Name: A Troublesome Space Voyage by Emily A. Sprague
Duration: 7 min 22 s
Description: It's beautiful up there, but it's not easy...

@ashleybruner: thanks!  have fun making sounds :-)

London-based keyboardist/producer Dan Nicholls (of Y-OTIS) introduces a new album project ‘Mattering And Meaning’ to be released by We Jazz Records on August 13th. Nicholls' music uses acoustic piano as its key element, transporting the instrument into new territories that sound remarkably natural and organic, whilst displaying a strong kinship with the world of abstract electronic music. The music utilises piano loops and field recordings as its key elements, forming what might be described on the surface as a fascinating ambient jazz record – but at the same time there's so much more at play here on deeper levels. Dan's music sounds at once otherworldly and immensely inviting.

With its uncanny landscape of fine sand drifts, juniper fields and pine, the ancient Beerze forest in the North-East of the Netherlands is a site of many unusual convergences of human and other than human stories. 'Papa' continues to unravel the threads of a deep artistic collaboration and kinship between pianist and producer Dan Nicholls and the Dutch filmmaker and anthropologist Louise Boer. These fuzzily collaged images and sounds represent a common love for finding the in-between places in which ideas can find deeper roots, channeled here through a dreamlike world which holds within it the location in which Louise’s father, Henk Boer, found his final resting place.

Mattering and Meaning

Exclusive Premiere: Dan Nicholls "Papa" (We Jazz Records)

From album "Outside The Dream Syndicate." Originally released in 1973. Reissued on Superior Viaduct, 2016. www.superiorviaduct.com

Buy Vinyl or CD

Tony Conrad with Faust - The Side Of Man And Womankind (excerpt)

Landing: "Third Sight" will be out on El Paraiso Records June 17 on CD, download and LP (transparent green vinyl limited to 750 copies)!

Preorder from: www.elparaisorecords.com

"Connecticut's Landing have specialized in a mild and rural kind of psychedelia over the course of nearly two decades. Recent releases have seen them closer to post-punk and shoegaze territory than ever, but Third Sight – recorded specifically for El Paraiso Records’ Impetus series – builds on the hallucinatory soundscapes of the band's earliest days.

There's a unique sense of motoric drift to these four long pieces, and an organic blend of rock instrumentation and analog electronics that brings to mind Eno's best collaborations in the 1970s. But the group's flair for fuzzy drones and new weirdsy commune-folk also betrays their affiliation with the experimental American east coast scene –these guys have played shows with their friends in Bardo Pond, releasing a split EP with Windy & Carl and playing numerous Terrastocks throughout their existence. 

And despite releasing one brilliant album after another the band remains appalingly under-appreciated. Perhaps because the tryyps Landing take are rooted in self-exploration. As trends in krautrock, drone, folk, and psychedelia ebb and flow, Landing remain unfazed. The door to Landing’s world is open, but there isn’t a flashing neon sign above it. These guys are far removed from the hustle and bustle of geographic cultural bubbles, both physically and spiritually.

Listening through this LP is likely to stimulate mental images of rural winds blowing across vast American fields of grass, bonfires, blue rivers and power lines sailing through rolling hills. Landing's psychedelia possesses a rare timelessness. We are proud to present this offering from the band in the El Paraiso catalog!"


Landing: "Delusion Sound"

It's beautiful up there, but it's not easy...

A Troublesome Space Voyage

For Daytime

Faerie Woods

My first patch with the Make Noise Morphagene.  Clouds in resonator mode being triggered by Varigate 8+ and being fed a sequence by Tides (note CV from Varigate going to Tides and Clouds 1v/o.  Stereo out from clouds to Morphagene.  Morphagene to K-Mix which adds some reverb.

Journey Through Morphagene

An early, transitional cut by The Nightcrawlers, recorded as a duo shortly before Dave Lunt completed the trio, “Luv-Li-Musik” (from 1982’s cassette Synthmania), released as a digital single from Anthology Recordings The Biophonic Boombox Recordings, showcases an unusually harder edge for the act’s patented electronic kozmik drift. That’s not to say that the Gulch Brothers had detoured into a precursor of fluorescent rave ala Manuel Göttsching’s E2-E4 (recorded a year earlier, and released two years later). Rather, the interlocking motifs of the track highlight the group’s interest in pattern music ala Steve Reich, who was an influence not only on The Nightcrawlers’ beloved Berliner Schule (of which Göttsching was a member), but also on the Philadelphia experimental scene centered around University of Pennsylvania radio station WXPN and Philadelphia’s Painted Bride Art Center. In it, you can hear the distinct quality each one of the two brought to the aggregation: rising and falling ambient beds, mysterious and lush, pillowing the intensity of Peter Gulch's hypnotically repetitive patterns, while Tom Gulch's minor key soloing pierces through, capturing the imagination.  So in tune to the talents of one another were The Nightcrawlers that “Luv-Li-Musik” is an improvisation that could easily pass as composition. And with the addition of Lunt and his experimental background, they would soon commence launch into the deepest regions of space.

