Crow Versus Crow is honoured to present 'the ends (also end) of (the) earth and variants', a new body of work from polymath artist and educator Dr Amy Cutler, available as a limited-edition cassette and digital download from Friday 14th May 2021. 

'the ends (also end) of (the) earth and variants' springs from a strange medieval English riddle, the Harley lyric 'Erthe toc of erthe' (Ms. Harley 2553). The tiny lament or puzzle is impossible to translate, since in its four short lines the word earth appears twelve times. Like ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’, these identical words have different meanings – transitioning between soil, world, burial, cultivation, decay, earthly possessions, and our own bodies. The device of repeating earth so many times in such a short space creates an unsolvable lyric which, riddle-like, ‘only makes sense when we are prepared to hold several meanings of the word in our minds simultaneously’.

Featuring tracks by Layla Legard (Hawthonn), Ceylan Hay (Bell Lungs), Mark S. Williamson (Spaceship), Ecka Mordecai, and Drew Mulholland, this is an album of field recordings, chants, twilight hums, nonsense riddles and layered repetitions, sonic variants of 'erthe toc of erthe', forming the ultimate group sonic field trip.

Cutler’s recordings were made in Lud’s Church, a naturally resonant mossy chasm in Staffordshire where Lollard ceremonies were held, including their alternative death chants. Combining guitar, voice, processed electronics, record hiss, and field recordings, these tracks (and the album as a whole) are each titled with phrases from the dictionary definitions of ‘earth’. Some of these meanings are undigestible by each other, whether scientific, metaphorical, or allegorical: e.g., the ground as a surface on which humans and animals move; the inhabitants of the world collectively; ‘earthing’ a conductive electrical circuit or terminal; to ‘go to earth’ meaning to take refuge as in an animal’s lair or burrow.

Combining this mix of opposites – doom and refuge, sin and innocence – and playing on the end of the world-ness of elegy, this camper-van tape release becomes a sort of muted lullaby for earth itself.
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Dr. Amy Cutler is a geographer, musician, and filmmaker who is inspired by the history of landscapes as dream visions or “phantasmagoria”. Her self-taught sonic approaches draw on experimental fieldtrips as much as on her instruments, ranging from strings and lullabies to field recordings, voice, and post-processing, as well as de-composed or unspooled found sound.
Her first tape release was Örö Tape (Fieldtrips of the Damned) (Fractal Meat Cuts, 2020), exploring pathetic fallacy, isolation, and sci-fi, based on a month’s winter residency under the military radar on an uninhabited Finnish island. This was followed by GUTTER (Misophonia Records, 2021), a rainy lockdown album based on histories of atmospheric experimentation, recorded in London and Pendle Hill. She has also released albums based on metallurgy, earth, and sea-change (Forgerons et Alchimistes, 2020), and the sounds of science and specimens (PILOTS, 2020). Her most recent composition was LULL, an interactive ambisonics surround-sound installation for Amoenus, which used ultra-sonar sensing to manipulate the perspectives and horizons of nature contemplation and its “recitals” – from howls to lullabies – according to the actions of visitors to the space.
She is currently an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths University, where she teaches audio-visual composition and philosophies of the nonhuman. Her writing and research activism – including her work on fossils, elegies, archives, and mourning – underpins all her music releases, which together explore sonic illuminations of nostalgia for the earth, from 1970s geography trips to contemporary extinction grief.
www.amycutler.net

the ends (also end) of (the) earth and variants

The Drizzle of Rain

Amy Cutler - The Drizzle Of The Rain ('the ends(also end)of(the)earth and variants' / CVC021)

Artist: Yol 
Title: viral dogs and cats
Label: Crow Versus Crow
Catalogue Number: CVC022
Format: Limited Edition of 50 cassettes & digital download
Release Date: Friday 29th October 2021
Bandcamp Link: https://crowversuscrow.bandcamp.com/album/viral-dogs-and-cats
Tracklist:
A1. chunks of tongue A2. sun roads neighbours A3. eat out to help out
B1. viral dogs and cats B2. glue comedy

Yol. Found objects / mouth noise / mangled language.
That’s it.
All of it. 
And yet… lo! There’s real GOLD here, conjured from within these looping, twisting, writhing incantations. GOLD, y’hear?!
Primark bags and dog shit; they were the prima materia of yond alchemists, right?
viral dogs and cats was recorded in a vacant retail premises on Brook Street, Hull, made available as a project space through the facilitation of Red Contemporary, Hull – an artist-led organisation, and former gallery space, displaced after 20 years in the wake of Hull’s ‘City Of Culture’ redevelopments. It was recorded during a period of lockdown, with all the practical and technical restrictions that lockdown precipitates, but it’s not a ‘Lockdown Album’, per se.
Yol’s approach seems to be to absorb that which is around him, the fragmentary, the minutiae, and regurgitate it through distending, absurdist ritualistic cantillations. Yol invokes sonic transmutations from gathered detritus, from the grimy scrapings from between the cushions of society’s (fly-tipped, piss-stained) settee. Gold! Hear!

