'Study 1: SNAZ' [SLP009] is the first in a series of deranged dancefloor studies by Tom Rose, for which he is adopting his TCR moniker. 

Bookended by two remixes of cuts from Micachu’s 'Meat Batch Mix' with Kwake Bass and 'I’m Not Dancing' EP with Tirzah are three TCR originals borne out of an admiration for the producer’s bludgeoning and eccentric dance music. On 'Leaves', 'Vixen' and 'Peach', TCR contorts blunted beats into glitched, fuzzy complexity whilst remaining true to the music’s dancefloor function. Just. In his remixes of 'Go' and 'I’m Not Dancing', the artist remains recklessly playful, with the originals occasionally rearing their heads through the gloop.

Study 1: SNAZ [SLP009] - TCR
Released: September 2014

Peach - TCR

'Sleep Spindles' [SLP013] is the debut full-length of Dublin-born, London-based composer Paul McGuire.

McGuire's fastidious pieces wrench the fizzes, crackles, and hums of acoustic instruments into towering swarms of sound. 'Sleep Spindles' collects three of his most focussed, guttural works to date. On 'Tampered', the minute squeaks of Céline Papion’s cello are gathered in solid hunks; the microtonal guitar drones of 'Marshes' are part seduction, part dread; and 'Sleep Spindles' gleans an earthy poise from the skins of a simple percussion set-up. 'Sleep Spindles' [SLP013] makes the nanoscopic speak with exquisite force, and carves out a defiant zone between the luxurious washes of ambient maestros like Tim Hecker, and the more rarified noise compositions of Helmut Lachenmann.

Aside from numerous individual shows, McGuire’s work has been performed by the London Sinfonietta, Loré Lixenberg and Sarah Nicolls, and at festivals internationally including Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, SPOR in Aarhus, and at Bang On A Can in Massachussets. He is nearing the completion of his doctorate studies with Christopher Fox and Jennifer Walshe at Brunel University.

www.paulmcguirecomposer.com
www.slipimprint.co.uk

Sleep Spindles [SLP013] - Paul McGuire
Released: June 2015

Marshes - Paul McGuire

'March Of The Whales' [SLP014] is the fastidious debut of San Franciscan producer Sean C. Stevens.

'March Of The Whales' is a synthetic spectacle rebuilt, pixel by pixel, from the rubble of an operatic arc. Stevens renders an erratic electronic landscape in scrupulous detail, one populated by stuttering rhythms, phantasmal machine song, and purring drones. The three-dimensional, non-linear, and distinctly visual quality with which Stevens conceives of the LP betrays his background in both design, physics, and as a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute.

But for all its conceptual motivation, 'March Of The Whales' is elegant, even sensuous. On ‘Magis Minus’, Stevens strums brittle snaps and android bleeps like a lyre, and ‘Candesco Somnium [I & II]’ is as close to blissed-out Tangerine Dream as Autechrian neurosis. As such, the album injects obsession with a vital levity and joy, much in the vein of electronic pioneers like Morton Subotnick.

'March Of The Whales' is available in a limited CD run, with artwork by Sean C. Stevens & Dori Deng.

www.slipimprint.co.uk

March Of The Whales [SLP014] - Sean C. Stevens
Released: July 2015

Magis Minus - Sean C. Stevens

'Got Gills?' [SLP015] is the exigent Slip debut of Manchester-based Otto Willberg. 'Got Gills?' is a commanding introduction to the double bassist’s assertive, heady style. This unhinged collection of live acoustic takes (no amps, no overdubs) marries rasping grit and mesmeric repetition, and announces the arrival of a precocious instrumental talent.

Otto is a double bass player living in Manchester, interested in improvisation, experimental and contemporary music. An urgent agitator of his local scene, he is a core component of caustic psych outfit Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura, and of Manchester's ever-blooming underground.

'Got Gills?' is available in a limited tape run, housed in a filter-foam case designed by Susie Whaites, and accompanied by a tracing-paper poster and insert artwork by Rian Treanor.

www.ottowillberg.com
www.slipimprint.co.uk

Got Gills? [SLP015] - Otto Willberg
Released: September 2015

4.4 - Otto Willberg

'Storage' [SLP018], the ravishing debut release from British composer Aaron Parker, collects five works attentively compiled over a period of almost three years. Parker’s pieces are as much ‘environments’ as ‘compositions’: rich ecosystems where strata of fibrous acoustic and electronic sound are overlaid in undulating cycles at once mechanical and utterly natural.

Lead cut ‘Warehouse’ is a substantial ensemble piece dating from 2012, where lurching winds, balletic metal percussion, and chiming harps curiously assemble around a supple violin line and a dripping metronomic glitch. Though it owes a debt to the mammoth, chugging minimalism of ‘70s Glass and Reich, ‘Warehouse’ is far from brutal, and exudes a lushness more akin to the environmental works of Zimoun and Chris Watson.

'Storage''s accompanying works - which take their titles simply from the GPS location and date on which they were completed - foreground electronic over acoustic processes. Parker’s looped scrapes, sighing machines, and snatches of field recording reverberate in strange, artificial acoustics. These uncannily melodic pieces distort both temporal and spatial perception, and the influence of Cage, Eno, and Giuseppe Ielasi loom large.

