North Wales; Spokane, Washington; Perth, Western Australia; 20 December 2011. Hidden Shoal Recordings presents ‘The Colour Of Long Days’, a companion track to the recently released ‘We Don’t Look Back For Very Long’ EP by neo- classical/minimal ambient artist Antonymes.

As with the songs on his new EP ‘We Don’t Look Back For Very Long’, ‘The Colour Of Long Days’ is Antonymes’ reworking of music by fellow Hidden Shoal artist Slow Dancing Society. This time ‘The Red Summer Sun’ from Priest Lake Circa ’88 is transformed, the original’s shimmering waves of guitar forming a background against which plaintive piano chords resonate beautifully. Antonymes marries SDS’s glistening atmospheres to his own trademark ambient neo-classical minimalism, creating a completely mesmerising hybrid.

Antonymes is designer, photographer, conceptualist and musician Ian M. Hazeldine. Debut mini-album Beauty Becomes The Enemy of the Future was released initially on David Newlyn’s Cathedral Transmissions label in December 2009, and 31: Before The Light Fails, was released as a digital download and as a special box in 2010. Various pieces by Antonymes have appeared on compilations produced by labels Soundcolours, Dezordr, Cathedral Transmissions and Audio Gourmet. Album The Licence To Interpet Dreams was released by Hidden Shoal to widespread critical acclaim in early 2011.

Slow Dancing Society is Washington-based musician/ producer and nostalgist extraordinaire, Drew Sullivan, who has released four celebrated ambient albums on Hidden Shoal since the label began in 2006. His first three albums – The Sound Of Lights When Dim, The Slow and Steady Winter and Priest Lake Circa ’88 – comprise a peerless trilogy, with his latest album Under The Sodium Lights released in 2010.

‘The Colour Of Long Days’ is available for free download from the Hidden Shoal Store. Its companion EP, We Don’t Look Back For Very Long, is also available in digital format, its limited edition CD run selling out soon after its release. – Hidden Shoal

Also make sure to check out the new digital edition of “31: Before The Light Fails” by Antonymes. In addition to part one, part two is now available for the first time and comes with a full colour PDF booklet and a 4.0 surround sound mix. As with the original release, you get the original short film too. All for just £4.50!

www.music.hiddenshoal.com
www.agora.hiddenshoal.com
www.antonymes.co.uk
www.music.hiddenshoal.com/ artists/slow-dancing-society/

The release of Iron marks the sixth anniversary of Yann Novak relaunching Dragon’s Eye Recordings, the record label originally created by his father Paul Novak in 1989. In previous years, this anniversary compilation has been a chance to look forward to the coming year of artists and releases. With Iron, we will be looking backward at the previous 6 years.

For Iron, artists featured on Dragon’s Eye were asked to contribute either a solo piece or a collaboration with another Dragon’s Eye artist. The results came together as a massive free download compilation, consisting of 24 artists, on 20 tracks and over 2 1/2 hours of sound. The compilation came together as a perfect mix of the styles and voices featured on Dragon’s Eye over the last 6 years. – Yann

1. Luigi Turra – Aura
2. Robert Crouch – A Broken Field I
3. Jamie Drouin – Trümmerfrau (improvisation 1)
4. Yann Novak – A Broken Field II
5. Pierre Gerard – Borderline Elements
6. Ælab – Moving Alignment
7. Moize – A Broken Field III
8. i8u – Apophis
9. Will Long – Transporting Away From Tomorrow
10. Lucia H Chung – A Broken Field IV
11. Mem1 – Embla
12. Stephen Vitiello + Simon Whetham – Prayers Return
13. Steve Peters – Solar Ring (Chamber Music 7)
14. Will Long + Corey Fuller + Tomoyoshi Date – Walk
15. Robert Crouch + Marc Manning – Charismatic Manifestation
16. Sublamp – Possible Steps
17. Ian Hawgood (feat. Warren Forrest Kroll + Sara Martin) – Grace Lines
18. Clinker + Blake Carrington – Dust Flights, Mirror Softly and Moan
19. Mise_en_Scene – Midrone
20. Shinkei – An Empirical Demonstration Of The Alchymical Properties Of Metals

Download

www.dragonseyerecordings.com

It’s been quite some time since the last digital edition. In fact I think the last one was way back in June! Yes I know we have been slacking. Anyway we thought it was high time that a new edition was put together and hope you will agree this one is rather special!

‘Highlights 2011′ covers, well you’ve guessed it… highlights from the past year on Fluid Radio. 2011 has been a fantastic year musically speaking and this new digital edition only scratches the surface with regards to what has been covered on Fluid this past 12 months.

