Cock and Swan – Stash
CD #LTS0011: Total Time: 43:25
Artist Website: http://www.cockandswan.com/
Record Label: http://losttribesound.com/
Recorded by: http://dandeliongold.com/
Soundcloud Samples:
Tracks: 1) Sneak Close; 2) Stash; 3) Raging Chisel; 4) Sympethizer; 5) Happy Thoughts; 6) Unrecognized; 7) Unserious; 8) Clear Sighing; 9) Remember Sweet; 10) I Let Me In; 11) Orange and Pink; 12) Walking Up Dandelions
Bonus MP3 EP: 1) Comfort Zone 2 (acoustic); 2) Raging Chisel; 3) Stash (Part Timer Remix); 4) End Sinister; 5) Random tracking; 6) Soft Setting; 7) Stash (Vieo Abiungo Remix)
Not so long ago I took a chance on purchasing an album based on a brief write-up and it turned out to be a real gem— Will Samson’s Hello Friends, Goodbye Friends. It has happened again with Cock and Swan’s Stash. I read a summary, and I also noticed the great care that Lost Tribe Sound had put into their limited edition release (cloth binding with mixed hand made papers). I could not resist, and what an enchanting surprise this album is.
Cock and Swan are Johnny Goss (bass, guitar, percussion, vocals and production) and Ola Hungerford (vocals, piano and clarinet). Supporting musicians include, Adam Kozie (drums), William Ryan Fritch (vibraphone, marimba, saxophone, flute and cello). Paintings are by Robert Klein and photography by Angel Ceballos.
Photo courtesy of Cock and Swan
There is something delightfully ancient and psychedelic about Stash. I won’t dwell for too long on what other albums I am reminded of—the percussion (including deep bass drums), woodwinds, soft and dreamy vocals. First, the ballads feel like they are drawn from the same cloth as Comin’ Back to Me from Surrealistic Pillow by the Jefferson Airplane (1967). Second, the drums—rough, full and sometimes behind the beat are very close to Michael Giles on both Cadence and Cascade from In The Wake of Poseidon by King Crimson (1970) and the alternate lyric version (by B. P. Fallon instead of Peter Sinfield) Flight of the Ibis from the eponymous album McDonald and Giles (also from 1970).
Some of the tracks on this album are acoustic remakes of more obscure electronic versions from their two prior albums (Unrecognized, Unserious, Sympethizer, I Let Me In, Stash, Tectonic Plates). It is evident that Cock and Swan were searching for a sound to fit the songs and I think in this album they have found it—softer, comfortable and more accessible (and with a hint of the sadly departed Sparklehorse).
Sneak Close and Stash both have guitars sounding like dulcimers, drum sticks counting time, whispering woodwinds, Ola Hungerford’s ethereal vocals and the overall sound of an old music box working against its well-used mainspring. Raging Chisel is an excellent combination of the obscure and edgy sounds of their earlier albums woven with melodic instrumental and vocal passages. Sympethizer is a short instrumental and Happy Thoughts moves slowly with a contrasting faster interlocking rhythm and subtle use of electronics. Tectonic Plates has a lush beat, sounds are layered (ambient and instrumental) and Ola’s voice floats in between. It’s easy to be drawn into this peaceful and dreamy realm.
The drums are strong, but never overpowering on Unrecognized and there is a charming mix with ambient sounds and solo acoustic guitar. The largely instrumental Unserious has a stately piano backdrop with woodwinds and soft percussion. Clear Sighing is a short instrumental percussion and woodwind link leading into the vocally and instrumentally beautiful Remember Sweet (with one of my favorite touches…a background of pin-piano during the choruses). I Let Me In has a rhythmically languid, but swaying vibe.
The standout piece on this album for me is Orange and Pink. Acoustic guitar, mallet-struck percussion and piano start with lightly teasing interplay until Ola and Johnny’s vocals feather into the mix and then yield to a hovering piano counterpoint before fading—it’s simply gorgeous. The album closes with the soft anthem Walking Up Dandelions, a combination of many of the sounds throughout the album.
