Very excited to announce that our first ever vinyl release is ready and waiting to be released through Facture on 25.12.11. A lot of love and care has gone into this project and a big thanks goes out to Ian Hazeldine for design support and John McCaffrey for his continued patience and sublime musical compositions. As usual those on the mailing list will have the opportunity of pre-ordering the album over the next day or so. For full release info head over to the Facture web site.

Reviews so far:

The music is graceful, the mood dream-like, and the tempos slow and ponderous—a combination conducive to meditation, reflection, and mental drift that proves potent, no matter the precise nature of one’s religious orientation. – Textura

Returning to the Scissors and Sellotape alias he used for a Cotton Goods release in 2009, we find him at his most layered, fragile state, arranging gossamer piano motifs over crumbling bass sounds and spacious field recordings, all with a meticulously nimble feel for texture and atmosphere. – Boomkat

For the Tired and Ill at Ease comes wrapped in the grand reverb of St Mary’s Church in Thornbury – the intimacy arrives as an embrace from all sides, with an emotional immediacy of soft notes and pedal clunks neatly juxtaposed with a sense of time blurred and distorted by the washes of echo. – ATTN Magazine

Falling between the modern minimal tinkly likes of Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds and the more composed ambient/drone types like Stars Of The Lid or A Winged Victory For The Sullen. – Norman Records

This album simply discovered me. All of its little quirks (the glitching on here is tastefully done) simply work towards making an emotional, dramatic statement. “For the Tired and Ill at Ease” is an instantly enjoyable, emotional, and oftentimes physical album. – Beach Sloth

A beautiful, haunting album of elegant minimal piano melodies. – Morpheus Music

Fitting fine inbetween recent projects of people like Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Clem Leek. – Ambient Blog

Music that has it’s own fluorescence which is not visible to the human eye, but always favorable for ours souls. – Blear Moon

The listener could easily lay their own emotional interpretation over these gentle soundscapes – extremely fitting and complementary to the album’s backstory. – Binge Cringe Winge

This ambient composition weaves a delicate work of subtle melodies, voices, whispers evocative of nostalgia and beauty. – Loop

Jointly curated by Daniel Crossley (Fluid Radio/Fluid Audio/Facture) and Jonathan Lees (Hibernate/Rural Colours) Kanshin is a two CD compilation album that presents a collection of sound design work from some of the scene’s finest artists from across the globe. It has been put together to raise money for the current recovery in Japan following March’s earthquake.

As the sensationalist media broadcasters find other things to talk about in the news, a huge recovery operation is still on-going as we speak. Many people have lost everything. So we decided to put together Kanshin so that via Ian Hawgood, 100% of profit from compilation sales will go directly towards the Japan recovery and on-going relief efforts. Ian lives in Japan and his wife is currently working with both the Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support organisation (JEARS) in Sendai and surrounding areas, as well as the Direct Help for Victims and Animals Rejected from Shelters in Japan group who are going up to areas which are not receiving government support for food, water, basic supplies, as well as rebuilding and cleaning up. By this means they are able to transport food, clothing and aid directly almost every other weekend and during holidays to areas which are not getting enough or any support. Ian’s wife has also arranged a house as a base in Sendai for volunteers and a temporary home for found animals who are then moved on through JEARS either to foster homes or animal centres. We felt that any funds we can send this way would probably have more of an immediate impact than donating via one of the larger UK charities.

Ian himself has contributed to the compilation in a collaboration with Peter Jørgensen and through 3 hours and some 30 tracks, the line up that comprises this album is surely as exciting as it gets…

This release is made possible by the generosity of all of the artists involved, Ian Hazeldine (Cover art), Wil Bolton (Mastering) and Damian Valles (Digital distribution).

