michael clough | radio free midwich

scrap(p)ing the barrel (nut)

February 8, 2016 at 12:49 pm | Posted in art, blog info, no audience underground, not bloody music | Leave a comment
Tags: dex wright, dr. adolf steg, gary simmons, hiroshima yeah!, joe murray, joined by wire, julian bradley, mark ritchie, michael clough, microzine, paul walsh, stephen woolley, tape noise, the barrel nut, zanntone

Oh well,

[Editor sighs, picks at bits of glu-stik and newsprint stuck to his palms, sucks blood from site of paper cut]

…that was fun, eh?

It is with sadness that I announce that the new, long delayed, issue #14 of The Barrel Nut will be the last and, aside from a handful of paper copies for contributors, will be distributed in digital formats only. This is a drag but a triple whammy death blow has been dealt by a) time poverty b) my access to ‘free’ photocopying being curtailed by, *ahem*, circumstances and c) silly postal charges.

Regarding this final point, it is profoundly depressing to see the offline world of mail art, zine culture and other barter economies being constricted by the prohibitive cost of shifting physical objects. Plenty of fun remains to be had, of course, and I salute those still at it, but I am joining the retreat. Living with a privatised postal service sucks major donkey balls and if you reside in a country where your national service is being run down/softened up to make its flesh palatable to those vultures then I suggest you fight against it.

OK, freed from the obligations of its usual microzine format this issue is presented as a series of full page pdfs/jpegs to be downloaded and/or printed out by the reader. Featured artwork is a representative sample of remaining submissions and the names will be familiar to regular readers – I hope you are entertained. This, and all previous issues, will be available via the The Barrel Nut page (tabbed above) until the coming alien invasion unleashes its server-destroying electro-magnetic pulse. Roll call:

The cover is by me,
page two is more scanner/photocopier EVP phenomena filtered by Michael Clough,
Dex Wright, a.k.a. Tape Noise, mauls ferric oxide on page three,
weird symmetries by Zanntone’s Paul Walsh slide across page four,
page five presents the collaged thoughts of Gary Simmons and Mark Ritchie of the print-only Hiroshima Yeah! zine (donbirnam@hotmail.com),
Stephen Woolley of Joined By Wire leaves tire tracks across page six,
deep-fried brainwaves crackle up and down page seven, courtesy of Adolf Steg
…and lastly we have typographical and cut-up dada from Julian Bradley and RFM’s own Joe Murray to play over the credits.

It’s a belting finale, that’s for sure. Here’s the files – individual page scans are of better quality but the ‘whole thing as one pdf file’ is handier for those busy zine readers on the go:

Individual pages as jpegs:

Individual pages as pdfs:

14 – 1 – Rob Hayler

14 – 2 – Michael Clough

14 – 3 – Dex Wright

14 – 4 – Paul Walsh

14 – 5 – Gary Simmons and Mark Ritchie

14 – 6 – Stephen Woolley

14 – 7 – Dr Adolf Steg

14 – 8 – Julian Bradley and Joe Murray, credits

The whole thing as a pdf:

The Barrel Nut #14

Many thanks to all those who have been involved – it’s been a right laugh.

—ooOoo—

unplayed, unheard, unfinished: michael clough, joseph curwen, namke communications

March 25, 2015 at 8:35 pm | Posted in art, musings, new music, no audience underground | Leave a comment
Tags: drone, electronica, endurance art, john tuffen, joseph curwen, michael clough, namke communications, new music, no audience underground, noise, object fetishism, unlistenable, unplayable, visual art

Michael Clough – unplayable 7” vinyl art object in cardboard sleeve (plus various miniMA publications)

Joseph Curwen – Lurking Fear (self-released download)

namke communications – 365/2015 (ongoing self-released download)

Up in my well-appointed office I sink into a white leather sofa and swirl the ice in my whisky glass in time to the racket emanating from downstairs. My underlings are joyously singing along to the latest Stuart Chalmers tape whilst chipping away at the cultural coalface. I want to join them but you know how it is when the boss sits in… Hmmm… maybe I’ll do some work on the long-promised aetheric/Invisible City round-up, I say to myself, then jump as a polite cough from my beautiful Turkish manservant (how long has he been standing there?!) directs my attention to several releases from both labels that have joined the pile since I last picked up the pen. Ah, next week perhaps… How about some editing then? Strewn across the marble desktop is the latest submission from Joe – a series of potato prints in primary colours apparently inspired by Jazzfinger – accompanied by an expenses claim for 40 litres of latex glue. I asked him about this earlier and he just looked up from his Spirograph, beamed that irresistible grin, shouted:

IT WAS NEEDED!

…and bounced into the grounds on his space hopper, high-fiving a startled Chrissie on his way. Perhaps I should look at this later…

It is a sadly inevitable trajectory: lone genius embarks on a project of enormous worth and significance, is overwhelmed by the love and success it attracts, hires staff happy to be paid in karma to help with the workload then is shunted, slowly but inexorably, into an administrative role. What should I do when I want to write but have little time to adequately listen to the object of that writing? The answer, of course, is to review three releases that are (almost) literally unlistenable.

Objects by Michael Clough

Pictured above is an intriguing object received from old friend and extraordinary artist Michael Clough. My love for this man and his work does not need repeating – I simply urge you visit his Soundcloud page, his tumblr account and to track down his every release. Your life will be enriched as a result. OK, what we have here is an anonymized and repackaged vinyl 7″ single onto which Clough has inked a narrative with silver pen, thus rendering it unplayable. Both sides have been decorated in this manner, two different stories. Clough offered his own explanation in some accompanying notes:

The first in a series I’m planning of altered records. The ‘concept’ is alluding to rare records (remember way back, when some items attained legendary status, and second-hand shops were scoured in the hope of spotting one?). Also reviews in mags raving about things, only to lead to disappointment when actually hearing said item. Sometimes what one imagined the record to be like outshone the article itself – the power of words to evoke a sense of what music may sound like. Object fetishism: this is a record you can have, imagine, but never hear – produced in such limited runs that the chance of obtaining one is almost zero.