While the arrangements are relatively simple throughout, the layering of the instruments, vocals and ambient surroundings give the album a lush quality. My only wish?—that a lyrics sheet were included. Other than that, this album is just wonderful.
Tectonic Plates Video:
Monty Adkins – Four Shibusa
CD #AB040: Total Time: 43:13
Artist’s Website: http://www.montyadkins.com/
Record Label Website: http://www.audiobulb.com/
Sound samples: http://www.audiobulb.com/albums/AB040/AB040.htm
Tracks: 1) Sendai Threnody 9:00; 2) Entangled Symmetries 11:04; 3) Kyoto Roughcut 14:38; 4) Permutations 8:31
I am likely less-than-qualified to discuss this work since it is steeped in layers of academia and has densely studied connections with artistic subjects. Yet, with all that Four Shibusa is a beautiful and very accessible collection of music on its own. It has a stark clarity that I am coming to understand and appreciate more in the recent works of Monty Adkins. I am most familiar with two of Adkins’s prior works, Five Panels from 2009 and Fragile.Flicker.Fragment from 2011.
This is an example of Monty Adkins’s work from Fragile.Flicker.Fragment
Remnant:
There is a companion video to “Remnant” here and I think it’s gorgeous:
Monty Adkins studied music at Pembroke College in Cambridge, UK where he specialized in French Medieval and Italian Renaissance music. After an introduction to electronic music by ECM artist Ambrose Field, Adkins formally studied acousmatic music (a form of electroacoustic music). More information on his studies and background can be found at his website noted above. In addition to his own solo works, Adkins has been commissioned to create musical works for art installations, dance and other performances as well as curate collections with other composers of electronic, ambient and musique concrète (influenced by the pioneering work of Pierre Schaeffer). He is on the faculty at the University of Huddersfield Music Department in the UK.
Shibusa is the concept of seeing the inherent simplicity and beauty in everyday objects. This has been the basis for an artistic collaboration between visual artist Pip Dickens and Monty Adkins (both having an interest in Japanese culture and thought) that recently culminated with the release of this album along with a book and exhibition entitled Shibusa – Extracting Beauty, edited by both artists. I have not yet had a chance to see the visual works (though some illustrate the CD cover) or book, in person. I have read that the visual work is an exploration of color, pattern, rhythm and vibration in Japanese Katagami stencils and fabrics and the interplay of light, shadow and color—relationships which can range from spirited to introspective and reflective. The CD, Four Shibusa is a collection of thoughtful and precise music compositions. At times, their simplicity belies their great depth.
More information on the artistic collaboration is at this link:
http://www.pip-dickens.com/audio-visual-collaboration.htm
Sendai Threnody, I posit, is a lament resulting from the massive and tragic 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. This piece is brilliantly played by clarinettists Heather Roche and Jonathan Sage. The subtlety of the blending of consonant to dissonant tones adds to the power and serenity of this tribute. Minimal electronics supplement this track.
Entangled Symmetries returns to sound explorations similar to Fragile.Flicker.Fragment, yet with a greater sense of restraint. There is a deep inner reflection in this piece. The more complex portions seem to be taking cues from the visual works of collaborator Pip Dickens where sonic patterns combine and vibrate.
Kyoto Roughcut has a distinctly mysterious quality. It opens with very subtle and not readily discernable combinations of electronics and clarinets. There is a building tension and the sounds expand with chattering and visceral undercurrents. As the piece progresses, the clarinets are revealed with shrill edges, full tones and liquid electronics are woven and pulsed into the fabric of sound until it overtakes and floods the entire soundstage and gently wanes. The clarinets return briefly and then all gradually fades.
Permutations opens with solo clarinet and a growing misty undertow of electronics with sounds reminiscent of meshed tonal percussion, strings and choral voices. It is a somber theme similar to Sendai Threnody—almost like a beacon calling out in a steady rain. Eventually, the clarinet melody shifts and the electronics gradually transform to purer tones like the clarinets and then the combined atmosphere of sound subsides, leaving a lone clarinet.
