Norman Westberg - The Chance To
LCR Records - LCR010
Release date: 1st December 2017
www.littlecrackdrabbit.co.uk/lcr010.html

'The Chance To' is the new album by Norman Westberg, perhaps best known for his guitar playing in Swans but now making a name for himself with long-form ambient guitar works. Many listeners have noted the depth and subtlety of Westberg’s compositions and the four new tracks on ‘The Chance To’ are no exception. They have a rare ability to echo both the clarity of minimalism and the maximal intensity of the best overdriven rock bands. Much patience and care is taken with his sounds and, fundamentally, there is always a lightness of touch to Westberg’s work.

Norman Westberg - One One (edit)

LCR Records start 2018 by announcing their next release: Washington DC’s abstract electronics outfit BLK w/BEAR with their new (textually challenging) album ‘MO RE B ROKEN TH AN Y OU’.

Heavily involved in DC’s new electronics scene (including the Sonic Circuits series that “exposes audiences to cutting edge contemporary music that defies genres”), BLK w/BEAR operate more as a collective group of individuals intrigued by the possibilities of sound than as a traditional band. Not for nothing is one member credited as playing “Califone turntables” and “Morse code”. ‘MO RE B ROKEN TH AN Y OU’ is their most fully-realised recording to date.The album consumes multiple influences from the worlds of contemporary music and art, processing them into sounds that are both familiar and strangely disorienting. In their own words, BLK w/BEAR “wanted to create something familiar yet wholly different”. 
 
For reference points, the combination of dissonance, melody and depth in opening track ‘How To Stage Yr Own Death’ follows on from Ben Frost’s exploration of clashing overtones and there’s certainly an echo of Kosmische Muzik in the gently pulsing ‘Weggewaschen’.The sparse piano lines of ‘Sloth Extraction 11’ threaten to quote from a modern classical composer before the underlying electronics rise up and push it off course, an event that occurs across several tracks. Later on is a piece entitled ‘Allan Kaprow’ in tribute to a pioneer of performance art, another clue as to the collective’s leanings. Finally, the album resolves with the lengthy ‘Honour Code’, sounding almost like a liturgical song heard from afar, a neat summary of BLK w/BEAR’s overall approach.   
 
PREVIOUS PRESS
THE WIRE (UK):“BLK w/BEAR are like Basic Channel at their most abstract, and after a serious nervous breakdown."
ECHOES & DUST (UK):“A sonic holy place.” 
DECODER (US): “A space-bound entity, evoking the vast harmonious shifting of the cosmos through the use of glitchy tape cuts, hovering strings and echoing drones." 
SUBJECTIVISTEN (NL):“A peerless and most compelling album.”
TERRASCOPE (UK): “Teutonic, Eno-esque and psychedelic."   
   
PERSONNEL 
JS Adams : loops . prepared vinyl . Califone turntables . Morse code . electronics . prepared guitar . processing
Doug Poplin : cello + effects . lap steel . Korg LittleBits . trumpet . voice
PD Sexton : bass + effects . guitar + effects . Korg Minilogue .
Renée Shaw : live video mix

BLK w/BEAR - We Fled Into The Darkness Because That Is All There Ever Was

P J PHILIPSON - Linotopia
LCR Records // LCR012
Release date: 20th July 2018
http://www.littlecrackdrabbit.co.uk/lcr012.html

LCR are pleased to announce the new album by P J Philipson, the follow-up to his acclaimed (and long sold out) 2014 album ‘Peaks’ (“A masterpiece” - Metro) that became a firm favourite of Gideon Coe and Stuart Maconie on 6Music. ‘Linotopia’ is an album of dreamy, spatial guitar music in which electric and acoustic instruments, tone generators and field recordings have been modified through dynamic, time and spatial processes to form fluid harmonic shapes and juddering rhythmic layers. Inspiration for the album was found in the former Linotype works on the edge of Manchester’s suburbs and the music of Vini Reilly, Manuel Göttsching, Conny Veit and Steve Reich, amongst many others.

P J Philipson - Rhythmanalysis

LCR releases so far:
Norman Westberg +++ Mia Zabelka +++ Mark Harris & JOHN 3:16 +++ Brave Timbers +++ We Mythical Kings +++ Hypnodrone Ensemble +++ Black Walls +++ PJ Philipson +++ A.R.C. Soundtracks +++ BLK w/BEAR

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