The second vinyl release on Facture will be available from 25.05.12. Those on the mailing list will be able to grab one before the official release date. Full information over at the Facture web site.

For the first edition of the ‘Off-Key Sessions’ in Bristol the organisers took over a wonderful and eerie vaulted crypt located underneath Grade I listed St John The Baptist church built in the 13th century alongside the Bristol city walls. Upon entering the venue, the small audience of 70 or so people were greeted by Ryan Teague’s neo-classical DJ set which immediately set the tone for the evening, engulfing the venue with beautiful and ghostly resonances.

Before the actual performances began, Ian Hazeldine (Antonymes) projected his film Light Dispersed Through Clouds at the back end of the crypt, a film full of contrasts between light and shadow, both on screen and through the speakers. From dark bass rumbles, sheets of wind and gusts of static echoing ominous birds, eerie clouds, leaf-less trees and disembodied buildings in the first half of the film, to the glorious string harmonies slowly undulating as the sun finally emerged from the preceding darkness in the second section, Hazeldine’s audio-visual presentation was a pure sensual and emotional delight.

After a short interval, Christoph Berg gave the first performance of the evening in a beautifully restrained fashion, playing violin lines (looped and layered) that slowly developed into delicate flickering textures whose gentle push and pull movements resonated through the vaulted crypt. As subtle resonances where wafting over the audience and engulfing it into desolated and yet beautiful landscapes, one couldn’t help being transported to an elusive timeless place that irradiated glorious colours.

Olan Mill quartet stepped up next after a short break and navigated a fine line between abstraction and more tangible feelings. As clear piano lines were often going through well defined chord progressions, guitar motifs were nicely abused through a complex array of pedals to carve out the low end of the spectrum and allow the violin to often take centre-stage and give the performance a delicate and subtle sense of narrative.

Daniel Thomas Freeman played quite a disparate set in comparison but tied it up together perfectly by addressing the audience directly to give some background information about each composition. From the very first track, a beautiful ritualistic gong droning piece, to the very last where he invited his wife on stage to provide achingly beautiful vocals, Freeman’s performance was underpinned by a wonderful sense of fragility and honesty.

Last performance of the evening by Richard Knox and Frederic D. Oberland, joined on stage by Angela Chan and Lidwine, was nothing less than extraordinary. The four musicians played a long set drawing on material from The Rustle of the Stars in a more haunted and visceral way, compared to the album. In Drawing Lines to the End of the World for instance or in The Wreck of Hope, Oberland’s guitar lines were more abrasive and emotive, giving the tracks an even more devastating outcome. One of the highlights of the set was perhaps harpist Lidwine, who sang beautifully and gave the performance some serious haunted resonances. From guitar to Rhodes piano, from violin to glockenspiel, from harp to pump organ, all musicians regularly changed instruments in a very organic and spontaneous way. And the special acoustics of the place heavily recalled the sense of space of the album itself which was recorded in St Margaret of Antioch church in Leeds, thus giving the music a wonderful depth of field.

As the day-light filtering through the arched windows slowly receded over the course of the evening, the music of Ryan Teague, Ian Hazeldine, Christoph Berg, Daniel Thomas Freeman, Olan Mill and Rustle of the Stars imbued the audience with a humbling sense of wonder, and while the whole of the crypt was finally vibrating in one eternal and beautiful resonance, the place inhabited by 800 years of sacred music suddenly found a new breath of life – something the organisers should be proud of.

- Pascal Savy

We will be launching the first in a series of gigs to be held in the 14th century crypt of St John The Baptist, Bristol….

Sunday April 15th: 6pm – 10pm / St John The Baptist Crypt, Broad Street, Bristol, BS1 2EZ

It has been a long standing dream for myself and Jess to put something like this together and we are both really excited to see it finally happen!

We have been on the look out for a unique venue for sometime now and hope you will agree that what we have discovered is truly beautiful: A gorgeous crypt built into the city walls that was used in the 14th-century as a place for travellers to offer prayers before a journey.

All tickets purchased for the event will include a limited edition letter pressed CD and digital download containing unreleased material from the artists playing on the night and a film from Antonymes. Tea and cake will also be served throughout the night free of charge. Releases from the artists will also be available to buy on the night at a discounted rate.

