Although sounding more like the name of a character Shakespeare struck from the script of "A Midsummer Night´s Dream" in his final revision, "Peasgood Nonsuch" is actually a variety of apple grown in England (best harvested in October).

Robin Saville´s album is so very evocative of rural England, so much and so pleasantly so that it is almost the magically anthropomorphized England of classic children´s tales. Imagine if a character in "The Wind in the Willows" had been a composer - this is what he would have written.

It is good-natured and dry-witted, which is evident both in track titles and the light touch brought to the compositions and the playing. Swaying and bubbling electronics are delicately combined with acoustic instruments, usually a guitar. Saville stays low to the ground and conveys the essense of a shift in the breeze or the fragrance of a flower, the smallest and therefore most important elements of the bucolic life.

http://www.staticcaravan.org

In 2006 Hey-o-Hansen released a series of twelve-inch singles, from which they have now culled six original tracks and five remixes. This two-man circus takes us on a seventy-five minute "Journey into Berlin´s Afro-Alpin-Dubstep-Killersound". I´m not really sure what that means other than they value the beats and bass of Africa and the West Indies as much as they enjoy the native sounds of their Alpine homeland, represented primarily by some wonderfully swingin´ accordian right off the bat on track one, "Moon". But it also tips you off to the fact that these fellows have a wicked and silly sense of humour. Which is nice in dance music, a genre that takes itself all too seriously.

If I understand the genesis properly, originally Hey was a solo act, teaming up occasionally with Hansen. Now they have taken on board the barely-under-control dancehall singer Sir Lord Gordon Odametey and have also been lent a hand by members of Múm from Iceland. As they take on collaborators they take on influences and expand their sound palette.

Further evidence of the breadth of their odd tastes are samples from such unlikely candidates as the leader of the conservative Popular Party in Spain and the regional chief economist and director of social and economic development for the World Bank's Middle East and North Africa office.

Musically, the trio range so far all over the map that you´ll be finding everything from steel drums to brass bands somewhere in among the heady, steady rhythms. The only real miss is the preachy, plodding "Abraxas" - as a jeremiad against slavery one must of course admire its convictions, but it just doesn´t fit in such happy, colourful surroundings.

And just when you think you´ve had too much fun, the remixers take over, all of them working out of Berlin and most of whose reputations have unfortuntely not reached much further. Yet. As with any remix, the art is in doing something with someone else´s ideas as a point of departure. And everybody does, but to be honest none really stand out as work which will break them internationally. If I had to choose a favourite, I´d take Thaddeus Herrmann´s "Jack is a Simple Fellow..." for the great sense of space it creates.

Still and all, I can hardly think of an album you can have more innocent fun with.

http://www.heyrec.org

One of the hardiest stalwarts of the new dub scene since the nineties has been Nick Perch, the man behind the band Zion Train, operator of the Universal Egg label and coordinator of the Abassi All Stars. As is traditional in the genre, a studio album (called "Showcase") was first assembled from various sides recorded by this studio-only band, highlighting singers including stars like Tippa Irae and Luciano, and newcomers drawn into the studio from across a vast expanse - Junior Kigwa (Rwanda), Sis Sanae (Japan) and Daddy Roots (Anguilla). In the future the band has plans to record with an ever-expanding roster of exciting new and familiar names.

All songs were written by Perch, posed with agile fingers stabbing deftly at the keyboards and twiddling the knobs on his electronic playthings, and trumpeter David Fullwood, whose seductively swaying, muted trumpet has always been a hallmark.

Now as is the custom comes its dub companion, showcasing Perch´s considerable studio skills. Irresistable, positive energy has always been a hallmark of Perch´s productions through the years and the vibe remains the same here. The instrumentalists are all top British and Jamaican players, the melodies have a kind of Ethiopian lope about them and the horns a Trenchtown jump. As with most classical dub, the singers are rendered mere bit players, mere ghosts, fragments and after-echoes remaining from the original.

Still, their spectral presence is one more colour on the palette of the producer giving his dubscapes more depth, more breadth, more life. This is one vastly entertaining seventy minutes, jam-packed with just what you expected and a few surprises, like the somberly beautiful dirge "Cities" showcasing and fiddling with some lovely violin by someone only identified as "Anne".