More details Kanshin.co.uk

Tracklist:

1. Clem Leek: Light Passage II (Grief)
2. Hummingbird: Dancing Shadows
3. Relmic Statute: Lopery
4. Scissors and Sellotape: Heal
5. P Jørgensen & Ian Hawgood: Isles
6. Wil Bolton: Lost In Transit
7. Field Rotation: A Pondering Silence
8. Caught In The Wake Forever: LiaFail (At Dawn)
9. Damian Valles: Clime
10. Library Tapes: May (Variation)
11. Yellow6: Repeat
12. Maps & Diagrams with Yvat: Again
13. Felicia Atkinson: Chaleur Vacante
14. Hessien: Flightless And Nocturnal
15. Yann Novak: 3 Surfaces Excerpt
16. Offthesky With Ten And Tracer: Therapy Refuge
17. Orla Wren With Katie English: Swallowtail Yellow
18. The Moving Dawn Orchestra: We’re Here
19. Spheruleus: Residue
20. The Silence Set: So Will Everything We Love
21. Aaron Martin & Machinefabriek: Utsutsu
22. Szymon Kaliski: And Longing
23. Jeremy Bible & Jason Henry: Grainslip
24. Bengalfuel: Gorgon
25. David Newlyn: Landscape (III)
26. Tom White: Bright Rooms
27. Listening Mirror: The Cause Of It All
28. Talvihorros – Perigee
29. Alex Durlak: Bellows
30. Antonymes: Kiotsuketene
31. Kyle Bobby Dunn: Britannia Into Morning

Pre Order: Ships June 10th

Fluid Audio Store
Hibernate Recordings Store
Stashed Goods Store

Digital through Bandcamp

You guys have been asking about it so here it is at last: Field Rotation’s ‘Acoustic Tales’ is now available in your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire. Also includes a film made exclusively for the release by Ian Hazeldine (Antonymes), PDF photo booklet, poetry by Estela Lamat and screen saver images.

The new sub-label Facture is now up and running. The first release on the label from Hummingbird (Remixes) has sold out but is available in digital format.

www.fac-ture.co.uk

We received some seriously good news this weekend when an email came through from the lovely chaps over at Resident Advisor announcing that Fluid Audio has been featured as ‘Label Of The Month’ for March! Good news indeed I hope you will agree…

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There’s an old saying by someone somewhere. Something about ambient/experimental music being beyond words. Now, judge not lest ye be judged, but I think that’s hooey. I think it’s more just a numbers game. There’s less of an audience for such delicate, gossamer music, and thus fewer writers talking about it in print and/or pixel. The law of averages simply dictates that “beyond words” is more a case of “Lester Bangs doesn’t have time for this crap.”

There are reliable outposts, however. As the internet simultaneously grows larger and more hermetic by the day, enclaves have sprouted up devoted to nearly any niche you’d care to explore. Over the past two years, Fluid Radio has been my standby for discovering new music in the ambient/experimental/new classical sphere, a website that mixes album and gig reviews with interviews, mixes and films about artists that I already knew and cared for, and plenty that I didn’t know before Fluid brought them to my attention. This stuff may be beyond words, but Fluid doesn’t seem to notice.

The website has about eight people writing for them nowadays, but the whole thing is headed up by Dan Crossley, a former Londoner who now lives in the countryside just outside of Bristol. Growing up, Crossley was brought into music via his father, a sound engineer that was constantly bringing home white label vinyl. And while he claims that, to this day, he doesn’t know what most of that stuff was, he got the bug—leading him to become a buyer of the stuff, most notably of what became an enviable early Detroit electro collection.

Informed by the transformative power of hearing unknown music, Crossley soon got involved in a pirate radio station “transmitting from the tower blocks of Bow, E3.” They focused exclusively on the experimental side of drum & bass, a far cry from what Crossley covers these days. But the idea behind each was the same: Use any means that you have to promote the music that you love. That’s why, in 2009, Crossley began Fluid Audio—a label manifestation of the types of music that FR was already covering.

The imprint began in the same haphazard way as most do in the electronic music world. So much great material was being sent their way that hadn’t found a home on a label. But the thing that sets Fluid Audio apart is that the goal wasn’t to simply set something up to start pumping things out. Instead, Crossley and his label partner, Jess, take care to make each release extremely special. Everything is ultra-limited—often 200 copies—and personalized.

