Canyon Hands - Their Copy Hearts Beat at Their Chests

static roar/whispering in wires

Liz Harris (Grouper) - Mirror Hall pt. 1: Jeweled Light

Last year, Liz Harris better known to the world as Grouper released a small art book on the venerable Root Strata label. Liz's art is actually quite evocative of her music in some ways. It's often incredibly dense,  made up of repeating, interwoven patterns and is quite beautiful. But for me, the real point of interest was the dvd that came with the book. Clocking in at over an hour long, the movie is a continuation of Liz's art in moving images and, given that there's music playing the whole time, in sound - the medium by which we know her best. What we have here is that piece of music, all 66 minutes of it. The piece is an epic tape collage, water logged, absolutely drenched in reverb and murmuring static. Field recordings filter through the murk at times, distant and bathed in fuzz or hazed almost to the point of pure texture. Around a quarter of an hour in, Liz's trademark electric piano, trembling and melancholy rises to the surface, contending with a veritable avalanche of static that sounds like a hurricane heard from some bunker deep underground. Around 25 minutes in, thing turn sinister, a menacing series of overtones - courtesy of Rob Fisk on viola - cut through the swirling swoosh of decaying radios and distant thunderstorms that have taken us this far. Voices can be heard in far off corners, a thrum of reverb and a menacing low, almost reminiscent of the quieter moments from The North Sea takes us down dark corridors, ghostly and dreadful. Eventually we are back in the world of gently murmuring static, wind in microphones, the sounds, perhaps, of a city far beneath, interrupted by at long last by Harris' voice as we've come to expect it - a chorus, fragile, mournful, utterly haunting and lovely. We veer then into more straight up drone territory, the static is all but gone, pianos ring out, waver, keen, mournful, beneath an almost Stars of the Lid dronescape. This passage is transportive, entrancing, lovely and sad. After the 50 minute mark, we're back in Grouper territory, drone-y and washed out, reverb and static, flickering, hazy vocals. More static. A single, plaintive piano wanders, picks up a sinister clip over an ever growing mess of feedback - again shades of the North Sea here - and this too then gives way to yet another Grouper-esque moment of keyboard and static wash. With five minutes to spare, there is more darkness, more rumbling like forgotten machines built for nefarious purposes, a buzzing line of feedback over a wash of static like cars passing over rainslicked pavement, slowly fading into silence.

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Unfortunately Divide is sold out but you can buy more great stuff from Root Strata here.

The Ghost of 29 Megacycles - Love Via Paper Planes

This shimmering, ethereal debut album came out in 2009 on the now tragically defunct Sound&Fury imprint and quietly slipped under most people's radars. It's a shame, because it's a gorgeous album full of sprawling dronescapes lovingly crafted from haunted, whispering vocals, coldly thrumming and heavily reverberated guitars and gauzy, glowing organ. It's a chilly sounding album but enveloping nonetheless, rich in texture and carefully crafted washes of sound. At 15 minutes long, the opening track accounts for about a third of the total run time. It's decidedly minimal with constant waves of guitar and organ serving as the backdrop to a hushed, wordless chorus. The second track is far more guitar heavy, but droned out almost to the point of a pure wash of sound. Its slow burn progression, melancholy and meditative, is reminiscent of Stars of the Lid. The title track and the one following it, entitled "Dusted," could easily be one long piece. On the first, a languorous guitarscape drives the piece forward. The latter swells with vibrant, near-hypnotic organ tones, the guitar shimmering within it. On both, those same tender, wordless, washed out vocals sing almost mantra-like throughout. The album ends unexpectedly with a cover of Daniel Johnston's "True Love Will Find You in the End." For the first time, the vocals are clear, albeit distant and almost tremulous, as if coming from some room far, far away. It's a wonderfully melancholy piece and a fantastic way to close out this mysterious yet highly accomplished album. This is shoegaze for fans of pure ambience, or as if My Bloody Valentine decided to make a drone album. In any case, it's a gem and is not to be missed.

