The Boy In The Diving Bell: A Sonic Exploration of Fragmented Consciousness

Flakebelly's The Boy In The Diving Bell is a profoundly introspective and boldly experimental opus, an ambitious project - conceived as the first part of a sequence of three interconnected albums - that interrogates the essence of memory, perception, and identity. At its core, the album is a collision of acoustic alt-folk and fractured psychedelia, with each element twisted and torn apart, as though pulled through a sonic wormhole.
 
Time itself becomes elastic here - warped, twisted, and shattered through live manipulations of a 1960's reel to reel tape machine, which is treated not merely as a recording device but as an instrument in its own right. Squelches, blurples & the occasional soul-rending screech, are coaxed from its mechanics by playing with the physical tape and manipulating the play, stop, rewind, and fast-forward dials in real-time. These live performances, recorded directly to the track, create ghostly echoes, cascading loops and unpredictable textures.

The album’s tracks weave between surreal brevity and expansive, hypnotic soundscapes. Ambient interludes of manipulated field recordings - wind through trees, mountain burns - are bent and layered into uncanny textures, creating what feel like "postcards from the inside out." These moments are punctuated by flourishes of finger-picked, lifelorn laments, their plaintive tones stretched into kaleidoscopic abstractions.

As a tapestry of alt-folk, lo-fi grunge, and experimental psychedelic sound design, The Boy In The Diving Bell is a singularity where time and sound collapse into pure expression. It resonates as a deeply immersive experience, a journey through the upside down, where acoustic sincerity is continually deconstructed and reassembled into something new.

This is not just music through the eye of a needle, it is a meditation on perception, a voyage through warped temporalities, and a bold reimagining of what music can become when pushed to the outermost limits. Flakebelly invites the listener to lose themselves in this fragmented, dreamlike world, where every note is both a memory and a revelation.

The Boy In The Diving Bell

Pulsatile Tinnitus

Buy on Bandcamp

Transmission number 12 from The 7Hz Broadcast, noise, experimental, bass, musique concrete, soundtracks, featuring a lot of Ennio <3, the full Sleng Teng (86 Discomix Version) by Reducer, cause it's mad, some hard stuff but a lot of love too. Free Palestine

The 7Hz Broadcast: 8th August '25

Avant-garde musician and composer Jim O'Rourke pulls stops by once a month, pulling an hour of picks from his extensive record collection. 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/jim-o-rourke/episodes/jim-o-rourke-7th-august-2025

Jim O'Rourke 070825

In 2008 I wrote a poem called Do The Echoes Fidget For Passports? that I happened upon as I finished up this song today and it felt fitting:

recording 35,000 falling feet
moving forward
toward forgetting
pressing STOP
previously: 
killed days with giant unravellings

destroy the recording
frame the seven minutes in a faster Now
open christopher's round face in a 
round hand moving off a 
round page with 
round delay & slowly rising reverb ur ation

1 5 or 2 7 
turn right at the mirror
follow the light
the rest is going to spring forth wakeful clues
three bark
an outstretched paw
the phone, the location says 

no more

i'll be in my stolen sugar
sipping with the ants

i'll swallow the tide and pull at maps of 
everything with crossed fingers
and find CONNECTIONS
and get back
to getting used
to it

Recording 35,000 Falling Feet

the heat
brings me feverish dreams
filled with violence and lust;
and a deep aching sadness
i cannot begin
to describe

lake // theme (luscinia)

Fada

prone

“The surface world may be as much a myth to the subterraneans as the underworld is to us.”  ― Priscilla Vogelbacher

