Two mixes which will wholly improve your life. Get to it.
A guitar soli mix for Root Strata by Danny Paul Grody. If you can listen to Glenn Jones's 'A Snapshot of Mom, Scotland, 1957' without tearing up, you're a better man than I.
And this 'Winter Mix' by James Ginzburg for The Outer Church. Basic Channel, Susumu Yokota, Paul Jebanasam, Roly Porter? Precisely.
Tracklisting in no particular order:
John Heckle - I & I -
San Laurentino - Just Like Heart
San Laurentino - Space Tourism
Marcello Napalentano Presents Ra Thout & The Brigante's Orchestra - Man From From Messapia
Marcello Napalentano Presents Ra Thout & THe Brigante's Orchestra- The MAn Who Can Do Everything
John Heckle - Healer's Charm
Vagon brei - Welcome to Zeta Puppis System
Simoncino - The China Syndrome
Simoncino - Into Outro Cosmo
Simoncino - Dark Devotional Energies
Click on the image for a great Not Not Fun mix over at Pontone...
Single Shots by Mandrew on Mixcloud
Artist: Forest Swords
Album: Dagger Paths
Label: Olde English Spelling Bee
It's going to be impossible to write about Dagger Paths without mentioning hypnagogy, so I may as well get it in early. Dagger Paths, the first vinyl release from this elusive unit from coastal Merseyside, is an enervated, fogged remembrance of music and place. What it seems to do is, like Burial, use half remembered beats and tropes, and mould them into a sonic landscape, or in this case a dubscape. The hypnagogic effect comes from precisely that strange mid-land between sleep and waking, the combination of the slowly attuning ears picking out environmental sounds and the distant echo of recorded music. It’s no surprise then, that the Aaliyah/Timbaland track on display here is almost unrecognisable – the bassline a thuggish recreation of the original’s supple warmth, buried beneath a guitar line cribbed from Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s ‘Dead Flag Blues’ and a cavernous outer treated guitar. It comes on, at times, something like a dubbier Hood.
‘Holylake Mist’ is another signature track (remixed from a version that first appeared on the Miarches tape that came out last year). It’s built from very little: two entwined spidery guitar lines, a near non-existent buried vocal and a sparse tribal drum pattern; yet it manages to evoke the still of a near-dawn landscape. It’s got a devotional aspect to it as well, almost invocational – a hymn to formative place and memory.
For some reason, I’ve started to conflate this with the recent Demdike Stare record – Forest of Evil, which uses a different sound palette to explore similar ideas and the pull of collective memory and the English landscape. Both have a haunted and haunting quality. And both are well worth getting hold of. The other thing they have in common is both are a pain in the arse to get on vinyl! The former is available from Olde English Spelling Bee, the latter is on download from Boomkat.
You can also download Forest Sword's Fjree Feather EP free at Last.fm, and find an ace Demdike Stare mix over the Modern Love site.
In all my days of writing on here, I don't think I've ever mentioned Fluid Radio. So here is a mention for Fluid Radio - a site that hosts a radio station for ambience, drones, weird folk and fridge noises, plus all manner of reviews and links out to free mixes and downloads. Go there.
Here are a few recent downloads we've come across that are worth checking out...
Not sure how I missed this first time around (the curse of the RSS Reader I suspect) but an excellent compilation from the ever-superb Raven Sings The Blues blog - they're a top source for that seam of psych and plain weird folk music that's been dominating the American underground for the past couple of years. This compilation is like a summing up. It's also free. Their main site is here: Raven Sings The Blues
A FACT remix by the Caretaker, aka Leyland James Kirby - this is a trawl through the stranged haunted dancehalls of his discography so far. There are also some samples of his new stuff on the V/VM website - they sound immense and hugely ambitious. Kirby also has a new blog - History Always Favours The Winners - with links to various things and the odd downloadable track.
There's a fantastic Kryptic Minds and Loefah interview and exclusive download over at Blackdown's blog - this is the artform of the blog at it's height: freeform, wide-ranging, with the added bonus of a soundtrack. Print literature just can't compete with this stuff. (Edit: not 10 minutes after posting this I noticed that Plan B had gone. Shame - it was one of the best music magazines still going...)
Lastly, some ambient and post rock mixes - the first is from the ever excellent Low Light, combining Philip Glass and Mogwai to excellent effect; the second following a link of his, is a collection from The Bovine Life Support System, a whole host of arcane and haunted ambient mixes.