In one glaring lapse of judgement, however, snippets of a tirade by British nutcase, racist and conspiracy theorist David Icke are included on three tracks. Reggae, hip hop and illbient all have a predilection for conspiracy theories, sometimes ironically, sometimes dead serious. But while these artists usually sample their kooks off the radio or TV, Icke appears among "vocalists" in the liner notes. In fact, two other individuals also share their conspiracy theories with us on the record, but they remain unidentified and probably sampled. If Icke indeed was specifically invited to participate, then I´d say this all-star team let a fox into the henhouse of otherwise honourable and peaceful individuals. For it is always far more refreshing to hear a singer humbly admit that he doesn´t "have the answer to all the questions", as we do a little late in the disc.

This is the ambient music that ambient music puts on the stereo when it wants to unwind and get reaquainted with its roots.

Toronto´s Sleep Research Facility perversely approach the "comfort of encroaching hypothermia" with this sweeping, textbook example of true soundscaping craftsmanship. The playful title puns of course on the temperatures to be encountered in the Arctic, the region inspiring the five works presented here, but there is also a deeper poetry here. A frieze is of course a mural, an oversized, panoramic view of something - in this case, the top of the world and the deeper, hidden delights of what most dismiss as a monochrome wasteland.

Sleep Research Facility allows each piece to evolve at its own pace. Our location is clearly set at the outset as SRF effortlessly conjures up the sound and feel of icy wastes across which the winds roam unimpeded. He progresses by smearing great swaths of thick greys and off-whites on this canvas as he raises monoliths of unimaginably large exterior space, the kind of space only nature can provide. Although one drone does indeed recall being indoors - imagine the most tremendous hall housing the most monstrous giant turbines you could ever conceive.

It´s inspiring to hear someone with such an ear for nothingness.

http://www.coldspring.co.uk

Süd Electronic & Dial Records Yuletide Knees Up - 13th December 2008

Powered By A Funktion One Soundsytem

First 200 people at the venue will each recieve 3d glasses to enjoy Valero Doval's visuals

Line Up

Dj Jus Ed - USA (Underground Quality )
Efdemin - Berlin (Dial ,Curle Recordings ,liebe*detail)
RNDM - Berlin - One Half Of Pigon Alongside Phillip Solman AKA Efdemin (Dial )

Support Dj :
Lakuti ( Uzuri ,Süd )
Visuals by Valero Doval : http://www.valerodoval.com

Date : 13th December 2008
Ticket Infos : Advance Tickets Priced @ £10 + BF Available from :
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/39308

Otherwise Tickets Are £12 On The Door & Subject To Availabality

Venue : Somewhere In Dalston .(Prosumer Kicked Ass @ This Venue @ Our Last Party ) Full Venue Details To be Revealed Nearer The date
Via :
info@sudelectronic.com
07853371939

More Info On The Night :

Süd Electronic & Dial Records Once again join forces to bring you their annual Yuletide
Knees Up now in it's 4th Year . Last year we brought you the wonderful sounds of Efdemin & Lawrence in
the lovely confines of the "Boys Club " in Dalston . This time the jamboree Stays in Dalston
though in a different space , which we've already road tested @ our 8th Birthday With Prosumer @ the
beginning of October .We expect the tickets go quick if last year's do is anything to go by so i would
advise that people purchase their tickets soon !!
This end of the year party is possibly the party we most look forward to . We feel very blessed too that our Dial Records
friends feel the same too .Dj's are encouraged to go beyond their comfort zone and to go beyond genre specific styles of djaying .

So expect a heady cocktail of the very best in Deep House , Chicago House , Detroit House , Disco & Techno .

This year we are excited to be able to bring a very special guest in the form of the Deep House Legend - Dj
Jus Ed !

Jus Ed (Underground Quality )

Jus Ed has truly captured the imagination of house heads acroSs the globe with his wonderfully deep , house sounds
which look back to the past whilst firmly rooted in the now & future .
uNDERGROUND QUALITY has become synonymous With Quality Electronic Music from himself and outstanding new talent such as
Anton Zap , Dj Qu , Fred P Aka Black Jazz Consortium ,Jenifa Mayanja + Many More .
His Underground Quality Radio Show on Myhouseyourhouse.net every wednesday has become a
hot bed for what is new in electronic music , with a global cult following comprising of deep house lovers & producers .
2008 has been a great year for Jus Ed with gigs in some of the most important venues such as Fabric In London , Tape Berlin , Rex Club in Paris ,
The APT In New York , Russia , Hamburg , Heidelberg , + Many more . 2009 looks set to be an even bigger year for the artist with some excellent releases
scheduled for release on UQ .
Click on the link below for an interview he did with Resident Advisor
http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=919
Below is a recent Podcast by him also on Resident Advisor :
http://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast-episode.aspx?id=127
Totally unmissable !

