The Ghosts Of Bush was created entirely using the natural acoustic sounds of Bush House, the iconic home for the past seven decades of the BBC World Service which closed its doors for the last time on July 12th 2012. All of the sounds were captured in the small hours of the morning in empty offices, corridors, stairwells and other hidden corners by a Studio Manager working overnight. These recordings were then dubbed onto quarter-inch tape in the basement studio deep in the bowels of the South-East wing using two of the surviving reel-to-reel machines.
Adjusting the playback speed of the spools and bouncing the recordings between the two tape machines lead to the discovery of a number of interesting phrases and sound textures which were then looped, layered and fashioned into rough compositions. Over time the tape would start to degrade and alter the nature of the sounds, while occasional echo was created by recording and playing various loops simultaneously, feeding the sound back into itself. The entire album was produced using these simple methods, and no other effects or studio trickery have been used. Thanks to the sonorous quality of Bush Houses Portland stone walls and high ceilings, the natural resonance of the space was all that was needed.
These are the sounds the building makes when it thinks no-one is listening, the sounds of many sleepless nights spent isolated in a labyrinthine basement surrounding by a crepuscular soundtrack of creaks and crackles. Its an attempted homage to the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop who crafted the most incredible of sound-worlds from the most basic of sources. But mostly its my way of saying goodbye to a building that I and so many people have loved.
When talking of historic structures, the old clichéd approach is to wonder what one might hear if the walls could speak. I like to think that with The Ghosts Of Bush we come closer to hearing them sing: One last song about the passage of time and the impermanence of all things, with the ghosts of the machines joining in. The last hurrah of a bygone era, of obsolete equipment and of a studio that has since fallen silent forever.
This is fantastic. I really scared the hell out of myself with it last night. I went out to walk the dog, and for some reason all of the street lights in the neighborhood were out, and the moon was low on the horizon, so it was very dark. I had a little led flashlight, which was only making weird creepy lighting and odd shadows. There was some bizarre nightbird singing a noise that I've never heard before; I actually had to stop the tape to be sure it was in the outside world. And this was playing in the background. By the time the dog decided to stop in front of the old Tudor style house that's been empty and for sal for more than a year, I was feeling a bit freaked. In a good way.
NYOP for digital; £12 for white ("the color of ghosts") vinyl.
To celebrate our upcoming 50th (hb50) release with Antonymes (hibernate-recs.co.uk/antonymes) we asked 5 hibernate artists to each compile an album made up of 10 of their favourite tracks from our back catalogue and were making all 50 tracks available as a free download. Please consider making a small donation or share on your social networks/blogs in return, it all helps. Thanks and enjoy!
This is a recording of a major work that has been lost to history for fifty years.
My first hint of its existence came around 1992. I was writing an article about the music of La Monte Young, who in the 1960s had introduced long drones into the music of the avant-garde, and in so doing secured himself as reputation as the father of minimalism. La Monte gave me a hissy cassette tape of some slow, faint piano music. It was one of those thin, unreliable 120-minute cassettes, and the pitch wobbled badly. It was marked as containing a piece called November, dated 1959, by Dennis Johnson, though the recording was indicated as being from 1962. The music was glacially calm and meditative in the extreme, and cut off abruptly after 112 minutes; in fact, there were a few gaps in the audio elsewhere, too. On tape, voices murmured in the background. Occasionally a far-off dog barked. And La Monte credited the work as having been the inspiration and predecessor to his mammoth magnum opus The Well-Tuned Piano, which I had come to write about.
"Cause And Effect was a cassette distribution service operated by Debbie Jaffe and Hal McGee from 1984 to 1988. During that time we sold and traded more than 5,000 cassettes of homemade experimental music."
"Recently I have commenced a project to reissue online in archival format every cassette that was distributed by the Cause And Effect Cassette Distribution Service (operated by Debbie Jaffe and me) in the 1980s. It is a non-profit effort to preserve the documents and artifacts of Cassette Culture era history, and to honor the artists and labels, strictly for archival, educational, historical, and non-commercial purposes."