Parker is as indebted to visual ruminations upon landscape - Larry Gottheim, Norman Ackroyd, Gerhard Richter, Julian Opie - as sonic ones. Fittingly, 'Storage'’s completion owes much to an intense period of collaboration with visual artist Susie Whaites. One of a limited series of 60 photographs by Whaites is contained within each copy of this limited release, which comes paired with a cassette, the full digital audio files, and a bonus talk tape with early pressings. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux.

@aaron-parker-2
www.aaron-parker.com
www.slipimprint.co.uk

Storage [SLP018] - Aaron Parker
Released: January 2016

Warehouse - Aaron Parker

Lawrence Lek’s 'Unreal Estate' is a speculative simulation in which London’s Royal Academy of Arts has been sold off as a luxury playboy mansion to an anonymous Chinese billionaire. First shown at the RA itself in 2015, and available to play online as part of Lek’s 'Bonus Levels' series, this dystopian and poignantly funny piece was the winner of the ICA Tenderflix award and the Dazed x Converse Emerging Artist Award. 

'Unreal Estate'’s eerie landscape is underpinned by a soundtrack from cellist and composer Oliver Coates. Coates’ cello chorales are both tender and stark; glossy Reichian quavers, elephantine bass lines and cultivated waltzes reverberate within the gallery’s imaginary walls. Interspersed amongst Coates’ themes are selections from 'Unreal Estate'’s narrator, whose advice to potential investors comes from a found text from Russian Tatler, translated into Mandarin by Joni Zhu. 

Lek and Coates are both highly respected in their own fields. In the last two months, Lek has exhibited alongside Holly Herndon and Benedict Drew at Wysing Arts Centre’s 'The Uncanny Valley', and been announced as the visual collaborator for Kode9’s 2016 'Nøthing' tour. Coates’ lauded solo album 'Towards the Blessed Islands', released on PRAH in 2013, showcased the virtuosity and flexibility the cellist has brought to collaborations with Mica Levi, Jonny Greenwood and many many more. This release captures both artists at the top of their game. 

'Unreal Estate OST' [SLP019] is available digitally from November 2015, mastered by Rupert Clervaux, alongside a limited-edition A1 poster designed by Lawrence Lek and Tom Rose.

@ollycoates
@lawrencelek
www.olivercoates.com
www.lawrencelek.com
www.slipimprint.co.uk

Unreal Estate OST [SLP019] - Lawrence Lek & Oliver Coates
Released: November 2015

Dragons (Theme from Unreal Estate) - Lawrence Lek & Oliver Coates

'Vyamanikal' is the Slip debut of Kit Downes and Tom Challenger: a collection of transcendent improvisations where the primordial moans and whistles of remote organs meld with gossamer saxophone. 

Recorded at 5 Suffolk churches during a 2015 Aldeburgh Music residency, 'Vyamanikal' deftly explores the native nuances and acoustics of 6 organs and their surrounding environment. Downes’ organ playing is alternately delicate and thunderous, teasing out unearthly vibrations from converted harmoniums and mighty, century-old 3 manual organs like Framlingham’s ‘Thamar Organ’. Challenger’s sax lines act as a conduit between the instrument and their locale, probing errant pipe tones for interferences, and embellishing distant birdsong.

Named after the ancient Sanskrit term for flying machines - ‘Vaimānika Shāstra’ - the pair’s second release since 2012’s Wedding Music celebrates music-making at its most meditative and transient. 

Kit and Tom have performed together at the Royal Festival Hall, Café OTO, The London Contemporary Music Festival, Cologne Philharmonie, Swaledale Music Festival, and been broadcasted live on the BBC. 'Vyamanikal'’s forthcoming dates include Aldeburgh Festival, Manchester Jazz Festival, and Norway’s Stavanger Organ Day.

'Vyamanikal' [SLP024] is available on CD and download. It comes packaged with a fold-out A3 poster with photography by Alex Bonney, who also recorded, mixed and mastered the album.

@tomchallenger
@kitdownesmusic
vimeo.com/148794039

Vyamanikal [SLP024] - Kit Downes & Tom Challenger
Released: May 2016

Sa - Kit Downes & Tom Challenger

'Heat, War, Sweat, Law' is British composer Laurie Tompkins’ debut solo recording: a desperate stomp on the bones of Heaven 17’s ‘The Height Of The Fighting’, replete with rabid voices, cracked pots, faltering pipes, spent IKEA bags and egg shakers, and spasmodic ghosts of Martyn Ware synths. 

Part foaming rant, part exercise routine, HWSL’s incessant shaking, hammering and yelling wear down soloist, tools, and the tolerance of an audience put upon by a dispersed mob seeking to recruit them in their inane howling and clapping. 

Laurie has been commissioned by Aldeburgh Music, the LSO Soundhub Scheme, and the ddmmyy series; performed HWSL in London, Aarhus, and Berlin; made radio programs for Resonance and NTS; and collaborated with Oliver Coates, Otto Willberg, Suze Whaites, and Dori Deng. He co-directs Slip with Tom Rose and Suze Whaites. 