Efdemin (Dial , Curle Recordings ,liebe*detail)

Phillip Solman Aka Efdemin has been propeled into superstardom with Resident Advisor voting him artist of the year for 2007 , countless tours e.t.c
Efdemin first made his first ever UK appearance @ Süd alongside Lawrence , last June .
He went on to do one of the best Resident Advisor podcast in 2007 , which was inspired
by his dj set @ Süd according to the man himself .
http://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast-episode.aspx?id=57
November will see Curle Recordings , release Efdemin's first mix cd which is just magnifent
it features artists such as Patrice Scott , Scott Grooves , Marcel Dettman & Ben Klock , Surgeon , Craig Alexander , Brother's Vibe + More .
Curle will also be releasing an equally impressive ep by him .

RNDM (Dial )
Oliver Kargl Aka RNDM is perhaps better known as one half of Pigon alongside Phillip Solman
aka Efdemin . More goodies will becoming from this excellent duo .
What also impressed us though is oliver's impressive knowledge of house & techno and excellent djaying .
Come & hear for yourselves !!!

Links :
http://www.myspace.com/djjused 
http://www.myspace.com/efdemin
http://www.myspace.com/pigon
http://www.undergroundquality.com
http://www.sudelectronic.com

Hope to celebrate the holidays in your company
 

The present reviewer must confess to having no idea of this duo´s track record, but artistically at least it looks like a case of the old ketchup-effect: nothing, nothing for a long time and then suddenly, splat! Five releases on three different labels, including their own, in a matter of a few short months.

Vryashn is presented as an "avant-garde sound experience" intended for deep listening. A tad generic as a description, but then the two extended pieces on this album really need no further introduction or setting of the scene. What Bible and Henry have created speaks for itself, and it does so softly and with great authority.

I fell for the first piece directly. In its slow, organic growth it displays compositional maturity and dexterity. Vast grainy spaces shift as viola and cello sway back and forth, the elements become integrated and build a perfect whole. I am almost sad to have it come to an end. It is a space for quiet contemplation and reflection, as sparse and sacral as a Zen garden.

Initially I found myself indifferently disposed toward the second, half-hour long piece, which would seem to be an altogether different animal than its predecessor. Instead of floating in glorious stasis, it is more of an off-kilter collage; this must be the "avant-garde" bit promised by the press release. I´m still not really enjoying myself - until around the seventeenth minute when what sounds like an orchestra schooled in nothing but holy mininalism begins to swell and we are back in territory much more familiar and, to be honest, much more worthwhile your time.

Having also recently heard Bible and Henry´s "Marker" on Gruenrekorder, I know they are dedicated field recordists, but I prefer their talent at creating mood, sustaining techniques, sounds bleeding into one another, shifting colour. And the first seventeen minutes of that second track simply seem out of place on Vryashn. Excise them and you have what in my opinion is one of the most polished musical moments of a year quickly approaching its end.

The Hampshire Jam 'Jam'
an evening of improvised electronic music
will once more take place on:

Friday 14th November 2008
at The Millennium Hall, Liphook, Hampshire

featuring:
Xan Alexander (The Omega Syndicate)
Jez Creek (Modulator ESP)
David Gurr (The Omega Syndicate)
Steve Humphries (Create)
Stuart Judd (Chromengel)
John Sherwood (4m33s)
Terje Winther (WintherStormer)
Stephan Whitlan (Narcosis)

& Special Guests

Lighting by the Electrick Egg

http://www.hampshirejamjam.co.uk
http://www.awakenings-em.co.uk

The final Awakenings of 2008

live ambient and electronic music from

Astrogator
Create
Hashtronaut

Saturday 22nd November 2008
£5/ £3 concessions

(Virtual Ticket available until 21st November)

Early start - doors 18:30 - onstage 19:00

at Paget High School
Business & Enterprise College
Burton Road
Branston
Burton on Trent
Staffs
DE14 3DR

further details from

http://www.awakenings-em.co.uk/

As Rapoon, Robin Storey can assume a number of guises. His audio work can be so dark as to be toxic, oily dark, nightmares of industry, fresh hells. He can also toss varied-coloured tiles at the wall and create wonderful and byzantine mosaics which range in mood from giddy to threatening. Good examples of such work include his double CD "Cold War", or his recent release on Vivo, "Obscure Objects of Desire".