The new edition can either be viewed above or via a download zip file for your iPad and other ‘on the go’ devices. Also included in the download file is a gorgeous mix from the artist Hummingbird that brings with it six unreleased tracks from 2011. Not bad eh!

That just leaves me to thank everyone that has been involved and supported Fluid Radio over the past year: Artists, record labels, writers, photographers and most importantly our readers. Without all of you guys we would not do what we do and your constant encouragement and support is something that we deeply appreciate.

So from myself and Jess that just leaves us to wish you a wonderful Christmas and New Year x

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If you appreciate what we do then a small contribution will go a long way to keeping Fluid Radio productive.

Sequence2 is finally upon us and what a compilation it is! Michael over at Future Sequence has worked tirelessly on getting this project put together and the outcome is simply epic. Hosting a stella line up of artists that Fluid Radio followers will instantly recognise, Sequence2 delivers breathtaking soundscapes that include forty three tracks and gorgeous imagery. The fact that the whole thing is available for free in various file formats demonstrates even further just how much you need to go check this release. A truly magnificent project! – Recommended.

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Sequence2 continues the sequence series curated by Futuresequence – aiming to showcase the breadth and depth of experimental music around the world right now. With a clear focus on supporting independent artists and labels the compilations hopefully provide a platform for emerging as well as established artists.

After the success of Sequence1, whether to continue the series wasn’t a hard decision to make. More than anything I really enjoyed the whole process of putting the compilation together; gathering and choosing tracks, getting to know the artists better, creating the artwork, promoting the release – the whole thing.

As a statement of intent then, the series will continue with a compilation release every few months, showcasing the best of experimental, electronica, ambient, drone, noise (etc) has to offer.

Thanks to all the artists involved, and to you for listening. Please help support the artists by sharing Sequence2. – Michael Waring (Future Sequence)

www.futuresequence.com/sequence2/
www.futuresequence.com

It’s been a while since we last mentioned any news from Audio Gourmet. The label have recently featured four new digital releases from Widesky, Wbaum, Savaran and Themuru that are well worth investigating…

Widesky – Celestial Bodies

Widesky is New Mexico, US based experimental artist Seth Chrisman. His only release before this was an acclaimed EP on Rural Colours earlier this year called ‘Floating In Being’.

His work is typically created through extended techniques using field recordings, radio static, found sound and instrument sources. These are then processed with software to create his eventual compositions.

The two pieces that form ‘Celestial Bodies’ were recorded in 2010. They are both improvisations with guitar and laptop, recorded in one take without overdubs. ‘Sungrazing’ features a nylon string guitar adorned with a contact microphone whilst ‘Radiosonde’ is an electric guitar improvisation. Seth began experimenting with more complex DSP chains for these pieces, and in forming the title for the EP, he vaguely recalls having ‘celestial bodies’ on the mind when lost in improvisation, hence the names of tracks and the EP.

Wbaum- Spaces

Wbaum is the solo project of musician and producer Claus Poulsen who works with laptop, turntables, guitars, field recordings and other sound sources. His output from this can sit anywhere within the blurred boundaries of electronica, ambient, noise and pop.

Having played in many bands, most notably 8 years of noise improvisations with Alarm112, he decided to make music on his own under the Wbaum moniker(pronounced “wunderbaum”).
So far it is just the CD/LP ‘The Wonderful World Of…’, released on Elektrolyt in January 2010 that comprises his discography. He now adds to it via Audio Gourmet, with this short set of guitar experiments called ‘Spaces’.

His journey as an artist is very much an on-going process and he prefers to experiment with sound and texture in an improvised fashion, with a loose goal of gradually honing his craft over the months and years that lie ahead. Claus is constantly pushing himself in different areas and experimenting with ideas in search of something new, unexpcted or accidental.

After immersing yourself in these six short but atmospheric movements, it might strike you that Claus’s sound is remarkably refined for someone who has only had one other solo release under his belt. It’s perhaps largely attributed to the ten releases he has racked up alongside Henrik Bagner as Small Things On Sundays…(see AGN016). The duo have been going since 2008 and their sound is sculptured from dark and cavernous ambient drones and noise textures.

Aside from music, Claus is keen on photography and intends to produce cover artwork under the name Artwerk. This is mostly for his own releases, although he would consider working with other artists on this as a sideproject if any interest were to arise.

