WDT/VSTM Archive: Heroines of the U.S.S.R – Dawn of Dogs EP

WDT016: Heroines of the U.S.S.R – Dawn of Dogs EP

For the first archive update of 2013, we have reached no.16, which is about half way through if we include the VSTM releases. The Dawn of Dogs EP was recorded seven years ago, although the opening track was actually made in 2003; this track was composed on the Novation K-Station with relatively little post-production and was the first long track I had ever made. The track, like the others, was augmented with some crackle from a record player I found in the attic of one of the houses I used to live in in Norwich, with a bit of delay for good measure. The other two tracks used reworked sound from the original files, again using Cubase to change tone, pitch, duration and sustain – as well as applying a variety of effects – to create the final pieces.

The idea behind the release was a sort of mundane invasion, with potential links back to the Pink Floyd album Animals. At the time I was working on a book called Sunshine and Power Lines which featured a long story in the centre involving the disappearance of animals; this was a sort of response to that, an aural explanation of where they might have gone.

The excellent art work is by long-time collaborator Lee Broughall (tomfire, Badgerwood Commission amongst others)

The next archive update will be WDT017: uncle mum – Make Your Own Hole

Heroines of the Archaic Horizon

The folks at Archaic Horizon have put out/uploaded/made available a record of mine called A Map of Lost Causes. It can be found here. Dan at Archaic has given it an insanely complimentary write-up for which I am very thankful and flattered. To add my own two cents to Archaic’s, the 9 pieces on the recording mark a voyage made by an unnamed explorer across a vast continent, and the horrific and peculiar people and places he comes in to contact with. It is loosely based on the fictional continent of Indeshada,the topography of which makes up the setting for a book I am working on. I believe it is what’s known as a concept album, but then they all. I’ve got one about a guy drowning whilst camping out with his friends next to a lake. If I’d thought about it, it would tie in nicely with Halloween. Perhaps I’ll save that until next year.

Any way, Map, like Winter before it, contains a piece that I am genuinely proud of making, which required almost no reworking in the sense that it came out like some sort of fully-formed music baby. Yeh. That’s a description that makes sense. Dance of the Cryptids, which was already floating about on the archive here would be the name of it. I am also found of the track The Future because it took a long time to get it to a stage I was happy with, and is a bit much for nine minutes or so in length as it essentially repeats the same phrase whilst gradually destroying itself. I suppose that is a kind of homage to Disintegration Loops except that there’s no life-changing story to go along with it; I’d recently moved to York when I made the album. That’s it.

Oh, and the excellent cover art is Robin’s creation. Huge thanks on that, it looks amazing.

In other news, I am presenting a paper at the Music and Meaning symposium on November 7th, discussing the use of archives in the work of Jon Brooks (The Advisory Circle) and William Basinski (there’s a link to something I was just talking about…neat little segue), but viewed through Deleuze and Bergson obv! It’s a reduction of a piece I’m hoping to get accepted by a journal – no names – so I’m only really looking at ‘sheets of past’…time constraints and audience boredom also have an impact…so I may add it up here after I’m done and if it doesn’t tank to badly. I’ve set the bar relatively high for myself in terms of the obscurity of the things I’m combining to form a narrative; John Cage playing a cactus, a boy being electrocuted whilst trying to collect a frisbee and September 11th 2001. Let’s see how that pans out…

Heroines of the U.S.S.R – March 3rd, 1911

Right click. Save as.

WDT/VSTM Archive Update: November

WDT011: Cataahn – Untitled EP

According to this, I suggested I’d be back posting on Nov.5th. Well, that was a lie. I’ve been away getting married and making sure I have a semi decent research chapter written up so that I can actually, you know, complete a PhD eventually. Any way, that’s enough of my excuses for being lame. Or a lame wad. Whatever the kids are calling it.

This month’s archive release is Cataahn’s Untitled EP. Again, utilising home made reverb (the Trans cock) – I’ll see if Lee can furnish me with a picture at some stage – delay, guitar, vocals and various other effects, Stokes and Broughall cobble together a curious and at times unsettling concoction of distant melody and half heard remembrance. It’s tentative, exploratory, meandering and odd, which I guess is why I like it. There’s a nice passage between 4mins and 10mins where vocals routed through the Trans cock and DL4 (I think) collapse in on themselves, accompanied at first by an off kilter American National Anthem and then by some plaintive guitar…

A little more info is available on the Archive page. The next release, a new year one, will be Tomfire’s Best Of (though I’ll have to check with the rest of the band first). In reality, I think this was the first release we had on the label, but I’d pushed it down in the catalogue…not sure why.