It’s a wry take on the obsessions of the collector, an ironic (and nostalgic) nod to pre-internet scarcity and a subtle, entertaining and personal take on the odd relationship between music and the reams of text written about it. Like much of Clough’s art, macro-simplicity masks micro-complexity (try saying that after a few) meaning that under a cool, minimal surface the attentive will find an undulating mesh of smart, rigorous thinking and absorbing detail.

As further illustration, a handful of beautifully produced ‘zines’ containing Clough’s art came in the same package, self-published by his miniMA imprint. These document his ‘totems’ series for scanner and photocopier in which jiggling the source material as these technologies do their thing creates strange alien symmetries and haunting instances of pareidolia (yes, I was so impressed I went and looked up the proper word). Further examples can be seen reproduced in recent issues of The Barrel Nut here and here. Essential stuff.

Joseph Curwen – Lurking Fear

Next we have an album that is perfectly listenable in principle but practically unlistenable in my current circumstances due to it being twelve fucking hours long.

Back when I could often be found standing on an allotment, leaning on a spade and staring contemplatively at redcurrant bushes I reviewed an album a mere nine hours long, having listened to every second of it over a few days. Now: forget it. I have not the time, energy or attention span to make such a commitment. This is a shame as what I’ve heard of Joseph Curwen’s previous output is cosmic (see, for example, Scott’s review of a tape on Cruel Nature Records here). Their H.P. Lovecraft obsession is more than window dressing – these cats (of ulthar?) can really lay down a cyclopean drone, twelve hours of which would be more than sufficient to soundtrack, say, the raising of a sunken nightmare corpse-city from the depths of the Pacific.

I wondered whether ‘dipping in’ would suffice for purposes of review but decided that would be shamefully half-arsed. This had to be all or nothing, I decided, thus: nothing. I offer a wholehearted recommendation of this album whilst admitting to not hearing a moment of its 720 minutes. Perverse, I know, but then…

What language can describe the spectacle of a man lost in infinitely abysmal earth; pawing, twisting, wheezing; scrambling madly through sunken convolutions of immemorial blackness without an idea of time, safety, direction, or definite object?

Indeed.

There is perhaps a discussion to be had about how the internet and, in particular, gateway services like that of Bandcamp have refashioned what can be considered an ‘album’. What seemed like the ‘natural’ length for a piece of recorded music whilst I was growing up has been shown to be nothing but an artifact of the media used to contain it. I wonder what pioneers of the hypnotic groove like Morton Feldman and La Monte Young would have done with the opportunity.

namke communications – 365/2015

Finally we have another album which exploits Bandcamp’s fluidity. 365/2015, by old-friend-of-RFM John Tuffen in his namke communications guise, is unlistenable in the sense that it cannot be heard in its entirety as it is still being recorded and won’t be finished for another nine months. However – get this – it is already available for download. What John is doing, in a project which recalls the conceptual bloodymindedness of Bill Drummond (who has raised ‘seeing it through’ to the level of art form), is recording a track every day throughout the whole of 2015 and adding them to the album as the calendar marches on.

This isn’t an Aphex Twin style dumping of offcuts, each track is freshly produced on the day in question and, as might be expected, vary enormously in style, execution and instrumentation – there is guitar improv, electronica in various hues and field recording amongst other genres welcome ’round here. I suspect by the end of the year John will have had to reinvent music just to keep himself sane. He has taken to tweeting a brief description of the day’s work and one of the pleasures of this project is the opportunity that affords for the curious bystander to poke it with a stick. For example, in response to John copying me into a tweet about a guitar drone track he thought might appeal to me, I replied:

@namke_ heard this now, good and chewy. Thinking of writing up yr project alongside an unplayable 7″ single I’ve been sent. Two extremes…

…and added, with regards to the project as a whole:

@namke_ it’s insane but I wish you luck. Looking forward to months where each track is a version of 4’33” with you sobbing in background…

…which tickled John and led to all of February’s tracks being field recordings with the duration 4 minutes and 33 seconds. In an era of desperate, endless hi-fi reissues of any album revered as a sacred text it is ice-bath-refreshing to be able to alter the course of a recording with a joke.

This one I have no qualms about dipping into, in fact I would recommend constructing your own dipping strategies. As the year progresses you could build an album from the birthdays of your family, or never forget an anniversary again with a self-constructed namke communications love-bundle. Won a tenner on the lottery? Create your own three track EP with the numbers and paypal John a couple of quid. Or perhaps a five CD boxset called ‘Thursday Afternoon’, in homage to Brian Eno, containing everything released on that day of the week? Or condense the occult magic with a set comprising every 23rd track? Ah, the fun to be had. Or you could just listen to it on a daily basis until it becomes a welcome part of your routine – more fun than The Archers, guaranteed.

—ooOoo—

Michael Clough

Joseph Curwen

namke communications

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

a craft ale with the bald heads of noise! the barrel nut issue #12!