There is a meditative purity throughout Four Shibusa, but it is in no way a sterile. The timbre of the clarinets adds a warmth to the overall work. In each piece, there is a masterful sophistication and balance, and despite the use of electronics, the sound is never synthetic. Sometimes the power is in the silence and the spaces, not always in the sound. This I am coming to understand more with each new work by Monty Adkins. As a record label, Audiobulb has again held fast to their tenet of being “…an exploratory music label designed to support the work of innovative artists.”
More information about clarinettists Heather Roche and Jonathan Sage:
http://heatherroche.wordpress.com/ and http://www.jonathansage.co.uk/
Tape Loop Orchestra – The Word On My Lips Is Your Name & The Burnley Brass Band Plays On In My Heart
CD 1: Time: 45:00 #TL001: The Word On My Lips Is Your Name – Subtitle: A compendium of tape loop experiments
CD 2: Time: 45:00 #TL002: The Burnley Brass Band Plays On In My Heart
Artist’s Website: http://oursmallideas.tumblr.com/
Available at: http://shop.12k.com/products/500637-tape-loop-orchestra-the-word-on-my-lips-the-burnley-brass-band-plays-on
I trace my interest in electro-acoustic and electronic music back to the late 1960s and early 1970s when I built crystal radios and electronic circuits, and started listening to shortwave radio broadcasts. Searching the radio dial late into the night, I often found the spaces on the radio dial between the stations as fascinating as the broadcasts from far away lands. Drifting in and out of sleep, it was the sounds of unfiltered carrier frequencies, blended oscillations, static and hiss, high-speed Morse code, and fading music and voices that I found so alluring.
This brings me to the mysterious realm that Andrew Hargreaves occupies in his third release under the moniker of Tape Loop Orchestra. Andrew is also one half of the duo known as The Boats (the other half being Craig Tattersall), and their most recent CD Ballads of the Research Department is a delightful collection of dreamy instrumental and vocal works released on the 12k Label: #12K1068 (http://www.12k.com/index.php/site/releases/ballads_of_the_research_department/).
The first CD in this two CD set, The Word On My Lips Is Your Name is an interconnected anthology of Andrew’s recent sonic explorations, deeply shrouded layers on metal oxide tape, no doubt for later use in a broader context. These linked recordings project a feeling of being cast adrift on a gently rolling sea, while fading in and out of consciousness. The pieces vary from deeply veiled Mellotron-string harmonies, muffled bell-tones, placid swells of dissolving piano, and cello (by Danny Norbury) on the edge of a choir. Every so often, a familiar instrument appears, but there is clarity only long enough to establish a presence in the loop before it blends into the other-worldly haze. Some portions are reminiscent of my favorite Edgar Froese album, the lush (largely Mellotron-ic work from 1975): Epsilon in Malaysian Pale/Maroubra Bay. There is a thoughtful (yet often ethereal) romanticism in this collection.
In the second CD, The Burnley Brass Band Plays On In My Heart, I feel a deeply held sentimentality for an era of long ago. It is a sonic (and also quite visual) tour filled with an indescribable yet comforting melancholy. It starts as a largo of highly obscured brass (of some sort). The journey shifts from obscurity to clarity as each connected section of sound layers emerge from the mist of clicks, blips and gentle tape hiss. The transitions are subtle as different layers of instrumentation are introduced and others drift away. There are soft winds blowing, restrained choirs with distant horns, hints of an orchestra, perhaps a church organ, and a string quartet. The looping introduces a calming pulse, and as the journey nears an end, the somber brass largo returns with added strings and fading choir.
Works such as this, is what brought me back to listening to electronic and electro-acoustic music in the last couple of years. I felt like so many instrumental works of this genre in the 1980s and 1990s sounded hollow, synthetic and inauthentic. This collection from Andrew Hargreaves of Tape Loop Orchestra is like a pleasant distant memory of the nights of long ago, hearing far-off lands and dreaming of how those places might have been, while drifting in and out of reverie late into the night.
