Paul Bradley - Consumed

Touching Extremes
Always a delight receiving reports by Mr. Bradley, who over the years has been doing everything in his authority to contrast my pessimistic views about the growing ineptitude of the mass of droning amateurs affecting the world. The core of the matter is that we're not dealing with a dabbler but a serious composer, his choice of tinges and configurations - as shapeless as the latter may be - reflected into some of the most spellbinding electronic works of the last decade. At this particular juncture, we have two versions of the same idea: "Consumed" is in fact a double disc (DVDr/CDr), so that one can decide if exclusively benefit from the music or associating it to a pictorial content. Speaking of which, the images are as intangible as the related sonic matter, a series of blurred saturated colours with a few flashing lights contributing to the state of downright trance that wraps the watcher only moments after the start. Says Bradley: "the origin of the sounds and the concept behind creating them is ultimately unimportant for the listeners (…) who will create their own emotional responses". Exactly: while the sheer existence of those peaceful radiations - whose slightly modified stillness is a joy to the ears - is sufficient to file "Consumed" as an outstanding release per se, the practice of remaining stuck to our seat in stunned contemplation, looking transfixed at the screen as the vibrational currents flow, is perhaps preferable. The man doesn't know how to shoot a blank indeed. Massimo Ricci

Monos - Promotion

Aquarius Records
Darren Tate has quietly been producing drone-based compositions out of smeared field recordings and electronics for almost two decades now, but the bulk of his productions have been tiny self-released editions. In the early '90s, he and Andrew Chalk released a handful of cassettes under the moniker Ora, often with help from Colin Potter, Jonathan Coleclough, Michael Northam, and Daisuke Suzuki. Around the turn of the millennium, Tate and Chalk parted ways under amicable circumstances from what we can ascertain, with Chalk focusing on the equally impressive Mirror with Christoph Heemann, and Tate beginning to record as Monos with continuing production support from Colin Potter. Promotion was the first Monos album. While many of the ensuing Monos records had the same dappled deep ambience and impressionist use of field recordings as Ora, Promotion was an entirely different beast. Here, Tate works with a comparatively caustic recording of him dragging a heavy metal object across a concrete surface with all of the abraded textures and rusted growls that one might expect from such an action. Against this, Tate interweaves several long-form electronic drones with off-set oscillation sweeps, recalling more of the bunker electronics of early '60s computer music. Originally, Promotion was released in three tiny editions of 50 copies each back in 2000. Of course, those are long gone; but Paul Bradley has rescued this gem from the dustbin, although this current edition numbers only 200 copies. And, no these won't be long for this world either!

Cyclic Defrost
Promotion, originally released in 2000, cradles within it a nest of germinal ideas - an array of points of departure and areas of potential experimentation that Darren Tate, with the aid of Colin Potter and Daisuke Suzuki, would later pursue and, to some extent, see through to fruition through efforts on labels such as Die Stadt and Anomalous Records.
The gestural fullness, tonal flirtation and ambiguity that would later come to play a prominent part in Tate’s recordings, is here all but eclipsed by an approach that is content to stir and stroke the music’s surface, rippling its sheets of metallic sound with dots of micro-details (clicks, scrapes, squeaks) and looped phrases, which allow some simple patterns to establish themselves from the otherwise relentless mode of self-destructing noise.
It’s all very tight and concentrated; the piece standing out as a workout that grates restlessly at the listeners nerve endings. A blurring or fusion of most any sort is largely avoided. Indeed, were it not for the noise drone undertow the work would be less linear, more episodic. While always leaning toward the latter, the piece does to a certain extent maintain a sort of tense middle-ground between the two, full of curls, points and slashes, calligraphic gestures and assorted debris, which make for intriguing singular events, while at the same time being led into oblique modes of continuity by a low thrumming drone, whose pitch sounds almost expressive against such rough tonalities. The albums lure rests in this reversibility - in the intricate, nearly organic manner of its unfolding industrial environment, and the cold, brutal qualities of the natural elements housed within it.
Max Schaefer

Wonderful Wooden Reasons
Whilst recently being a duo (with Colin Potter) and a trio (with Paul Bradley) Monos in it's earliest incarnation was a solo vehicle for Darren Tate.  Promotion is a reissue of the first Monos album and is a dramatic diversion from the more recognisable drone-based sound of the majority of Monos recordings.  Darren has always had a love affair with field recordings, often made in the most mundane of circumstances (one of the tracks on his Ghost Guitars (I think) album features a recording of him making a cup of tea), and here this love affair is in full flow.  A lonesome siren loops mournfully throughout but any overt musicality is virtually swamped by the clusters of sound dropping from the speakers.  For the most part the origins of these sounds are indistinct or inconceivable yet they all feel perfectly suited to the recording and are used to conjure a grittiness that isn't often apparent in Tate's work but is very welcome here. Ian Holloway.