Yol is a visual, sound, and performance artist based in Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. His raw, intense, possibly cathartic, thoroughly enthralling, live performances perfectly encapsulate a ‘maximum gains from minimal means’ ethos. Found objects, mouth noise, mangled language. This extends to his recorded works, of which Yol has self-released numerous CDRs alongside solo and collaborative works on various formats on the Chocolate Monk, lf Records, Beartown Records, Quagga Curious Sounds, Fractal Meat Cuts and Vanity Publishing labels, amongst others. He is a frequent collaborator, working with turntablist/composer Mariam Rezaei and multi-instrumentalist tape-wrangler Stuart Chalmers, and as part of the Neck Vs. Throat trio, with Miguel Perez and Posset.

Yol - Chunks Of Tongue (viral dogs and cats / Crow Versus Crow, CVC022)

Artist: Penance Stare
Track: Cradlewell (Lacrima)
Album Title: Solanaceae
Label: Crow Versus Crow
Catalogue Number: CVC011
Format: Limited Edition of 50 cassettes & digital download
Release Date: Friday 1st February 2019

Crow Versus Crow is honoured to be able to present, 'Solanaceae', the second full-length record from Penance Stare, the
Gateshead (UK)-based project of songwriter Esmé Louise Newman. 

Following the much-lauded 'Scrying'(2018) and
'House of Bastet' EP (2017) cassettes, this bleak and haunted recording captures Penance Stare at its most fully-realised
thus far.

Previously known for her work in Melting, Commiserations, and Etai Keshiki, among many others, Esmé has
spent the last two years deep in sonic exploration, developing an incredibly rich sound that, “whips together
atmospheric black metal with darkwave, shoegaze, stormy ambient, and witch house… as soothing as it is intense” (Kim
Kelly, Noisey).

'Solanaceae' deals lyrically with themes of trauma, illness, ageing, neglect and regret, and is rendered with a sonic
palette of heavy drum machine rhythms, degraded chamber music passages, low fidelity guitar fuzz and blurred out
vocals.

With blatant disregard for the oft-perceived sanctity of aesthetic dogma, Penance Stare draws voraciously from a
wealth of seemingly disparate musical sources, twisting the Gothic ephemeral grandeur of Cocteau Twins, the blunt
mass of industrial noise, the layered textural intricacy of ‘Loveless’ and the raw, razor thin brutality of contemporary
Black Metal, to form distinctly articulate works of personal expression.

After stunning audiences at initial exploratory gigs in Manchester and Leeds and as part of TUSK Fringe during 2018,
Penance Stare will be performing at select live dates throughout the UK, and writing and recording new material with
an expanded line up in 2019

'Solanaceae' is released as a limited edition of 50 professionally dubbed cassettes and digital download via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp on Friday 1st February 2019.

https://crowversuscrow.bandcamp.com/

Solanaceae

Cradlewell Lacrima

Penance Stare - Cradlewell Lacrima (Solanaceae / Crow Versus Crow, 2019)

Crow Versus Crow is honoured to be able to present to you 'Gallooner', by Chlorine – alias of thee mighty Gateshead-based artist and multi-instrumentalist, Graeme Hopper. Following last year’s 'Loser Herd', released on the Panarus Productions label, 'Gallooner', digs deeper into the artist’s psyche to construct heavily layered and complex sonic evocations and excavations of the artist’s Self. It is by far the most personal collection of recordings Chlorine has produced to date.

Anxiety. Loneliness. Self-Loathing. Depression.

All hewn crude in catharsis.

That is not to say that 'Gallooner' is a violent, nihilistic, ugly record. As with many creative expressions of melancholy, there is a deep, complicated beauty within the intricate soundscapes. It’s probably a hopeful record. But its seeds are sown deep in frustration and doubt.

Gall.

Bitterness. Bile. Audacity.
A skin sore caused by chronic irritation. 
Brazen boldness coupled with impudent assurance and insolence.
Flaw.

And doubt.

With 'Gallooner', Chlorine has produced six eclectic yet cohesive soundscapes that range from throbbing, percussive, post-Dub, post-Industrial, post-Techno, sunk ravers, to heavily textured string-scraping, tape-hissing evocations of nocturnal wanderings, both dreamlike and concrete. Found sounds and field recordings coalesce with keys, strings and percussion to form intricate compositions rich in a symbiotic sense of geographic and psychological place.

'Gallooner' is released as a limited edition of 50 hand-numbered professionally dubbed cassettes and digital download via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp on Friday 12th July 2019, featuring artwork by Hopper.