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Band's Website

Seaworthy

It's a new day and Hollow Press is back online. After weeks of crazy deadlines and adventures the musical spelunking can once again commence. We're kicking things off with three releases by Australia's Cameron Webb aka Seaworthy, a maestro of guitar and electronic minimalism.

First up is "Codes Adrift." Released in an edition of 100 CD-Rs, placed in hand made envelopes, and sealed with wax by the now tragically defunct Sound&Fury records, "Codes Adrift" is two untitled tracks sprawling out over just under half an hour. The two pieces could almost be one, a quietly pulsing and sublimely peaceful journey comprised entirely of looped and layered guitar tone and feedback. The sensation of listening to this record is of one sitting on a small boat in the middle of an absolutely endless sea but being completely at peace with this fact. A wistfully lulling siren call shifts and lows, an almost organ-like thrum, while Webb picks and plucks his guitar quietly around this softly swirling ebb and flow. Although some new elements creep into the track 2 - bits of static and softly glitchy pulses rattle and whisper, lonely and nostalgic; the volume and intensity picks up - the sonic journey "Codes Adrift" takes listeners on is essentially without interruption. The two pieces feed into one another and, like the tides they seem to draw inspiration from, could pulse inward and outward forever. It's a powerful yet delicate piece of music, decidedly minimal but incredibly deep.

Codes Adrift
Codes Adrift is long out of print and probably can't be purchased anywhere. Sorry!

Next there's "1897," an album recorded entirely in an old ammunition depot from the titular year. Once again Webb's guitar playing is at the fore here although meditative electronic thrum and lovely field recordings of wind, birds, rain, and running water are woven throughout, creating a fully realized sonic world, one that drifts through haunted corners of dusty attics and over rainswept meadows, mournful and brimming with melancholy. One of the most impressive parts of this album is the timbre of Webb's guitar, at times reminiscent of Loren Connors, which picks up a huge amount of natural reverb from the physical space in which the album was recorded. But some tracks are far more electronic heavy than others, eschewing traditional guitar sounds altogether. Sparse, glowering drone pieces crop up amongst the rippling guitar and delicate sigh of wind and rain through leaves. Stark and chilly, this isn't happy listening but it's perhaps Webb's best to date.

1897
Buy or go here

Finally there's "Map in Hand," a rather different album from the last couple but still definitely part of the Seaworthy oeuvre. "Map in Hand" is more hopeful, a warmer and overall more involved production. Electronics play a bigger role, the guitar is less prevalent, at least in it's traditional state. While many songs on "1897" are just Webb improvising on guitar with little to no significant processing, "Map in Hand" is more concerned with creating glowing, densely layered soundscapes. Rather than stark and mournful, these are more transportive, crackling with analog buzz and thrumming with strange energy. The result is soft and languid and beautiful. It's not a very easy album and will bore some but for those with the patience it's wonderful and rewarding, a perfect soundtrack to a late night summer drive through the country, surrounded by dark fields but warm and secure and speeding into the unknown.

Map in Hand
Buy or go here

Upcoming

So for the past month or so I've been finishing my senior thesis and finals and all that good stuff hence the total lack of posts. That's going to continue for the next couple weeks. BUT I have good stuff planned for the future. More mixes are in the works and posts of rare and out of print albums from Seaworthy, The North Sea, The Ghost of 29 Megacycles, Svarte Greiner, Liz Harris, Christopher McFall, and Sundrips plus some cool concert bootlegs are all in the works. Come mid-June(ish) things will pick up, promise!

In the meantime go here and listen to two new songs written and performed by the immensely talented Jo Warren aka sTiCkLiPs: http://asarchives.bandcamp.com/album/sticklips-asarchives-session

First Third 2011 Mixtape

It's April and that means 2011 is one third over. To celebrate here's a mixtape featuring 17 songs from albums released in the past four months. This was thrown together rather quickly and is in lieu of an actual update so there are some admittedly imperfect transitions on display but this mix does highlight some of the best music we at Hollow Press have heard this year so far.

