1: Poppy H – To The Dead, We Failed – “Made in a single day, To The Dead, We Failed, is a mixtape of sound collages born from raw acoustic recordings that finds Poppy H seeking solace in the imperfect and embracing his limited – but preferred – working environment and production tools”.
To The Dead, We Failed is doesn’t sound like it was made in a day, it doesn’t sound rushed, it sounds like it has all the time in the world to go nowhere inparticular, that surely is a good thing? Gentle soundscapes, warm, inviting, easy to flow with, to go with. Simple maybe but that’s rather clever, it isn’t quite a less is more thing, it does breathe rather well though… Poppy H is an experimental musician, field recordist and producer.
2: Lola de la Mata – Stereocilia is the second single release from Lola de la Mata’s upcoming album around tinnitus: ‘Oceans on Azimuth’, out May 8th 2024 + a 250 limited edition run transparent vinyl. “Emerging from the depths of the cochlea, the fluttering voice on Stereocilia, together with the presence of the Claravox Theremin dance across fluctuating waves around one another, haunting the listener as if hearing into past” composition, lyrics and performance all by Lola de la Mata, more about and from the album here – ORGAN THING: Conceptual Sound Artist Lola de la Mata has announced a new album Oceans on Azimuth – an Auditory Odyssey Into Tinnitus due out in May, the news comes with a new single ‘PINK noise’…
3: Microcorps, Alexander Tucker’s mutant techno alter ego, has announced details of a collection of new material for The Tapeworm, the cassette-only label that celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, out on 10 May 2024. Macrocorpse 2021-2024 is a collection of eight tracks that stray into a mutated space where techno-based composition inhabits the same space as microsound time scales, drone and noise. Regular Tapeworm collaborator Savage Pencil lends his warped graphic visions to the cover artwork.
Microcorps – Macrocorpse 2021-2024 (Tapeworm) – Techno? I guess so, but a subtle take on the notion, those times when you really get into a groove with a machine, or you really enjoy the noise of a train ride and don’t want to get off, or an industrial press or something of that nature, not obvious, not just banging techno, not really banging in any kind of way (although it is) but they you’d not expect it to be. The whole album is really enjoyable, almost wholesome, soothing, they are tape worms.
“I’ve always admired The Tapeworm from afar,” says Tucker. “I’d amassed all these tracks, some of which I’d forgotten even existed until the label asked me to produce a tape. Each track is made with a specific system I had set up on the modular rig. I’d have all these processes feeding back into each other creating these dense fragmented bangers.”
Across the album, machine technology sits next to Tucker’s own voice, processed through electronics and granular sampling. Vocals are pitched beyond recognition and delivered in a wordless constructed language that attempts to create its own alien landscapes. Tucker’s aim is for each track to set a balance between structure and disrupting processes that feed off one another, where core rhythmic elements rub up against fried textures that fold in and out of each track. Always keen to marry electronic systems and acoustic instruments Tucker also employs cello layers which are resampled into sonic drone debris.
He expands “I often want to have my cake and eat it with these tracks. My idea was is to place my love of experimental techno, drone, music concréte and composition into each piece, where all these elements can weave through each other and produce a hybrid area”
Experimental without being obtusely so, techno-drone? Mutated goodness, just really hitting the spot (or the spots). Tucker is joined on final track ‘PYN’ by Luke J Murray (Nonexistent, Stonecirclesampler, Liquid DnB-like Ambient Grime 2) adding his gauzy drones and electronic drift. The whole album is just really enjoyable and feels like it will continue to be…
Macrocorpse 2021-2024 can be ordered here. Release date is May 10th 2024
4: Mummies and Madmen – an almost lost abum from back there that you might wish to explore. You’ve just passed a YouTube slice with, in their own words, an “extract from the April 2024 album ‘Mummies and Madmen Grow Dark In The Sun’ by Mummies and Madmen on Winter Hill Recordings/Adventures in Reality. This is an extract from the 20 minute title track. Originally recorded and released 1984, paired with a second 20 minute track ‘Red Front’, in 1984 as a cassette on Coventry’s Slob Tapes, this has been re-mastered by Sion Orgon and re-issued as a Digipak CD and download with new artwork and sleeve notes”. Find the whole thing on Bandcamp and find more about it all underneath, do we need to add anything?
More – “24th August 1983. The scene: a small and chaotic terraced house in Craven Street, Coventry. Bob Oliver, main man of eclectic tape label Slob Tapes, and Alan Rider, head of early industrial label Adventures in Reality Recordings (Attrition, Stress, Irsol, SPK, Test Department, Muslimgauze and others) and one half of electronic duo Stress, have come together with the mysterious Cryptic Z Mostmen to record a single track, ‘Mummies and Madmen Grow Dark in the Sun’, over the course of an afternoon. It was an inventive period in music, where anything was possible and Coventry had its own very underground experimental electronic scene comprising Attrition, Stress, Irsol, Sea of Wires and the Adventures in Reality label. Everyone shared equipment, accommodation, and often band members. Bob was a drummer/percussionist who would later perform live with Attrition. He went by the name Gamla Stan on recordings. Alan ran the Adventures in Reality fanzine and label, performed and recorded in Stress, released early Attrition material and created and operated Human League style slide and film projections on the band’s UK and European tours. No one knew what Cryptic Z Mostman did.
Mummies and Madmen was never intended to have a future. It was formed for the duration of that one track, a mix of throbbing drum machine, synthesiser feedback, PiL style bass and scratchy, reverb drenched, guitar that contorted, evolved and mutated over the course of 20 minutes. Fourteen months later Gamla Stan and Cryptic Z Mostmen came together again to record a second track, ‘Red Front’. Both tracks were released later in 1984 on Slob Tapes under the Mummies and Madmen name as a C45 tape album, Slob 008. That would probably have been that. Until now that is, when a solitary surviving copy of the album was unearthed and re-mastered for this reissue”.
THE ORGAN 