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NEWS: please note that the b-side of the brother raven lps is stamped, not the a-side.
we are now utilizing soundcloud to post previews of digitalis (not digitalis ltd, however) releases that you can blast anytime, in their entirety on your computer. we won't be putting the entire back catalog online this way, but going forward we'll be doing this for all our releases (radio people, ossining & svarte greiner are currently availble for listening, just goto their individual release pages)
NEWS: please note that the b-side of the brother raven lps is stamped, not the a-side.
we are now utilizing soundcloud to post previews of digitalis (not digitalis ltd, however) releases that you can blast anytime, in their entirety on your computer. we won't be putting the entire back catalog online this way, but going forward we'll be doing this for all our releases (radio people, ossining & svarte greiner are currently availble for listening, just goto their individual release pages)
check out dial square
!!new tapes available!!
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co-released with sweat lodge guru
When it comes to contemporary experimental and drone music, one of the first names on the team sheet should always be Australia's own Lawrence English. When he's not busy running one of the best and most innovative labels around, Room40, or playing in the modular synth duo Holy Family, he's cranking out incredible solo works for the likes of Touch Music and 12k. This, his first full-length available on vinyl, was originally released on the latter and finds new life inside these black analog grooves.
"A Colour for Autumn" is the second in a series of albums from English that explore the changing seasons and his innate ability to transform such esoteric imagery into sound is immediately on display. "Droplet" opens the record and immediately grabs you and cradles you beneath undercast skies. Dean Roberts' lends voice to the track, giving it an otherworldly feeling but also a degree of warmth against the underlying sea of tones. But it's on "Watching it Unfold" where the album really takes flight. English's simple guitar patterns reek of nostalgic debris. As the piece coalesces and the leaves change from green to gold, everything gets washed over by brassy drones. The horns return, but more muddled, on "Galaxies of Dust" and add another element of cacaphony to an already dizzying track. It's in passages like there were English's incredible compositional talent shines.
Fennesz lends his electronic expertise to "The Surface of Everything." Whenever I hear this, I always think of crisp October nights, the smell of chimney smoke perfuming the air while you wax nostalgic about summers past. English provides the spine with his methodical crystal-toned guitar exercises but it's the added crackle and texture from Fennesz that makes this the stand-out song on the album.
There's so much depth and subtlty to "A Colour for Autumn" that it would be easy to gloss over on first listen. On repeated trips, however, the whole picture reveals itself. This is an approachable album full of all the emotion and understated beauty that I associate with the fall. English covers the spectrum expertly. And then, as the glassy remnants of "...And Clouds for Company" begin to shift and fade away, you can smell the snow coming and winter is almost here.
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The last two years have been an impressive journey for Frank Baugh, the brains behind Sparkling Wide Pressure. He's released a multitudes of CDRs and cassettes on some of the best labels around (Stunned, Housecraft, etc) and spent time building up his own label focusing on the 3" CDR, Kimberly Dawn. So it feels like a natural progression for Baugh to finally bring his toys to this ball of wax, and trust me folks - this is his A-game times infinity. Bittersweet nostalgia has never sounded so fucking good.
One thing that always gets me about Sparkling Wide Pressure is Baugh's ability to collage a seemingly endless amount of styles into a seamless, cohesive whole. His music blurs together like watching a landscape pass by on a moving train. His work is visionary and instantly recognizable. A million different pieces slowly come together and eventually form shapes. Broken-down keyboards washed in hiss flutter around like decaying tape loops on "Clear Pathway," driving themselves straight into a wall of ramshackle guitars and minimalist beats. It's a lazy river of slowed-down drones and junkyard guitar, weaving together into something that is awkwardly beautiful.
"Jeremy Moves" is the real prize, though. Synth notes act as an anchor against the faint industrial rhythms and meandering crackle. Everything feels incredibly fragile as if each string Baugh is pulling could snap at any instant. The beats keep building and building into a cacaphonous flurry while vocals pierce through the murk, leaving a mark of hopefulness on everything beneath. It's a mini-masterpiece; Sparkling Wide Pressure's finest moment.
It all goes a bit wonky on the flip-side. Drunken campfire serenades with dying batteries and broken flutes. "Summoning" is disjointed on the surface yet expertly stitched together below. What really sets Baugh apart is his ability to tug at your heart-strings in the most subtle of ways. You don't even realize he's taking you back in time to a place you remember fondly, but by the time the journey is through, your emotions are exhausted and you're ready for another trip. In the culmination on "Completely Inside," the ghosts from your past are given a voice and the freedom to rise to the top, singing on crumbling wings. There's always been beauty in decay, but Sparkling Wide Pressure has his own brand to sling.
Edition of 150 copies with fold-out silkscreened covers designed by Jeremy Braden.
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Radio People is the latest project from Ohio-stalwart, Sam Goldberg. After a handful of solo releases under his own name on Weird Forest, 905 Tapes and the Emeralds-run Wagon & Gneiss Things labels, he debuted Radio People on an ultra-limited self-titled cassette on his own Pizza Night imprint. At that point, there was no way back and the only move was to push forward with this new cosmic beast. Two more short-run tapes followed and it was clear that this new chemically imbalanced synthesizer project wasn't just a quick hit one-off. Radio People is here to stay.