Gallooner

Song For A Silhouette

Chlorine - Song For A Silhouette (Gallooner / Crow Versus Crow, 2019)

Artist: Carnivorous Plants
Title: Mammon
Label: Crow Versus Crow
Cat: CVC015
Format: Limited Edition of 50 CD-Rs & Digital Download
Release date: Friday 29th November 2019

Mammon

Excerpts from 'Mammon'

Carnivorous Plants - Excerpts From 'Mammon' (CVC015)

Artist: Shit Creek
Title: The Land Of The Remember
Label: Crow Versus Crow
Catalogue Number: CVC016
Format: Limited Edition of 50 CD-Rs & digital download
Release Date: Friday 27th March 2020

Crow Versus Crow is delighted to present for public absorption a new body of supra-spectral, barely-contained-by-the-medium-of-sound works from Shit Creek, titled, 'The Land Of The Remember'.

It can be difficult to make music about anything other than clinical depression when you're clinically depressed. Similarly, it can be difficult to imagine a reality beyond our own when the one we find ourselves in is so thoroughly depressing. Recorded between October and December 2019, in the midst of the General Election and the dismal sham masquerading as political discourse, 'The Land of the Remember' could be seen as an attempt to forge an alternative - free from the restrictions of stifling oppression and dehumanising, debilitating structures of the contemporary UK .

Jamming the emotive tranquility of the raga against a glittering technicolour that glitch-flips between atomizing anxiety and absolute joy, 'The Land Of The Remember' is an attempt to create the sound of a world beyond, or perhaps reconfigured from, the current socio-political context.

With no beat to anchor, the layers of granular fizz, squelching tropicalia glimmers and discordant plucked whatevers form shifting, expansive plains of multifarious sound, in a psychedelic bricolage of transcendental reconstitutions of the everyday.

'The Land Of The Remember' is released as a limited edition of 50 hand-numbered CD-Rs and digital download via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp on Friday 27th March 2020. The physical version is presented as a full-colour thermal printed CD-R, housed in a recycled card ‘greeting card’ sleeve, with full colour artwork by Crow Versus Crow.

________________________________________

Shit Creek began as a solo project centred on a violin-and-cassette-loop setup, in an attempt to imitate and musicalize birdsong near my childhood home in the Holme Valley. Over the years, and several moves around less rural climes, the sound and approach have evolved to incorporate toy synths, electric and 12-string guitar, junk, cymbals and an array of pedals, with the focus now on creating static sound collages, lo-fi airing cupboard psychedelia, and un-anhedonic, happy new sonic worlds. 

Since 2017, Shit Creek has released numerous records, on such esteemed No-Audience Underground labels as Liquid Library, Structured Disasters and Moon Myst, along with self-released works through the Luxury Bucket mini-label. This is alongside releasing highly regarded collaborative works with Neil Campbell ('Arclight' was one of The Quietus’ Tracks of The Month, Sep 2019) and Owen Chambers (Tremolo Ghosts), whilst contributing violin parts to numerous others' work.

Shit Creek - Happy Skeletonzz (Crow Versus Crow, 2020)

Artist: Brandstifter & Diurnal Burdens
Title: Miraculous Seepage
Label: Crow Versus Crow
Cat: CVC020
Format: Limited-Edition of 50 cassettes & digital download
Release Date: Friday 26th February 2021
Bandcamp Link (active on release): https://crowversuscrow.bandcamp.com/album/miraculous-seepage

++++Peep box shadow play.
////////Spliced scenes on a carousel looping.
\\\\\\\\Vinegar stink.

\\\\ Two figures in a parasomniac waltz click mesmeric. The slumped marionette nods in cadaveric spasm. Glimmering fish-scales fall in soft violet pirouette. Hummed shanties leak from neon fissures. The Jolly Chimp claps in amnesiac glee

++++++++++++ Projections slip and stutter.

Goose stepping armies march by writhing strings------------Silver light static flicker

///Sulphuric miasma.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\Miraculous seepage

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Crow Versus Crow is honoured to present Miraculous Seepage, seven surrealist dioramas, two sides of collaborative tape loop bunraku, from Brandstifter and Diurnal Burdens. Part Herman Hesse fairy tale, part Lynchian hypnagogia; with whirring spools clicks and visible strings, slewed transmissions break through the void. Ferric zoetropes in varispeed.

Brandstifter & Diurnal Burdens - S. Scheint In Solcher Zeit (from 'Miraculous Seepage' / CVC020)

See the Crow Versus Crow Mixcloud http://www.mixcloud.com/CrowVersusCrowPromotions/  for archived episodes of the Crow Versus Crow Radio Show.

Crow Versus Crow is an independent, not-for-profit curatorial project based in Halifax, West Yorkshire.

Initiated in September 2010, the aim of Crow Versus Crow is to contribute to the developing music scene, and broader creative climate in Halifax, by presenting a variety of interdisciplinary projects featuring local, national and international artists.

Crow Versus Crow presents, to date, limited physical editions, a community radio show and podcast and live music events exploring the intersection between contemporary D.I.Y and non-mainstream music and visual art culture.

We welcome participation from, and collaboration with, those who wish to effect a positive change within their own community through creative practice.

punk rock/p-diddy/an♥ichris♥

http://crowversuscrow.blogspot.co.uk
http://www.facebook.com/thecrowversuscrowrecordlabel

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