Maile Colbert - moborosi

Tokafi
No need to feel envious: A self-sufficient overture to a larger work taking shape in the background.
Maile Colbert has mentioned that she needs the help of all senses to feel “whole” and a balanced person. A director, video artists and composer, all aspects of her work are mutually influenced by each other, each uttering constituting a synthesis of the most diverse disciplines.
This may be a reason why she is currently working on completing an ambitious opera project on “millennialism and apocalyptic thought and theory” with singer Gabriela Crowe. Opera, after all, has traditionally been seen as the art of arts and the one genre which binds all others together. It does not seem far-fetched, therefore, to regard “moborosi”, as much as it has been conceived as a self-sufficient album, as the overture to the larger work taking shape in the background.
In fact, it may be regarded as a concise introduction into her oeuvre as a whole. This just over thirty minute long debut contains a collaboration with above mentioned Gabriela Crowe, features poetry by her brother Ian as well as her soundtrack contributions to “How little we know of our Neighbors”, Rebecca Baron’s documentary on the “Mass Observation” public spying project in the UK - and fully demonstrates her versatility and ability to integrate her personal approach into the equally idiosyncratic work of others.
As a composer, Colbert’s style may be characterised by a perfect symbiosis between the ages: Monophonic chant, classical themes and reverb-pedalled broken piano chords have the same status on “moborsi” as aerial, translucent drones, backwards-played themes, electric configurations and filtered synthesizers, without anything appearing irregular or out of place.
Another distinct feature consists in her technique of naturally placing these musical objects within close range of each other and of playing them back simultaneously, without regard of whether this does their historic background justice or whether their tonalities match for 100%.
This is not meant to be disrespectful. Colbert merely sees and hears with different eyes and ears, her entire sensory system is geared towards an intuitive view of the world and towards finding out “how elements (...) around us effect us psychologically and physiologically”. Just as if she were using the short stretch of this album as a space for reflection, it keeps coming back to the same trains of thought, with some strings overlapping and synthesizing as part of a Freud’ean materialism.
Everything on this record is self-referential, with tracks popping out of other pieces like smaller babushkas hiding inside their taller counterparts: The piano of “Day of Fire” is part of “Broken Camera Sunset”, the barely one-minute long “Sweet still Sleep” is contained within “primitive” and the abstract rhythmic charges of “begin” act as a Leitmotif for the entire work.
Consequently, a hermetic, haunting, slightly surreal and yet inwardly quiet mood is predominant on “moborosi”, its structures speaking to each other in tongues, as its body awakens in the middle of a full-moon night, startles and falls back to sleep again. Still, things are never opaque or oblivious – Colbert’s artistic language is clear and coherent, her tone soft and void of radical outbursts.
There is no need at all for her to feel envious of her brother’s abilities as a chef, expressing himself fully through his food. While she may need the help of all senses to function as a person, her music definitely doesn’t need any visuals to be appreciated. Tobias Fischer

earlabs
Moborosi weaves its way through a frantic metrical illogic. Off-kilter yet firmly entrenched cyclical motifs act as finely pulsing counterpoints for a series of richly droning, warm chords.
Processed with flange, reverb, and delay, these pieces are bunkered in breathy, teeming harmonics that hover above these clusters of incandescent notes, which time and again culminate in a bending skyward wail.
In its thirty-minute life-span, the action is often heavily stylised and cross-cutting different genres - shifting quickly, yet meaningfully, from these passages, to even more discrete moments, where loops are constantly shifting by tiny degrees. In addition, during these more vigilant sections, Colbert’s style, with its oblique use of tonality, is colourful and alluring, but also wry, detached and frigid.
Thus, pieces such as "Day Of Fire" work with a racing, tumbling loop, filled up by tiny glitches like rocks rolling down a streambed, and deflated by languorous descents into near stillness. All of this reaches its zenith in "Blinding Begin Again", which builds slow dynamic curves by countering long probing lines with soft anchoring tones that leave the impression that all is evaporating into impenetrable darkness. Taken together, then, Moborosi reveals a complex and adaptable figure in Colbert.

The Wire December 2007 - Outer Limits
In discussing a recent installation, LA based sound designer and film maker Maile Colbert emphasized the importance of reconstructed memories, even if they are generated through repression, disassociation or the inaccurate recollection of factual details. These ideas continue on Moborosi, a collection of abstracted vignettes published through Paul Bradley’s imprint. This is quite the detour from Bradley’s typical preference for deep drone work; instead, Colbert offers a delicate array of structural loops and backwards lullabies. At times, she positions granulated samples of digital errata in lockstep with mechanised loops; elsewhere, her compositions drift in a out of placid Ambient passages. Colbert counters the porcelain fragility and cool detachment found throughout these recordings on “Day of Fire”, which features the plainsong vocals of Gabriela Crowe. In the bricolage of fleeting details and smeared electronica, her voice is a baroque feature which suggests the kind of surrogate memory that Colbert seems to be searching for.
Jim Haynes.

Touching Extremes December 07
Maile Colbert, from Los Angeles, is a filmmaker, video and sound artist whose activities include teaching sonic design and applying her craft to other people's work, especially in the movie, documentary and installation areas. "Moborosi" is the author's misspelling of the Japanese word "Maborosi", which should approximately be translated as "phantasmic light" and enclose vague concepts of "otherworldly, a bit lonely, a bit of longing, a bit of hope and wonder" (a monk indicated a distant luminescence in the nocturnal view of an harbour to give Colbert an idea of what this concept means). Of the same importance is the quality of the record which, although not exactly conforming to the Twenty Hertz canon of advanced electronica, evolved ambient and droning soundscapes, is truly of the "short and sweet" kind, lasting in fact only half an hour filled with moments to be repeatedly savoured and definitely remembered. The composer is extremely clever in her choice of not fossilizing herself on a specific setting, possessing an uncanny ability in elaborating the right alternance of evocative ambiences and juxtaposed pictures, offering a series of aural snapshots whose contrasting character outgrows the limits of the recorded format to expand within our system with the delicacy of a fine perfume. We hear voices singing in Latin and reciting poetry amidst slowly melting backgrounds, misshapen dreams, strange loops of electric bass, a carillon reproducing "Greensleeves", snippets from old records à la Janek Schaefer, female choirs, environmental fragments, impressive subterranean frequencies, interferences abruptly changing a previously oneiric scenario. The listeners are put in confront with those invisible entities that dematerialize thoughts during the REM phase of sleep. It's a very personal style, despite being made of pretty familiar elements; we're not too far off the target when suggesting names like Helena Gough and Gavin Bryars as just two of the many entrance points for an optimal approach to this deeply inquisitive release. Massimo Ricci.

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Ubeboet - spectra

earlabs
‘Music for Winding Mountain Roads’. Such might have been a possible title for this cd, analogously to Brian Eno’s Ambient Music series. For one thing, obviously, because in these higher regions one is closer to the heavens. Indeed, this is the first striking characteristic of this music: it’s reflection of, it’s reflection and meditation upon Christian liturgical music of the Middle Ages. Certainly in the first half or so of the cd the mind wanders with the music through a cathedral-like space, an airy, transparent monolith of winding voices, like a glass sculptured entwining of climbers. Mountains transform into clouds, and clouds into mountains; in a mysterious act of transubstantiation the massive stone architecture becomes light and trembling like a flame. (On this note also the cd ends, with the final and perhaps most radical act of transubstantiation of a fire-offering or holocaust.)