'Heat, War, Sweat, Law' [SLP029] is available on metallic gold C25 tape or CD, with download. It comes packaged with a fold-out A3 poster with ‘business wanker’ artwork by Joel Wycherley. Tapes dubbed by Callum Higgins. Mixed and mastered by Owen Roberts.

@ltpieces
www.laurietompkins.co.uk

Heat, War, Sweat, Law [SLP029] - Laurie Tompkins
Released: May 2016

Sweat - Laurie Tompkins

[SLP021] - Laurie Tompkins & Tom Rose

Slip guest mix for Beatrice Dillon on NTS Radio, 28th March 2016.

Matt Rogers - 'It Does Not Affect The Timetable' from 'lff' [Slip, forthcoming]
Giuseppe Ielasi - '7' from 'Rhetorical Islands' [Senufo Editions, 2013]
Ande Somby - 'Gadni (spirit of the mountain)' from 'Yoiking With The Winged Ones' [Touch, 2016]
Klaas Hübner - 'single tube' from 'SOG' [SLP025]
Otto Willberg & Odie Ji Ghast - 'Roaming...' from 'WHATSAPPITE' [SLP027]
Julia Reidy - 'All Is Ablaze' from 'All Is Ablaze' [Opalmine, 2016]
Paul McGuire - 'Percussion Quartet' [unreleased, 2015]
Anna Holmer & Steve Moshier - 'Oo Nu Dah' from 'Breadwoman & Other Tales' [RVNG Intl., 2016]
Laurie Tompkins - 'Fifth' from '45th Generation Roman & European Bob' [Sacred Tapes, forthcoming]
Tom Rose - 'crunchyshinyalarmvoiceBronzemitre' (feat. Sarah Hill) [Slip, forthcoming / unreleased, 2016]
Rian Treanor - 'Al Gore RHYTHM --- and noise' + 'COLLAGEscream' + 'Chime' [unreleased, 2014]
Max Hampshire - 'DAYS RESTING IN' from '???' [Slip, forthcoming]
Chaines - 'through the night' [unreleased, 2015]
Mica Levi & Oliver Coates - 'New Wren Kitch', from 'Remain Calm' [SLP035]
TCR - 'SZ-fing8' [unreleased, 2014]
Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland - 'slugabed rejected remix' + 'LUNA VACHON' from 'The Attitude Era' [The Guardian, 2012]
Matt Rogers & Tom Rose - '8' from '10 Tens' [Slip, forthcoming]
Kit Downes & Tom Challenger - 'Sa' from 'Vyamanikal' [SLP024]
Genevieve Murphy & Joe Snape - '9' from '10 Tens' [Slip, forthcoming]
Mica Levi & Oliver Coates - 'I'll Keep Going' from 'Remain Calm' [SLP035]

Full show: www.nts.live/shows/beatricedillon/episodes/beatrice-dillon-slip-28th-march-2016
@nts_live
@tom-rose-tcr
@ltpieces

Slip Mix [SLP021] - Laurie Tompkins & Tom Rose / Beatrice Dillon on NTS Radio

'Id Vendor' is Newcastle outfit Yeah You’s Slip debut: a stack of crackpot situationist pop forged in the fire of free improvisation. 

Mykl Jaxn and Elvin Brandhi are relentlessly producing instinctive, chewed-up tunes on the fly. Culled from sessions crammed into weekly drives to yoga, idle moments in the trolley park of Bridgend Tesco, and a late-night wander in Brussels, 'Id Vendor' captures the father/daughter duo in superlative form off the back of knockout 2016 shows at Kraak, Borealis, and Counterflows. 

A wicked onslaught of blunted beats, rudimentary synth contortions, and haphazard vocals as relentless as it is unpredictable as it is bloody wild. 

'Id Vendor' [SLP026] is available on clear yellow-reeled C50 tape or CD, with download. It comes packaged with a fold-out A3 poster with artwork by Elvin Brandhi. Mastered by Owen Roberts. Tapes dubbed by Otto Willberg.

@yeahyou1
@elvin-brandhi-1
@gwillyedmondez
vimeo.com/yeahyou

Id Vendor [SLP026] - Yeah You
Released: June 2016

i, catalysed - Yeah You

'WHATSAPPITE' is the batty collaborative debut from Mancunian long-time sparring partners Otto Willberg and Odie Ji Ghast: a bewildering assemblage of feral double bass and vocal vignettes spliced with rabid interjections from a handpicked cast of eccentrics.

Willberg and Ghast’s cuts ditch polish, finesse and good taste in favour of animal propulsion, taking base, off-the-cuff melodies and rhythms on a skew-wiff joy ride.

Bolstered by brain farts from Gwilly Edmondez, Elvin Brandhi, THF Drenching, Rachel Margetts, Sam Andreae, Arshon, and Biz, 'WHATSAPPITE' marries proper abandon with unabashed ears for a hook.

Future Bass?

'WHATSAPPITE' [SLP027] is available on clear C40 tape or CD, with download. It comes packaged with a fold-out A3 poster with artwork by Odie Ji Ghast. Mastered by Owen Roberts. Tapes dubbed by Otto Willberg.