Mogwai kicks things off with "Rano Piano" from their latest, Hardcore Will Never Die but You Will. An awesomely powerful and catchy guitar riff pulls the song along, anchored by propulsive drums and a whole mess of electronic noise. "Glass Deers" by Braids follows and features a gently picked guitar and gorgeous female vocals (both clean and chopped up and stuttering) along with shuffling drums, electro-pop that's catchy without being irritating, sad and gripping without being melodramatic or banal. Mark Templeton's wonderful "At Your Feet" is layers of electric guitar with percussion from drums and a lot of shaker. The guitar plays a simple refrain throughout with a rising tide of delayed guitar squall building up over it.

These first three tracks should more or less tell you what to expect. This mix goes a lot of places and explores a lot of ground. Deaf Center's "Close Forever Watching" is dark and deep, a very heavy, very waterlogged sonic journey. On the other hand  Matthew Cooper, better known as Eluvium, offers a bright but wistful piece for piano and strummed, delayed guitar along with murmuring, whispering electronics from his original soundtrack for the film Some Days are Better Than Others. Meanwhile Dirty Beaches' "A Hundred Highways" sounds like someone took a 1950s rock and roll LP, rubbed it with dirt and gravel, and threw it on a turntable with an ancient cartridge. It's scuzzy as hell.

Then there's Grouper, Julianne Barwick, and Motion Sickness of Time Travel - three female solo artists - who make their voices - looped, delayed, layered, distorted - into a primary component of their pieces. Barwick's "Envelope" is more or less just her voice, a tremendously affecting track of layered and looped wordless vocals swaying and cascading and folding into one another. Rachel Evens of MSoTT uses her trademark spacey synths and haunted, murmuring vocals to take the listener on a drifting, meditative journey from one of her newest tapes, A Disembodied Voice in the Darkness. Liz Harris aka Grouper absolutely stuns with "Vapor Trails," one of her most powerful tracks yet off of Alien Observer, itself one half of a two album release called A I A (the other half is Dream Loss). Her trembling keyboard, thick with reverb, and softly glowing guitar complement layers of wonderfully soft and ghostly voice, a terribly sad song that sounds like it's drifting up from the bottom of the sea.

Also in the mix, Colin Stetson's undeniable genius on the baritone sax is here for all to hear. Somehow Stetson manages to vocalize in tremendously engaging ways, transforming his instrument into something wholly new in the process, a fact that's true for the entirety of his New History Warfare Volume 2: Judges. This sounds like a heavily processed piece but it's recorded live with no overdubs. It's a thrilling and original piece of music. A Hawk and a Hacksaw offer up a hymn for strings, a mournful, lovely tune dominated by an emotionally bowed violin. Evenings' "Still Young" is a catchy bit of electro instrumentalism with syncopated drum machines and keyboards, a definite must for fans of The Album Leaf. Electronic music master Tim Hecker's piece "No Drums" from the awesomely titled Ravedeath 1972 is drifting, guazy, and contemplative, soft and pulsing, reminiscent of German producer Gas. Ending it all is "Postcards from 1952" off of Explosions in the Sky's latest. It's true that this Texas based band is still doing the whole "post-rock" thing that is arguably derivative and old hat by now but they do it so well that it's impossible to really complain. Their newest is a gorgeous, elating piece of work and this track is one of the most intense of the bunch, a fantastic, stirring piece of music.

Hopefully there's something for everyone here. As always, thoughts are appreciated. Enjoy.

The First-Third-of-2011 Mix

1. Mogwai - Rano Piano
2. Braids - Glass Deers
3. Mark Templeton - At Your Feet
4. Grails - Future Primative
5. Deaf Center - Close Forever Watching
6. Matthew Cooper - Some Days are Better than Others
7. Tape - Dust and Light
8. Rene Hell - Detuned Clarinet
9. Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Vision of Bliss and Peace
10. Evenings - Still Young
11. Dirty Beaches - A Hundred Highways
12. Julianna Barwick - Envelope
13. A Hawk and a Hacksaw - Lazslo Lassu
14. Tim Hecker - No Drums
15. Grouper - Vapor Trails
16. Colin Stetson - In Love and in Justice
17. Explosions in the Sky - Postcards from 1952

Total Runtime: 1:33:27

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edit: just noticed the "album title" on the tracks calls this a "first quarter" mix rather than first third. Change as you are wont.

