — a polarizing society, disruptive isolation, and the fading collective experience. Utilizing dramatic vocals, industrial trip-hop, and post-punk-leaning electronics, Archetype marks the new moniker by the ever-versatile Viennese Rotterdammer, Leonard Prochazka. Following his manifold of concept-driven, instinctive musical output, Archetype's "The Ick" releases in 2024, following "Strapazen und Genesung" as Geier Aus Stahl on Knekelhuis in 2022.

Archetype - I See Numbers

@stacksofvoices

Stacks ‘Want’ album out May 15th 2024

Music and lyrics by Jan Matthé & Sis Matthé
Written and recorded in St. Lauri, Antwerp
Mixed by Stacks and Yves De Mey
Mastered by Wouter Brandenburg in Amsterdam
All rights reserved ℗ + ©️ Knekelhuis 2024

Want

Stacks - Run Away

Directions Out Of Town is the latest and teased as (possibly) the last LP by DIY electronic abstract pop wizard Finlay Shakespeare.

Directions Out Of Town is a fierce mix of headstrong pop bangers. Fact. There is simply no one else traversing the field that Shakespeare is exploring. It can be lonely in the desert, Simon says. Lyrically, Directions Out Of Town is dealing with loss; personally, geographically, politically, culturally - a general decay of everything.

This new record is heavily inspired by structural film where the results unravel a method where metaphor is removed from the act of sound synthesis, production and mix of the tracks. Fiercely independent and brimming with integrity this is a deeply effective journey through machines of the human experience.

The track titles are telling: ‘Away’, ‘Get’, ‘Direction’, ‘I go for a walk’, etc. This is sentiment via complex synthesis wrung through patterns of pop. One also finds ways out that only turn out to be false/untrue. “I essentially don’t know where I belong any more. This record is the precursor to that.”

What is ostensibly an electro pop record reveals a multitude of layers and depth as one man and his machines wrestle with the reality of this tangled matrix. If the charts had brains this would be album of the year.

Finlay Shakespeare is an electronic musician working in the UK. His fascination for synthesized sound was born out of his parents’ record collection, leading him to explore the electronic music of decades past throughout his teenage years. While starting to write and record his own tracks, he also began learning analogue electronics, which led him to design and build his own equipment. To date, he has released work on Editions Mego, Superpang, and his own GOTO Records.

Directions Out Of Town

Face Value (Trio Mandala)

Finlay Shakespeare 'Face Value (Trio Mandala)' (EMEGO310)

Impression

Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long time collaborator Alan Licht. 
Celebrating thirty years of collaboration, Loren Connors and Alan Licht performed for two nights at OTO on May 5 and 6th, 2023. On the second night, with the stage lit in blue, Connors took up a seat on the piano stool whilst Licht picked up the guitar. What followed was the duo’s first ever set with Connors on piano - one of only a few times Connors has played piano live at all - here captured and issued as The Blue Hour. Its spacious warmth came as a total surprise live, but makes complete sense for a duo whose dedicated expressionism takes inspiration from a vast spectrum of emotion.

Both opening with single notes to start, it doesn't take long before a surface rises and begins to shimmer. A run up the keys, the drop of a feedback layer on a sustained and bent note. The two begin to exchange notes in tandem and brief touches of melody and chord hover. After a while, Connors picks up the guitar, stands it in his lap and sweeps a wash of colour across Licht’s guitar. Sharp, glassy edges begin to form, open strings and barred frets darkening the space. When his two pedals begin to merge, Licht finds a dramatic organ-like feedback and it’s hard not to imagine Rothko’s Chapel, its varying shades of blue black ascending and descending in the room.

When Connors goes back to the piano for the second side, the pair quickly lock into a refrain and light pours in. It’s a kind of sound that Licht says reminds him of what he and Connors would do when the duo first started playing together 30 years ago. It’s certainly more melodic than some of their more recent shows, and the atonal shards of At The Top of the Stairs seem to totally dissolve. What is always remarkable about Licht is that his enormous frame of reference doesn't seem to weigh him down, and instead here he is able to delicately place fractures of a Jackson C Frank song (“Just Like Anything”,) amongst the vast sea of Connors’ blues.

Perhaps it's the pleasure of playing two nights in a row together, or the nature of Connor’s piano playing combined with Licht’s careful listening, but the improvisation on The Blue Hour feels remarkably calm and unafraid. There’s nothing to prove and no agenda except the joy of sounding colour together. Totally beautiful. 

---

Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Saturday 6th May 2023 by Billy Steiger
Mixed by Oli Barrett
Mastered by Sean McCann
Artwork by Loren Connors
Layout by Oli Barrett
Screenprint by Tartaruga

 Edition of 300 standard LPs, 100 LPs with screenprinted artwork inserts and 200 CDs.

ROKU037 - Loren Connors & Alan Licht "The Blue Hour" [excerpt]

to the moon

hey, 

glad to invite caapi for this 15th opus from crying is softer than you think,

caapi runs a label we're particularly fond of called Somewhere Press,

thanks for this emo mix <3

tracklist:

Elena Isolini - Baby's Ballad
Ouri	- figure profane
Grady Steele - Larghetto
Ugnė Uma - Rage Love Strange Love II
ssaliva - Death Valley
Klein - wicked dreams
Kevin - for the ones we love
Chris Reimer - About
Cancer House - a hiding place (leaf miner mix)
Plume Girl - Clean
Princ€ss - In the Morning
Box5ive - Rough Sleeper
dj lostboi	- D MAJOR XO LIFE
Various - A divine kiss (edit)
Hollowphonic	- Regent Park
PJ Harvey - The Darker Days of Me & Him

Noods Radio #15 - crying is softer than you think - caapi (26/05/2024)

As you can imagine we are under huge pressure at the moment and are working flat out to ensure Cafe OTO survives this. The impact of this situation is extremely acute for small venues like ours and we need all the support we can get to pull through. Please donate what you can, if you can. Thank you. 

Cafe OTO opened in April 2008 with the aim of providing a home for creative new music that exists outside of the mainstream. It comprises one large cafe/performance space open during the day serving food and drink with an evening programme of live music almost seven nights a week. 

OTOROKU is part of OTOProjects - a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (CIC) that has been set up to manage the programme at Café Oto. Any profits from OTOROKU are put back into supporting what we do and will help us to continue programming the best musicians and performers from all over the world.

www.cafeoto.co.uk

ROKU037 - Loren Connors & Alan Licht "The Blue Hour" [excerpt]

cafeOTO

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