Sleeper Line is a five-track EP constructed from the original components of a live set performed in December 2012. These components — manipulated found sounds — were recorded at various times and in various environments: Dungeness Power Station (2012), street recordings post-Notting Hill Carnival (2007), a prior live performance at the White Building in London (2012), and a cassette recording made in the cloakroom of the Metalheadz Sunday Sessions club night (1997). The cyclical process of merging analogue and digital media, elements of dance music and varying locations and timescales, sits at the core of the compositional and sonic structures of the EP.
Shelley Parker is an artist based in London. Her practice explores the experiential potential of sound and image through the manipulation of technology and the study of structure and material. Live audio feeds, bass frequencies and found sounds are recurring themes within her performance, installation and music production.
2014 continues with more great new music than any one person could possibly keep up with. I managed to cover one or two things in the last month, including Robot Records’ 3CD retrospective of Jacques Lejeune’s work. It’s probably the best GRM-related release I’ve seen since the INA-GRM put out those Luc Ferrari and Bernard Parmegiani sets in 2008 and 2009. I highly recommend it. If you’re looking for a place where you can get a copy, it’s currently available at Other Music.
I also covered Nicholas Szczepanik’s Not Knowing for Dusted in Exile, which is one of the more gorgeous recordings of 2014 so far. As long as you’re there, you should also check out Jennifer Kelly’s review of Damien Jurado’s new record. Not so much on the experimental side of things, but a great record and worth checking out.
I’ve been catching up with and writing about Coppice and Haptic and I hope to get something together for The Patient as well. Those three recordings have most of my attention at the moment.
But there’s lots of new music coming from Editions Mego that I want to hear too. Along with the Schmickler/Rohrhuber LP below, which I’m slowly digesting, there’s new music from COH, LCC, Mika Vainio, Russell Haswell and Fennesz on the way. You can preview all of that on their website.
There’s also two new releases from Erstwhile, four new records and a 7″ from Kye, a boatload of Alga Marghen reissues, a new Thomas Ankersmit CD on Touch, and several new Sub Rosa projects that are either out now or soon to be available. Nevermind that Record Store Day is just a few days away, there’s more than enough music out there now to keep you record hunting for a good long time.
Links to my favorite sites for reviews and information are found at the bottom of the page. You can always find good infoatBrainwashed.com, Dusted,Just Outside, andAll Music Guide, and samples are available virtually everywhere.Forced ExposureandBoomkatare good places to go if you’re looking for the more obscure stuff.
As always, formats posted are the ones I own. Further record-buying resources can be found at the bottom of this page.
Better late than never: here we go with a combined monthly list for the first part of the year. The last two months have been filled with tons of great new music, some of which I’ve had the chance to review, some of which I’m in the middle of writing about now. There’s lots more due out in the next few months too, which means I need to pick up the pace.
That said, here’s a list of what’s been in my CD player and on my turntable in the last couple of months. Links to my favorite sites for reviews and information are found at the bottom of the page. You can always find good info at Brainwashed.com, Dusted, Just Outside, and All Music Guide, and samples are available virtually everywhere. Forced Exposure and Boomkat are good places to go if you’re looking for the more obscure stuff.
As always, formats posted are the ones I own. You can find numerous retailers carrying these titles at the bottom of this page.
Lots of great records gets overlooked at the end of ever year, as everyone busies themselves with year end lists. ThePatient, by Joseph Clayton Mills, is definitely one of those records. It was released right at the end of 2013 as best as I can tell, and I’m not sure it’s been made available in the States since it’s released, but it looks and sounds fascinating. Here’s the info from Entr’acte:
“During his final illness (tuberculosis of the larynx) at the sanatorium in Kierling, Kafka was not supposed to speak, an injunction he obeyed most of the time. He communicated with Dora Dymant, Robert Klopstock, and others by scribbling notes on slips of paper. Usually these notes were mere hints; his friends guessed the rest.”—Max Brod
Inspired by and incorporating fragmentary notes written by Franz Kafka on his deathbed to communicate with friends and family, The Patient draws from the texts of these conversation slips for specific imagery, textures, mood, gestures, and instrumentation. The score—essentially an index of suggestions to guide structured improvisation—was initially performed at Chicago’s Experiemental Sound Studio in the fall of 2012 by Olivia Block (piano/walkie-talkies/objects), Noé Cuéllar (accordion/psalter/cassette player/objects), Steven Hess (percussion/cassette player), Joseph Clayton Mills (electronics/cassette player/objects), and Jason Stein (bass clarinet). Recordings of that performance were subsequently augmented, rearranged, and assembled by Mills into the finished album. Additional material provided by Megan Rodgers and Seonaid Valiant.
A sound sample is available via the label’s website, here. There’s also a short trailer for the album on Vimeo, posted by by Mills. I’ve embedded that below.
The music sounds excellent and everyone involved is incredibly talented, which is enough to make me want a copy. The A5 book that accompanies it and the Kafka connection put it over the top. Not a lot of info about the book on their site, but from what I can tell it includes some of the quotes from Kafka and is at least 40 pages long (check the images on the website).
Copies are currently available via the label, and should arrive at Erstwhile Distribution shortly. Don’t sleep on it. Looks like only 200 copies were made.
