Swantje Lichtenstein and Jono Podmore – Miss Slipper ​/ ​Lewes

Psychomat

Swantje Lichtenstein‘s streams of (found) consciousness are half-audible, semi-comprehensible on “Miss Slipper” and “Lewes”, rendered as if perceived in a dreamstate interior monologue bouncing between dormant ears before awakening with a start. Jono Podmore — perhaps best known as Kumo, as a member of the fabulously groovesome Cyclopean and determinedly analogue outfit Metamono, and as co-producer behind the recovery and restructuring of Can‘s epic Lost Tapes — places Lichtenstein’s randomly-sourced words in a cut-up soundscape that stretches across both sides of the record, the whole wrapped up in a sleeve adorned by Michaela Eichwald.

Deep inside a ring-modulated arena, The Clangers seemingly meet both Alvin Lucier and William Burroughs in tape-experimental mode, reformed and obfuscated through a welter of progressively weirder and weirder vocal processing and subtle synthesis. The double-A-side 7″ vinyl they appear on trips out into a swivel-eared musique concrète of sussurus and ghosted bleeps, words devolving and reformatting themselves into a half-discernible yet intriguing miasma where nothing is certain and everything is permitted.

There will be more to come, remixes and reversionings; these will be interesting to hear.

-Linius Tossio-