@reading-my-eyes
@ottowillberg
@user-80921683

WHATSAPPITE [SLP027] - Odie Ji Ghast & Otto Willberg
Released: November 2016

Good - Odie Ji Ghast & Otto Willberg

Mica Levi & Oliver Coates - Remain Calm [SLP035]

All music written, performed, and mixed by Mica Levi & Oliver Coates. Recorded by Erik Nyström. Mastered by Beau Thomas at Ten Eight Seven Mastering. Artwork by Leah Walker.

Clear & Black 12" Vinyl / CD / Bonus Tape + DL
Bandcamp: slipimprint.bandcamp.com/album/remain-calm
Bleep: link.bleep.com/mica-levi-and-oliver-coates
Boomkat: boomkat.com/products/remain-calm

@micachu-music
@ollycoates
www.micalevi.com
www.olivercoates.com
www.slipimprint.co.uk

Remain Calm [SLP035] - Mica Levi & Oliver Coates
Released: November 2016

Dolphins Climb Onto Shore For The First Time - Mica Levi & Oliver Coates

'It's All True' [SLP040] is an opera-in-suspension from New York ensemble Object Collection based on the complete live archives of iconic underground band Fugazi.

Grounded upon the DC post-hardcore outfit's 1987-2002 Live Archive series, composer Travis Just and writer/director Kara Feely's work uses only the incidental music, text and sounds, none of Fugazi's actual songs. An obsessive leap into 1500 hours of gig detritus - random feedback, aimless drum noodling, pre-show activist speeches, audience hecklers, police breaking up gigs - is the foundation of an ear-body-and-mind-flossing 100 minutes for 4 voices/performers, 4 electric guitars/basses and 2 drummers. It's All True is overloaded, maddening, mundane, properly funny, and a radical incitement to action.

Half of this delectably bruising megalith is collected here for the first time and on the accompanying 'Prisons For Profit' [SLP041] - Object Collection's debut outings on Slip.

'It’s All True' was commissioned by and premiered at 2016’s Borealis Festival, Bergen.

'It’s All True' [SLP040] is available on 12” vinyl or CD from October 2017. 'Prisons For Profit' [SLP041] is available on 7” red vinyl from September 2017. 
Both releases feature artwork photography from Henrik Beck, plus fold-out double-sided inserts including performance text and score extracts by Object Collection, and additional liner notes by Guy Picciotto (Fugazi). Mixed by Travis Just and Philip White. Mastered and cut by Josh Bonati.

'It's All True' [SLP040]
http://www.smarturl.it/itsalltrue

'Prisons For Profit' [SLP041]
http://www.smarturl.it/prisonsforprofit

Object Collection was founded in 2004 by writer/director Kara Feely and composer/musician Travis Just. Based in Brooklyn, the group operates within the intersecting practices of performance, experimental music and theater. They are concerned with simultaneity, complexity, and radicality, combining dense layers of text, notation, objects and processes. They work to give audiences unconventional viewing experiences through our merging of theatricality and pedestrian activity. Their works upset habitual notions of time, pace, progression and virtuosity. They value accumulation above cohesion.

Ensemble:
Voice/Performers: Catrin Lloyd-Bollard, Avi Glickstein, Daniel Allen Nelson, Deborah Wallace
Electric Guitars/Basses: (Dither Guitar Quartet) Taylor Levine, Josh Lopes, James Moore, Brendon Randall-Myers
Drums: Shayna Dunkelman, Owen Weaver

Trailer + "What's The Problem" video: www.vimeo.com/226121593

Single "What's The Problem" DL/stream: www.smarturl.it/whatstheproblem

@object-collection
@objectcollection
www.objectcollection.us
www.slipimprint.co.uk

DLP/DL

What's The Problem - Object Collection

'KRUTCH' is Newcastle duo Yeah You's black-hearted return to Slip: poisonous, weaponised pop, spat out on the roam.

Father-daughter Mykl Jaxn-Elvin Brandhi's defiantly other improvisations tangle up defouling sermons with ragged beats, gnashing bass, and ear-worm synths.

Recorded in a black Renault Clio in Holland and Germany, and at Aurora, Budapest throughout early 2017, 'KRUTCH' is the 'You at a freshly terrifying apex, filtering the desperation of black metal through an unerring pop nous.

'KRUTCH' [SLP043] is available on 12” vinyl from September 2017. Artwork by Elvin Brandhi. Mastered by Stephen Bishop.

12" Vinyl + DL: www.slipimprint.bandcamp.com/album/krutch

"Skin (I have only lived once)" video: www.vimeo.com/227049387

"Two generations re-occupy themselves through disinheriting trend, appropriating cultural frustration to inject what will keel the market. 

A HERALD TO SCANT REGARD LANK PATIENCE< An Ominous refrain ‘distain, distain’ ]"

@yeahyou1
@elvin-brandhi-1
@gwillyedmondez
www.vimeo.com/yeahyou
www.slipimprint.co.uk

LP/DL

Skin (I have only lived once) - Yeah You

'Lost In Shadows' is American composer/performer Ashley Paul's bewitching Slip debut: a expansive, deeply personal excavation of recent motherhood, told through songs dissolving and re-crystallising at the threshold of free improvisation.