February 23, 2015 at 12:58 pm | Posted in art, no audience underground, not bloody music | Leave a comment
Tags: collage, cut-ups, dada, foldhead, gary simmons, hiroshima yeah!, joe murray, mark ritchie, michael clough, paul walsh, photocopier art, posset, scanner art, visual art, zanntone, zines

Never one to miss an opportunity for collage fun, I spent the afternoon of a recent sick day coughing phlegm all over my cutting board (hey, at least I didn’t need a glue stick!) whilst assembling the dozenth issue of RFM’s atomic microzine. Glowingly described as a…

…momentary distraction from the hellish nothingness of the vortex…

…by Pyrrhic Victories magazine, previous editions of The Barrel Nut adorn the finest notice boards, untidy bedside zine piles and dustbins of the worldwide no-audience underground.

Should you not know what I’m barking about, or be overwhelmed by the self-indulgent whimsy of the preceding paragraph, here is a repeat of the usual explanatory bumpf:

The Barrel Nut is a single sheet of A4 paper cleverly folded to make an eight panel (per side), A7 pamphlet. Paper copies will be distributed to anyone who wants one, or who has expressed an interest in the past. I’ll bring some to gigs I attend and a bunch will be passed around by those with a similar love of the post.

Should you be so inclined then you are very welcome to download and print out your own. Links to the latest issue in jpeg and pdf formats are below (you may need to trim the print-out down one edge to make it fold properly). Some more context, assembly instructions and previous issues can be found on The Barrel Nut’s own page (tabbed above).

Should you wish to contribute artwork then I would be very grateful indeed. Submissions need to look OK when reproduced as a black and white photocopy and be 7cm by 10cm in size (or scalable to roughly those dimensions). Good quality scans attached to an email are fine, originals sent in the post ideal. Please get in touch.

So now you know. #12, the second DOUBLE-SIDED issue, features cover dada idiocy from yours truly (reproduced way larger than life and in glorious colour above), more of Michael Clough’s eerie ‘totem’ works – the scanner art equivalent of EVP recordings, a photo-memory of Summer boozing from everyone’s favourite drunken uncle Paul Walsh, some Zennish cut up hoodoo from RFM’s own Joe Murray and a pair of pieces by Gary Simmons and Mark Ritchie, the brothers responsible for Hiroshima Yeah! Gary gives us a microbial starscape of indeterminate origin and Mark entertains with an uplifting ophthalmic DIY collage. Unfold and turn over for a full page ‘Bald Heads of Noise’ cartoon by Mark Wharton of Idwal Fisher in which the notion of the no-audience underground is skewered hilariously in six panels. Unmissable.

Contributor and subscriber copies will be in the post ‘in due course’. For those who can’t wait, or don’t mind a bit of salt-and-shake style DIY, then print out your own from the links below:

The Barrel Nut issue #12 FRONT as a pdf file

The Barrel Nut issue #12 BACK as a pdf file

The Barrel Nut issue #12 FRONT as a jpeg file

The Barrel Nut issue #12 BACK as a jpeg file

Artwork for future issues always welcome – please feel free to drop me a line.

christmas card from a blogger in chapel allerton: finally, the barrel nut #11!

December 4, 2014 at 10:49 am | Posted in art, no audience underground, not bloody music | Leave a comment
Tags: collage, copier art, cut-ups, dada, dr. adolf steg, gary simmons, hiroshima yeah!, joe murray, mark ritchie, michael clough, no audience underground, posset, scanner art, text score, the barrel nut, visual art, yol, zines

Bloody hell, it has been nearly six months since the last issue dropped! Bet you thought I’d discretely shoved this barmy little project down the back of the sofa. Well, I could make up a whimsical nonsense story to account for the delay (erm… lost on a yeti hunt? Nope – used that one) but the sad fact is that I’ve just been busy with other things. Still, who can resist the zen calm to be found in folding a bunch of these zines at the kitchen table? Not me. Also, I thought it might be nice to do something special seeing as it is the fifth anniversary of RFM this month so not only does a shiny new issue appear but, for the first time, it is DOUBLE SIDED. Woo!

Wrapped in the usual dada silliness by your truly you will find cut-up collage by RFM’s own Joe Murray and Hiroshima Yeah!’s Mark Ritchie (big themes: space, god, death, n’ that) and proper art that looks like a Bauhaus photographic experiment by Mark’s co-writer Gary Simmons, plus an indication of his financial situation and a terminal film still from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Barrel Nut regular Yol praises King Coffee on the tomb wall and offers sage personal advice in the form of one of his rolling text scores/typewriter screeds. Dr. Adolf Steg of (the already much missed) Spon offers some vaguely dermatological doodling with newspaper headline addenda and finally Michael Clough gets an unheard of four-panel spread for an example of his unnerving scanner art ‘totems’ series. It is top notch stuff.

Should you be a recent convert to this blog and thus have no idea what I am talking about, here’s a repeat of the basics:

The Barrel Nut is a microzine – a single sheet of A4 paper cleverly folded to make an eight panel (per side), A7 pamphlet. Paper copies will be distributed to anyone who wants one, or who has expressed an interest in the past. I’ll bring some to gigs I attend and a bunch will be passed around by those with a similar love of the post.

Should you be so inclined then you are very welcome to download and print out your own. Links to the latest issue in jpeg and pdf formats are below (you’ll need to trim the print-out down one edge to make it fold properly). Some more context, assembly instructions and previous issues can be found on The Barrel Nut’s own page (tabbed above).

Should you wish to contribute artwork then I would be very grateful indeed. Submissions need to look OK when reproduced as a black and white photocopy and be 7cm by 10cm in size (or scalable to roughly those dimensions). Good quality scans attached to an email are fine, originals sent in the post ideal. Please get in touch.

All contributors should have their copies by now, it was available to pick up at the gig last week and a bunch more will have been distributed with the latest issue of Hiroshima Yeah! Subscriber copies will be in the post soonish – consider it a Christmas card from the RFM family. Contributions still always welcome – if you like this little distraction then please feel free to send me something. More will follow in the fresh New Year.

