Edition Fieber

Shrigley Forced To Speak With Others – "The Tree" by Edition Fieber
Shrigley Forced To Speak With Others – "Bong Your Dong Against The Gong" by Edition Fieber

Here's a little project I helped create. I'd almost forgotten about it but a small box of 7" singles arrived on my doorstep this morning and when I opened it I got a little excited. Probably more so than I should of. I did the audio warble and some other bloke scrawled the artwork and wrote the lyrics. I rather like them. Dinky little things. Maybe, it's because the covers look so rubbish, maybe it's the pink vinyl, I really don't know. There's more information about the project here. Oh and the price tag, absolutely mental.

Yaraandoo

Here's a recording entirely worthy of your attention. Originally released in 1974 as a minuscule private pressing of less than a 100 vinyl copies, Yaraandoo, is surely one of the lesser known and oddest conceptual records in existence. It's a difficult recording to define, an oddly unique meeting point between Kosmiche outsider jam, restrained free jazz improv, romantic impressionism, pastoral jazz and taut progressive moves. Inspired by the Aboriginal dreamtime myth of Yaraandoo, the record is a masterpiece of deeply, sparse and evocative musicality which deftly captures the stark, sun drenched Dreamtime isolation of the Australian outback. Recorded over a few months by multi instrumentalist Rob Thomsett and friends on a two track home studio in Canberra, Yaraandoo evokes a wide range of stylistic and compositional tones, moods and colours. At times, the sound is reminiscent of the deep jazz groove of Ian Carr's progressive outfit Nucleus but this reference point soon collapses into unexpected forms such as childlike folk strum complete with shimmering bells, glockenspiel and auto harp, melancholic minor key orchestration, wibbly avant electronic oscillations and slow motion hypnotic jazz. Originally, packaged using hand glued stationary card and illustrated with startlingly contemporaneous spray painted graphics, the record has a strange outsider aura which would make even the most ardent record collector salivate.  Few private records live up to the hyperbole, but Yaraandoo is undoubtedly a unique and strange listening experience which thankfully has been lifted from private press obscurity by the ever wonderful Australian based label Roundtable. Seek out this record, take off your clothes, lift your arms up to feel the setting sun and let this undefinable musical solar flare wash over you.

Photography Into Sculpture

Los Angeles based gallery, Cherry & Martin, restage Peter Bunnellʼs landmark 1970 exhibition, Photography Into Sculpture. Perhaps worth a visit if you're in the vicinity?

Way Of The Morris

More good news! My favourite purveyor of esoteric soundtrack recordings, Jonny Trunk, has started a new label called OST with the sole aim of releasing some of the more interesting proponents of contemporary film music out there. The first release on this new label is Adrian Corker's original soundtrack for Tim Plester's award winning documentary about the much ridiculed tradition of Morris dancing entitled “Way Of The Morris”. The film is a charming meditation on the curious role of folk traditions with contemporaneous culture and despite this rather oblique subject matter, the soundtrack is a wondrous mix of restrained electronics and ancient instrumentation and very much worthy of your attention. Utilizing field recordings from rural England, the music documents a strange and wonderful meeting place, where the sound of bells and whistles, voice and tradition, sticks and rushes blur and decay into a radiophonic otherworldliness. It is a weird mix indeed as shimmering glacial electronics elide into eccentric Moondog rhythmic patterns, joyous Bacchanalian reverie eerily echoes then dissolves into playful folk melody to suddenly side step into deeply meditative and cavernous melancholic disquiet creating an intoxicating amalgam of rural sounds. Compositionally, the soundtrack is both rich and emotive in tenor and style and wonderfully captures many of the contradictions of the preserving village green tradition within an industrial society. An utterly charming, idiosyncratic and very worthwhile release.

The "Way Of The Morris" soundtrack is released on OST on November 21st.

Playthings

It's taken me a while to discover the wonderful blog entitled 50 Watts. Here's a few gems from the collection. The images are taken from a book from 1928 entitled "Children's Toys of Bygone Days: A History of Playthings of All Peoples from Prehistoric Times to the XIXth Century" by Karl Gober. Wonderful stuff.

Bulandra I Diabeł

The Kramford Look

Here's a little oddball record that I like. Odd, because I've spent a large part of my adult life looking for records like it. It's the kind of record that makes the endless hours spent rummaging through consumer dietrus at rain soaked carboots, church fairs and the occasional local dump worthwhile. If your bag is sinister Giallo schlock, dusty wibbly electronic library themes or kinky cinematic arrangement you'll want to dig a little deeper to find this gem. The descriptive cues on the back of the record such as "Apprehensive theme with childlike overtones, glockenspiel" give little indication of the sonic wonders contained within its grooves and if I pulled this out from a box of scratched Mantovani records at the local booter I'd be well chuffed. You can find yours here.

Sound Sculptures