It is also because of the way the music itself unfurls, unwinds itself, disperses itself like up curling smoke, which brings to mind the analogy of a winding mountain road. Unveiling and shrouding its sense and direction, it enfolds one in a cloud of unknowing. The past and the future – the road behind, and the road upfront – still (or again) remain a mystery. Creating just the slightest opening, a minute clearance, a window on nothing but the tangential moment itself, alike in the text of the same title this unknowing thus becomes a stepping stone for a primarily experiential mode of perception.

This is not drone music, where the past and future are molded together with the present moment in blazing fire, stone, storm and torrent. This is ambient music, a passage into, or rather through the elements, traversing them in perpetual anticipation of: a perpetual beyond. A plea for metaphysics, metamusics, metabioi; the content of this plea eliciting but a fragrance, a mere tangence (and not even that) of this destined beyond. This fragrance becomes more and more diluted during the course of the cd, losing more and more of its sensual container and taking on more and more the ephemeral structure of an anticipatory modality ‘an sich’ – alike a catholic mass opening up to a vision of Nirvana (actually not so far besides the Byzantine liturgy which may well be the source for these pieces).

An amazing work. Mark Pauwen.

Vital Weekly
So far Miguel A. Tolosa, also known as Ubeboet have released a couple of works, mainly through MP3 labels, such as his own Con-V but also Earlabs and Zeromoon. 'Spectra' is a release that might be the first that is produced in any sort of commercial way. Ubeboet's music is not an odd-ball for the Twenty Hertz label, as the nine pieces show a deep interest in digital drones. Usually it's hard to think what went into the production of drone music, but here it's clear that the laptop is at the hard. Around it we find field recordings, FM radio, tape recorder and a lap steel guitar. Soft tinkles occur, embedded in a warm bed of digital insect chirping, moving through high and low ends of the sound spectrum. Nothing new under the microsun, but I must admit that this was quite a nice journey. Maybe it's the small melodies that are used here and there that add just that little bit of extra needed to stand out, in a very positive manner, from the usual suspects in this field. It's an absolutely fine release and hopefully the start of more beautiful things (with, to be honest, some minor changes to make this reviewer happy and see a break with the drone genre). (FdW)

Keith Berry
One of the best works I have heard in a while. It's haunting corridors of sound have been filling my room for days now. Like an old memory, it feels familiar but in its present context also feels like a dream, just beautiful music.

Wonderful Wooden Reasons
Con-V label head Miguel Angel Tolosa here conjures a series of beguiling and palatial ambient tone pieces. Gracefully unfurling sounds form a billowing tapestry upon which Tolosa gradually and patiently constructs his breathy and disconcerting soundscapes. At a cursory glance it's easy to dismiss these pieces as being slightly insubstantial but listeners willing to take the time and effort to immerse themselves in the pool of sound will find layers and nuances to absorb and explore.

Tokafi
While I was listening to “duae”, the recent collaboration of Miguel Tolosa (aka ubeboet) and Pablo Reche, a big truck pulled up beside my window in a usually agreeably quiet sidestreet and left its big diesel engine running for almost an hour. For some strange coincidence, the exact same thing happened while I was enjoying “spectra”. Only this time around, I could continue listening.

The reason is simple: On his latest release, Tolosa has left the fields of silence he usually ploughs with his tasteful con-v label and has all but severed the connection with the “lower case” movement he has been one of the main proponents of. The future will tell whether or not this is a longterm artistic decision or an occasional excursion, but on “spectra”, he is closer to the music of Twenty Hertz boss Paul Bradley than ever before – a convergence which has been made even clearer by Bradley’s recent output, which wasn’t only warmer than any of his previous releases, but also more concise and compact. On a casual listen, this truly sounds like a work of pure drones, smooth, sustained tones glistening in the sunshine and of careful hands delicately turning some knobs with glace kid gloves. Almost exclusively around the four minute mark, the pieces don’t build up or run through too much of a development, but appear to be impressions, postcards which the eye gazes over in search for details, only to be put aside with a smile after a short while. Just like with postcards, however, it is always a wise thought to read the text on the back. And the information printed in the booklet indeed gives a twist to the first impression, revealing that the material was realised using “field recordings, fm radio, tape recorder, lap steel guitar and laptop”. So I gave things a second and third spin and, yes, there were the rough edges, minute impurities and additions to the clarity of the basic colours: Are those violins? Where did those subtle scratchings come from? What is that rustiling noise? Could that be be a choir in the back? Was this part recorded at a train station? Suddenly, the associations start coming in, opening up new spaces in their wake. Tolosa has managed to award different layers to his compositions and the waking mind will enter them according to its disposition. The more the album progresses, the more it leaves the halls of angelic beauty and turns towards darker shades of the palette and the more arrangements consist of various parts and movements.

At 38 minutes, it does this in a remarkably short span of time and creates a sensation of fluidity and hardly noticeable, floating changes. It is almost as if the lowercase elements of ubeboet’s previous work have been enriched and connected by a multitude of timbres. Which means that it may not be such a big departure from the original style as it seemed in the first place. Despite its more tangible character, the album still wants to be enjoyed in a silent place. Better wait for that truck to leave after all. Tobias Fischer.

Touching Extremes August 07
Working under the Ubeboet moniker, Miguel A.Tolosa is a Spanish composer who creates beautifully layered soundscapes able to lighten up physical tensions during those moments in which our mind doesn't want to accept the privileges of tranquillity. "Spectra" was made with field recordings, FM radio, tape recorder, lap steel guitar and laptop, yet often sounds like some sort of religious elegy, and I'm pretty sure that vocal sources are present in those tapes - if they aren't, kudos to the author for having my brain figuring them. Nine tracks whose levity meshes in excellent combinations with strokes from an unearthly kind of inspiration, so that everything appears as perennially suspended in a grey mist, but still very visible. A distant reference point could be found in Robert Rich's earlier output; nevertheless, Tolosa owns a personal style which overcomes any possible comparison. By showing austerity even through its most arcane conceptions, Ubeboet's music easily defends its luminous spot in the overcrowded field of ambient electronica, blessed as it is by a peculiar grace that separates it from the commonplace mass. "Spectra" is not really an album that you could call "innovative"; it's a very honest one, though, and that counts more than anything else in the final judgement.