The Barrel Nut issue #11 FRONT as a pdf file

The Barrel Nut issue #11 BACK as a pdf file

The Barrel Nut issue #11 FRONT as a jpeg file

The Barrel Nut issue #11 BACK as a jpeg file

eye for detail: a long month passes quickly

November 2, 2014 at 10:09 pm | Posted in midwich, new music, no audience underground | Leave a comment
Tags: ap martlet, aqua dentata, astral social club, bbblood, breather, brian lavelle, chrissie caulfield, clive henry, dale cornish, daniel thomas, devotional hooligan, dr:wr, drone, dsic, eddie nuttall, electronica, foldhead, gerado picho, hagman, hardworking families, helicopter quartet, improv, in fog, joe murray, john tuffen, julian bradley, karl mv waugh, la mancha del pecado, michael clough, michael gillham, midwich, miguel perez, neil campbell, new music, nick allen, no audience underground, noise, orlando ferguson, panelak, pascal ansell, paul walsh, paul watson, posset, psychedelia, pyongyang plastics, scott mckeating, shameless self-congratulation, simon aulman, the piss superstition, the red cross, the zero map, tom bench, van appears, yol, zn

It is now a month since eye for detail, the midwich remixes album, was released as a Bandcamp download. In that time there have been 35 purchases and well over a thousand plays of the individual tracks. More than £150 has been raised for The Red Cross as a result. I can only repeat how grateful and touched I am to those that contributed and to those that have supported it. Keep spreading the word.

Now that a little time has passed some critical reaction has started to bubble to the surface. Opinion first popped into being via Twitter, of course, and friends of RFM like Miguel Pérez and Paul Watson used their 140 characters to praise favourite pieces. Others have stepped out of the limelight to send me personal emails, such as the enigmatic Daniel Thomas. Paul Margree posted a welcome summary over at We need no swords – grinning and shrugging at the enormity of it and shooing his readership in this direction. Andy Wild has played extracts on the 81st edition of the Crow Versus Crow radio show too. The ‘scene’ has rallied around in a most heart-warming fashion.

Further to the above I have also, amazingly, had not one but two track-by-track accounts sent to me. The first of which is a collection of one-liners from the over-clocked, fizzing metaphor engine that is RFM’s own Joe Murray, the second a lengthier effort from my friend Nick Allen.

Joe needs little introduction but Nick is a new name here. We have been friends and work colleagues for many years. He is a knowledgeable and enthusiastic music fan and a frequent gig-goer but is by no means a noise head. He has listened in a tolerant, amused and open minded manner to me gabbing on about it all the while we’ve been sat in an office together and has done me the courtesy of coming to see me play live at Wharf Chambers. In return I have suffered no worse than occasional piss-taking which I consider fair exchange. Being a good sort he donated a tenner to the cause and, after dipping his toe in once or twice, decided that he was going to spend a Saturday afternoon immersed: listening to the whole lot, in order and making notes as he did so. Blimey.

Both sets of reactions are posted in full below. Why not open the eye for detail Bandcamp page in another window and listen along as you read?

Oh, and finally, Nick is an occasional writer of poetry and the combination of a glorious Yorkshire sunrise experienced whilst listening to the track by ZN inspired him to write ‘Juego de la Luz’ – also posted below. Should you enjoy it, Nick has a terrific 32 page, A6, self-published booklet of his work (called, with admirable brevity, ‘Poems’) available for nowt much so email him at the address at the foot of this post and make arrangements. I’m on my fourth copy because I keep wanting to pass them on to others I think will be interested – high praise.

First up – Joe:

Various Artists – Eye for Detail (The Midwich affair)

Micro-reviews/descriptions/impressions of each piece from the Now That’s What I Call Midwich smash hit.

Dale Cornish – Management. Hissing clicks like freshwater shrimps gone loco. Wonderfully sparse.

Aqua Denta – Natural Wastage. A glassy shroud wrapped round a tin body. After time rusty horns blow.

In Fog – Verdigris. A Mynah Bird enrols at IRCAM. This is her final project (informed by heartbreak).

Dsic – Procedures. The gods throw road mending equipment through a black hole.

Clive Henry – Witch Mania, Mend Gem. Scrabble tiles become sentient and form one-note Tangerine Dream tribute act.

Brian Lavelle – Slowly, we illuminate future truths. New Star Wars theme slowed down 1000 times.

Van Appears – Molluscs. Undersea skat. SCUBA improv. Oxygen/Nitrogen mix set to high

AP Martlet – New Plateaus. Elegy for out-of-date School Atlas (circa 1951).

Foldhead – Glacier. Super minimal like pink frost.

Chrissie Caulfield – oTo T50. A sharp intake of robot’s breath. Klezmer exhale.

DR:WR – Left Unresolved. Prison riot as heard through battered brass ear-trumpet.

Hardworking Families – Be to under weather to be. Sunshine distilled into individual waves, pickled then shook in a jar.

John Tuffen from Orlando Fergusson – Weather to be Under. As above but dubbed like On-U Sound.

Panelak – Irnwrks. Chipped-crockery-core! Salty blood runs over teeth staining them pink. Sharp to the touch.

Simon Aulamn – Too Early. A spitting porpoise (of course).

Paul Watson – Midwich. Sneak into the chapel. Stuff the organ pipe with potato. Hit the keys for chips.

Posset – A Moment of Stillness. Dictaphone frottage in Lovecraftian word jam.

The Piss Superstition – tinymuscle. The Detroit mass transport system scored for bic pens and pocket fluff.

Michael Clough – Left Unresolved. Thomas Tallis jumps in the Tardis and demands sexy-android motet.