At the LP's heart is Paul's mercurial multi-instrumental style, which renders the primal wails, clunks, and twangs of clarinet, saxophone, percussion, and guitar uncannily melodic, alchemised by frank, vulnerable vocals. The deft negotiation of the fragile and the coruscating evidenced on Paul's 'Line The Clouds' (2013) and 'Heat Source' (2014) has now reached a kind of hesitant sublime.

Recorded over 3 weeks at a FUGA residency in Zaragoza, Spain in December 2016, 'Lost In Shadows' documents a cathartic outpouring; the first time Paul had been able to write since the birth of her daughter 11 months earlier. 

The record is completely influenced by "many hours spent awake at night in a dream like state of half consciousness, darkness and solitude; an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and exhaustion made light by a profound new love", with Paul's solo playing bolstered by additional baritone saxophone, cello, tuba, and percussion. This ensemble set-up, which premiered much of this work at 2017's Counterflows festival, gives the album a fresh sense of luxuriousness, bounce, and rich possibility.

'Lost In Shadows' [SLP044] is available on gold or black LP with download from April 2018. Artwork by Gayle Paul. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Distributed by Boomkat.

@ashleypaul

www.ashleypaul.net
www.slipimprint.co.uk

Night Howl - Ashley Paul

'Decalage In Vivid Counts' from C30 tape - 'Gnarlage of Self' / 'Trouble Number' [SLP045]

The Godfather of Wild Pop.

'Trouble Number' is a major retrospective of four decades of peerless, visionary, and feral production from Gwilly Edmondez - the dad from Yeah You.

This 90 minute double-cassette package cherry picks from hundreds upon hundreds of hours of psychoanalysis through pop waste, performed by Gwilly upon himself since the founding of his '80s outfit Radioactive Sparrow.

Bewildering and basically incomparable in its entirety, 'Trouble Number' mongrelises strains of hip-hop, black metal, folk, power balladry, more more more, with a properly prophetic, popwise soul.

Pay your respects.

Says Gwilly:

Gwilly Edmondez just grew as a character project in the mid-1980s, offshoot from the to’l-spon/non-com/pop-kak invention-pool that was/is Radioactive Sparrow, itself founded by a group of Bridgend (13-year-old/non-voter) elements in 1980. Gwilly is a solo/collaborative improvisation that started out making fake, unwritten rock, then progressed in the 1990s to real unaccompanied rock, before settling into a mode of practice defined by sampling, tapes and vocals.

Over many years, Gwilly has struck up many material partnerships and misadventurist associations of, with the likes of James Joys, Val Persona, Faye MacCalman, Karl D’Silva, Tobias Illingworth, Laura Late-Girl, b-cátt, Odie Ji Ghast, THF Drenching, Tony Gage, Richard Bowers, People Like Us… But in the end none more so than Elvin Brandhi.

‘Gnarlage of Self’, the C30 album, was made on Newcastle’s hottest day in 2017, in an upstairs room in Heaton, recorded by Dario Lozano Thornton with Schoeps MK2/MK8 pair to Sonodore preamps in one take subsequently edited and disorganized by Dario.

‘Gwilly Edmondez: A Retrospective Mixtape Made Questionably & Unquestioningly by Himself’ started out as a kind of slapstick/slapdash best of… but quickly became its own entanglement of old stuff, new-but-unused stuff made for the C30, and bits of recent live sets. The first half, side one, tries to bungle blindly into the nature of supplication, confession and self-condemning introspection – find the self then kill it; side two starts on the other side of death inhaling wafts of cheap air freshener as a means to hallucinate a personal history that never could’ve happened anyway, before scrambling back through the rear end of personality only to be consigned to liturgical palliatives in a manner carried out by his countless forebears of the cloth. It could only end with “Walken’s Kiss”, a sardonically pronounced cliffhanger.

‘Trouble Number’ [SLP045] is available from May 2018 in a double cassette package - ‘Gnarlage Of Self’ (C30) + ‘Gwilly Edmondez: A Retrospective Mixtape Made Questionably & Unquestioningly by Himself’ (C60) - with download. Artwork by Gwilly Edmondez. Mix and Edits by Dario Lozano Thornton and Gwilly Edmondez. Distributed by Boomkat.

@gwillyedmondez

www.slipimprint.co.uk

2xCS/DL

Decalage In Vivid Counts - Gwilly Edmondez

Eliza McCarthy plays 6 piano pieces by Mica Levi on ‘Slow Dark Green Murky Waterfall’.

12" vinyl + download (only with vinyl): www.slipimprint.bandcamp.com/album/slow-dark-green-murky-waterfall

The EP is bound by a sense of unreal poise: the elegant, blunt, low-lit, and gloopy seep into one another. The titles describe what the music is trying to emulate. Levi's idiosyncratic mix, and the care in McCarthy's playing, give ‘Slow Dark Green Murky Waterfall’ a sense of lived-in warmth.

‘Slow Dark Green Murky Waterfall’ [SLP036] is available on 12” vinyl plus download (only with vinyl), from October 2018. Music by Mica Levi / Performed by Eliza McCarthy. Additional Mixing by Sam Slater. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by Mica Levi and Eliza McCarthy. Distributed by Boomkat.

