SEPTEMBER 2024

Past Machine” (originally written for John Peel):
 "Only a few weeks before the late great John Peel died, he honored Lali Puna by inviting them for a Peel Seesion. It was recorded in BBC's studio 4 in London on sept 30th 2004. The band performed ''6-0-3" , "Small Things" , as well as the exclusive song "Past Machine" and "Nin-Com-Pop"

Lali Puna: Past Machine (John Peel Session 2004)

Slow Heart Music is the acoustic side project of ambient and drone musician Ben Rath. Based in Manchester, UK, Ben has released music under his own name with labels including Sound in Silence, Unknown Tone Records, Eilean Rec., Cathedral Transmissions, Moonswing Netlabel, Triple Moon Records and Whitelabrecs. As Slow Heart Music, Ben focuses more closely on solo acoustic guitar instrumentals and has released albums exclusively through Whitelabrecs.
The majority of Ben's musical output finds its home in the rich and diverse territory of experimental ambient and drone music. Ben creates compositions using original recordings of guitar, keyboard, and piano, as well as samples, field recordings, and digital synthesizers. These sounds from various sources are then moulded, transformed, and edited together to form instrumental arrangements which span a wide variety of styles, tones, and emotional registers, with inspiration drawn from pioneers in the genre such as Tim Hecker and Lawrence English, the early ambient works of artists such as Sean McCann and Colleen, and the emotional weight and resonance of Constellation Records greats such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Esmerine (among many others).

Under the Slow Heart Music moniker, Ben strips things back to explore the simple joy of the acoustic guitar. His playing, influenced by the likes of Eric Chenaux and Richard Dawson, as well as the gentle beauty of solo piano works from artists such as Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds, combines a sense of playful and spontaneous improvisation with arrangements and compositions that often express a gentle and tender emotion.

For his new album ‘Hope’, Ben returns to the artful acoustic arrangements and soulful guitar playing that marked his debut as Slow Heart Music, ‘This Body Is Not Me’ (2017). Armed with the same £5 half-size classical guitar which was used to record the first time around, Ben adds a second classical acoustic borrowed from his girlfriend in the spirit of using whatever was to hand to create with. He had a vision for the sound he wanted to achieve, which builds on influences from artists that embrace the mournful and melancholic, but also find beauty and uplift amidst the sadness. As Ben explains, “I’ve struggled with my mental health ever since adolescence, and music was the thing that often provided me with the most solace and comfort. The artists that inspired me were those who were expressing something that felt real to my experience, that taught me that I was not as alone in my feelings of deep sadness and anxiety as I often felt, and that meaning and beauty could still be found and expressed in the midst of it all.’’

Those who know him would describe Ben as a quiet, calm, and reserved person, but his music is the space where he is able to express himself more fully. ‘Hope’ is a collection of soft and minimal pieces, steeped in emotion and feeling, at times mournful, at others uplifting, but never seeking to prematurely soothe or distract from the suffering of the world, instead sitting in the mud of it all, and seeing what can be created from there. It is Ben’s sincere hope that his music may help some other lonely soul feel that little bit more connected and understood.

Hope

wlr161 Slow Heart Music - Hope

Liminal Animals

Nocturne #1

About the song:
As much as the nature of “A Measure of Shape and Sounds” has been inspired by a profound introspection about life’s impermanence and the decaying sensations that accompany the defying acceptance of our own existential consciousness, “Sorrowful Bouquet” evokes serenity and peacefulness, the results of losing our illusionary control over the conceptual power of time and over our physical limitations and tangible perspectives, thus offering the possibility to embrace emotional freedom that comes with the emancipative reflection of who we are; a transient fragment of the sound waves we’ve created through the limitations of our own selves.
***
About the video:
Aligned with the aesthetic of the Asian wabi sabi philosophy, the video for the song “Sorrowful Bouquet” was filmed in the Japanese prefecture of Tottori and is the visual metaphor contextualizing such disorienting state of mind, where the endless ocean of undulating and modulating sand symbolizes the volatile incarnation of our intimate — yet global — sense of reality. The water all around acts as a representation of a perpetual passage towards letting go, while the transience of the wind offers the uncanny sublimation that balances our daily sensations, scattering its different components. The sun then comes as a stabilizing marker between evolving spiritual intangibilities and the palpable decline of our personal fatalistic views. It’s a willful acceptance beyond our controlling resistance. 
***
About the album:
Following Kimiyo, what would eventually become the second chapter of Voyage à la Mer, A Measure of Shape and Sounds, is an intimate journey of its own, representing a profound personal breathe-in made of several layers of guitar loops, reverberations, resonances, and oscillations juxtaposed together to create a sonic multi-directional contemplative maelstrom. Purposely recorded live to capture as direct a flow as possible, the songs embodied at that exact moment carried their human disposition not only to abandon oneself to the motion but to become one with it. Foster mentioned: “It felt like the representation of an organic movement that could ultimately break us free from the echo chamber we might have been trapped in and therefore end the emotional twirl and affective cycle of redundancy that too often comes with our emptiness and desperation.”

