Pulled back from obscurity by label honcho Alan Gubby, these choice selections from the long-defunct Arcadia Cosmos sound library excite, get in your head, inspire. Sounds that inhabit their titles and more, gift-wrapped in the spiky jiver of a monochromed power station.
various artists
51 posts
What's being reviewed here is two things: a book, Subcontinental Synthesis: Electronic Music at the National Institute of Design, India 1969–1972 , edited by Paul Purgas, and a record, The NID Tapes - Electronic Music From India 1969-72. The NID of the LP's title refers to the National Institute of Design, a home for electronic music within India of the late 1960s. The book is a more expansive look at electronic music in that era, and one is a taster for the other.
Unearthing buried treasure is what this label’s all about, dipping into the hauntological hangover of years gone by, to resurrect or recreate their own interpretations. An ethos that seeps into this recent compilation, a tenth anniversary celebration that features a whole host of new, remixed, rare and unreleased material, giving the curious a decent taste of what floats their boat.
Broken Tape I’ll apologise for being brusque, but there’s a lot to get through and we haven’t got all day. – What is harsh noise wall? It’s harsh noise, except less happens. Typically fairly long, typically just white noise, typically minimal if not no dynamics. Often abbreviated to HNW. If it’s quieter it’s ambient noise wall (ANW) – Great, so what’s this compilation? It’s called 100 Harsh Noise […]
Play Loud! So here we are in London’s salubrious East End, in a period between the wars and reflecting a very different area to the one we know now. Except kind of not — London’s always been a mix of people, so no great surprise that ’20s London had Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews rubbing shoulders with white working class Londoners, singing songs about Copenhagen or the Netherlands. This […]
Finders Keepers “Categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden — step out of the space provided”, goes the intro to the Nurse With Wound list – as the rivery wound within the typographics become your rabbit hole, the spidery black text your ladder. Mythology is a strange thing: a seed of truth dropped in the enquiring mind some might say.
Bronson Martin Bisi‘s famed BC Studios in Brooklyn is renowned for bringing the noise to New York, and in celebration of it reaching the grand old age of thirty-five, they decided to throw a party in January of 2016, invite a load of old friends and record the ensuing fun for release. A first volume was released back in 2018 and now the response has demanded a second […]
Drone For the seventh outing in Drone Records‘ long-running Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone series of vinyl compilations, Specimens, Skeldos, Mytrip and Opening Performance Orchestra get not only a track on the LP, but for the first time in the collection, the latter also have the chance to offer up the full seventy-minute version of their contribution on an accompanying CD.
Frequency Domain For the second volume of Partials, only a couple of the artists from the previous release make a return visit, leaving the way open for plenty of fresh artists doing their bit for this fantastic cause. Once again, it is a real chill-fest, the majority of tracks happily nestled into the drifting ambient side of things, with only a few adopting beats and allowing the vibe […]
On The Dole The new wave of British heavy metal then. It can safely be said that your writer has minimal understanding of the genre. Actually almost deliberately. So why pick up a compilation of NWOBHM? Something to do with “history is always written by the victors”‘.
Rocket Girl I have fond memories of corresponding with head Rocket Girl Vinita back in the 1990s, those heady days of hand-folded seven-inch singles and US imports being posted out from their East London lair for the equivalent cost of a second class stamp in today’s over-inflated mail costs. That the little notes nearly always came from her and would also include suggestions of bands to whom she […]
Lo Recordings Lo Recordings have been going for over twenty years now. An often overlooked but important arbiter of modern electronic based music, they have chosen this moment to release a compilation of material that they see as exploring the connections, overlaps and roots of that oft over-used term ambient. In association with Strange Attractor Press, they have invited a wide variety of artists to offer a contribution […]
Anthology This is a CD to go with a book about that library music there used to be. It’s about curios, you see? So here we have another sense of curios. I like the Rolling Stones, say, but it’s just such a thing from another time for me. Curio. This is probably more directly obviously a curio. Library music. Curio.
Transgredient Troum have been illuminating the drone landscape for over two decades now, so to celebrate their twentieth anniversary, they decided to issue a lush two-disc set where they invited friends, family and interested parties to tackle their favourite selections from the Troum catalogue.
Buried Treasure A book, a CD, a crackle, a cackle. It’s an undialled radio… buzz… Echoes a little of 2000AD’s Zenith… perhaps even the first few episodes of Hellboy… this is England Calling, The Delaware Road… a little graphic play, beautifully illustrated…. A Black Mass…
Drone Now into its sixth volume of lovingly curated drones, the latest collection in this series brings together Nam-Khar, Markian Volkov, For Kings And Queens and Kevin Durr. The four contributors offer up a varied palette of clanks and heaving synthesis
Front & Follow Ten years after its inception, Front and Follow‘s roster has grown up to be a very interesting beast indeed. Straggling left-field electronicia, folk and avant-pop, fostering strong recurring returns from Kemper Norton, The Doomed Bird of Providence and Sone Institute whilst always pushing further afield
Music Information Centre Lithuania This has the descriptive title of Anthology of Lithuanian Art Music in the 21st Century, which could mean a few things, but what we actually have is a load of contemporary compositions from Lithuania.