Hal McGee @ http://www.haltapes.com/cause-and-effect-january-1985-catalog.html
122 tracks for GBP6, proceeds to cancer support. Various familiar names and a lot of new ones.
All proceeds donated to Macmillan Cancer Support - www.macmillan.org.uk
Some of the planet's greatest Electronic, Ambient & Modern Classical musicians come together for this amazing cause.
You can pay an amount of your choice here (£6 or over), and we will donate (and claim gift aid) on your behalf, or, you can go to www.justgiving.com/Touched-Music and donate directly (and leave a message if you wish).
The artists have contributed their music for free.
Another bandcamp charity fundraiser, for the Hospice of the Good Shepherd in Chester www.hospiceofthegoodshepherd.com. Various artists, incl. Antonymes, offthesky, Olan Mill, Wil Bolton - in short all the gifted folk in the Hibernate scene.
All proceeds go to Beyond Blue, working to reduce the impact of depression and anxiety in the Australian community.Exclusive tracks donated to the Admirable Restraint Christmas Special, broadcast on Fine Music 102.5, Sydney, Australia, on 19 December 2013.
credits
released 25 December 2013
I'm surprised this one hasn't been mentioned yet: a live album by the guitarist of Marillion, 50 pence with the discount code merryxmass. Proggy goodness, as one might expect.
A "name your price" track, recently added to the miscellaneous album by Daniel Padden's The One Ensemble, as usual with their unique and breathtaking brand of "freak folk". . .
[size=12Daniel Padden - ]Music Language Sept 2013[/size] - "Live performance for Music Language Festival 2013, Garnethill Multicultural Centre, Glasgow.
Performed by Daniel Padden, Richard Merchant, Rory Haye, Alex South, Iban Perez, Howie Reeve and Ross McCrae."
Peter Slavov's name sounds familiar to me. I'd have to check my site and/or my notes to see what the reference would be. John Shannon, also, though not at as much as Slavov's name.
I'd have to check, but I'm pretty sure that duo recording "Old Shoulders" was one of me eMusic Jazz Picks. But I'm not certain that all of those recordings have hit eMusic.
I've seen both Daisy and Bishop perform down in Lexington, and enjoy the live performances. I've never taken too great a shine to the music from the Chicago Improv scene on recorded media though. It doesn't connect with me like it would when I'd go down the street and hear it at the Empty Bottle (back when I was living in Chicago).
I've got a bookmark on the bandcamp page. I think it's been there for awhile, along with all the other bookmarks I've listed, for all the column ideas I've had over the two years my site has been running. Just one of those things that hasn't quite happened yet.
- Also as "name your price" and highly recommended:
Daniel Maze: bass, guitar, keyboards, electronics.
Bryan white: drums, percussion.
Dave Zeal: trumpet, drums on Revenge of the cosmic debris.
Jerry Cromwell: bulbul tarang, tape effects.
- "Walltapper (Daniel Maze) born in 1980 is a Canadian producer of Vancouver known to approach composition by means of very different styles in a very personal way. We know of Daniel immediately because of his releases on numerous netlabels such as Test-tube, 12rec and of course EKO (Lifeguard ep ref. 013) and SKM (Skuba ref. 011). Emotional, experimental, deep and pop, the words fail us to define his whole discography, we can say however that Daniel has no particular limits and always pushes the boundaries of his compositions by concentrating on textures, energy and melody.
His new album Monaco (SEM 017) confirms this eclecticism delivering an album mixing trip-hop jazz, experimentations and very groovy drums-beats." http://semlabel.com/walltapper/ - Emusic
Heirs - Alchera (NYOP, free for an email)
Heirs - Fowl (NYOP - Free)
Drawing influence from MICHAEL GIRA and his SWANS legacy, the sledgehammer ris and industrial pummel of GODFLESH, and continuing Stegeman's incense shrouded low-end incantations from his work with doom dealers WHITEHORSE, combined with Jackson's reverb-soaked noise, Alchera strips bare the needless excesses of post-rock and heavy metal in favour of something much more concise and affecting. A lurching, drugged-out specter - holding solace in one hand, and vengeance in the other.