A short excerpt…
****
Post-script: Perhaps intended? The timing of each CD (and the resultant total) is not lost on me—a tribute to the 90 minute cassette tape format.
Kane Ikin + David Wenngren – Strangers
CD KESH017: 45:54 (Mastered by Taylor Deupree of 12k)
Record Label: http://www.keshhhhhh.com/
Available at: http://www.experimedia.net/
1) Swell; 2) Call; 3) Veil; 4) Chalk; 5) Drifter; 6) Strings + Interlude
Album Preview:
*This posting has been updated upon further listening*
This is the first joint work created by Kane Ikin (one half of Solo Andata) and David Wenngren (Library Tapes). I have read that “Strangers” Ikin and Wenngren did not meet during the recording and that the structure and overall sonic feel of the album was not planned. This and other similar works mark a continuing re-emergence of instrumental music by a new generation of creative and technically inclined musicians that craft layered sound atmospheres (often referred to as “electro-acoustic minimalism”), yet the music is engaging and stimulating.
I have been an avid listener and collector of synthetic electronic music since the early 1970s, yet there is something to be admired about the production of fine instrumental music with an ambience and mystery of electronics, being created with cleverly disguised analog instruments (acoustic or amplified) as well as found, ambient, looped or processed sounds.
Historical context: While they abandoned their early legacy when they issued their boxed set “The Catalogue” in late 2009, Kraftwerk’s work started with a similar experimental spirit to “Strangers”, based on analog instrumental drones of guitars, flutes and rhythms of found percussion on pieces like “Kling Klang” from the 1972 album “Kraftwerk 2”.
Kling Klang Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50M7RLgipNc
Same with early works by Tangerine Dream and others, before they switched to early sequencers and then hefty modular synthesizers, like the Moog (or later more portable and somewhat less reliable EMS VCS3) as well as tape-based samplers like the Mellotron or Chamberlin. Early works by Evangelo Papathanasiou (Vangelis) were mostly created with organ, clavinet, woodwinds, piano and percussion processed with reverb, delay and other effects, as in “Creation du Monde” from the 1972 soundtrack to “L’Apocalypse des Animaux” by long time collaborator and filmmaker Frederic Rossif.
Creation du Monde: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0QQJfPi3ps
In “Strangers”, there is meandering warmth to the album, a peaceful sense of comfort and meditation with a tangible awareness of humanity and nature (an absence of the synthetic). Layers of guitar, bass, piano (deep soundboard), percussion (low register bells and gongs) and strings appear throughout. From the collaborators there is a joint sense of discovery and response as each layered track progresses. This method of joint remote authorship is risky, yet very intriguing and the results are quite successful.
The titles of each track do seem to symbolize the development of the sonic ideas. “Swell” is akin to Ikin’s gorgeous recent work “Contrail” with apparent glissando drifts of guitar and layered keyboard peregrinations. “Call” has the feel of time-shifted incantation with repeated musical phrases. The intensity of the “call” increases as it progresses. While there is a general feeling of the pastoral in this track, there are times where layered sounds mesh to a point of tension, later to be diffused to a calming resolution. “Veil” starts with a repeated tonal beacon and gradually it diffuses into a suspended wash of winds, harmonics and tonal percussives. “Chalk” is hypnotic and haunting with a sense of a distant faded memory returning. “Drifter” contains repeated sampled phrases that establish a building tension as the fabric of the piece intensifies. Washes of noise (almost like lashing waves in a storm) enter the piece until they subside (this piece, to me, does appear to be chopped a bit at the end). “Strings + Interlude” builds slowly, and pulses as layers and sounds are introduced. It has a feeling of darkness, yet it’s punctuated with sounds that introduce light and color into the soundscape. Then the strings disappear and the interlude is a peaceful and mysterious aftermath–this piece, along with “Chalk” and “Swell” are the most cinematic.
This video using “Chalk” will give a sense of what I mean…rather unusual historic footage:
Gone are the soulless interfaces of MIDI and sequenced boxes of beat, and with “Strangers” we are presented with a thoughtful, visual and distinctive journey into an ethereal realm of musical authenticity.
wajobu 