On this, his debut vinyl effort, Goldberg has compiled the best elements of those three, long-gone cassettes. This Dubplates & Mastering cut slab of wax is the strongest statement Goldberg has made, proving his talent lies far beyond ambient soundscapes and well into the world of pop-infused synthesizer chaos and kraut-inspired composition. Major hooks sit alongside dense planetary drones. Goldberg pairs rivers of polysynth tracery with deep shards of droning organs, minimal live percussion and a whole host of drum machine backbone. This really is the best of both worlds. Melodies suck you in, beats get your head bobbing and then you're sucked down a complex tonal wormhole of introspective loops and ambient synthscapes.
Pop song frameworks nestle themselves neatly beside somber soundscapes, sometimes jumping back and forth in the same track. Barely-there vocals foil the stasis, leaving the listener guessing and wondering if there's a ghost in the mix. Radio People's embracing of simple kraut rhythms to underscore the catchy, kosmische wanderings give this music an accessibility not present in much of Goldberg's previous work. It crosses boundaries and comes back and shows still untapped wells of talent and ideas in Goldberg's bag of tricks.
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In 2010, the ride never seems to stop so if you want to get off you've just got to jump head first. Brother Raven, the Seattle-based duo of Jason Anderson (Spare Death Icon, Gift Tapes, etc) and Jamie Potter (ex-Bonus, Million Mists, etc) are taking synthesizer-based music into new and unexpected realms. Anderson and Potter are total time travelers, searching out old, forgotten methods and sounds and taking them into a square-wave future. "VSS-30" is rooted in its namesake's primitive synthesis but is forward-thinking enough to take the listener on a tripped-out cosmic space walk.
"VSS-30" picks up where the duo's previous release on Digitalis (2009's cassette, "Nellie") left off. It's a continuation of those ritualistic astral projects but with more polish and unexpected surprises. The opening piece, "Space," acts as a segue into this new, expanded universe. Washed-out drones greet you at the gates, advancing methodically until noisy blasts and sonar-infused rhythms bring the facade crashing down. Once the first beat drops, though, "VSS-30" has arrived. Disco flirtation and blooped-out nowhere hooks rise between the waves. It's almost pop music, but not quite and falls apart just as fast as it arrives.
As with all their music, Brother Raven's sound is 100% improvised and always recorded to tape. That added warmth keeps their space-age intonations from getting distant or cold. The flip-side of the record dials things in and shows just how much focus and restraint the duo possess. More blitzed beats push things along at a reliable pace, underscored by repetitive tones leading into candy-striped, totally sweet synthesizer loops. "VSS-30" seems, on the surface, to be all over the map but it's absolutely cohesive and flows like a perfect pink stream.
There's no doubt that there's been dozens upon dozens of new synth-based bands and artists coming out of the woodwork over the last couple of years, but Brother Raven have shown over and over that they've got a head above most. "VSS-30" is an impressive, fully-realized piece of work that cements their place on the astral plane.
Vinyl only edition of 300 copies housed in silkscreened jackets.
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Josh Hanson is another of Portland, Oregon's underappreciated sons. Having come up through the ranks of long-time, long-forgotten faves Hochenkeit, he also spent time as a member of The Davis Redford Trio. But Hanson's path diverges into a totally different sphere nowadays, spinning solo modular synth exploits to the stars. Influenced not just by the likes of Subotnick and Cluster but also various types of Eastern sounds, Hanson is looking forward, trying to find new pathways in electronic music. Using a homebuilt synth, Hanson is like a magician that keeps you looking one direction while he's cooking up something special from out of left-field. "Boolean Blues" is psychedelic and mathematical all once
Starting with the pulsing and surprisingly catchy "Shut Your Fucking Krout," you are instantly sucked in as a listener. The revolving synth melodies are in your face, never trying to hide behind a veil of reverb of fuzz. "Catshit and Sandalwood" works as two separate tracks, conjoined at birth and held together through piercing synthetic bleeps. Again, there's a softness and melody here that hook you straight off, but the heavy doses of electronic mayhem that go along with it are what keep things uneasy. It's like a warning bell going off so often you have no idea if there's hell on the way. That feeling comes to a head on the centerpiece, "Swat Valley Driver." This is where the psychedelia really kicks in. After a methodic exercise in control backed by a minimal, analog beat, you are greeted with heavy Indian influences. No, of course there's no sitars or tanpuras, but Hanson twists his synth into spitting out racing analog ragas. It's fucking exquisite, all the while backed by black bass lines. "Peace in Sumeria" continues the theme but moves a little bit West, getting lost in translation all the way.
What is perhaps most amazing about "Boolean Blues" is that even though at its heart it's a synth album, wholly electronic, it feels like so much more. It's full of warm tones and rich visions. It's a trip in every sense of the word.
digitalis digital downloads are now available via the following excellent retailers:
2010 breaks on through...
upcoming vinyl:
sparkling wide pressure "field & string"
lawrence english "a colour for autumn" (co-released w/ sweat lodge guru)
concern "truth & distance" (lp version of the CD with expanded versions of each track & new art)
+ later drips from carousell (richard skelton), gärden sound (eternal tapestry + barn owl), blue sabbath black fiji, mandlebrot & skyy', niggas with guitars, + more
next cd releases:
steven r. smith "antimony/kohl"
pefkin "the all alone stone"
anla courtis "b-rain folklore"
digitalis ltd
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digitalis
po box 700810
tulsa, ok 74170 usa
brad@digitalisindustries.com