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Paul Bradley - chroma

Furthernoise
Abstract experimental music, unlike most varieties, doesn’t do anything so obvious as to represent directly something in a world outside itself. But it usually contains at least some veiled gesture towards a potential object to connect to. What to make of a stream of soft-edged tonal material gradually mounting in pitch and frequency? Might it not suggest, for example, the sun’s emergence from below the horizon into the lightening sky? But the sound needs something else – a signpost, a cue – to help find its meaning-socket. An experimental musician whose work has often been reticent in this respect is Paul Bradley. It doesn’t ostensibly seem to be ‘about’ much else other than itself. You could say it’s audio-documentary of his reflections on the nature of sound. Fine’n’dandy, but... Is that all there is?

No. There’s more. Only connect. The ombrous wispy cover image of his new release may not be giving much away, but that Chroma... is talking colour. Bingo. Immediately suggestive for Bradley’s work, and once colour co-ordinated, these spacious washes relieved by pointillist shadings and wisps of light are illuminated in earthy browns, glassine greens, and glimmering yellows. These seven short to medium-length compositions made with e-bow guitar as source, stretched out and spangled by processing, are variously hued. Colour them how you hear them, then go from there. Opening movements propose extended undulations of low-to-medium-end pillowed tones with minimal (but crucial) timbral variation flirting comfortably with a major key. #3 feels like a warmer more engaged variant on these openings, bringing out overtones and harmonics into a gorgeous wooze. #4 seems to further elaborate the compositional structure – that of variable recursions of drawn-out loops periodically flecked, layering more crystalline loop strata and intensifying reverberation into a near-blissed out pastoral drone-symphony.

Overall, Bradley’s strategies are deliberately minimal and homogenous. Like a writer who’s written 20 short novels all in roughly similar style, he doesn’t dissipate his energies experimenting with different voices. An experimentalist, but with a voice more musically conventional than, say, the liminal noise-phantoms of a Günter or López, but less overbearing than the stern sonorities of kindred like Coleclough or Monos, he seems to have found his niche with a signature droning style embracing both crepuscular and twinkling variations on a theme. And when most emanations from England’s subterranean drone collective seem to rejoice in finding ever more inky depths to plumb, it’s refreshing to encounter such a spirited assemblage. Denying the downcast, it seems to look up towards some sort of inchoate “beyond” – sounds pushing up and out as if to efface all but a trace of materiality, and become pure colour float. The closing #7 seems to will itself into the realms of space, less of this earth, rotating with a sense of endlessness while churning within. You might even find it inspiring, representing something existential – a reflection of what some of us may aspire to do in seeking to make a life less ordinary. Only connect. Alan Lockett

Cyclic Defrost Magazine
Sonic choreographer Paul Bradley directs a slow motion waterfall of sound on Chroma, his seventh release in the last year. Both vivid and subtle, the maelstrom of sound disguises rather precise coordination of attacks, which evoke very strong emotional and aesthetic responses in the listener. In fact, in comparison to previous efforts, Chroma, as a sonic analogue of a kaleidoscope, as a lovely play of tonally moving forms colored autumnal yellows and glass bottle-green’s, is one of Bradley’s most simple, altogether accessible statements so far.

Indeed, the colors, as simple qualities, manage to provide pure sensuous pleasures over the course of the work. The recording consists of seven short compositions, where Bradley conjures dream-tangled nightscapes in which synthesizers, used sparingly and effectively, supplement the ebow’s expressive range, and heighten the mood through harmonic coloration. It’s gentle and plaintive music mostly, carefully paced, and tenderly crafted. Unencumbered by a need to hallucinate, to transport the listener into a delusional temporal continuum, these drones calmly yet mysteriously rise out of one pool of silence and disappear into another, along the way, passing through subtle modalities of change and dynamic processes of particle synthesis.

Specifically, track two sketches smoothly oscillating scenes that arrange delicate textures within swaying tonal passages while others, such as track six, are less airy and open, more grounded, pastoral even, with minimal repetitions expanding and contracting across a frequency spectrum, slowly building an endless breath-like quality. Certain compostions go so far as to enjoy themselves, freeing the listener up to simply relax. More than a fine play of sensations, though, Chroma maintains structure, and expresses a deep ineffable content such that certain moments seem touched with a tincture of the sublime. Max Schaefer

Touching Extremes April 07
Sometimes it's good to know that the music we're going to listen to won't surprise us, especially when sure that it will enable our nerves to lighten up the tension and our body to fluctuate in crossing currents of stimulating waves and heartrending drones. "Chroma" continues to report about Paul Bradley's voyage through the spheres of electric/electronic prayer; no indications are given about the instrumentation - as always with this soundscaper - but I'm willing to guess that, besides synthesizers, a dose of bowed strings is in there. The seven movements are among the best things that I heard from the English composer, symbols of an otherwordly contemplation whose intense radiance puts our vital functions in standby mode, as we're left suspended in amazement and stirring emotion. The consecutive wonders of the third and fourth parts are a metaphorical representation of the perfection and the self-centering to which human beings should ideally aspire to; then it's all the more annoying that, once we're brought back to senses after the record's over, we must start again from square one, dealing with delusional individuals and overboard physical specimens whose presence is nothing but disturbing and debilitating. Massimo Ricci.

The Wire April 2007 - Outer Limits
His seventh release in less than a year, Chroma is another stately album of strung-out vibrations from British drone artist Paul Bradley. E-bowed guitar is central to this album, which emerges on the first couple of movements as deep ripples of low-end frequencies exposing their source material through slow rotation of several phase patterns that could only be made by guitar. About halfway through the album, Bradley moves away from these Isolationist references through a pastoral set of brightly toned ambience. Here, the structural nature of Bradley's work becomes more apparent, as he composes through variable repetitions of elongated loops pocked with the odd effervescent flourish. jim Haynes

Tokafi
Whatever your exact translation of the term “chroma” may be, it always has to do with colours. Which makes it a perfect match for the music of Paul Bradley, whose pure and spaceous dronescapes have always made it easy to draw parallels to the visual world and to painting. Even more than with any of his previous albums, however, it is almost perfectly spent on this, his seventh effort as a solo artist, as it sees Bradley noticeably expanding his palette of aural timbres.