“Every time we are in the middle of creating a new release I always vow it will be the last time as it kind of drains you mentally. You will often find myself and Jess around the table stitching, glueing, folding, etc. way into the early hours of the morning,” relates Crossley. “I remember when we did the Hummingbird release [Our Fearful Symmetry], I came across this old store on the harbour of Bristol and in the back room there was an Aladdin’s cave of old photographic collections. After nearly two hours of looking through the dusty boxes, I came across some intriguing old Polaroid slides still in the original glass cases. Without a moment’s hesitation I bought the lot. I remember one of our followers sending a message after we paired them with the release, saying ‘The idea of looking back in time some 60 years while listening to this album is borderline mystical.’ For me that is what it is all about. The audio and visual connecting in a special way, giving the listener something that will hopefully be treasured for a long time to come.”

Much of the music on the label thus far has centered around the nakedly emotional side of the ambient spectrum. You rarely hear an abstract drone without some light soon shining through the darkness. Fluid’s first release, after all, was a compilation entitled Hope. It set the table for the sorrowful, yet uplifting work of Guy Andrews’ The Moving Dawn Orchestra, a project begun specifically for his release on the label. “About halfway through the process of creating Hope, Dan e-mailed me with a concept for an EP based on the four seasons,” writes Andrews via e-mail. “He wanted something that didn’t use any drums and each tune had to be around eight minutes long. Dan knew exactly what he wanted—but gave me complete creative control.” As for the artwork, “I always trusted Dan’s artistic judgment, to the point where I said ‘just let me know when you’ve decided on something.’ He went away for about a month or so and just sorted it all. He had literally organised everything, from the handsewn CD case to the individual photo albums, badges and stickers included in each release. I hadn’t seen any of this until a box arrived on my doorstep with the promo copies—when I opened them up my jaw literally hit the floor!”

It’s no different to the many labels that have something of a family vibe to them, but each artist on Fluid Audio—to a man—brings up the extensive talking they’ve done with Crossley, late night chats that no doubt ensure the symbiotic relationship between music and art that the imprint has been able to achieve in its first few releases. As Hessien—the collaborative project between Charles Sage and Tim Diagram—recalls, “There were some challenges [with our release, but when they] were presented there was no sense of crisis from Fluid Audio. The default reaction of most labels would be to fall back to a more conventional design to save time and money, but there was never any discussion of that at all. The process was always about making it look as good as we could. It was well paced too. There were periods of blazing activity, and then we’d take a break for a while. There was no stress, or rush. In fact, that was probably the abiding recollection of the process—there was an overriding sense of purpose.”

Purpose is the key to the appeal of Fluid Audio. Everything is done with an aesthetic aim, from the hazy website to Crossley’s no repress stance to the immaculately weathered artwork. It looks and it feels personal, a sentiment that flies in the face of an increasingly twitter-friendly world. Handcrafted works of art are a rarity.

As a result, the accolades for Fluid have come streaming in. Even from Fluid Radio itself. It’s a careful balancing act, mirroring the same struggle that a website like Resident Advisor faces, for instance, when we put on a party somewhere in the world. “We try our best to keep Fluid Audio as detached from the radio station as possible. What I mean by that is we do not overpromote the label on the Fluid Radio web site. For sure we mention a new release and sometimes have artists from the label involved in mixes, but on the whole we like the label to stay low key,” writes Crossley.

But for many the two are inseparable entities. And that’s fine. “What makes Fluid Audio so special, I think, is that it’s such a supportive environment, the site, the label and the station. A lot of music press and labels are cliquey and exclusive but the way both Fluid Audio and Fluid Radio operates is to try to do the best by everyone,” explains Sage and Diagram. “All releases are approached with open ears; there are obvious favorites, but new artists are given equal thrift as well…. There are plenty of places that cover experimental music, but not as enthusiastically. There seems to be an inherent appreciation of its unique nature by anyone that’s familiar with it.”