Neil Campbell – MidwichMIX. Sly Stone comes round to polish yr Horsebrasses? Beware excessive Brasso fumes.

Devotionalhallucinatic – August in Ribblehead. Severe throttling. Barbed Wire snogs. Not a great first date.

Michael Gilham – oTo T22 Part II. Tractor beam vibrations, asteroid mining, dirty spacecracft.

Daniel Thomas – Striking Flint. Cast Iron Cello rubbed till the rivets pop out.

Breather – Floating. The real Pirate Radio material…stick that up your Skinner!

Yol – Stoma 2. Real-live stutter gob vs Jojouka horns (acid remix)

ZN – La Industria De La Luz. The Museum of Misery opens its doors. Churning machinery whirrs inside with dismal efficiency. In your pocket, an invitation…

Andy Jarvis – Bosky. Shit. Wish I’d thought of this. Pure vocal drone like some Pandit Pran Nath dude. Heavy vocal sludge gets more and more looped and freaky. God damn perfect!

—ooOoo—

OK, that’s that for Joe, over to Nick:

I know almost nothing about this music – so here goes – I have had one run through a week or so ago…in bits…when I picked out Cassie Caulfield and Michael Clough as early front runners, let’s see how they perform now its all in one sitting. It is 1.30pm on Saturday 18 October, press PLAY and let the spontaneous prosody begin:

Management – Dale Cornish

static bursts or restrained pissing…something frying long pauses…a message not reaching me

Natural Wastage – Aqua Dentata

outside…natural atmospheric background…perhaps a distant motorway…higher scratchings…spirals…low-level tinnitus…flying saucers from Plan B from Outer Space…an itching…something more coming into view…more solid…almost expect the screen to wobble a la transportation device of sci-fi TV…nevertheless a peaceful embracing enveloping atmosphere…also something of Sunday morning church bells (I can hear my dishwasher in the background glugging a rapid beat)…entering bat territory…higher higher pitch…like listening to a Turner painting, hearing colours…inside a sensory depravation tank with my eyes open…pulsing…meditative…a note, sustained…riding over, riding over…a crashed car with the horn jammed…a ferry…pulled out of calm…fade…stop

verdigris – In Fog

accidental musicality…placid…measured…sounds like a workshop…with an insect trapped…a guide bell…a mood reminiscent of the White Lunar album (N Cave and W Ellis)…fitfull/restful

Procedures – dsic

clamour…clamour…irregular jerking clamour…opening different doors in an industrial factory one after the other…working with the caffeine to increase heartbeat…I can’t help wondering why…space invaders!…and then a drill…all sent to annoy…some pre-recorded music and bleeping…finished and not sad

witch mania, mend gem – Clive Henry

digging, chipping…low backdrop…the sound of an insect invasion, walking…bricklaying…nothing restful…constantly constant…to a whistledown stop and something…walking on bubblewrap (question mark)…wet finger on a glass rim…paranoia perhaps…this could hurt…two apparently unrelated soundtracks…converging on an incoming tide…the hurricane winds battering the wooden window boards in downtown Florida somewhere

Slowly, we illuminate future truths – Brian Lavelle

revelation, and the clouds part…for the first time I close my eyes…a wider picture…within…too calm to be euphoric…there is a place, there is a place…boats passing boats, unseen – that’s something from Apocalypse Now, I’m sure…

Molluscs – Van Appears

Headunderwaterlistening…high tide perhaps…recorded dolphin speak but the voice has been disguised to protect their identity

New Plateaus – ap martlet

pressure build…irritation…a white noise box to mask traffic and city clamour…in a block of flats above an urban motorway, the JG Ballard flyover, and from the balcony you watch the lights swing following the same path, following the same path, lighted traction from the darkest fraction…a city in all its horror and glory…follow the red lights bead…the blinking white lines…sodium…it must all lead somewhere…repetition, the flow, of repetition…dementia…fractures our habits…the neverending nightcity hum…enter the void…there is a darkness beyond…still falling or climbing, hard to tell…exposure…try not to blink…water pressure builds…the last lost signal is broadcast – END

glacier – foldhead

less glacier, more fog, sea fret…immersion and low frequency vibration…soothe…calm intention…passed through some kind of body scanner…observed…minutely…for some reason whales come to mind…perhaps their song…I see in greens and blues…the Sea of Tranquility is green and bottomless and calm…adrift…dreamlike…slumber beckoning…sleep phantoms loom and pass harmless, soft creatures of the deep withstanding enormous gravity, eyeless blind…take an age, we grow…to achieve

oTo T50 – Chrissie Caulfield

outside or wind or…something landing…musical, structural almost a rhythm…there is a Who intro keyboard, slightly…violin-ish…and then cello…trepidation…a sense of lurking…before the trauma…Hitchcock’s Psycho…and so of course, blood in water…some message tapped out

left unresolved (short) – DR:WR

too many voices calling…cannot pick out a thread…interwoven…a sense of cacophony controlled…layers…no structure but mass…diminish…what will happen…

Be To Under the Weather to be – Hardworking Families

the start, the keyboard, the looping beat, then the skip, move up, shape, an invitation to dance, and to risk a beat, this is the dance track, played backwards, beats meet you out of sequence causing surprise, call and refrain, where are the horns, playful, happyhappy, repeatedly running towards me smiling in the video, definitely a song for spring not autumn

Weather to be Under (five is the number he is bounteous) – John Tuffen from Orlando Ferguson