Savaran – Observations

Savaran is Mark Walters from Wales in the UK. He is an electronic musician, sound designer and sound artist working in the ambient, electronic, electro-acoustic and experimental genres from his small home studio on the Welsh border near Shrewsbury. Mark also works as a full-time archaeologist. His music is inspired by the random daily events that life throws at you, landscapes, environment, atmosphere, astronomy, geology, past cultures, or just the indefinable need to make music. His constantly evolving musical output has been released on a number of labels over the last year including Hofa Media, Wasamix, Gradient Audio, Ember Music, FeedbackLoop and Somehow Recordings.

The Audio Gourmet EP Observations includes four tracks recorded between April and July 2011 which tend to explore a far more acoustic and organic sound than previous releases. Opening track The Jewelled Sea blends coastal field recordings made on holiday in Scotland with gentle ripples of processed and sequenced synthesizer sounds that provide a background swell for the minutiae of hydrophone derived flotsam and jetsam.

Inside Out was inspired by a rainy Sunday morning in Islington, London observing umbrella clad passers-by from a cosy hostelry and soaking up the sights and sounds of the street scene.

Lost in Conversation is a live improvised piece played over the complex crosstalk of multiple conversations in a busy restaurant.

1860 Redux revisits a phonautogram of the oldest song recording made by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville in April 1860. The song Au Clair de la Lune was sung by an unknown performer and the original lasts just 10 seconds. The faint warbling voice on the original is lost in a fog of hiss and distortion which makes it quite a difficult listen. I stretched and processed the sound with reverbs to create a gentle wash that fades in and out of this ambient track as a small homage and remix of the original achievement.

Themuru – Themuru

The EP is finally ready for release today and it is a seamless blend of dark territories with rare glimpses of light amongst a deluge of blackness. Now that summer is drawing to a close, it is perfect for the colder months that lie ahead. The EP titles are in a language that seems as unfamiliar as the bleak fifteen minutes that they represent. It seems that little is known about themuru and after attempting to conduct some research, I am at a complete loss. The stance of remaining inconspicuous has often been adopted by artists, particularly in the ambient field. It has been suggested by some that this is due to sheer laziness.

This is certainly not the case with themuru…

The ambiguously titled ‘….’ EP is so intricately put together and so cleverly done, that it stands as a real testament to the quality of this artist’s work. Coupled with a stunning set of bonus images (one for each track, included as a PDF in the download folder), it’s clear that Themuru takes great pride in his work and allows it to be his sole representative, rather than a collection of words and clear conceptual ideas.

‘….’ is saying ‘take this EP, allow it the time and space to sink in. Apply to it your own concepts and thoughts.’

It must be pointed out that whilst the fifteen minute EP has been split into separate tracks to suit our release guidelines, it is best enjoyed with gapless playback. themuru has composed the whole EP as a seamless blend of the four pieces and it works best when listened to in this fashion.

www.music.audiogourmet.co.uk

Sequence One is a superb compilation coming from the excellent Future Sequence web site. The album is a celebration of FS being one year old, and boy what a celebration it is. With forty two tracks featured on the release, it really is a mind melt of a compilation with many Fluid favs featured within the track list. Please do make sure to download the album and also go check the FS web site as it is a great resource for experimental music and a wonderful addition to the community…

Words from FS editor Michael Waring:

31st August 2011 marks a year since Futuresequence’s launch, I knew I wanted to do something to celebrate this but wasn’t quite sure what. Asking our Twitter, Facebook and Google+ followers for suggestions, one idea was to put together a compilation of tracks contributed by various artists. After a quick think, I decided to do it and SEQUENCE1 got underway. That was just over three weeks ago

The response I recieved from artists was genuinely overwhelming, I’ve been bowled over by the number of people wanting to be involved – artists who we have interviewed, reviewed, had mixes from or had been in contact with in other ways. There is a mixture of exclusive tracks, edits of existing tracks, some from forthcoming releases and from past releases. In all instances I couldn’t be happier the tracks, and the lineup we have.

My intention with SEQUENCE1 is to celebrate not only the 1st year of the site, but the breadth and quality of the electronic and experimental music ‘scene’. There is such a strong sense of community within this field, and it’s great to feel part of it. I’m very excited about SEQUENCE1, this is why we do what we do isn’t it? Because this music excites us.

www.futuresequence.com
www.futuresequence.com/sequence1/

The source instruments may be built of strings instead of keys, but synthesis is still the best description. There is electric guitar, bass guitar, even a Vietnamese drone instrument called the Dan Bau, but the sounds are boosted, compressed, filtered, pulsed, or otherwise deranged using a myriad of effects, both brick-and-mortar and virtual. Such a description may seem an excessively prolix way of otherwise concluding “ambient,” but there is a certain ethic to the composing that transcends the category. The heights here cause nosebleeds, and the depths, nitrogen narcosis. The spaces, agoraphobia. As ambient releases go, this one is remarkably tangible. And from a relatively unknown talent.