From the seething metallic buzz and bluster of the opening track "Plague Asphyx", through to the crowning low-end droning turbulence of "Russia", the recording is an archetype for an existence shrouded in confusion, joy, disappointment and addiction.
Power-pop synth soul (or something) from Asheville, NYOP. Found this exploring my latest "Arlene and Larry Dunn and Bad Thoughts bought new music on Bandcamp" email!
This album by Holly Echo, "Out the Window Music," was released only about six weeks ago - it's a kind of chamber-pop/dreampop ("symphonygaze"?) male-female singer duo from Toronto, giving away one of the best things I've heard in months for absolutely-free:
This may have even been my choice for best album of 2013, along with the Wire and Sad Day for Puppets albums, plus the first half of We Will Live the Space Age by Jetman Jet Team.
A sister label to Important Records has just entered Bandcamp with artists such as:
Greg Davis, Arnold Dreyblatt, Maurizio Bianchi and Conrad Schnitzler.
(A)ll of his already-great work pretty much pales in the face of this harrowing, at points almost disturbingly voyeuristic and emotionally bruising set. Dedicated to the memory of his late father, The Pilgrim contains music made up from the aspects of previous Lescalleet work that most moved his dad as outlined by a letter reproduced on the inside of the glossy gatefold sleeve and moves from Basinski-style minimalism through creepy, nocturnal, barely-sounding breaths and drones that sound like something from the early Nurse With Wound catalogue. On one side of the 12" picture disc is a recording of Jason at his father's side during the last moments of his life, a microphone in his pocket catching their last sad, awkward exchange of words, his father almost inaudibly weak. Have to admit that I found this side particularly difficult going, with his father's words sunk deep in a dream of hiss. Indeed, I can't think of another record that goes this far beyond any notion of entertainment in favour of the personal preservation of life-force and spirit and the process of working through melancholy memory.
Comments
Howlround - The Ghosts of Bush
This is fantastic. I really scared the hell out of myself with it last night. I went out to walk the dog, and for some reason all of the street lights in the neighborhood were out, and the moon was low on the horizon, so it was very dark. I had a little led flashlight, which was only making weird creepy lighting and odd shadows. There was some bizarre nightbird singing a noise that I've never heard before; I actually had to stop the tape to be sure it was in the outside world. And this was playing in the background. By the time the dog decided to stop in front of the old Tudor style house that's been empty and for sal for more than a year, I was feeling a bit freaked. In a good way.
NYOP for digital; £12 for white ("the color of ghosts") vinyl.
- Now they just need to launch a way to unsubschribe from all these emails.
To celebrate our upcoming 50th (hb50) release with Antonymes (hibernate-recs.co.uk/antonymes) we asked 5 hibernate artists to each compile an album made up of 10 of their favourite tracks from our back catalogue and were making all 50 tracks available as a free download. Please consider making a small donation or share on your social networks/blogs in return, it all helps. Thanks and enjoy!
NYOP for all 5
eta, looks and sounds great on iPhone
Hibernate/Home Normal at the Vortex 22/03/13
4-track EP. Artists: Black Elk, Moon Ate the Dark, Olan Mill, Tobias Hekllkvist.
NYOP.
New NYOP release from Ben Woods, who has a couple of other nice NYOP releases in the ambient piano category. Gentle, pensive.
Dennis Johnson - November
Kyle Gann writes about it.
Jürg Frey: Piano Music
- Could be interesting to follow . . . . .
122 tracks for GBP6, proceeds to cancer support. Various familiar names and a lot of new ones.
[text deleted]
Another bandcamp charity fundraiser, for the Hospice of the Good Shepherd in Chester www.hospiceofthegoodshepherd.com. Various artists, incl. Antonymes, offthesky, Olan Mill, Wil Bolton - in short all the gifted folk in the Hibernate scene.