This month’s label showcase was put together by Fluid Audio head Dan Crossley. It features a selection of pieces from the label, as well as forthcoming material from its new sublabel Facture. Per his request, no tracklist has been given, allowing you to simply focus on the music at hand.

- Words: Todd L. Burns

Download the mix here

www.residentadvisor.net

The new sub label ‘Facture’ will be launching in the next few weeks and it is with great enthusiasm and excitement that the highly anticipated remixes of ‘Our Fearful Symmetry’ bu Hummingbird is ready to roll…

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

Donald Rumsfeld’s, quixotic ‘Intelligence’ brouhaha, almost sounds like an astute assessment of previous commentators attempts to confirm anything about anonymous zeitgeist, and potential enigma of the modern classical style, Hummingbird.

The original version of this lo-fi, electro-acoustic master class, saw the haunted Hummingbird display a disposition to hover imperceptibly, over waves of wise and wistful ambient harmonic nectar. Now, with a cryptic reference to the real bird’s ability to fly backwards, Hummingbird returns to the source material and delivers a dark and discordant re-interpretation.

The remixes album offers a dense and dexterous synthesis of re-sampled parts of the original recording, along with; new harmonic distortions, textured layers of edifying live instrumentation, obscure field recordings, drifts of static interference plus an extensive palette of inventive and long forgotten audio grains, murmurs and resonances.

The first two tracks form a first ‘movement’ that suggests a traumatic experience; a shipwreck, a death, or the failure of current thinking.

Opening track, Uncertainty in Copenhagen (Nowhere to Turn Mix) starts with a deliberate decelerating effect of ambiguous field noise. A compressed and crowded atmosphere builds as a distant low-end drone begins to throb with terror, echoing in a sinister and malevolent manner. An additional heavier drone now oscillates nervously, a dark foreboding feeling of doom descends, post apocalyptic landscapes take shape as swathes of oppressive breathing suffocate and confuse the listener. A register of reflective cellos and violins weaves in and out of this emotional vacuum adding to the sense of destruction and chaos. An atonal and violent style is used as a means of evoking heightened emotions and states of mind.

Seeds of Deception (This Life Mix) opens rapidly with a stretched contortion of organic percussion. Banks of intense static and processed frequencies create audio fog as they mingle with intense dronish reverberations. Live strings add to a strong feeling of suspicion and a sense of warning, as a preoccupied piano makes prescient comments.

The next five tracks chart a second ‘movement’ that evokes pain, memories, introspection, and a period of isolation.

The Little Green Box (Landscape Mix) melds melancholic strings and distorted synths to which recurring echoes and themes of piano and cello are added. The anger has passed leaving a growing sense of emptiness and detachment.

Sketch of Mythology (Interval at the Station Mix) sees a repetition of poignant piano notes over ever increasing distortion, as a complex rebound of drone shimmers in and out. Hidden conversations are revealed, intensity grows as serious questions are asked in order to establish a way of coping.

Eemina (Unpopular Culture Mix) blends the acoustic footprint of a children’s playground with glimpses of water, mutated instruments, and choirs. A low pitched rumble fuses with rattles, chimes and crackles. A sense of intense soul-searching is created.

Florian (Not in My Back Yard Mix) presents dense undercurrents of echoes, chimes and atmospheric emotion drivers. A steady drone warbles as layers of distortion and interference vie for position. An edgy sense of recovery gains momentum, but a warning to learn the lessons of the past is prominent.

Thoughts in the Head (Cassiopea Mix) employs dense layers of textural effects and decay. A sober, yet warm and comforting, drone signals an agreed sense of new understanding may be possible. The worst is over; forgiveness enters a heart, a progression will bring its own reward.

The last four tracks form a third and final ‘movement’. A sense of renewal, rebirth or spiritual growth is delivered in spades.

Starfish Seastar (The Water Table Mix) continues with the intense and voluminous style techniques heard thus far, but a new sense of nurture and nature enters the fray. An indication of Primordial life itself beginning in the oceans becomes a metaphor for self development.