Track list and start times:
00:00  Anna Drubich – Down the Tunnel (from ‘Barbarian’)
03:07  156 – Red Rooms
07:55  Concepción Huerta – Magma como la vena en el territorio
14:32  Jeff Gburek – The Bridge Of Many Shapes
21:29  Dolores Mondo Stash – Streams of Compulsion
25:18  The Spectral Light – Whisper Surgery
33:19  Ariel Kalma – 244 Steps None Back 84
40:42  Gimu – The Self Exile Of The Self
47:29  Grand River – Tuning the Wind (excerpt)
56:05  If, Bwana – Bleeding At Limelight
1:01:52   Colin Andrew Sheffield – Sunrise
1:05:55  Leslie Keffer – Bison Antiquus
1:12:27  progettosonoro – Blood Moon (A tormented night)
1:18:55  My Own Cubic Stone – subterranean
1:27:28  Ryan Holladay, Hays Holladay & Zach Cregger –Where Are You? (from ‘Weapons’)
1:31:26  Stan Magendanz – reyoreawn
1:34:34  Green Tea – False Spring
1:39:29  Philippe Neau + LR Friberg – Operation Sugar Rush (Emoji Soup)
1:43:07  Audible Masticators – üpO'iuztc v
1:46:55  The Silent North – Written in Sand
1:51:02  Laurel Halo & Leila Bordreuil – Awe (excerpt)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Image: Lexica.art


Eclectic current – The rooms beneath the palace

The revered Japanese noise artist stops by for a regular NTS slot, playing some surprising selections from his diverse & deep record collection. 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/merzbow/episodes/merzbow-12th-august-2025

Merzbow 120825

MOBBS chopping up whatever he finds 

ohm.mobbs@protonmail.com
                             
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/mobbs/episodes/mobbs-15th-august-2025

Mobbs 150825

UK creatives should listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK4wBWiozyM

You must hear this: https://vimeo.com/52766051

*****

Ed Brunsden was kind and patient enough to interview me for  his blog Desert... Mountain... Dust...  - you can read it at https://desertmountaindust.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/tuonela-primitive-progressive.html

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. ~ Aldous Huxley

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it. ~ Jean Cocteau

All music is beautiful. ~ Billy Strayhorn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've become addicted to drone. Again. I was the kid with his head on the piano, listening to the overtones die away, or pressing his ear to the steel hull of the ferry, enthralled by the sounds it created. I was the kid who formed wordless songs to accompany the sound of train wheels on a long journey, or hummed along with the fan on a hot day.

In the 60s I used to play my 45s on 16, or backwards, or by hand using razor blades as stylii.

I made cut-up tapes on a cheap cassette recorder in the 70s and experimented with reel-to-reel in the 80s. 

Thank you Subotnick, Lygeti, Coltrane, Jimi, Mimaroglu, Eno, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle...

I am not a musician. I am a scavenger of sounds. I use the most basic software to process those sounds, stretching and filtering until something emerges that makes a joyful noise. Or not...

ambient synth + shortwave theohauntology experiments

Indie, Acoustic & Psychedelic music from The Western Isles of Scotland.

Elusive songsmith flakebelly defies genre norms, fusing psychedelic indie rock and acoustic folk-jazz. His sound is an intricate blend of folk-inspired acoustic warmth, blues-drenched guitar riffs, and ambient, psychedelic textures. Layered with jazz-infused piano melodies and indie rock nuances, his music forms a rich, genre-blurring tapestry that immerses the listener in an experimental and evocative journey. With In Parks Of Tall Trees recently playing on Tom Robinson's BBC 6 Music Introducing Mixtape, flakebelly's distinctive songwriting is beginning to build ripples from an avalanche of pebbles.

Learning guitar in the early 2000s, his musical journey led to an indie-folk EP in 2022, Behaviours, followed by Lo Fidelity in 2024. That same year, he released Apprentice Green, a genre-hopping album of psychedelia, folk, funk, dream-pop, jazz, and indie, 20 years in the making. Now, his most ambitious project yet, The Boy In The Diving Bell, arrives in August, preceded by the first single, At The Prow Of The Lifeboat, on May 23rd.

Taking a stand against exploitative streaming platforms, The Boy In The Diving Bell and its singles will not be available for streaming. Instead, all releases will be exclusive to Bandcamp, with CDs and vinyl available through ElasticStage.

Flakebelly records & produces alone in his home studio, embodying a creative evolution that is always transitory.

All socials: @flakebelly //

"Extensive and wildly eclectic sonic adventures" - Tom Robinson, BBC 6 Music

"Refreshingly individual and very likeable" - Neil March, Trust The Doc Media

https://www.nts.live
https://www.instagram.com/nts_radio/

New tracks tagged #Musique Concrete