Hopefully, before Christmas, I’ll have two or so more article to put up to accompany Ralph’s earlier piece on belief…don’t hold me to it though. I’ve also complete, as Heroines of the U.S.S.R, a new album of sorts titled Moreau’s Lament which is obviously highly conceptual and features a group of people who go camping at a haunted boat house, one of them goes for a swim, finds a submerged ballroom full of mutated animals (hence ‘Moreau’) and is subsequently drowned. During this escapade, he is also dumped by his fiance. Ha.

March WDT/VSTM Archive Update

WDT004: Heroines of the U.S.S.R – είστε ζωή

Due to FTP servers disliking certain non-Latin based languages, the original Greek titles of this release have been replaced by their English translations, which are of poor comparison. They give you an idea though. The original track titles of the record are available in the zip file. More information, as ever, is available on the archive page.

The next WDT Archive release will be WDT005: The Fucking Fulfords – Live at The Firs, a positively primeval live recording of myself, Tom and Stokes improvising on many instruments at a party in Hitchin. All guests but us left if I recall.

December WDT/VSTM Archive Update

The second item added to the WDT/VSTM archive is WDT002: Heroines of the U.S.S.R – Winter. More information on the release can be found on the archive page. The next update to the archive will take place in February, following the 2010 Review in January. The Febraury release will be WDT003: Creeping Jaw Society – Remixemedial, a highly embarrassing collection of failed remixes circa 2004.

Heroines of the U.S.S.R – Orpheus and Eurydice

I have been away for the past week, latterly in Northumberland but prior to that at the wedding of my friends Lee and Alison, now Mr and Mrs Broughall. As a wedding gift, I decided to try and compose a piece of music based on the vague concept of heroic (or unheroic depending on your take) love, picking the doomed romance of Orpheus and Eurydice as my overall frame of reference . I did think that perhaps the legend was somewhat inappropriate considering the occasion, but my ultimate goal was not to have the piece acting as symbolic of the legend, but rather a backdrop to allow the four sections to join in some sort of unified way; it was more about creating something I was happy with that would convey my congratulations and happiness at the marriage. I also had some excellent contributions from Liam and Chris, whose input I asked for as, between the three of us, we have worked together musically with Lee for a good many years and in various formats. I eventually put the CD together in a nice little case I hand made and such, which was remarkably skilful for me I think; I didn’t cut myself or anything.

The piece comprises four parts;

• Dance of the Naiads
• Argonautica
• Descent
• Orpheus and Eurydice

As Barry said to Chris at the reception – “In my day, it’s what we’d have called a ‘concept album'”. Hopefully it wasn’t too over the top. Liam contributed melodica and banjo to the second part, and Chris contributed vocals and guitar to the fourth part. For the sake of posterity, the piece was made in Ableton and Cubase using 5 second fragments of found sound, my own vocals, xylophone, water draining through a series of different pipes, miniature bells that hang in my garden, the birdsong in my garden at dusk (around July time) and a variety of effects made in Max for Live. The final running time is 24 minutes exactly.

The final section of Orpheus and Eurydice can be downloaded here, by right clicking and selecting ‘Save As’. It would be roughly in line with the point when Orpheus loses Eurydice forever.

Last FM updates

Just a small note to say that Heroines of the U.S.S.R, Creeping Jaw Society and Silk and Dogs now have tracks streaming and available for free download at Last FM, including a fair amount of stuff not available in the archive, such as the Cimmerian EP, A Map of Lost Causes, Winter, Dawn of Dogs EP and Nine Works for Piano in their entireties (The first two in that list are my favourites, or at least the things I am happiest with…the others are sort of an interesting look back at why my old ideas and production techniques weren’t so great). I’ll hopefully be adding much older material by the likes of The Fucking Fulfords, Ptolemy Pegram’s Big Noise Band, Kid In A Drawer and Garcia Dances The Jttrbg to the archive shortly as a way of cataloguing the old WDT/VSTM/School of Unthink stuff I have.

Last FM links:

• Heroines of the U.S.S.R
• Creeping Jaw Society
• Silk and Dogs

The penultimate track in the Provinces project by Silk and Dogs will be posted tomorrow/Friday, but is already available on the aforementioned ( titled Yunnan), with a 30 second preview of the final track, unsurprisingly called ‘Tibet’, also available (full download from mid September). There will also be a ‘Recent Listening Habits’ post up shortly, using the helpful scrobbling service so beloved by everyone, to see what I’ve listened to in the last week or so. Early September, there will also be a sizeable post on horses. I’m not sure why.