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Musically speaking the artist lineup speaks for itself and the term ‘Modern Classics’ seemed the most fitting title for the first Off-Key session…

The Lineup:

Rustle Of The Stars

Richard Knox lives and works in Leeds, UK and is one half of the ambient/modern classical duo Glissando, part of A-Sun Amissa, Of Thread & Mist and an occasional live member of Sleepingdog (with Chantal Acda of True Bypass and Adam Wiltzie of Stars of the Lid) amongst other musical projects. He also runs Gizeh Records – an independent record label releasing music by the likes of Conquering Animal Sound, Sleepingdog, Glissando, FareWell Poetry, Fieldhead and Trespassers William.

Frederic D. Oberland lives in Paris, France. Multi-instrumentalist and founding member of the experimental film / poetry / music related project FareWell Poetry, he also composes original soundtracks for cinema (Augustin Gimel, Blacklight, Jayne Amara Ross, Hugo Verlinde, Ken Brown, Mark Tribe, Boris Lehman) and has collaborated with musicians like Gaspar Claus, Beérangère Maximin, Colin Johnco, Arborea, etc.

www.therustleofthestars.com

Daniel Thomas Freeman

Daniel Thomas Freeman is a founding and current member of Rameses III, the South London group who in the last ten years have released ambient / drone / folk albums on labels such as Type, Important, Digitalis and Under The Spire and who have supported such genre luminaries live as Richard Skelton, Stars Of The Lid, Current 93, Murcof, Fursaxa, James Blackshaw, Yellow Swans and Astral Social Club.

His debut album “The Beauty Of Doubting Yourself” was released on Home Normal in June 2011.

www.descendingangel.com

Olan Mill

Olan Mill recalls the ambition of an orchestra with the limitations of just a few members, utilising a sequence of effect processes their acoustic instruments become an undefined blend of voice, strings and deep bass all composed in a classical trajectory of melancholy and euphoria. In 2010 they released their debut album ‘Pine’ on Serein and the follow up ‘Paths’ is due this April on Facture.

www.biglongnow.co.uk

Christoph Berg

Christoph Berg is a composer and sound artist currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. His debut album ‘Paraphrases’ is a collection of chamber music compositions that will see the light of day this summer through a 2 x vinyl release on Facture.

www.christophberg.tumblr.com

Antonymes (Film Project)

Antonymes music emerges from the adjustments and erasures where music expresses nothing but itself, from the relationship between continuity and repetition rather than of contract and interplay, from secrecy, from quietness, from pause, from thought, from emptiness, from time, from far off, from itself, from where it is set and where it is setting off to.

www.antonymes.co.uk

Ryan Teague (DJ Set)

Based in Bristol (UK), Ryan Teague is a composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist working in the field of electro-acoustic minimalism. His music combines contemporary arrangements and instrumentation with electronics and processing. He also produces music and sound design for film and TV.

www.ryanteague.com

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IMPORTANT:

Due to the nature of the venue we are only allowed to hold 60 people so tickets/CD’s are extremely limited!

Please bring along a printed copy of your Paypal transaction for proof of ticket admittance.

Tickets available from the Fluid Audio store:

www.fluidaudio.bigcartel.com/product/off-key-sessions-modern-classics

If you can’t use Paypal for some reason then there are other options that can be worked out by contacting us on the email/phone number below.

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Road directions:

Tower Lane, bottom of Broad Street at intersection with Nelson Street.

Public transport information:

Close to most city centre bus routes. Bus and coach terminus 0.25 mile. Nearest railway station: Bristol Temple Meads (1 mile).

OS Reference No:

ST 587 732

View map

www.//bit.ly/yV1F3G

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For more information:

Email: fluidaudio@me.com
Telephone: 07817 609883

Facbook: www.facebook.com/events/257213744361891/

SOLD OUT: Digital available here

Felicia Atkinson presents twenty five minutes of snowy drones inspired by Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem…

Hooves drummed,
Seeming to say,
Clip,
Clop,
Crop,
Crap.

Drink with wind,
Shod in ice,
the street slipped.
The horse
Collapsed
On its cropper,
Crowds of gapers
Gathered, crowds
Of trousers coming to a crotch
on Kuznetsky Street.
Gathered in a seam,
Laughter tittered and spluttered.
“A horse down,
A horse has slipped,”
Snickered the whole Kuznetsky.
I alone
Failed to add my voice to its howl.
I went up
And saw
The horse’s great eyes…
The street upturned
And floating,
The way he saw it…

I went up and saw
Tear after large tear
Dripping down his muzzle
And onto his coat…
And a moaning
And animal-like grief
Burst out in a flood,
And, rustling, spread.
“Horse, don’t you cry.
Horse, listen.
What do you think! Are you worse than them?
My child, we are all
To some extent horses.
All of us have in us
Some of the horse.”
The horse may have been old
And needed no nursing,
What said might have seemed trite
But nevertheless
It lurched
To its feet,
Whinned and
Moved off again.
It went back to its stable,
Stood content in its stall.
Ans it thought it was
A young colt again,
That it is worthwhile living
And it wasn’t bad working

Vladimir Mayakovsky

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

Lost Again On Waking – A Project in Music & Photography by Glacis and Heidi Kuisma…

Glacis is Edinburgh based musician Euan McMeeken.