He adds: “Even though I had the conviction that we had guided Kimiyo as far as we had to without spoiling its natural beam of light by suddenly adding the shadows of our ambitions to it all, Ben and I felt there was more to explore, as so many additional fragments of musical landscapes instinctively surfaced while we kept dwelling on the vivid sensations we were both still being impacted with at that precise instant.”

Instrumental by choice and minimalist by design, it was capital for Foster that A Measure of Shape and Sounds stood as its own living organism, not as a faire-valoir or add-on to the growing entity that Voyage à la Mer was becoming. If Momoka incarnated Kimiyo’s voice, Foster was adamant about the fact that “no introspection is really yours until you voice it yourself.” In that sense, the album would provide an ongoing soundtrack to that internal self-searching reflection inviting us to lift ourselves forward, to tame the other bonding voices to which we usually surrender our longing desires for freedom.

Sorrowful Bouquet

1st Revolt of the AI

SOFT PAIN

I JUST MIGHT DUST

VISION

CAPTURE THE FLAG

RED AND ORANGE

WHALE WATCHER

Slo-Fi (Volume 2) Released on all your favourite streaming platforms soon.

01 Bonjour, Côte d'Azur!

Ｓｉｌｅｎｃｅ

The new album 'Healing Is A Miracle', released 10 July on Ninja Tune: https://julianna.lnk.to/healingSo

Nebula

music , partial lyrics & vocals . The Fudge Nutz @helenswambo
original track: https://soundcloud.com/helenswambo/get-out-this-is-private-property
lyrics inspired by an interview of Sarah Suhail (https://pakistanswomenheroes.wordpress.com/tag/sarah-suhail/)
vocal performance + their production*, partial lyrics . Mariam Zohra D : Myrh
cover image: Dalit Panthers Of Maharashtra

lyrics in the original from The Fudge Nutz:
hold your body free/freely, bring it next to me
hold your body/ hold it natural
- jah jah, heel!
- jah, jah, feel!
- jah, jah, wait!
- jah, jah, wail!
- jah, jah, swale!
- jah, jah, move! 
- jah, jah, move your 
- jah, jah, move your body
chin up,
its time to go!


"you know, we are standing on the shoulders of giants" **
(keep up the work
move your body)
for when we gather
we work together
it doesn't matter
who knows
or how far you get
you just forget
you get involved
you get going 
before you know it
your life has changed
(cause baby)
we
are standing on the shoulders of giants
shoulders of giants

**I was video-editing an interview of Sarah Suhail (https://pakistanswomenheroes.wordpress.com/tag/sarah-suhail/) and what she said there got stuck in my mind for a few days atleast; i paraphrase her for the rest of the lyrics.

The Fudge Nutz & Myrh

Your Body Free - The Fudge Nutz | Myrh

"Fire with Fire" is the 2nd of 13 or so songs from my debut solo album, Year Zero.

this song is available to BUY on bandcamp https://miaowmcdonald.bandcamp.com/track/fire-with-fire

"Fire with Fire" is also available on all other digital platforms to download and/or stream... iTunes, Spotify, Napster, Deezer, GooglePlay, AppleMusic, TikTok, YouTube  etc etc etc...

(c)(p) written & performed by Miaow McDonald

engineered/co-produced by Robert Davidson, the Aged Choir Boy, who also plays drums & additional slide guitar on this track.

Miaow McDonald only plays Fender Guitars.

LYRICS:

you can't fight fire with fire
someone always gets burned.
i've got this raging desire
tidal waves can't be turned.

ooh ooh...

i could burn down your house
turn your whole world upside down.
don't swim in deep water, girl, no...
there's every chance that you'll drown

ooh ooh...

and you...
what would you do for love?
would you cry for me?
yeah you!
what would you do for love?
would you die for me...?

you can't fight fire with fire
someone always, always gets burned
you'd do exactly the same
if the tables were turned...

I JUST MIGHT DUST

Silver Souljah

Related tracks