The sounds are definitely more airy and open, the moods lighter and more permeable and the tonal colours more earthly grounded than ever before: Warm brown, yellow and clay shades contrast with the familiar liquid blue one has come to appreciate from preceeding works and while there are still moments of scantness and alienation, the general ambiance is inviting and friendly. Much more than an intellectual or conceptual swing, “chroma” comes across as a summer-fantasy by an Englishman, dreamed up by pot after pot of strong black tea and watching the wet streets from behind curtains of rain. This impression is solidified by the fact that Bradley’s compositions are still made up of only a few distinct elements and rely on gentle modulations and even complete stasis instead of forced changes and shocking surprises. And still, this record does sound different from anything he has done, if only for the fact that it is divided into seven short to medium length segments, including one and a half minute scenes and only just extending into the ten-minute range on the somewhat more stretched-out cuts. The different parts actually enhance the otherwordly and timeless nature of the music. As if watching a highway glowing in the burning sun, the flickering heat radiated by these tracks turns into a sensation of its own, morphing and loosing its form, yet bringing forth temporary concrete forms and kind showers of light. If anything, the result is even more loveable, a warm oasis where you can lay your worries to rest and enjoy the beauty of the moment.

The more diversified nature of the material creates a fluctuacting space and a movement absent from most of Paul Bradley’s other releases, yet its webs are maybe even more fragile, suggesting they ought not to be disturbed. This music is ideal for situations of unhurried solitude and for concentrated creative working - such as painting, for example. Tobias Fischer

Wonderful Wooden Reasons
The latest release from UK drone musician Paul Bradley sees him embracing a slightly more ambient sound than had previously been apparent although Bradley's take on the genre is very much his own. Working from what seems like a, not limited but, concise palette Bradley paints an ambient landscape of subtle tones and shades. His drones are steely and forceful, they are electric and magnetic with the ozone aftertaste of a lightning storm. Like the best ambient music Chroma is never overpowering or intrusive it simply is. Ian Holloway

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Paul Bradley - Sketches from Dust

Touching Extremes
I vividly recall that one of my first encounters with music based on slowly drifting, alluring synthetic waves was Kit Watkins' double whammy "Thought tones 1+2", which to this day I consider a most enjoyable listen in that sense. Somehow, certain sections of "Sketches from dust" brought those albums back in my mind, but Paul Bradley has well surpassed that intensity by now. Not only he's quickly become a reference name in this field, Bradley has already traveled several "extracorporeal" paths with several essential releases that, in their economy of means, have demonstrated an integrity level that fascinates even an old grumbler like this writer. This disc is yet another fine chapter in the Englishman's oeuvre, its fading lights and shifting unstable harmonics the cradle for a beneficial infinite sensual nirvana. The slow dance of the frequencies is beautiful to contemplate, as the deep resonance and indecipherable mystery of these currents throw us into a sense of standstill, much appreciated in these days of growing tension, social danger and even climatic menace for the poor, deluded insects that we,the so-called sentient beings, indeed are; the bell-like, low piano notes heard in the final section sing a requiem to human cheapness. One can read and study throughout its life and pretend to be fulfilled; but one of these superb drones should be enough to teach the most important thing, the one that's never learnt, namely to speak no more. Massimo Ricci touchingextremes.org

Chandlk
A new full length from Bradley and you know he's always great and I'm a fan of his, right? This time he collaborates with Current 93 pianist Maja Elliott (whose recent CDep "1000 Water Craters on the Sea" features in turn Bradley's contribution, along with Steven Stapleton's and Aranos'). "Sketches from Dust" is a one-track work in the wake of Paul's more abstract, ethereal and melodic works, like "Anamnesis" and "Liquid Sunset". The drone ebbs and flows along in a peaceful, brain-healing way, though the last section, when Elliott's piano dirge crawl in, is quite sombre, even reminding of NWW's "Soliloquy for Lilith". Seems you simply can't go wrong with this guy.4 out of 5 stars.Eugenio Maggi.

Aquarius Records
Taking a cue from fellow British drone alchemist Andrew Chalk, Paul Bradley offers an elegant miasma of elongated tones from guitar and piano, the latter of which was contributed by Current 93's Maja Elliott. The overall feel of Sketches From Dust is thoroughly amorphous in its strategy for a pure ambience (in keeping true to the Brian Eno ethos of such early masterpieces as On Land and Thursday Afternoon). After stretching the timbral monochrome from piano and guitar into a shimmering chorale, Bradley gingerly places these sounds in a loosened compositional framework that shares some similarities to how Mr. Chalk arranged his abstracted piano on Blue Eyes Of The March. On occasion, Bradley allows for clusters of Elliott's piano to flicker within the freefloating drone breathing with the quality of billowing clouds and transient early morning fog whose refracted light through water vapor makes everything obfuscated and luminous at the same time. Very nicely done. Product description.

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Darren Tate - The elves are coming

Vital Weekly 514
'The Elves Are Coming' consists of Darren playing guitar and keyboard whilst in the background there is a field recording by Daisuke Suzuki. It was mixed in two days in early january of this year and, although it is never stated, it's probably recorded then also, as the whole thing has a very direct, almost 'live' feel to it. The guitar sometimes just 'hums' and seems not to be doing much, while we hear sounds of someone shuffling about in what seems to me a wooden cabin of some sort. It's the sort of ambient drone music that is not necessarily demanding much, more like a sort of coincidental colliding of sound particles. That may sound perhaps a bit too easy, but it's this apparent randomness that is quite nice. (FdW) www.vitalweekly.net

Touching Extremes
Once again Darren Tate is helped by Daisuke Suzuki, who supplies his field recordings comprising birds, insects, voices and a constant suffocated hum that could be emitted by a fan or some other domestic appliance. This hazy ambience constitutes the foundation for the experiments that Tate conducts by manipulating the sounds of a guitar and a keyboard, which get caressed and dismembered at one and the same time in order to find the innocent voice of their components, something which the York soundscaper is a master of. Darren is one of the few artists still able to approach an instrument or a composition like if fronting an empty canvas or a blank page, his totally unruly behaviour a key for the interpretation of a music that sounds both familiar and quite undecipherable, especially when its level of anarchy is at the top of the scale. Either way, this child-like attitude is the very strength of this beautiful release; the tradition according to which a "Darren Tate style" does exist but cannot be defined by mere words continues. From my point of view, "The elves are coming" is another unmissable item in this man's chain of underground pearls, including his truly special cover artworks. Massimo Ricci touchingextremes.org