Voder is the alias of Brighton-based Paul Nadin, and Motes is its fourth album (Nadin takes the project name from a mostly-forgotten Bell Telephone Laboratories creation: the human speech synthesizer that Bell introduced at the 1939 World’s Fair). When asked for a glimpse into his composing method, Nadin replied with this example: “One of the instruments I built especially for Motes was a Random Grain Sampler unit that uses random number generators to control various parameters which seems to produce some nice results. Creating instruments that function using elements of randomness was a bit of an obsession when writing Motes. Giving an instrument a little free will takes the linearity out of a sound giving it much more depth, I think.” It’s an inspiring concept: the self-determining synthesizer.

Those familiar with Nadin’s work will know of Fields, a 2010 album largely written around the gorgeous two-part, nine-minute title track. “Fields 1,” but especially “Fields 2″ are somehow massive and embracing at the same time: a shower of celestial heat. Motes perpetuates the scale and the analog warmth of its predecessor, but offers much more diverse terrain. In the liner notes, Nadin describes the new album as “audio sketches based on my nostalgic experiences of people and places close to me.” The description rings true: individual cuts have much more distinct personalities this time around.

Opening track “Approach” is the largest, and likely the most familiar for those listeners already acquainted with Fields. Here is a perfectly blank canvas that the paint gradually reclaims: slowly filling with a dark and static undercoat, a surrounding, higher-register oscillation, and faraway, distorted guitar notes that need several measures to resolve. The tension is unwieldy, and added volume seems the only relief. The ten-minute exploration “Siena” briefly plays as a cinematic piece, with an abstract pastel base and vaguely percolating melody, until the track settles into an extended (Dan Bau?) drone segment, peppered with fragile harmonics and slowly fading to quiet.

This isn’t all prettiness-for-its-own-sake, either. The six-minute “Knot” is almost Gordian in variety, featuring abstract, boiling water-processing and a white noise coat. The two sounds face off until the four-minute mark, where the abrupt cessation renders the noise conspicuous in absence. Nadin returns to this gurgling-and-static pairing with “Cine Dust,” where the distorted lead guitar — complete with tremolo bar and sustain pedal — actually sounds briefly like a distorted lead guitar.

The strongest piece is “Momentary Blink,” which Nadin describes as the “odd track out,” given that its creation comes “from a field recording of a particular location.” You’ll be hard-pressed to pinpoint the sample. Instead, the track fades in almost immediately to a probing reverse-guitar riff, layers of aurora, and distinct waves of synthesizer (again, “synthesis” might be the better word, strictly speaking). The work is slow, full-bodied, and vaguely troubling: the opposite of the song implied by the title.

Distance Recordings is offering Motes as a free download. At times the netlabel movement tenders their lesser-known artists with a sort of wink-nudge je ne sais quois, but try to resist any negative connotations attached to the term “free.” Instead, think of Motes as priceless.

- Fred Nolan for Fluid Radio

www.distancerecordings.com
www.voder.co.uk

Apologies for no posts over the last 24 hours. Sometimes when the sun makes an appearance it’s time to just kick back and chill… Anyway here’s some interesting info on recent releases from the Audio Gourmet label that are well worth investigating…

Kirill Platonkin – Trails

Although Audio Gourmet is based in the relatively small isles of the United Kingdom, we like to think of ourselves as part of an international community. Our catalog has seen us release work from artists from all continents bar Africa so far! Yet it must be pointed out that with the rise of the internet, the geography of a record label is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

So onto our latest 15 minute EP from afar, we welcome Kirill Platonkin to the fold. Kirill is from a town called Blagoveshchensk in far Eastern Russia. It lies at the point of confluence of two rivers, Amur and Zeva. Kirill was born in 1986 and began writing music in 2002, centering his early work around psychedelic rock. With Pink Floyd a huge influence since before he can remember, Kirill progressed onto playing in a thrash metal group for a while before eventually moving on to experiment with sound by himself.

Through a couple of early pseudonyms such as Platon and GhostSonic and some releases under his belt, Kirill Platonkin became of age. He chose to drop his attempts at finding a name for his works and decided upon using his birthname for future output.
This has led to releases on labels such as Dark Winter, Treetrunk, Circlesandlines and his own Tukuringra netlabel.