Defining Space (Colour Space Mix) develops a demonstrative drone as dreamy new sounds are introduced as the flickering of a new era. A fresh and confident logic is starting to plot a new cosmic course as swathes of synth and instrumentation uplift the soul.

Garden of Secrets (Groups, Rings, Fields Mix) offers children’s voices, rich organics and warm soft synths to build an expansive and comforting sound of a human mind opening up to new dreams, desires and possibilities. Embracing echoes are used to remind us of the pain that has been endured. Emotive piano and sympathetic strings add to a feeling of new found compassion and personal growth.

The Making of a Revolution (Bounded Sequence Mix) welcomes us with a sedate reawakening of field noises. Cellos and violins offer camaraderie as a purposeful and proud drone indicates a new resolve and strength of character. A sense of confidence and resolution are apparent. An almost Nietzschean ‘will to power’ urges us to dare to live our lives once again. The cycle is complete and the chains that once made us prisoners of the past now disintegrate and fall as oxidised dust at our feet.

Hummingbird uses hard won self-knowledge to produce emotive musical majesty. This album is a sonic tour de force that documents an acute understanding of the modern European living experience, and also the story of a painful journey of self-discovery and reinvention. Beware though, this is no straight line music; it is neither obvious nor systematic. Tight associations, expressions of horror, spontaneous responses to injustices, these are the new histrionic flowers that lure Hummingbird to linger.

An essential release for fans of the genre.

- Review by Dean Rocker

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Release Date: March 14th

Anyone on this mailing list will have the opportunity to pre-order in the next week or so

Label: Facture
Mastering: Ian Hawgood
Film: David Bart
Photography: Aëla Labbé

www.fac-ture.co.uk

After a long old delay due to issues that have been outside of our control it gives me great pleasure to finally announce the release date for Field Rotation’s ‘Acoustic Tales’. The album will go on sale from the Fluid Audio store on Monday 31st January. Anyone that is on the mailing list will be able to pre-order a copy before the actual release date….

The kind folks over at textura have Acoutic Tales down as ‘Album Of The Month’…

Welcome to the magnificent sound-world of Christoph Berg’s Field Rotation whose Acoustic Tales presents eleven evocations of panoramic character and moods all held together by the discerning artistry of their creator. Created over a two-year period, Acoustic Tales represents an attempt on Berg’s part to meld the literary traits of Kafka and Hemingway into auditory form, and certainly the enigmatic and brooding qualities of Kafka’s writing are evident in the album’s tracks. It would be easy, for example, to imagine many of the tracks (the second and fourth tales for starters) acting as parts of a soundtrack to some cinematic treatment of The Castle, as ill-advised as such a film project would be.

The compositions and arrangements on this exquisite album are marvelous. Not a sound is out of place and a perfect balance is struck in terms of precisely how many sounds are in play at a given moment. While producers operating in the electro-acoustic ambient field are as a general rule meticulous, Field Rotation embodies this quality in the most satisfying manner, as a clinical degree of circumspection is brought to bear upon every sound choice. Anyone desirous of a reference point might imagine some ideal fusion of Max Richter and Rachel’s as a start.

The first tale, a brooding organ-heavy setting, provides a promising gateway to the album but more glorious tracks follow. The second immediately raises the bar higher when the mournful melody of a solo violin appears against a sparse backdrop of strings, lapping percussion, and clanking accents. Berg develops the piece beautifully by following the initial episode with a variation on it now supplemented by a heavy percussion element and an all-around richer palette. Even more resplendent is the fourth tale, which finds Danny Norbury’s cello emoting against a crackle-soaked blend of shuddering strings and hand bell accents, with all of it topped by sparkling celeste melodies and harp plucks. What it amounts to is seven remarkable minutes of compositional and arranging artistry that stands head and shoulders above the electro-acoustic ambient norm.