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Paul Bradley & Cria Cuervos - Moraines

Chaindlk
This combined effort opens a new chapter in the discography of Paul Bradley and Eugenio Maggi a.k.a. Cria Cuervos, but you'd better look for more infos on their personal sites. The lay out is great and the "scorn-godflesh-early-Earache" microscopic view on the front cover is the perfect image for this work. The sound quality is definitely top notch, Bradley kicked ass behind the mixing desk and Cria Cuervos with the last two release finally gets the "hi-profile" trademark required from his works. The music is surprisingly melodic and it's embodied by some minimal droned melodies, soft noises and electronic/ambiental high frequency sounds are the canvas (I'd say that's Maggi's own touch). This cd is based on a long and elaborated track, I think it could have been separated into different movements but at last crescendos and diminuendos highlight the passage to each different atmosphere. While for the first twenty nine minutes you got a sad, depressed (ambiental?) mood, with the second part of "moraines" the Stendhal syndrome takes over and the canvas (a.k.a. the soft white noise -sort of-), the initial image starts fading in the mist and it shows the testament of the early isolationist has found some heirs?. The final descent of the song reminds me of that wicked works Popol Vuh wrote expressly for Herzog's work of art "Aguirre". In my book the second half of the cd is that typical exhibit of "music where nothing is happening" that is satisfactory for every listener about to sinck, nay the whole listening is nothing but a pleasant and gradual dipping. 31/2 out of 5 stars. Andrea Ferraris.

Vital Weekly 514
Twenty Hertz boss Paul Bradley and Eugenio Maggi, aka Cria Cuervos from Italy. Their collaboration is a much tighter work, more strictly composed in the world of ambient drone music. Deep bass hum starts the piece, and then little by little they add their own blend of field recordings, working slowly their way into a mighty crescendo and then again as slowly again towards the end, taking the sound down. Probably it's because of the Cria Cuervos influence, but it sounds a tad more ambient industrial here and there than some of Paul Bradley's other work. That is nice, since it breaks away a bit from the more 'traditional' drone works on Twenty Hertz, even when as such the music doesn't open a new path in that particular field of music. But all in all it's a good solid work from these two. (FdW) www.vitalweekly.net

Connexion Bizarre
Paul Bradley and Cría Cuervos conspire to accelerate the fabric of time itself with their collaborative work, "Moraines." It is an extensive ambient piece, and begins with such quiet subtlety it found me double-checking the speakers for a minute or two before I decided that indeed, there was a track playing. Forty-six minutes and unknown ages later, "Moraines" had transformed a tapestry of sibilant drones and harmonic hums into an acoustic time machine, dialed to the late Pleistocene.
A moraine is an accumulation of boulders, stones, or other debris carried and deposited by a glacier. Paul Bradley and Cría Cuervos have either created the very music by which to watch glaciers, or a soundtrack in which the ghosts of ice flows passed are revisited at a glacial pace. The listener is transported to a sparse land of grey earth and windswept vegetation, where cycles of climate and erosion have remade vistas time and again. From vantage atop a small ridge - amassed in the wake of a glacier many thousands of years before - hints at booming undercurrents rise to the listener's ears through uncharted meters of long-forgotten ice.
"Moraines" is a system of deposits; a complex sediment of sounds. In its beginning, the haunting echoes of falling stones scatter through lulling white noise, like unseen things rustling in dark crevices. The piece gradually shifts toward more harmonic tones and builds intensity with hissing crescendos reminiscent of trapped air escaping through widening cracks. Finally, after more than thirty minutes have passed, the collaborators usher in thawing ice and sounds of trickling, seeping and gurgling water. At the static-filled culmination of "Moraines," waking life - buzzing insects and restless amphibians, perhaps - gathers in the slowly warming pools and scrub where glaciers once enthralled the land. Sandswept [7.5/10]. connexionbizarre.net

Touching Extremes
I don't know if "Moraines" was originally conceived as a soundtrack but most certainly sounds like one. Bradley and Cria Cuervos assembled their deep-frequency based subterranean hums - once in a while slightly modified by the appearance of more biological sounds - like if they needed some sort of audio documentary for an installation (or an aquarium; good comparisons could be found with Michel Redolfi and Vidna Obmana/Hybryds past work in that area, as sounds of water are well in evidence in the most relaxing segments). The music moves very gradually, almost afraid of waking us up from a state of torpor; blurred pictures of peculiar forms of life slide in front of us without interruption, at times reinforced with resounding low vibrations. Not groundbreaking, but well worth a careful listen, this is an accomplished ambient coalescence. Massimo Ricci touchingextremes.org

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Paul Bradley & David Wells - Op5 / Heart of Embra

Touching Extremes
There are times in which I silently damn the small format CDs like this very one, especially when the music they contain stands on such a level of excellence. "Op.5" by Wells is a haunting piece made of ethereal droning and economy of movement; imagine David Jackman's buzzsaw metal resonance after a Valium treatment submerged by the shadows of nocturnal sensitiveness during ten minutes of pure bliss. Bradley confirms with "Heart of Embra" his current magic moment with an atypical (for him) scheme-free acousmatic presentation of forms, pictures, drones and found sounds, at times slightly blemished by a little hiss and distortion, while the scenery changes quite frequently, with talking people and room/external noise acting as a counterbalance to Paul's customary slow spirals. Both compositions are a short lesson in attentive listening, making an eventual full-length album of similar materials quite desirable.

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Paul Bradley - Liquid Sunset

Tokafi
Ceremonial and solemn: Nothing can be added to this music, nothing can be substracted.

Time distortion may be an unpleasant sensation in everyday life, but with Paul Bradley it is an important aspect of the unique allure of his music. While having virtually nothing “happen” on your albums is an insult to some, it is a virtue to him and even though there may be even more minimalist drone composers out there, Bradley has found a way to walk the invisible border line between almost inaudible breathings and deep, sonorous and emotional frequencies. “Liquid Sunset” is a good example for his approach and shows why many in the scene envy him for his craftsmanship – and why, despite the perfection he has achieved, his art remains by no means without controversy.