Heidi Kuisma is a photographer from Finland now living in Glasgow, Scotland.

Lost Again On Waking. 4 sets of photographs taken by Heidi Kuisma sometime in 2009. 4 different locations. 4 very different sets of images. Documents of time and place. Interpreted by Euan as 4 pieces of ambient piano music to sit alongside the images. The sets/compositions are titled in both English and Finnish:

1. the forgotten time – unohdettu aika
2. maybe you will find me – ehkä löydät minut
3. we walk long distances through silent sleep – me kävelemme pitkiä matkoja hiljaisen unen läpi
4. you can still be beautiful – voit olla vielä kaunis

The tracks were written by Euan McMeeken. They were performed by Euan McMeeken and James Scott (Conquering Animal Sound/The Japanese War Effort). They were mixed by James Scott and they were mastered by Fraser McGowan (Small Town Boredom/Caught In The Wake Forever). A bonus track, the Fieldhead edit of “we walk long distances through silent sleep” will be available on the cd.

Limited to only 50 copies, the package comes with letter pressed covers in two different stitched fabric pouches (randomly assigned when shipped) along with a postcard in hand stamped envelopes, sixteen page photo booklet, bonus vinyl disk containing a one hour mix of delicate soundscapes all packaged with loving care into manilla stamped/numbered envelopes.

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Having started playing piano, guitar and bass at a young age, Euan spent much of his late teens and most of his 20’s fronting Edinburgh band, The Kays Lavelle. He began writing ambient piano pieces in 2010 and upon the split of The Kays has focused his attention on these simple piano pieces.

‘Lost Again on Waking’ captures the simplistic beauty of the piano and merges it with atmospheric soundscapes and textures to create wistful memories of moments captured, never to be lost. Memories of time and place. Accompanying the wonderful photos of Heidi Kuisma, ‘Lost Again on Waking’ is a dreamlike journey exploring, through music, the images that we too often fail to share and the emotions that these moments generate. ‘Lost Again on Waking’ should firmly launch Glacis into the spotlight as one to watch in the future.

Release date is 27.07.11.

As usual those on the mailing list will have the opportunity of grabbing a copy early.

Uriarra 
Road is the new album from Charles Sage’s (one half of Hessien) y0t0 project. Available now for pre-order through our sub-label Facture…

A Russian novel of Australian rural decay; 14 tracks of densely layered processed guitar, crowd melody, rain noise, electronic manipulation and birdsong.

Inspired by the film ‘In The Winter Dark’, Uriarra Road charts the decline of an outback town chasing survival as industry money crawls back to the city limits; left in its place is a confused and aging collective memory, drunk on nostalgia and the feral rantings of a right wing press.
Cabin fever, writ large.

Helping y0t0 map the town in question are Downliners Sekt, Jasper TX, Ghosting Season, Field Rotation, Spheruleus, Relmic Statute and Seaworthy, all of whom navigate the intersections and resentful front rooms of Uriarra Road with skeletal reinterpretations of the main street.

y0t0 is the solo project of Charles Sage of Hessien; assisting in construction are guitarist Ben Carter and vocalist/partner Jane Sage. Previous EPs No Myths and Baraku have been reconstructions of dialogue from documentaries No Maps For These Territories and Goddo Supiido Yuu! Burakku Emparaa, but Urriara Road sees a full album’s exploration of the hope found in abandonment, using a broad palette of field recordings, guitar noise, sparse electronica, minimal beats and bottom end drone. Mastered by Taylor Deupree, and to be released digitally only on Fluid Audio’s sub-label Facture late July, Uriarra Road will be made available on preorder for an introductory price the week prior to general release. The digital package contains a short film by Antonymes to accompany one track, along with a PDF artwork booklet and individual artwork embedded for each track.

Head over to the Facture web site for full info and purchase options

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