Golden Retriever

For our first actual update in quite some time, we have Golden Retriever's self-titled debut, a drifting cosmic journey for synthesizers and clarinet released in an edition of only 100 cd-rs by Root Strata in 2009. Golden Retriever is the duo of Matt Carlson and Jonathan Sielaff and for their first release they crafted a gorgeous yet sinister set of tracks that could perhaps best be described as the long-lost alternative soundtrack to Blade Runner. This is music for a midnight hovercar drive through the slums of some seedy, neon filled dystopian metropolis. Synthesizers thrum and undulate, glower and crumble, scattering bleeps and bloops off into the stratosphere like archaic, room sized computers communicating with deep space communes. Sielaff's clarinet soars out mournful and clarion clear, looping and layering into a shifting wash of sound at times, and in other moments exploring the more abstract boundaries of jazz. At other times the duo brings the sound down almost into the realms of minimal sound exploration, high end whispers like intercepted phone frequencies, spattering metallic gurgles, dull, lowing buzzes all weave into spooky, mysterious sonic trips through long forgotten laboratories and empty streets. All told, this self-titled debut is fantastic and unique, an amazing excursion that stands head and shoulders above nearly all of the recent glut of synthesizer albums clogging the airwaves. Definitely not to be missed.

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Buy
Golden Retriever Bandcamp

Massive Japan Relief Compilation

Antiopic has just released a downloadable Japan relief benefit compilation and it's a doozy, featuring 64 tracks, over 5 hours of music, all exclusive to this compilation. At only $15, it's a real steal and 100% of sales go to Civic Force, a Japanese non-profit helping with the relief effort from the recent earthquake and tsunami disaster. There's tons of amazing drone, noise, psychedelic, ambient, and otherwise experimental music, with artists include Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Grouper, C Spencer Yeh, Fennesz, Akron/Family, Ben Frost, Bear in Heaven, and Tim Hecker contributing among many, many others.

Buy it here: http://fina-music.com/catalog/index.html?id=105344

Full track listing:


Part One:
1. Fennesz: “Fearless”
2. Helado Negro: “Cabeza Bella”
3. Stephan Mathieu: “(Excerpt from) The Floating World”
4. School of Seven Bells: “Midnight Sun”
5. Lawrence English: “Hotaru”
6. Noveller: “Darkheart”
7. Zeena Parkins: “The Letter”
8. Tom Carter (of Charalambides): “Mended”
9. Akron/Family: “Deep Kazoo”
10. The Ex: “Cold Weather Is Back”
11. Shinji Masuko (of Boredoms/DMBQ): “Botsuon”
12. Oneohtrix Point Never: “The Inside World”
13. Tokimonsta: “Sound Caves”
14. Joshua Abrams: “Jackdaws”
15. Keith Fullerton Whitman: “Anzac #3″
16. Ben Frost: “Snæugla”
17. David Daniell: “Shiho-hiru-tama”
18. Grouper: “Cassiopeia”
19. Tape: “Mirrors”
20. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: “Moon in a Dewdrop”
21. D. Charles Speer: “Steel Infant”
22. Evan Caminiti (of Barn Owl): “Blue Veil”
23. Blackshaw, Wood, Wood & Tomlinson (James Blackshaw & Hush Arbors): “Are You Alright? (Chump Change)”
24. Nat Baldwin (of Dirty Projectors): “In the Hollows”
25. Chris Forsyth & Shawn Edward Hansen: “Dirty Pool Blues”
26. Zelienople: “Stone Faced About It”
27. Elm (Jon Porras of Barn Owl): “Diamond Dust”
28. Lobisomem: “Kusha”
29. Stabbing Eastwood (Tunde Adebimpe & Ryan Sawyer): “Thundersnow Mountain”
30. Alan Licht & Greg Malcolm: “Natasha Utting Reporting”
31. Scott Tuma: “To: Hasty”
32. Rhys Chatham: “Prayer for the People of Fukushima”