Thanks to LSO St Luke's, Alex, Kit, Ruth, and My Little Pony.

@elizamccarthy
@micachu-music

www.elizamccarthy.com
www.micachu.biz
www.slipimprint.co.uk

Eliza McCarthy & Mica Levi - Diamond Gun [extract]

'You turned into a painting' is Competition's Slip debut: laser-etched micro-songs of bruised vocals, sample grabs, and tenderised chamber MIDI.

Cassette + download: www.slipimprint.bandcamp.com/album/you-turned-into-a-painting

Competition is Newcastle-based Craig Pollard, whose confessional productions also spill into curation and a wider visual art practice (much of it, recently, as one third of the 'Wild Pop' crew).

This mini-album sees Craig atomise songcraft, probing its remnants for signs of soul. Like the post-mushroom recall from which it takes its title, 'You turned into a painting' is a queasy scavenging of the mundane. Pollard's voice achingly wears as he circles through lilting observations; his arrangements squeeze something unctuous from innocuous browser snatches and lowly sample packs, eschewing tricksiness in favour of low-key, loving twists.

'You turned into a painting' [SLP049] is available from November 2018 on cassette and download. Artwork by Grace Whitfield. Mastered by Stephen Bishop. Distributed by Boomkat.

@healthy-competition

www.craigpollard.co.uk
www.slipimprint.co.uk

CS/DL

cul de sac - Competition

breaks - Competition

Smoke Goes Up - Eliza McCarthy & Mica Levi

'PROSEGUR' is the obliterating Slip debut of North-Eastern security force Bad@Maths: pulped voices scrawled on wasted digital clatter.

Cassette + download: www.slipimprint.bandcamp.com/album/prosegur

The voices of Elvin Brandhi and Odie Ji Ghast have stamped themselves inexorably on the Slip catalogue - Ghast's swoops and blabbers and Brandhi's doosmday swaggers all over pairings with bassist Otto Willberg and pop-garbler Mykl Jaxn (as Yeah You) respectively.

As Bad@Maths, the duo's inimitable speaking-in-tongues practice lurches through electronic daggers and gunge. Elvin and Odie's roaming productions are a smash-and-grab on the furthest reaches of contemporary trap and grime, their voices re-animating 'net-culled spirits amongst whipslap beats. Modern mores, nasty drift.

'PROSEGUR' [SLP048] is available from November 2018 on cassette and download. Artwork by Elvin Brandhi. Mastered by Stephen Bishop. Distributed by Boomkat.

@bad-maths-1
@reading-my-eyes
@elvin-brandhi-1

www.slipimprint.co.uk

LEVIN B w/ Dodgelodge - Gravey MILKS TOI TRUTH - Bad@Maths

'Joyrobix' is Brummy-abroad Joe Snape’s flooring return to Slip: a songbook of nimble, aching pop that wrings raggedy solace from dejection and displacement.

Begun as a danceable refix of pieces for chamber ensemble toured the last three years, production on 'Joyrobix' stalled sharply in 2016. Instead of a self-confident exercise in documentation, the record twisted into a darker, more lyrical original: a period portrait of dislocation and burnout following Snape's move to the US in 2015.

There’s still plenty of fun to be had. Between the adult contemporary guitars, gospel grooves, and Broadway melisma, the tropes of a musical America are present, correct, and indefatigably uptempo.

But even at his most playful, Snape sounds like a musical mind running on fumes, the optimistic experimentalism of 2015's 'Brittle Love' audible only through a weary cloud, and the black dog never altogether quieted. Nor could it be: 'Joyrobix' sounds like a working-out – here manic, there taciturn – of a New World dream gone sideways.

'Joyrobix' [SLP047] is available on vinyl LP and download from April 4 2019. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by Suze Whaites. Distributed by Boomkat.

www.joesna.pe
www.slipimprint.co.uk

Joyrobix

Behind Glass - Joe Snape

'Pleasure Island' is British composer Tim Parkinson’s disquieting and joyous Slip debut: play time in end times.

Titled after the Disney adaptation of ‘Paese dei balocchi’ (or the Land of Toys) in Carlo Collodi’s ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ (1883), 'Pleasure Island' is a metaphysical playground of organic and digital cohabitation, its inhabitants pacified by toys and comforts.

Alongside Dawn Bothwell, Suze Whaites, Laurie Tompkins, and Francesca Fargion, Parkinson exerts an uncannily emotional pull from an unlikely but potent alliance of ultra-minimal aesthetics, dead-beat drums, junk electronics, and mechanised mantras.

Voices are hemmed in by electronic sound. People buffeted around by machines. Words surrounded by garlands of digital interference. Time repackaged as countdown.

Tim’s trash-opera ‘Time With People’ continues to be performed around the world, past champions of which include Object Collection, a.pe.ri.od.ic, Edges, and NEC, and he is a co-curator of London’s longstanding ‘Music We’d Like To Hear’ series. Despite decades of fiercely independent production, this is his only piece conceived of first and foremost as an album.

'Pleasure Island' [SLP053] is available from May 2019 on LP and download. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by Rick Pushinsky. Distributed by Boomkat.