However, his name is associated almost as much with the cold, desolate regions the label Glacial Movements has staked out as its own. And Time Frost is a kind of opus in celebration of the Arctic, its serpentines of loose snow dancing across the tundra. If the landscape is monochrome and featureless to many of us, Storey finds this inspirational rather than tedious and uses looping and repetition as his guiding aesthetic.

In his liner notes, Storey posits a textural theme as well, based on scientific speculation that global warming may weirdly enough bring down a new Ice Age on Europe. In order to imagine a Danube that has finally, really turned blue because it has frozen over, he uses "tiny fragments of music from an iconic European composition, Johann Strauss's Blue Danube". In fact, trumping one meta-fiction with another, he exclusively used locked grooves from the soundtrack to the equally-iconic movie, Stanley Kubrick´s "2001". (Interestingly, it has been done equally well before. Several years back, Andrew Deutsch released "Loops Over Land" on his tiny label Magic If, in which all the samples were created from locked grooves looping the music of Gustav Mahler.)

Imagining further into the future, post-Ice Age, when the glaciars recede and future archeologists sift through what we left behind, "Time Frost is an imaginary recording of the mutational process of sound locked into ice and transformed over millenia. Like ghosts of music trapped in an evershifting permafrost."

It´s an unspeakably beautiful five-part suite, in which maybe more purely than ever before over the course of an entire hour-long album, Rapoon succeeds in evoking not only the deceitful barrenness of the far north, its white-on-white textures, but also the bite of its cold air, the sting of snow moving horizontally on the cheek, the smell of the place - for it does indeed have its own special smell.

Among his most beautiful listening experiences.

http://www.glacialmovements.com

Cameron Wood is a true do-it-yourselfer, from the playing and recording to the cover insert and typewritten liner notes, which state that he recorded this mini-album on his day off and edited it the following weekend.

After being lulled into believing we´re in for a half hour of lazy, lo-fi blues meanderings by the first two untitled tracks on Three Thoughts on C Tuning, Wood unleashes twenty-five minutes of blistering deconstructive guitar torture, feedback shrill on top and dense muck on the bottom, utterly unimpregnable, passionately obnoxious and ultimately out to destroy any semblence of tuning regardless of key.

Like the proverbial car wreck on the highway, you just can´t tear your ears away from it, even though you know listening to it will give you nightmares. As it slowly subsides and resolves itself, an actual, albeit jagged two-note melody can be discerned trying to make itself heard over the buzz - a last desperate attempt at "music" to assert itself amid the apparent nihilism?

winwinwinwin.blogspot.com

We are so fascinated by the way sound makes its way through water, its physics so familiar yet so foreign, so alien but close by. And of course aside from the vastness of outer space, the element is the primary metaphor for the entire genre of ambient music.

"Underwater" has of course been done before in many ways. Gavin Bryars famously sank the orchestra of the Titanic, whilethe wonderful Mystery Sea CDR label is all about water. This piece by Mathieu Ruhlmann and the duo Celer (consisting of husband and wife Danielle Baquet-Long and Will Long) is high concept and triumphant.

In 1969, Swiss physicist Jacques Piccard completed construction of his "mesoscaphe", a submarine with room for six and capable of sustaining life for weeks at a time. In contrast to previous submarines and bathyspheres, the mesoscaphe was built to drift, not to be be powered by thrust engines, and to drift specifically along the Gulf Stream. Its initial mission took it from the Gulf of Mexico to the coast of Maine and was an enormous, if uncelebrated scientific success; you see, at the same time, the Apollo 11 mission to the moon was conducted. The mesoscaphe now rests in dry dock in a museum in Vancouver.

The three movements are each given numerous, detailed, and poetic subtitles detailing the mission, like "The Melodies of Our Heartbeats Slowing" and "Family Photos Speckled with Ocean Dust". And although the inspirational technology is modern, one gets the feeling more of being contemporaneous with Jules Verne and the contraptions of the early machine age - all steam and clanking rods and pistons - than the first moon landing. Jacques Piccard or Captain Nemo, this combination of man-made machinery and the briney depths is utterly beguiling. And the minds and manipulations behind this project, playing pianos, looping tape, turning knobs, seem to have been in complete harmony. Rarely do temporary collaborations come off so seamlessly.

http://www.spekk.net

Marissa Nadler sings like a girl Bob Dylan might have created and longingly described on an album like "Blood on the Tracks". She´s fascinating, she´s intelligent, she´s attractive, she´s utterly unique, but words will never really succeed in capturing her true essence. Instead you should just listen and listen closely.