Ibiza choon…arms waving through lights…risings…sunrise…this could pass for euphoria in a bleak world…where next though where next out of the loop…some scattered thoughts fleet and dash before being grabbed and harnessed…and so the loop, ever on, ever on with the loop…mobius sound…within sight of the place we started…zone in zone out…not boredom but the same effect of inattention…the focus is shattered…no, something softer than shattered…but the centre is nevertheless lost in all the rounding circularity…spirals…concentrated meandering always tethered…I’d like my drugs now please

Irnwks – Panelak

flckng rd sttns…nny nny…no pleasure to be had…Alex in Clockwork Orange had his eyelids pinned open…watching someone operate on a broken bone in your leg in your leg because they forgot the anaesthetic…followed by indecision…not unhinged, just hingeless…why would you…

remix of Midwich’s Too Early from Every Day is the same – Simon Aulman

(at 3 minutes this is the Ramones remix)…channelling paranoia…from a bad bad place…do less…much less…a longed for beat stop

Midwich (Hangover mix) – Paul Watson

lethargic crepuscular start…moving with a heavy heart…a car door?…in darkness water dripping…ripples and swirls…open the hands over the mouth and close again childhood megaphones…movement…through a corridor…listening from inside a cupboard afraid of detection…muffle…hiding, stay hidden…steps overhead, steps overheard…feels like ghosts…when you’re unsure

a moment of stillness – posset

verbal verbal…muttered words overlaid an aural mosaic senseless confusion I hear treacle but this is not glutinous it shatters and cracks and loops insensible a moment of stillness is sought, is noted a moment of stillness a moment a moment it is brave and compulsive I imagine him rocking rocking rocking without stop without eventually reaching for the wall like an exhausted swimmer

tinymuscle – the piss superstition

something organic growing one of those slo-mo shots of plants shoots emerging…the remnnants of a dance loop…an antiquity…dust on the needle…laboured breathing, perhaps emphysema, with an oxygen tank by the side of the chair…old industry…with a light touch…a hope…I start to imagine Ian Curtis’ voice…I’m at a loss as to why…

left unresolved cakemix edit – Michael Clough

a spaceship’s groans as it flexes…who would hear it…is it instead the magnified groanings of our knees as we stand again, cartilage upon cartilage…nevertheless it is a wave of sound that seems to enfold in an understated calm…something derived from the element of things…not quite the Buddhists’ chant of Om…closer less ethereal…I am reminded of the alien goo in Under the Skin, that absorbs men, erections and all…which all seems a long way from “cakemix”…the bringer of peace?

midwichMIX – Neil Campbell

tuning up…layers…not yet distressed enough to be Sonic Youth…as if you were touching a piece of metalwork and hearing the vibrations at its atomic level…there is a cohesive harmony but it is hidden among the density…such weight…occasional shafts of light penetrate

august in ribblehead – devotionalhallucinatic

(I like Ribblehead)…adrummerinthedistance…is the foundation…scraping away (an old Jam song)…an element of something happening over there… a show, a performance to be watched, passively…completely immersive

oTo T22 – Part II – Michael Giliham

gently meditative…not quite pastoral…slowly lifting…could be an interlude…so much scope, so much space…allows steady breathing…we float…unhurried…nothing seems immanent…the Northern Lights

Striking Flint – Daniel Thomas

deep echo…slowed dub electronica…all about the pattern on the cardiogram caused by the waves…the repeat and the variance…the approach and the retreat…the search for the optimal point…benign hypnosis…there must be a centre…standing on the shore of an avatar sea…watching the lights on the boats…knowing that the unknowable teems beneath…shoals…that pulse in light…thin filtered light…all this submerged beauty…beyond reach…beyond…timetracklost of…

throating (stomaching) – Breather

(almost) feedback…return nourishment…non-stomaching…which is of course vomit…not a reflection on the sounds, which are gastric at best…push a gurgle through a re-verb…insistent like an alarm…bike horns, he asks unsure…pleasant enough without cramping…

Stoma 2 – YOL

This sort of noise in a supermarket would make you skip to the next aisle and vow to yourself that next time you’ll do the shop on line.

La industria de la Luz – ZN

(this was partially responsible for a poem on the first hearing; see end, Juego de la Luz)

builds and builds…slow accumulation…uncertain pressure…pushing…

something below…an expectation builds…waiting…a chrysalis splitting…no clear view yet…never quite in focus…yet intense…perhaps it is a birth…waiting for what…it is breathing, it is everything, it is repetition it is grind and it is the turning day…the sound of white light at the end of the tunnel…

Bosky (AJ vocal remix) – Andrew Jarvis

…and so the last one…tibetan monk chanting lost behind feedback… something bizarre…squalls over mutterings…vague sense of it being something from another time…or unearthly or uninterpretable…an outtake from the White Album…if I hear a scouse twang I’ll believe it…comes a point where a rock song could climb and take off…but instead it meanders and fades…never less than interesting.

…and we’re done – at 17.23 – off to Fanny’s.*

[*Editor’s note: Fanny’s Ale House is a pub in Saltaire near where Nick lives. I thought it best not to leave that ambiguous…]