@tim-parkinson-1

www.untitledwebsite.com
www.slipimprint.co.uk

Happy Birthday - Tim Parkinson

'You Are Under Our Space Control' is firebrand US group Object Collection's inimitable Slip return: a utopian space-opera, a homing signal cast into an empty universe, a beacon for an aesthetically radical future.

Drawing on space travel, transhumanism, astronautics and the resurrection of the dead, Kara Feely's texts rehearse a progressive politics through a total re-envisioning of everyday life. Travis Just's limber speech-song vocal parts are eerily and spasmodically FX'd, and navigate surprisingly glistening instrumentals - a headlong tangle and squelch of flexing 808s and metal objects, roboticised guitar, and unreal synthesis.

YAUOSC's bubbling force belies its diverse, unruly underpinnings. The opera’s musical backbone is a drum-machine transcription of John Cage's 1951 piano solo 'Music Of Changes', a landmark of indeterminacy; its title grabbed from Cy Roth's sci-fi romp 'Fire Maidens From Outer Space' (1951); its texts inspired by Sun Ra and the Russian Cosmists’ poetics and philosophies, and interviews from real (and imagined) space travellers and astronomers.

Object Collection charge these impulses with a burning, engrossing physicality. This is, above all, an LP of heaving, life-giving music, deep in the mess of futuristic fervour.

'You Are Under Our Space Control' [SLP054] is available from June 2019 on LP and download. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by Frank Eickhoff. Distributed by Boomkat.

@object-collection
@objectcollection

www.objectcollection.us
www.slipimprint.co.uk

Look at Television - Object Collection

Competition makes a blue return to Slip with 'Repetititive Music': a sawn-off songbook of doting vocals and incisive, heart-ache instrumentals, carried with a soft swagger. 

Poised between insistence and tenderness, 'Repetititive Music' is an assured, dreamy successor to 2018's 'You turned into a painting'. As ever, there is Competition's rare care and delight in the unadorned material of modern song. Chopped strings, keys, machines and speech are screwed with classical grace. A voice pines and frays as it circles. Beyond the cut and the loop something yearns and lingers. 

Craig Pollard (aka Competition) is a quietly pivotal figure in Newcastle's musical underground, curating events as one half of the Wild Pop collective and operating across the city's artist-led communities. A collection of Craig's writing - 'Inside A Gleaming Feeling' - is forthcoming on Glasgow press The Grass is Green in the Fields For You. 

'Repetititive Music' [SLP050] is available from April 2020 on cassette and download. Artwork by Competition. Mastered by Phil Begg. Distributed by Boomkat. 

www.craigpollard.co.uk
@healthy-competition

grow(n) - Competition

'SPLIT' [SLP004] is the debut release of material from both Tom Rose and Caroline Haines (Chaines). Both composers working within electronic and contemporary composition, the pair’s music form a dialogue testament to sharing the same stage countless times over the past year. 

Chaines’ two offerings are evidence of an idiosyncratic vision embracing dislocated drums, swathes of distortion, and freakish manipulations of her own voice. There is a nagging sense of some submerged narrative – in 'Transverberation', the “bells and smells” of religious ceremony are evoked, while 'Speak Gentle Words' is something like catching glimpses of distant shorelines. 

Tom Rose navigates the alternating interzones with three cuts that dismantle the base of Chaines’ music, as dry synthetic drums coalesce into toppling patterns and waves of synthesiser become caked in debris. The final track includes contributions from ‘cellist Tom Bayman, whose string sounds become stretched in an extended rumination upon Chaines’ unexpected violin solo.

SPLIT [SLP004] - Chaines / Tom Rose
Released: February 2013

Berghaus - Tom Rose

'Mentos Gulgendo' is the Nowacka sisters' consuming Slip debut: a mercurial set for transfigured organ and voice, shaped to shudder, creep, or take flight. 

From the rough, anchored sound of a Unitra Estrada 207 AR organ, Antonina and Mila alchemise 6 nagging, fearful pieces, which alternate between burrowing, prickly beds of processed instrumental sound and more spacious sighs, buoyed up by dancing, full-blooded vocals. The Polish duo’s careful ear for the grain of the organ - sometimes allowing it to sink in, more often urging, pressuring it onwards - makes for a magnetic, addictive listen. 

'Mentos Gulgendo' is a new project by Antonina Nowacka and Mila Nowacka, who make possessed, hallucinatory sound and visuals as WIDT, most recently in a wild, unnerving collaboration with German producer Christoph De Babalon for Bocian in 2018. 

The pair state: 
“Mentos Gulgendo shares its name with a fictional philosopher and author of the “harmless lunatics” theory, which states our universe has been created by the representatives of the cosmic madhouse. The madhouse’s representatives used the finest and most subtle electromagnetic waves to weave a field of transcendental beauty penetrating the structure of each other. The field expanded, invading the solid structures of rationality and therefore transforming the traditional form of identity into a liquid, unsustainable fat.” 

'Mentos Gulgendo (1)' [SLP057] is available from September 2020 on tape and/or download. A companion release - '(2)' - is available from the Endless Happiness label on the same day. 