The Biophonic Boombox Recordings

Learn More

The Nightcrawlers - Luv-Li-Musik

From Oiro Pena 10'' (Ultra-023, 2019) limited edition of 200, silkscreened sleeves. Released on 7th of June, 2019. 
Buy vinyl ---> ultraaanirecords@gmail.com
------
On Working Alone

The first person to create something one may classify as instrumental music was probably alone. The mind tingles when imagining the prehistoric moment when, for the very first time, a member of what then was the human race grabbed something and used it to make a purposeless series of sounds. Even if some of his fellow beings had been present at the time, would they have understood anything of it? Would they have taken interest in it and stopped to listen, or would they have demanded something easier to dance to?

The leap from vocalizing or clapping to a form of expression produced with instruments may have taken a long time, perhaps even a thousand years. The same goes for the fabrication of such instruments. Human communities were small, and influences spread slowly. We do know, however, that the first discovered instruments date back to 43,000 years ago and took the form of flutes made from the bones of mammoths and birds. Researchers believe they played a role in religion and in entertainment – in this sense, very little has changed. The wildest theories claim that music was one of the factors that gave us, the Homo sapiens, a competitive edge over the Neanderthal: music helped foster deeper cooperation between individuals. 

In any case, however, the ones who decided to hollow out that bone and find out what kind of sound you could get out of it were individuals, and this brings us back to our theme of working alone. The modern solo musician enjoys a much greater sense of liberty than our distant forefathers. Multi-track and recording technology freed us from our physical constraints and allowed us to imagine ourselves as a multiplicity. Everyone could, in the comfort of his home, be his own one-man band without having to strap an array of instruments onto his body like carnival musicians or Rahsaan Roland Kirk used to.

This is the frame from which A. E. Vauhkonen and Oiro Pena spring from. Vauhkonen´s hands simultaneously summon up brass, flutes, keyboards, drums, stringed instruments and all sorts of percussion. The sound is firm and slightly cosmic, like early Sun Ra Arkestra at its heartiest. But that’s enough about the music, listen for yourself. 

-Markus Karlqvist

Nimeton

Oiro Pena - Nimeton

A decade since his first productions as part of Pendle Coven, Miles Whittaker delivers his debut album proper for Modern Love. The intervening time has seen him forge a formidable reputation alongside Sean Canty as Demdike Stare, and with Andy Stott as Millie & Andrea, beside his operations in the hardware field as Suum Cuique, solo excursions as MLZ and shadowy involvement in the HATE project - all the while building upon his in-demand skills as a DJ of twenty odd years experience, accumulating and absorbing far flung knowledge of hardcore UK jungle, Chicago house, Motor City Soul, the obscure UK techno of labels like Radioactive Lamb and Irdial, Italian concrète, Synthwave and contemporary noise. Which brings us to 'Faint Hearted', the Burnley-bred, Berlin-based maestro's debut solo opus; eight entirely analogue constructions riding the wave from wormhole hardcore clatter ('Lebensform') to body-compressing subbass undulations ('Irreligious'), trekking through frayed techno minimalism ('Status Narcissism') to mind-drift ambient ('Sense Data') and what sounds like a Demdike Stare track constructed on a worksite ('Rejoice'). But if you ask us, the best bits occur right at the end, with the ominous bass, funereal strings and obliterated noise of 'Archaic Thought Pattern 1' or the field recording clangour of 'Queuing', and certainly the majestically gratifying yet subtly dystopian 9 minute closer 'Loran Dreams'. As an individual sonic statement, it's an evocative exposition of Miles’ love of electronic music in all its shapes, harnessing his fidgety production style into one expansive, restless set of tracks.

Loran Dreams

From the Castles In Space bandcamp page at:
https://cis-isolationtapes.bandcamp.com/album/the-isolation-tapes-compact-disc

This album contains music recorded by artists in lockdown during the 2020 COVID-19 Corona Virus Pandemic.

Submissions were invited for tracks recorded and mixed only between 23rd March and 17th April, 2020 at the start of the UK quarantine period.

Castles in Space would like to express sincere gratitude to all the artists who gave their time and submitted their works for the project and thereby made this release possible.

Mastered by Jez Butler
Artwork and design by Nick Taylor for spectral-studio.co.uk

CiS062MC is also available as a related cassette volume featuring an additional selection of works.

All tracks are under license to Castles in Space for the purposes of this release and all copyright remains with the artists.

Profits from this album will go to support Cavell Nurses’ Trust (registered charity no. 1160148 and SC041453).

Cavell Nurses’ Trust proudly give money and support to nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants in hardship whether they are working or retired.

If you are a healthcare professional experiencing personal or financial hardship, please contact them today at: www.cavellnursestrust.org / 01527 595999.

The Isolation Tapes

Innerspaces

Modular synthesizer compositions and sound design.

~ mlesprg@gmail.com ~
mlesprg.info
mlesprg.bandcamp.com

A Troublesome Space Voyage

Emily A. Sprague

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Emily A. Sprague

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