—ooOoo—

Juego de la Luz

Awash,

The tentative dawn spills gentle and golden

Sweeping the valley like euphoria

This is what I imagine a warm wind

Would look like, or a heart in love

Rising behind the mass of Windhill

As if a great dam is breaching

Making shadow theatre silhouettes of the radio mast

Which lacks only sails to ride out to sea

And the great chimneys of the ex-factories

Blackly loom exclaiming their redundancy

The lambent air is still, the river’s skin

Lies un-nipped and un-blistered

This gold slips warm and soft along

The singing overhead cables

While the melting iron of Dali’s tracks

Lead the sliced eye to flattened horizons

What will today bring. I suspect

The attentive heron knows, the drifting swan

And the bolting deer locked in their moment of

Stillness, will both know. I am gently enraptured

By this timorous dawn, under whispering mists,

That offers a promise of transcendence

On arriving in the city I find

I no longer understand traffic jams

—ooOoo–

eye for detail on Bandcamp

Nick Allen: Panic@6haroldplace.co.uk

eye for detail, paul watson and a giant cardboard cheque

October 12, 2014 at 8:40 pm | Posted in midwich, new music, no audience underground | Leave a comment
Tags: ap martlet, aqua dentata, astral social club, bbblood, breather, brian lavelle, chrissie caulfield, clive henry, dale cornish, daniel thomas, devotional hooligan, dr:wr, drone, dsic, eddie nuttall, electronica, foldhead, gerado picho, hagman, hardworking families, helicopter quartet, improv, in fog, joe murray, john tuffen, julian bradley, karl mv waugh, la mancha del pecado, michael clough, michael gillham, midwich, miguel perez, neil campbell, new music, no audience underground, noise, orlando ferguson, panelak, pascal ansell, paul walsh, paul watson, posset, psychedelia, pyongyang plastics, scott mckeating, shameless self-congratulation, simon aulman, the piss superstition, the red cross, the zero map, tom bench, van appears, yol, zn

Regular readers and Twitter followers will know that the 1st of October saw the release of eye for detail – the midwich remixes album. This Bandcamp download comprises 27 tracks by various no-audience underground luminaries each refiguring some section of my back catalogue. It totals three hours and forty minutes in length and can be bought for the knock-down price of five pounds. All proceeds are being donated to charity. The album has garnered universal love since its birth – making it even better than a royal baby – and has already been hailed as the album of the year by no less an authority than the voices in my head. The total plays for individual tracks topped 1000 in ten days. Further details as to its genesis can be read here and notes on its release can be read here.

The cause I have chosen to support is The British Red Cross. You may be aware of the front line medical help they supply in disaster situations but may not be familiar with the global network they have for tracing missing family members, or the support they provide to refugees in accessing services and adapting to life in a new country. You can read about what they do here. It is vital work.

Paul Watson, best known ’round these parts as BBBlood, contributed a handsome mix himself and then went on to earn limitless karma points by enthusiastically badgering punters into coughing up. In return for his help I somehow agreed to make my initial donation of £100 via one of those giant cheques you see in local newspaper photo opportunities – handshake n’all. I have to admit to being tickled by the idea and thought I could pop into a Red Cross charity shop and have a bit of a laugh with the volunteers there. Alas, a little research revealed that The Red Cross do not have such a business here in sunny Leeds and, in fact, their only office is a refugee assistance centre. A visit was nixed immediately – I’d feel a right knobber interrupting this crucial work by prancing about with my sheet of cardboard.

…and yet I still really wanted to get the felt-tips out and had a giant box that bits of a bed had been delivered in down in the cellar. What the hell, eh? I’d make my fake cheque, my 18 month old son Thomas could be The Red Cross’s representative during a symbolic ceremony and I’d do the actual transaction online.

Here are the stats: 25 sales of eye for detail at the time of writing raising £136.23, removing Bandcamp and PayPal fees leaves a donation of £109.01 which was handed over electronically prior to this post being written. My thanks and gratitude again to all those involved and to all those who have donated money. The compilation will remain available indefinitely and I will continue donating future proceeds on a regular basis.

The cheque measures 20″ by 38″ (piss superstition CD-r included in picture above for scale) and is now for sale. If you’d like to own this historic document in return for a further donation I’ll look into posting it – get in touch.

The Ceremony in pictures:

Visiting dignitaries take their seats.

Thomas takes a few photographs himself whilst waiting for it all to begin.

The presentation! Thomas is amazed at this princely sum.

The ceremonial handshake – Thomas a bit unsure about the etiquette.

…goes for the fistbump first…

…then the full celebratory shake…

…then subverts custom by presenting his foot to be shaken too. Kid has flair.

Worrying (with some justification) that Daddy can’t be trusted with money he is eager to get it safe…

…so immediately deposits it in the Bank of Shove-It-Behind-The-Sofa. Daddy retires to the study to do the real transaction online. A job well done. Thanks to Anne for taking the photos.

—ooOoo—

eye for detail on Bandcamp

The Red Cross

‘eye for detail’, the midwich remixes album, out now!

October 1, 2014 at 9:22 am | Posted in midwich, new music, no audience underground | 2 Comments
Tags: ap martlet, aqua dentata, astral social club, bbblood, breather, brian lavelle, chrissie caulfield, clive henry, dale cornish, daniel thomas, devotional hooligan, dr:wr, drone, dsic, eddie nuttall, electronica, foldhead, gerado picho, hagman, hardworking families, helicopter quartet, improv, in fog, joe murray, john tuffen, julian bradley, karl mv waugh, la mancha del pecado, michael clough, michael gillham, midwich, miguel perez, neil campbell, new music, no audience underground, noise, orlando ferguson, panelak, pascal ansell, paul walsh, paul watson, posset, psychedelia, pyongyang plastics, scott mckeating, shameless self-congratulation, simon aulman, the piss superstition, the red cross, the zero map, tom bench, van appears, yol, zn

Comrades! Light the bonfires! Blow those long, thin trumpets with banners hanging off ’em!

Radio Free Midwich is delighted to announce the release of eye for detail – the midwich remixes album.

About six weeks ago a passing comment on Twitter was tossed over the chalet balcony and started to roll down the mountainside. The resulting giant snowball crashed through the doors of my back catalogue and, within hours, a happy band of looters was ransacking the vault. An album was retroactively called into existence with a deadline and a charity cause adding some ‘oomph’ to proceedings. The cut off was the 30th September, the release date today. Such is the unfettered power of the no-audience underground.