Acoustic Tales aligns itself to the electronic-classical genre with the emphasis on composition, sound design, and arrangement above all else. That classical dimension is rendered overt in tracks such as the funereal seventh and stately, waltz-like tenth where harp plucks share space with elegiac strings. An occasional field recording seeps into a given tale, and a light coating of haze blankets much of the album too. While it might seem churlish to be critical in light of the high calibre of music-making, the album’s near-seventy-minute running time means that more is featured than necessary and the album loses a bit of cohesiveness as a result; Berg might have been wiser to have included the best eight of the eleven pieces on the album, and kept the remaining three for another time and place. It should be noted that Fluid Audio’s presentation is a match for the musical content, as the release (available in 200 copies only) comes in a letterpressed package that includes a twenty-page booklet featuring photography by Antonymes and poetry from Estela Lamat. – textura

www.textura.org

Unfortunately the covers went awol which has meant a slight delay. Looking at a Jan 2011 release date. For now here are some rather lovely reviews that have recently come in…

Out of faint drone rumblings, an organ slowly ascends. The night is awash with a hospitable solemnity that the listener must traverse alone. “Acoustic Tales”, by Field Rotation, provides the soundtrack to stormy nights, unsettling at first, but compelling the listener to embark on an introspective excursion.

Darkness weighs heavily on the listener at first; the fog created in “Acoustic Tale 1” is waylaid with timely silence and makes for the perfect point of departure for an album filled with reflective movements, somber stringed nocturnes, and poignant moments at every turn that shake the listener to his/her core. Throughout the eleven tales, there are subtle strokes that examine small, finite particulars; a certain motif is explored, allowed to ferment, before burrowing itself back into the fold. On “Acoustic Tale 4” featuring Danny Norbury, the shadows diminish; the once-barren landscape now flourishes to reveal rigorous colors, lively shapes that fall into focus, and persistent patterns that provoke unremitting gratification. Each respective tale delves into evocation; memories that were once scattered fragments, conjoin, and overwhelm the listener. Electronic manipulations add even more nuance to the strings that often churn and then recede, and while this is expertly crafted on each individual tale, “Acoustic Tale 5” manages to do so with a remarkable lucidity. In some circles, I imagine this record will draw unfair comparisons to Anne Muller & Nils Frahm’s “7fingers” from earlier this year, with its marriage of modern classical elements and electronic manipulation, but the electronic elements of this album are simply one facet to each work, as each particular morsel of sound works to carve out a nook for the sake of the whole.

“Acoustic Tale 6” creates such a brooding tension that when the strings finally arrive it’s like a moist salve, providing, at certain intervals, a nice respite. As the album progresses, it gets even more magnificent; “Acoustic Tale 9” picks up the listener from the foreboding gloom and places them in a resplendent environment, complete with uplifting swells of violin and punctuated by electronic pulses.

On the penultimate tale, Field Rotation’s menacing string arrangement sputters through a sinister opening before blossoming into an enchanting segue, connecting the lurking darkness with glimmering rays of light. The hair-raising chanting on the closer, “Acoustic Tale 11”, is an appropriate ending to one of the most haunting albums of the year. Avoiding complete desolation, Field Rotation creates music to intersperse between the rays of light that penetrate the darkness; a balance is struck in the gloaming.

It would be an understatement to say this record falls in with some of the best releases of the year, as it demands to be at the forefront of a handful of triumphs. Sadly, many will not get to hear the brilliance of the album due to its delayed release and limited (200 copies) availability. When it is finally unveiled to the world, the album, with a magnificent mastering job from Nils Frahm, includes a 20-page booklet with stunning photographic artwork by Antonymes. The artwork and music is also presented in conjunction with themed poetry from Estela Lamat, continuing her association with the label.

- Review by Michael Vitrano for Fluid Radio

Join the mailing list for a 24 hour pre order coming soon for those on the list

More reviews:

textura
Adrian Carter
Alex Gibson
Morpheus
Was Ist Das
Future Sequence
The Muse In Music

www.fluidaudio.co.uk
www.acoustictales.tumblr.com

The good folk over at Headphone Commute recently managed to track down the ellusive Hummingbird to discuss the story behind ‘Our Fearful Symmetry’…

Talk a little about your decision of remaining anonymous.