Saturday, June 27, 2015

Hauntology Parish Newsletter June-July - Xylitol, A Year In The Country, Walberswick, Ghost Box




"sketches, fragments, half-finished instrumentals: 2005 - 2015" - glorious stuff from Xylitol, drifting between radiophonia, sinogrime, that recent (also glorious) Aphex-dump, Req, and the peripheries of this parish (Mordant in library mode, early Woebot, etc)

I don't know if Xylitol recognises the H-word but he did put out a tune called "Ghost Office", which made me titter

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Behold, a new release from A Year In The Country



In Every Mind - Transmission Resonances: Volume 1.

"In Every Mind is released as part of the A Year In The Country project, which began as a year long journey through and searching for an expression of an underlying unsettledness to the English bucolic countryside dream; an exploration of an otherly pastoralism, the patterns beneath the plough, pylons and amongst the edgelands… a wandering through the further flung reaches of work with its roots in folkloric concerns and what has been labelled hauntological culture... and which has now begun to wander pathways anew...

"A fractured otherly pastoral audiologica dream via the reverberations and signals of transmissions gone by...

In contrast to the telling of tales from the wald/wild wood in times gone by, today the stories that have become our cultural folklore we discover, treasure, pass down, are often those that are transmitted into the world via the airwaves, the (once) cathode ray machine in the corner of the room, the zeros and ones that flitter around the world and the flickers of (once) celluloid tales.

They take root in our minds and imagination via the darkened rooms of modern-day reverie, partaken of in communal or solitary seance.

The Transmission Resonances volumes of audiological constructs will take as their wellspring such stories; focusing on those tales that continue to resonate over time, which have gained layers of meaning as the years have passed, that express and/or explore some sense of otherly pastoralism and which skirt the edgelands.

From that first fount, the plan is for these volumes to wander through their own particular journey, pushing aside the brambles and travelling the pathways that they will; to consider the stories of the patterns beneath the plough and the pylons across the land.

In Every Mind: Transmission Resonances: Volume 1 has as its wellhead the continuing reverberations of the 1969 cathode ray version of Alan Garner’s The Owl Service.

It pushes open the attic door from whence the scratching descends and travels to places that surprised, and intrigued our good selves when it was being shaped on our own particular audiological potters wheels; creating its own particular form of fractured albionic audiologica.

This is the first release constructed solely by A Year In The Country.

The album is available in two different hand-crafted editions - Night and Dawn  versions - printed using archival GiclĂ©e pigment inks; presenting  and  encasing their journey in amongst tinderboxes, string bound booklets and accompanying ephemera."





hear here
 


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Jon Brooks recently put out a superb record on More Than Human - Walberswick  - in more ambient-eerie mode than library-wistful -  all done on the Buchla 200 series Electric Music Box apparently -  the vinyl sold out now but I heard there was going to be a repress - there was also supposed to be a digital download version becoming available in June but it has yet to materialise



read the Quietus review by Bob Cluness




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Finally, exciting news - coming in the autumn - Ghost Box celebrate their tenth anniversary with a double-LP / double-CD compilation In a moment... Ghost Box - it contains  "thirty especially remastered tracks that we think are the highlights of the label's output so far" + extensive liner notes

In the meantime, to tide us over - there's this split 7 inch "Machines Are Obsolute" b/w "Pathways" by Pye Corner Audio and Belbury Poly, in Ghost Box's Other Voices series: 




Which Cardrossmaniac2 reviews thus

A-Side: "Easy listening dystopian sounds. 80s attempts at futuristic soundtracks."*


B-Side: "Future Sailor but not as good like Howard Moon has found the new sound but no he hasn't it's just an old one. It sounds like every single song from 1983!"