The criticism, which occasionally rears its head, mostly has to do with the shirt-sleeve mentality of some journalists, who insist on an artist having to struggle to find his own language and to wade through years of failure and rejection, before discovering his true calling. Bradley, however, has been embraced by fans of the genre right from the very first instance he set foot in it. Already his debut album bathed in pure primordial soup, the matter from which all of his later works would draw their inspiration. Nothing could be added to this music, nothing could be subtracted. Suddenly, out of the blue, there it was and if it had been created by an 80-year old Nepalese monk after a lifetime experimenting with singing bowls and overtone chant, the press would have been ecstatic. As it is, Bradley lives and breathes in the UK and does not express his intuitive stance towards composing in haiku form, but in quotes like “I can appreciate a fine-looking woman without knowing how the nervous system works or a glass of beer without knowing how it was brewed.” The perfection he attained so early on in his career has also implied that his subsequent releases have not “pushed” the limit any further, but merely lit the scene from a different angle. On the other hand, do we really need this man to go against the grain to appreciate his music? If you take the pureness, simplicity and deepness of an album like “Liquid Sunset”, it would certainly seem like a brutal intrusion. On the first part of the journey, Bradley segues different segments together by means of silence or minimalistic field recordings (a small camp fire? crackling paper?), each one similar, but with enough characteristics of its own to mark a new mood, a new space and a new opportunity to get lost entirely. Part two is sort of a short annex to the ceremonial and solemn opening, but it could just as well have been its ending. Pensive bass drones scour the floor of the ocean, while the fluorescent headlights of bizarrely morphed ghost fishs mill short tunnels into a world of absolute darkness. Filter knobs turn and twist by their own accord, the world curves and undulates and everything looses its necessity.

When I first listened to “Liquid Sunset”, I estimated its running time at about 25-minutes. As it turned out, it was double that length, with the majestic “part one” clocking in at a vast 46 minutes. Such is the power of Bradley’s music, which uses its slow motion to catch the listener in an opium-atmosphered soap bubble drifting in a time gap between dawn and sunset. As to the repetitive nature of his CDs, one might add that watching him refine his vision is still any inch as fascinating as observing others trying to cover supposedly new ground. By Tobias Fischer

Touching Extremes
"Liquid sunset" is definitely a great album in Paul Bradley's discography, once again highlighting this composer's incredibly quick ascension to the very top of my personal graduatory in the ever-too-densely populated area of electronic dronescaping. As usual, Paul does not reveal his sources and immediately starts a slow wave dance where real and imaginary harmonic shifts and constantly changing realities morph into perennially altered states, contraptions and expansions succeeding in a natural-sounding blur of sensual astonishment. As the sinuous spirals of shimmering wonders find their way around our freedom of movement, one can't help but appreciate Bradley's use of accurate yet extremely moderate programming; his creations become almost tangible, sort of "solid vapors" in absence of gratuitous vacuity. Bells and whistles don't belong in this majestic sparkler's sound world, as Paul is DEEP - and many people should learn from him. Massimo Ricci touchingextremes.org

ChainDLK
Bradley is tirelessly putting out new releases, and, when the quality is this high, prolificacy is welcome. His new full length, "Liquid Sunset", is probably one of his best solo releases: indeed its two parts remind of his most abstract guitar-based works, like "Sepulchral" or the first Dronework, but with the more serene and airy feel that was already present in "Anamnesis". The guitar inputs are thus transformed into warm floating clouds of sound, slowly lulling the listener - perfect evening soundscapes, just like the title evokes. And besides the inherent beauty of the work, one notices Bradley's increasing mastery of the tools of trade, as his releases keep getting more and more refined. 4 out of 5 stars Eugenio Maggi. chaindlk.com

The Wire February 2006 - Outer Limits
Within Liquid Sunset, the British drone artist Paul Bradley has lifted a page from the Mirror handbook for longform impressionist compositions. The now defunct project between Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann had demonstrated a majestic beauty in radically stripping away non-essential elements to their dronescaping. Bradley's work adopts a very similar methodology as he expands field recordings into slow moving undulations of monochromatic sound. Given the high standards set by the Mirror template, Bradley does well to flatten his synthetic ambience into turgid ooze. His crepuscular drifts fade to silence almost inexplicably on several occasions, temporarily giving way to quietly crunched detail of rain or possible cracking leaves. Such detours in the continuity of his sunset serve to add a shroud of mystery to this wholly meditative album. Jim Haynes thewire.co.uk

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Tate & Liles - Without Season

Chain DLK
Two teddy bears on the cover and a surreal statue of a fox-headed boy on a wheelchair on the back: what else could you expect from the collaboration of these two drone masters? Judging from the liner notes, Darren Tate has handed his sounds to Andrew Liles who has then structured and mixed the five untitled tracks. Some acoustic guitar plucking and a few accordion improvisations (by guest musician Kathleen Vance) are recognizable here and there (track 2 and 5), but most of the work is the perfect mix of sustained drones and natural field recordings you'd expect - which necessarily reminds of Monos' tradition, especially the finest moments of "Sunny day...". Brighter and almost bucolic moments alternate with powerful, awe-inspiring atmospheres - but all is graced by that sense of mystery and magic which is common ground between the two artists. 4 out of 5 stars Eugenio Maggi. chaindlk.com

Vital Weekly 502
Coincidence it must be, but here's a second collaborative release involving our man Andrew Liles, this time with one of favorite drone meisters Darren Tate, who is known for his work with Ora and his solo projects. On the cover (which I should add I don't like: it's combination of both Liles and Tate's interests in pictures and these two simply don't match. It was better to choose for either separately) Andrew Liles is being credited as 'conductor' and Darren Tate gets credit for 'improvisations, field recordings and squeeze box (and one Kathleen Vance on accordion), so me thinks, reading such that Liles is the one who transforms all the recordings made by Tate and Vance. As we all know by now, Liles has a pretty surreal form of mixing his stuff, but actually he does he pretty sober job here. In some instances he leaves Tate's playing in tact and only seems to be adding a little bit of electronic effects. In the early stages of the CD the music is rather drone based, not unlike Tate's previous collaboration with Paul Bradley on Plinkity Plonk, yet not as deep. Only as the CD progresses he gets to do what he does best: a more collage oriented work, with piano sounds, coughing and accordion playing - but it turns out to be just the last track. All in all this is much more drone based work, certainly when compared to last week's CD by The Wardrobe, Liles' work with Tony Wakeford, sober in tone but with some more action than some of his Uk colleagues. So it might appeal to a lot of people, I guess. Quite nice indeed. (FdW) www.vitalweekly.net

Brainwashed
An incredibly fertile and industrious musical world is going on right beneath everyone's noses. While this or that magazine is busy trying to pin down the next 10 big bands or the next big scene, musicians like Darren Tate of Monos and Andrew Liles are busy making music, lots of music, and nearly everything they release tackles some new sonic territory.