Music composed, performed and recorded by Antonina Nowacka and Mila Nowacka at the Family Allotments "Kaloria", using a Unitra Estrada 207 AR organ. Mastered by Filip Marcinkowski. Artwork by Masia Debska. Distributed by Boomkat.

Mentos Gulgendo (1) [SLP057]

Sabino Marfi - Mentos Gulgendo

Ralph Cumbers makes a very welcome return to Slip with the sweet drive and unguarded lyricism of 'Orezero': a smiling-through-the tears chaser to 2019's majestic '111 angelic MIDI cascade'.

Says Clef:

"'Orezero' is both the prequel and sequel to '111 Angelic MIDI Casacde' in that I'm not sure which ones is Wonderland and which one is through the Looking Glass. So it can stay unresolved as both and neither? Feels like a strange time to be releasing what might be the most joyous Bass Clef record. Certainly 'One Tree Island' and 'Heavy Lifting Light Wave' are two cuts of happiness, but the kind of happiness that acknowledges and incorporates all the unhappiness that came along the way. Other tracks are a more rarefied kind of joy I guess, I find myself stripping back layers on these tracks to an extent I never would have dreamed was possible for me.

These tracks were recorded in 2019 over quite some time, although each track itself takes no more than 3-4 hours and are recorded live. Editing clears the clutter to reveal the intent, not always obvious at the time of recording. I was pushing myself, again, to focus on harmony, and melody, the two things I think I am worst at, rather than returning to rhythm and texture, the playgrounds I always felt most comfortable in.

Instrument restrictions helped as always – most of the sounds heard are from two ROMplers, much-loathed relics of pre-computer music, loaded with largely un-tweakable samples of acoustic instruments, samples you have heard on a billion records, but hopefully stacked in new combinations this time around. Backed up with Microkorg, a resolutely and extremely popular, yet deeply uncool, digital synthesizer.

The tracks here were originally intended for two different records (maybe that’s why the prequel/sequel feeling persists) but thanks to excellent old school A&R in the form of an evolving conversation with Laurie from Slip, together we eventually uncovered one record that I think manages to weave all these threads together. I hope it will bring some smiles to some people."

'Orezero' [SLP059] is available from October 2020 on cassette and/or download. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Distributed by Boomkat.

heavy lifting light wave - Bass Clef

'Generous / Sunday Market' [SLP055] - Relax Kevin & Blue Shit

'Generous' by Relax Kevin 
'Sunday Market' by Blue Shit 
Artwork by Le & Mi 
Mastered by Stephen Bishop

Generous / Sunday Market [SLP055]

Sunday Market - Blue Shit

Generous - Relax Kevin

'Ray' is Ashley Paul's bright, sensual return to Slip: a lifting, delighting suite of yearning winds, loose beats, and cocooning, humid bass coming together and falling apart as songs. 

The LP airs Paul's new trio, alongside bass clarinettist Yoni Silver and bassist Otto Willberg, who fatten out and shine light on her singularly intimate, multi-instrumental with mystery and grace. 2018's 'Lost In Shadows' wrote into the bewildering ecstasy of recent motherhood with a tingling resolve. On 'Ray' - recorded remotely during lockdown - Paul's deliciously hesitant songcraft is an outpouring and an anchor in freshly tumultuous times. 

Says Ashley:

"Over the past six months I’ve found myself needing music in a new way, a way of coping. I found again albums I had loved in the past, full of melody and humour, to cancel out the barrage of terrible news happening outside. I think this album is a reflection of that need. There is the playfulness of spending my days with our four year old, and the hours spent tending to plants in the garden and examining bugs, and also the pain of missing family and friends. It’s hard for me to fully comprehend the breadth of emotion I've felt recently but maybe this is a small window.
The trio idea had been formulating in my head for months, and then lockdown happened. At first I was very disappointed and thought I'd be waiting forever to finally make it a reality, but time passed. I started working on a new album and could only hear it with these guys. We recorded remotely. I sent material in a variety of ways; written, aurally and verbal ideas/queues, sometimes with just a shell of a track and other times nearly completed. I wanted all our voices to be present, and to allow freedom in the parts for interpretation and improvisation. Maybe because we’ve all worked together in various situations and are friends, I’m not sure, but it came together naturally, magically and quickly."

'Ray' [SLP060] is available from November 2020 on LP and download. Painting by Gayle Paul. Design by Ashley Paul. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Distributed by Boomkat.

Light Inside My Skin - Ashley Paul

CHALICES is the combined force of writer, poet and performer Alice Godliman and musician CHAINES.

On 'Conference Room B 10pm' CHAINES takes their cue from horror podcasts such as The Black Tapes Podcast and Alice Isn't Dead, combining a fondness for the spooky spoken word with deranged tinkerings in modular synthesis. 'Gravewalking' and 'Red' - collaborative tracks with Godliman - use the lens of mythology and superstition to explore two different moments of nostalgia and relationships.

chaines.co.uk/chalices

'Gravewalking' [SLP061] available from October 2020 as a photo with/or download.

Music by CHAINES
Text & Voice on 'Gravewalking' and 'Red' by Alice Godliman.
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux

PIC/DL

Gravewalking - CHALICES

OTHER ROGUE HYBRID MUSICS
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