A very special voice, a very spectral voice, which somehow conveys something completely sui generis and never-before-heard and yet seems as timeless as the act of singing songs itself. An effect the late Canadian singer Stan Rogers was adept at achieving.

From the very first strophe of "Diamond Heart" you´re hopelessly entangled, possessed by the voice and determined to delve deep into the text, sometimes so straight-forward, sometimes so impenetrable. And truly pretty, then exhiliratingly sad in turn.

Nadler has almost simultaneously released a collection of "b-sides and other lost songs", or "compilation tracks and miscellaneous oddities", depending on what side of the cover you read. Now, Marissa has recorded three wonderful albums, nary a flubbed note or forced rhyme. So the question is, has she ever recorded a bad song at all? Since "Ivy and the Clovers" (Eclipse) contains one-offs for magazines, compilations and flip-sides, this would be the place to look for slip-up, right?

(Thirty minutes and ten seconds later...)

Nope. Nothing is less than glistening, nothing is just phoned in. Just as meekly profound, beautiful and even sexy as anything else in her growing, stellar catalogue. "Conjuring Spirit Worlds" reads like a lament written by Ophelia to Hamlet before taking her final dip. More proof that Marissa Nadler is probably the most interesting female vocalist currently evolving on the North American continent.

http://www.marissanadler.com

Immersion
Thursday 4 December 2008
19:00 - 23:00.
Cost: FREE entry
Information/website:
http://www.immersionclub.tk

---------------------------------------------------

The Flea-Pit
49 Columbia Road
London
E2 7RG
020 7033 9986
http://www.thefleapit.com/

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Description:

Experimental electronics, noise, tones/drones and pulses/rhythms, partnered by cutting edge projected art visuals - all processed live.

Artists featured:

ABKomm // Alnagak // Infinite Scale // Removal Company // Suero // Zainetica

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Well... Stuchka Vkarmanye is Eliad Wagner. Composer, producer, DJ, and a fair cook. Released albums on labels such as metropolis rec. (US), Digital Kranky (DE). Co-founder of ±G6PD Records, an indie label for freestyle experimental and electronic music.

In his work, Vkarmanye combines old analoge electronic instruments with cutting edge computer programming.

The Japanese artist Murakami has a theory about the current state of his own culture, which can easily be extended to cover any Western society. He calls it "superflat" and means that his fellow citizens are refusing to grow up and deal with reality, instead drifting along in a state of empty happiness, indulging in childlike play through their obsession with manga cartoons, Hello Kitty and ridiculous TV game shows.

I wonder if fellow countrywoman Naoki Ishida is thinking along the same lines (Is it ironic that her own label is called "Kitten Recordz"? Or totally not?). On the one hand, Tone Redust is "common" enough folktronic field recording music. It is very competently done and makes for an undemanding, enjoyable listen. But if we view it in the context of the superflat, then the cover art (beautifully executed by Mai Seike) may hint that we are sniffing in the right direction. Child-like pencil sketches of happy faces and sad faces share the canvas with horsies and flowers and cars. But also cigarettes and what looks like a straight razor. And something else that looks like a sperm. Inside the envelope, the CD itself is a blast of fresh, primary colours.

The music of Tone Redust is one great, circuitous playpen filled with bright and shiny distractions and the absent-minded strumming of an acoustic guitar, keeping us gently occupied until, with irregularity, the flick of a Bic reminds us that this is an adult world after all. Or an adult dream. Throughout the piece - given six titles despite the fact that there is hardly a pause between any of the tracks and the entire album is of a whole - an electronic mural rolls by in the background, like the kind of repetitive backgrounds used by lazy animators in cheap cartoons. And throughout, Tone Redust has an outdoor ambience - but where exactly? Wooden wind chimes are regularly disturbed, so I end up imagining a balcony in an apartment building not in the middle of the city, but not far outside it either. There are simply no aural cues to help identify which way is up and which way is down, if we are in an urban space or somewhere else altogether.

I believe that this ambivalence is part of what makes Ishida´s album so successful.

http://www.quasipop.org