Admirable Restraint
All proceeds go to Beyond Blue, working to reduce the impact of depression and anxiety in the Australian community.Exclusive tracks donated to the Admirable Restraint Christmas Special, broadcast on Fine Music 102.5, Sydney, Australia, on 19 December 2013.
credits
released 25 December 2013
Brian Olewnick's track review
I'm surprised this one hasn't been mentioned yet: a live album by the guitarist of Marillion, 50 pence with the discount code merryxmass. Proggy goodness, as one might expect.
[size=12Daniel Padden - ]Music Language Sept 2013[/size]
- "Live performance for Music Language Festival 2013, Garnethill Multicultural Centre, Glasgow.
Performed by Daniel Padden, Richard Merchant, Rory Haye, Alex South, Iban Perez, Howie Reeve and Ross McCrae."
Afro-Araboc Jazz; very weel done, especially from the rhythm section. NYOP
Matt Kilmer, who is on that Xalam Project, was also on "Lingua Franca," an excellent album with Peter Epstein and Brad Shepik...
A youtube vid of an album song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrDAZQ5TBdQ
Peter Slavov's name sounds familiar to me. I'd have to check my site and/or my notes to see what the reference would be. John Shannon, also, though not at as much as Slavov's name.
Enjoying this Xalam Project right now.
Cheers.
I'd have to check, but I'm pretty sure that duo recording "Old Shoulders" was one of me eMusic Jazz Picks. But I'm not certain that all of those recordings have hit eMusic.
I've seen both Daisy and Bishop perform down in Lexington, and enjoy the live performances. I've never taken too great a shine to the music from the Chicago Improv scene on recorded media though. It doesn't connect with me like it would when I'd go down the street and hear it at the Empty Bottle (back when I was living in Chicago).
I've got a bookmark on the bandcamp page. I think it's been there for awhile, along with all the other bookmarks I've listed, for all the column ideas I've had over the two years my site has been running. Just one of those things that hasn't quite happened yet.
- Also as "name your price" and highly recommended:
Daniel Maze: bass, guitar, keyboards, electronics.
Bryan white: drums, percussion.
Dave Zeal: trumpet, drums on Revenge of the cosmic debris.
Jerry Cromwell: bulbul tarang, tape effects.
- "Walltapper (Daniel Maze) born in 1980 is a Canadian producer of Vancouver known to approach composition by means of very different styles in a very personal way. We know of Daniel immediately because of his releases on numerous netlabels such as Test-tube, 12rec and of course EKO (Lifeguard ep ref. 013) and SKM (Skuba ref. 011). Emotional, experimental, deep and pop, the words fail us to define his whole discography, we can say however that Daniel has no particular limits and always pushes the boundaries of his compositions by concentrating on textures, energy and melody.
His new album Monaco (SEM 017) confirms this eclecticism delivering an album mixing trip-hop jazz, experimentations and very groovy drums-beats."
http://semlabel.com/walltapper/ - Emusic
Hammock-An introduction to Hammock NYOP
One of my favourite bands, if you have not heard them treat yourself to this.
Not new, but just enjoyed this when it came up on a playlist. Still NYOP.
Heirs - Alchera (NYOP, free for an email)
Heirs - Fowl (NYOP - Free)
Power-pop synth soul (or something) from Asheville, NYOP. Found this exploring my latest "Arlene and Larry Dunn and Bad Thoughts bought new music on Bandcamp" email!
This may have even been my choice for best album of 2013, along with the Wire and Sad Day for Puppets albums, plus the first half of We Will Live the Space Age by Jetman Jet Team.
Greg Davis, Arnold Dreyblatt, Maurizio Bianchi and Conrad Schnitzler.
In today:
Total Life - Burner (free download)
Jason Lescalleet - The Pilgrim
David Keenan writes: Tiny Mix Tapes on the reissue