I have been delighted with the number of responses, the enthusiasm with which contributors embraced the task and the breadth, quality and imagination shown in the submitted tracks. The artists featured represent a (partial at least) cross section of the ‘scene’ this blog reports on and the gathering of the clan has reminded me, more than once, of the ridiculous oTo tapes project I oversaw a decade ago (indeed, check out the title of Michael Gillham’s track – dude also has a long memory). It has been extremely flattering and morale boosting to see such art inspired by my own meagre output. I am humbled but beaming.

A few words about the album itself. There are 27 tracks in total and the combined running time is over three and a half hours. The artists included are (deep breath):

Andy Jarvis (Vile Plumage, NIHL), ap martlet, Aqua Dentata, Breather, Brian Lavelle, Chrissie Caulfield (of RFM faves Helicopter Quartet), Clive Henry, Dale Cornish, Daniel Thomas, devotionalhallucinatic, DR:WR (Karl of The Zero Map), dsic, foldhead (Paul Walsh – who accidentally started it all), Hardworking Families (Tom Bench), In Fog (Scott McKeating of this parish), John Tuffen (of Orlando Ferguson), Michael Clough, Michael Gillham, Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club), Panelak, Paul Watson (BBBlood), posset (Joe Murray also of RFM), Simon Aulman (pyongyang plastics), the piss superstition, Van Appears, Yol, and ZN.

Phew, champion line up, eh? I have made a stab at organising a coherent running order but please feel free to chop and change according to your own mood. Over such a long time, and with so many different styles in play, some juxtapositions are going to grate for some listeners. I have done a little light-touch mastering – mainly just amping up a couple of tracks – but not much, most tracks are presented as they arrived. There are some variations in volume but SO BE IT – no unnecessary compression/loudness war crap here.

The cover photograph was donated by Michael Clough and I encourage all readers to regularly check his tumblr site for a stream of similar observational genius. The download includes a portfolio of a further seven photographs from Clough to accompany the release. Also in the bonus items is a document listing links to further information about the featured artists and, where possible, links to the midwich material that was the source for their track.

Finally then: the cause. It seemed appropriate to me to make this a charity release and chose the Red Cross as the beneficiary. You may be aware of the front line medical help they supply in disaster situations but may not be familiar with the global network they have for tracing missing family members, or the support they provide to refugees in accessing services and adapting to life in a new country. You can read about what they do here. All proceeds from this album will be heading their way.

—ooOoo—

eye for detail on Bandcamp

The Red Cross

eye for detail: the midwich remixes album

August 26, 2014 at 3:38 pm | Posted in midwich, no audience underground, not bloody music | Leave a comment
Tags: andrew jarvis, ap martlet, brian lavelle, clive henry, daniel thomas, drone, dsic, early hominids, electronica, eye for detail, foldhead, improv, joe murray, michael clough, midwich, new music, no audience underground, noise, paul walsh, posset, red cross, remix, the piss superstition, yol

The idea of a midwich remix project goes back a fair distance (indeed, the missing-in-action Trademark TM created a version of the second midwich album life underwater – called ‘life underwater in space‘ – back when we were still laughing at bewildered millenarians) but now, finally, its time has come and I am inviting you, dear reader, to be involved.

The story so far is simple: Paul Walsh (foldhead, early hominids) sent me ‘glacier’, a version of ‘stomach lining’ from october in yorkshire that had been knocking about his hard-drive for yonks and discovered in a clear-out. I liked it very much, mentioned it in passing on Twitter and within minutes had volunteers queuing up to submit their own remixes for an album I had to retroactively call into existence. That’s what Twitter is like, innit?

So here’s the plan: the album will be called ‘eye for detail’. The entire midwich back catalogue is up for grabs, much of which is freely downloadable via the midwich bandcamp page. Take what you want, do what you want with it and return the results to me ideally in wav format, ideally via WeTransfer (my email address can be found on the ‘about us…’ page). The deadline for submissions is Tuesday 30th September and it will be released in October as soon as I get it all sorted. To keep distribution simple and proceeds high the album will be download only via Bandcamp. The reason for wanting to keep proceeds high is that all money raised will be donated to the Red Cross.

(An aside: this organisation was chosen as it provides immediate medical help to those most in need around this shitty world that we live in. It has been brought to my attention that some may have issues with the Red Cross. I’m afraid I’m ignorant of the politics I might be accidentally wading into here, so if you have concerns please email me privately so I can address those concerns or make sure your donation is sent elsewhere)

So far the project has only existed on Twitter and in a few emails but already I couldn’t be more delighted with the response. As well as the foldhead track mentioned above and garnering permission to use existing tracks by Daniel Thomas, ap martlet and Andy Jarvis, brand new work by dsic, Clive Henry, the piss superstition, Yol and Brian Lavelle is jostling in a hard-drive folder. Others are hard at work. It’s very exciting and updates are being tweeted on the arrival of each new jewel for the treasure chest. Of particular note is Joe Murray’s Posset remix of this blog. Yes, instead of choosing a midwich track to molest he has clipped favourite passages from my more whimsical and/or threatening moments and has created a shadow narrative that sounds like Adam Bohman cutting up H.P. Lovecraft. Has to be heard to be believed. ‘Cover art’ will be provided by Michael Clough, who may be persuaded to submit some music too.

So: fancy being a part of this? I flatter myself (as always) but perhaps there seems to be something about the wide open spaces, the jokey bibbling or the simple pulses of my, *ahem*, ‘music’ that invites augmentation or reinterpretation. You’d be in terrific company and the cause is righteous so why not, eh? All submissions gratefully received.