Part Two:
33. Prefuse 73: “The Only Climactic Dissonant Hums”
34. Growing: “Untitled”
35. James Plotkin (of Khanate): “Broken ’96″
36. Totem Test: “Pulse Prayer for Japan”
37. Marcus Schmickler (of Pluramon): “2.71828 Up”
38. Tim Hecker: “Hatred of Music (Double Gate Mix)”
39. Sylvain Chauveau: “Colours in Darkness”
40. Bear In Heaven: “The Days We Have”
41. Spires That In The Sunset Rise with Michael Zerang: “Collision Theory”
42. C. Spencer Yeh: “Solo Violin March 13th 2011″
43. Lau Nau: “Oi Kuolema”
44. Oren Ambarchi: “Merely A Portmanteau”
45. Warm Ghost: “Uncut Diamond (Dripping Pollen Mix)”
46. Bradley & Geofrey (Atlas Sound + White Rainbow): “Mr. Stephen’s Private Service”
47. Peter’s House Music: “Half Step”
48. Leb Laze: “Da Plane Da Plane”
49. Matthewdavid: “Stop Laughing / Be Honest”
50. Sam Prekop: “Lakes River”
51. Simon Scott: “Of You (Before 2082)”
52. Tetuzi Akiyama/Jon Mueller/Jim Schoenecker: “Untitled”
53. Shelley Burgon: “Let It Be New”
54. Giant Sand: “Recovery Mission”
55. William Tyler: “Tears and Saints”
56. Mountains: “Still Life”
57. Ben Vida: “Quadsweep +2 (snkglazz iii)”
58. Maria Chavez: “Natural Disaster #2_2011″
59. Cleared: “Nova”
60. Neptune: “FIG IV”
61. Water Fai: “Tokitomori”
62. Parts & Labor: “Dokonimonai”
63. Jackie-O Motherfucker: “Blood of Life”
64. Greg Davis: “Sho Sai Myo Kichijo Dharani”

again, here's the link to buy: http://fina-music.com/catalog/index.html?id=105344

Motion Sickness of Time Travel - A Disembodied Voice in the Darkness

One of our current favorites here at Hollow Press, Motion Sickness of Time Travel, has put put out a new limited cassette on Teosinte. Buy it here: http://teosinterecords.blogspot.com/2011/03/motion-sickness-of-time-travel.html but act sharpish, there are only 47 copies and it will sell out quickly.

Listen 


Will probably share the music here once it's gone so check back. Also be sure to keep tabs on MSoTT's website for updates on all sorts of good stuff coming up soon: http://motionsicknessoftimetravel.blogspot.com/

Good Stuff House

Good Stuff House is Matt Christensen and Mike Weis of Zelienople in collaboration with former Souled America guitarist Scott Tuma. Here we have their only two albums to date, "Good Stuff House" and "Endless Bummer." On both, Tuma leads the way, spinning out vast, bottomless guitar nocturnes. Weis and Christensen add complex atmospherics, decayed percussion, hidden vocals, all taking Tuma's guitar drone down dark corridors and out into sun drenched deserts. In some ways GSH is a haunted continuation of Souled America, a fog drenched, smoke filled take on Americana.  Think of these as crumbling, droning country albums washed out almost to oblivion. At times this influence is more pronounced than others. On the band's first, self-titled album the opening track is propelled forward by an almost jauntily strummed banjo with layers of pulsing atmospherics in the background. Both albums here are culled from various tapes of improvised live sets and supplemented by studio work and it shows: both feel like explorations into far off places, acoustic guitars and banjos and piano and snarled percussion consumed and overwhelmed by vast undulations of white noise, oceanic echos, caverns of reverb, lost voices swimming out of the ether. And yet, despite how nearly annihilated it is, the Americana influence is undeniably there, sometimes lost altogether to the crumbling static and decomposing reverb but at others rearing up out of the welter. Haunting, fantastic stuff.


Good Stuff House

Endless Bummer
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