After a short break, Further returns with long overdue notice of CDs from The Advisory Circle, Urthona and Fluorescent Grey that have come my way recently. Another roundup of audio and printed materials should follow soon.
The Advisory Circle – Other Channels
Ghost Box
It’s 1974. You’re drifting through the Phoenix Nebula in search of the lost patrol, or what’s left of them. Lights blink and flutter on the command console as you scour the heat signature monitors for signs of life. Mellifluous tones, produced back home using the latest synthesiser technology, warble through the onboard quadraphonic sound system. It’s a lonely existence, but it has its rewards. Suddenly you hear something – an unfamiliar sound, like wooden percussion. Then, voices… A man is discussing civil defence… there are women, their voices phasing in and out of meaning… strange rhythms… cheering and flames… Unfamiliar call signs fizz in and out focus on your video receiver. A hideous cowled face… a sinister, beautiful young woman bares all before an appalled cleric. They had warned you about this at the academy – stray transmissions from another culture… another Earth.
It’s hard not to get swept up in revery while listening to this latest offering from the Ghost Box label. The Advisory Circle’s rich brew of analogue library melodies and half-remembered film and television dialogue bubbles with humour, eeriness and nostalgia for a past that seems so familiar, yet never really existed. At least, not like this. The CD comes illustrated in visionary-banal style by Julian House, with suitably cautionary liner notes from Ken Hollings.
Urthona – I Refute it Thus
Head Heritage
In case you’re getting too cosy in front of the ghost box, here comes Urthona, all heather, moss and grimpen mire, to drag you out onto the moor and clobber you with screeching guitars and some seriously heathen attitude. Unashamedly raw and processed only to the point of reaching out to turn up the volume dial, this is the sound of one man, his Les Paul guitars and enough fuzz to warm a naked ox during a wet night on Bald Mountain.
Urthona lurks deep within Neil Mortimer, editor of Third Stone and Time and Mind, author of two fine tomes on the original modern antiquarian, William Stukeley, and now moor-dwelling guitar hero. So it’s no surprise to find that there’s much more than just hairy-handed amp-bashing at work on these three, lengthy tracks. Urthona Cannot be Destroyed emerges like Dub Syndicate playing the Dr Who theme (which of course they did) in a skirmish with My Bloody Valentine; then The Bright Burst of Morning and Sun and Moon so Heavy take MBV out onto Dartmoor, load them with Kendall Mint Cake and introduce them to Neil Young, who’s been left to stew overnight on Hound Tor. After some serious guitar waving, the Mint Cake is cracked open, a granite amphitheatre is located and our heroes carve out great crackling larva floes that light up the horizon for miles.
Urthona now available via Strange Attractor Shoppe
Flourescent Grey – Gaseous Opal Orbs
Record Label Records
These days my electronic music tastes generally swing between the 1920s and the mid-1970s, but I’ve always got an ear out for Something Else. On paper Flourescent Grey’s new album promises to open up just such fresh sonic vistas – sounds materialising out of stretched sine waves, digitally modelled synthesis and reverse-engineered video game consoles. But to my cloth ears these potentially intriguing sound sources have been undervalued, chopped and squeezed into all-too-familiar electronic musical tropes – jittery-glitch rhythms and skittery clicks whirs and spurts – that have littered the electronic landscape for over a decade. It’s clear that much thought and late night monitor burn has gone into assembling this disc, and there are some sublime moments to be found buried within the 11 minutes of Are you Aware of the Pink Light Emanating from your Naval? (sic), and the nine-minute Teleological Attractor, but not enough to keep this listener’s attention for its full hour’s duration.
I’m always very happy to receive goodies, and will always endeavour to give them a mention here. But be warned, it can take a while…
Urthona and The Advisory Circle featured in my Kosmische playlist, broadcast 14 March 2008 on Resonance FM.