Kirill’s sound falls loosely into the dark ambient category and is made up from field recordings and sounds he captures from his instrument collection which includes guitar, flutes and ethnic instruments.
Collecting instruments is very much an accompanying hobby for this artist and he is always searching for new objects to impact his music

For Audio Gourmet, Kirill has put together ‘Trails’, a three track EP of dense and brooding ambient music. Dark ambient music is a saturated sub-genre in which only a select band of artists are able to come up with something challenging and well put together. Kirill Platonkin is one of these artists, as you will soon hear for yourelf…

Lauki – 69º54´S-135º12´E

Next up on Audio Gourmet, we present an EP of five tracks by Spanish artist Lauki. He was born in Pamplona and lives in Barcelona where he currently works as freelance sound technician and composer.

Mikel Lauki has several other projects, including f.ex and Lupus where he blends ambient music and IDM. At the end of 2008 the netlabel 49manekinow published his album “Obertura”, a piece of sound experiments trapped within IDM, glitch and concrete music boundaries.
He is also part of the collective Sci-Phi, where he explores through different audiovisual pieces, the connection between image, sound and the sensibility of the time we live.

He has a particular weakness for contemporary classic music, generative art and the aesthetics of the digital error.
With the juxtaposition of classical music set to fractured digital manipulation, 69º54´S-135º12´E is characterised by crystalline nets of microsound, glitch and computer sounds that break upon contact with the delicately analog melancholy of rubbed strings.

The contrast of these two ingredients is stark, like ice melting in the hot summer sun. The ice is fragile and vulnerable, inevitably melting away quickly in the intensity of the heat. For this EP, the five short tracks reference this beautifully as the modern classical melodies are quickly melted into droplets by the electronic glitches, evaporating in just fifteen minutes.

Jacob Newman – Against A Quantized Sky

With ‘Against A Quantized Sky’, Colorado based artist Jacob Newman joins the Audio Gourmet Netlabel catalog. He has been in touch with the label back when it was first set up and has been slowly working on somthing for us ever since.

He began experimenting with sound back in 2004. Previous work includes releases on Earth Mantra, Seedsound and Data Obscura.

Jacob’s music particularly draws influence from the balance of analog versus digital and this latest EP is no exception. It is produced mostly using piano and bass, with digital and analog synthesizers used minimally.
It was the artist’s intention that the eventual sounds heard within this EP continue along a similar line of his previous work – to be contemplative, relaxing and to inspire slow thinking.
Against A Quantized Sky has been specifically designed to fit the Audio Gourmet brief of just fifteen minutes of sound and it is to offer the listener a short window in which to slow down and regenerate.

Thematically, the EP title came about after Jacob had taken the cover photograph and uploaded it to the internet. His friend Marcos made the comment ‘Against A Quantized Sky’ and Jacob felt it was fitting as the title for his latest EP. The rest is left for us as a listener to disect and to search for any hidden meaning within this delicate and meditative collection of sounds…

www.music.audiogourmet.co.uk

A 16mm film by Guillaume Mazloum during the soundcheck of ‘Un Diable sur le Tympan’ released through Facture…

www.fac-ture.co.uk

With a straight up ‘a and b’ side EP, Audio Gourmet welcome Quinn Walker and Danny Clay to the netlabel…

Their long distance collaborative effort through file-sharing and sample swapping has yielded these fifteen minutes of sound, constructed from various acoustic instrument treatments, drone textures and field recordings.

Quinn is based in Daegu, South Korea and Danny is based in Ohio, US. Despite the far-flung locations in which these artists reside, their results sound remarkably coherent and restrained. Its parts mutate and evolve, gathering momentum slowly throughout these two tracks.

‘Of The Days And Shapes’ is a patiently building piece comprised of discernable instrument and chime sources that have been shaped into a kaleidoscopic soundscape.

‘Wavering Lines Rise And Fall’ closes the EP in a beautiful manner, with the building of organic drone sounds that rise and fall gracefully.

A glance at their past discography and you’ll see that both artists have released 3″ cd-rs through the Heat Death imprint. Aside from this, they are relatively new to the scene with two releases each. Danny has had both of his released through Heat Death whilst Quinn’s other EP ‘The Weight Of Care’ was put out on the Rural Colours label earlier this year.

Their respective tallys now sit at three EPs each, with ‘Track A/Track B’ also serving as a highlight in the Audio Gourmet netlabel catalog…enjoy! – Audio Gourmet

www.music.audiogourmet.co.uk