through the city, undetected: luke vollar on sheepscar light industrial and daniel thomas

March 16, 2015 at 1:59 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 2 Comments
Tags: ap martlet, astral social club, cherry row recordings, daniel thomas, dave thomas, drone, electronica, extraction music, field recording, hagman, luke vollar, michael clough, neil campbell, new music, no audience underground, noise, noise dads, sheepscar light industrial

Neil Campbell – Oystercatcher Salad (3” CD-r, Sheepscar Light Industrial, SLI.029, edition of 50 or download)

Michael Clough – MetaMachineMusic (3” CD-r, Sheepscar Light Industrial, SLI.028, edition of 50 or download)

Hagman – Inundation (3” CD-r, Sheepscar Light Industrial, SLI.030, edition of 50 or download)

Daniel Thomas – Visitors (CD-r, Cherry Row Recordings, CRR006, edition of 25 or download)

Here’s a common theme at Radio Free Midwich: middle aged dads with a burning passion for exotic ear wax carried from their formative years but with less time to listen. Gone (for now at least) are the days of staring out of the window, watching the trees sway, cradling a warming goblet of spiced absinthe and spinning the latest 13 inch lathe cut by Arse Bracket [Editor’s note: remember them, eh?], letting the sounds seep into your subconscious while the alcohol and powdered Arabian monkey husk seep into your blood stream…

…and so it is that I come to review four releases from the orbit of Daniel Thomas, not as the libertine dandy I (never) was but as a regular bloke with small children. Thus the quadruple offering is heard as a soundtrack to loading the dishwasher, unloading the washing machine and so on. I fear that if I were to pop a three inch CD-r in my car stereo (my guaranteed listening window en route to work) I wouldn’t see it again and so I grab opportunities when I can to listen, mostly on my small tablet. Wanting to do these discs the justice they deserve I have taken my time and returned to them whenever possible.

We’ll start with Neil Campbell’s Oystercatcher Salad.  Birdsong, muffled chatter and guitars that wail like, erm…, whales make this an enjoyable twenty minutes from the original chatty man. I’m a big fan of electric guitars being left to do their own thing aside from being occasionally nudged and that is what we get here. Perhaps this is Campbell’s love song to The Dead C.  Having said that, Neil seems to be aiming for a wide open vista, beach at sunset vibe and there’s part of me that thinks cutting back on the unnecessary clutter (the avian chatter gets a bit much) would improve the view.

Onwards to Michael Clough’s MetaMachineMusic and this is the kinda jus I know I’m gonna dig in seconds.  Clough confounds with some very real audio trickery as we descend through a serpentine drone tunnel into the catacombs. Are we listening to a sleek silver panglobuloid insectular robovore as it flits through the city undetected (it can go invisible, ya dummy) picking up information through its unfeeling eyes to feed back to some dark overlord via a bank of TV screens and software that processes the data for the impending meltdown of civilization as we know it?  Probably.

Inundation by Hagman is the best thing that the Thomas Brothers [Editor’s note: no relation] have produced thus far [Editor’s note: bold claim, comrade]. Delivered with exquisite economy and steely determination, the two patiently mould a glowing ember of sound into a pulsing ball of ectopic expression that radiates a nocturnal glow like a sleeping power plant in the rain. No bucolic birdsong or babbling brooks here – more an urban soundtrack to a concrete sprawl pulsing with electricity. It’s the kind of thing that our very own editor might instruct his chauffeur to play whilst being driven to Wharf Chambers, the slow methodical whump in time with the passing street lights reflected in his mirrored sunglasses.  He surveys the city in transit: his face a mask, his grip on his ivory tipped cane steady and fixed.

Daniel Thomas’s Visitors maintains the high quality with a collection of stately pieces that are making my eyelids heavy as I try to write this (in the best possible way).  Simple humming noises are left to run as smoke like tendrils escape into the aether, flickering machine sounds give birth to pure beams of light and ticker tape melodies play out to deserted car parks and services stations.  Seems this CD-r is already gone and the other discs mentioned are, if not sold out then dwindling to their final copies.  An indication of the growing audience for Sheepscar Light Industrial and Daniel Thomas’s own brand of extraction music and hardly surprising given the winning combination of low prices and immensely gratifying ear mung.  Judging by this latest batch the quality remains on an upward trajectory.

—ooOoo—

Sheepscar Light Industrial

Cherry Row Recordings