They refuse to be any one thing except consistent, producing a prodigious amount of work. Yet they don't receive as much coverage as they should, much of their work going ignored even by those publications claiming to bring their audience the cutting edge in musical innovation.

Cinematic probably best describes the work of Andrew Liles, though a term like that fails to hint at all the nuances that make his music so intriguing and fun. Darren Tate, on the other hand, works with Monos, a group comprised mostly of him and Colin Potter. Their work reaches further into the world of drone music, populated as it is by layers and layers of dense electronic sound and warped samples. Unlike some collaborations, it is actually possible to hear the merging of these two approaches on Without Season. The notes claim that Liles was just the conductor and that Tate, along with guest Kathleen Vance, worked on most of the source material. If this is true, it just goes to show how unique Liles approach to music is. His trademark humor and strange understanding of horror are all present on this disc along with Tate's thick sound and careful use of variation.

Everything from piano and the sound of candy wrappers unfolding to an accordion and the use of bird calls can be found on this album. Nothing is too exotic, strange, or out of place for either of these guys. Want to tie together the sound of birds, running water, a fat man moaning, and the faint ringing of crystal glasses? These guys will do it and they'll convince you that each of these sounds are out to kill you while they're at it. That or the distinct possibility of being suffocated will come to mind and all the claustrophobic nightmares everyone has will somehow come to life and finally deliver on their promise.

Carried out as a single piece in five parts, Without Season builds, recedes, and recycles itself without bothering to stop or take inventory of where it has been. Its 40 plus minute duration is over far too quickly, feeling as though it passed in ten. At times the record is beautifully dreamy, almost as though it were sewn together using silk and nothing more. Even the abrasive parts, especially the awesome hum that opens the album, sounds smooth and fine as it rumbles outward.

The album closes with a simple melody played out between vague environmental sounds, an accordion, and a piano and its wandering rhythms end up portraying the whole of the album perfectly. There's a sense that Tate and Liles set out to get lost on this record and to bring back all the details no matter how illogical they all might turn out to be. This particular meeting has produced an exceptional and strange record. It stands out among many of the other collaborations I've heard and marks another high point for both Tate and Liles.
Lucas Schleicher http://www.brainwashed.com

ECR
I suspect this collaboration had to happen just to get that awful pun of a name out of the way. Here Darren Tate and Andrew Liles create several soundscapes that mix drones, field recordings and acoustic instruments. The slowly evolving drone of 'Part I' builds until the bird, insect and water sounds, that threaten to swamp it completely cease abruptly, leaving only the naked drone. 'Part II' sees us back in the bayou being serenaded by japanese hillbillies (which reads like an eighties slasher-movie plot). The next two parts settle us into the warm embrace of the pure drones that these two do so well on their own whilst 'Part V' brings an accordian into the mix for what almost, but not quite, turns into a song. At various timesthis album reminded me of both Volcano the Bear (a seemingly random approach to instrumentation) and Nurse With Wound (a seemingly random approach to everything) but fortunately what we have here is far more than the sum of it's, maybe not influences but, contemporaries. Tate and Liles are both skilled enough to stamp their own collective identity onto the proceedings producing an album that I suspect will be haunting my player for some time to come. ecr.homestead.com Ian H.

Paris Transatlantic
One of the most coherent albums to come out of Northern England, a region that has generated some of the purest electroacoustic works in the last two decades from the likes of Colin Potter, Jonathan Coleclough, Paul Bradley and Andrew Chalk, Without Season fuses the skills and the vision of two fine purveyors of egoless kneadings of therapeutic field recordings and pellucid naive electronics, in the form of Andrew Liles (whose solo work is well represented by his excellent Drone Works on this same label), acting here as a "conductor", and Darren Tate, who provides most of the sonic material, including his trademark environmental sounds (water flowing and splendid birds on top) plus a squeezebox and various "improvisations". Also present is Darren's neighbour, 79-year old Kathleen Vance, whose stuttering accordion, heavily processed and accompanied by rare piano touches and synthetic waves, characterizes the final movement, a conceptual continuation of Tate's recent Trees Kissing Trees (Fungal), on which Vance was also prominently featured. Instruments mesh with the rainbow arcs of reverberating exploration in a meeting of three solitary souls who decided to share a little of their intimacy. MR paristransatlantic.com

The Wire February 2006 - Outer Limits
Despite a recent interest in solo productions, collaborations suit Darren Tate. In the late 80's Tate was a founding member of Ora alongside Andrew Chalk, Colin Potter and Lol Coxhill. Currently he continues with Potter in Monos and has also ventured into a couple of one-off collaborations such as Without Season with Andrew Liles. Here, the two have split their roles in the project, in deference to their primary talents, with Tate as the improvisor and Liles the composer. Having recorded events in natural settings, where Tate can be heard crumpling leaves and creaking hinges to the sounds of birds and draining aquifers, he passed them onto Liles, who shaped the context with the help of his synthetic ambience into an elegant Gothic sensibility. On the first two tracks, Liles punctuates the division of labour by situating Tate's unprocessed, haptic events against his own ominous melodic repetitions. While Liles deftly manipulates all of their materials together into dreamy vibrations, Without Season is most rewarding when the synthetic and the natural are allowed to cohabitate. Jim Haynes thewire.co.uk

The Unbroken Circle
Tate and Liles are Darren Tate and Andrew Liles collaborating on this album. Darren Tate is credited with ‘improvisations, field recordings and squeeze box’ whilst Kathleen Vance is credited with accordion. Andrew Liles is mysteriously only credited as ‘conductor’ and appears to be there to produce and balance the music. What strange and ethereal music it is too.

Darren Tate brings us some excellent field recordings that were captured in his garden of flowing water, bird song, creaking wood and insects. Set with this are minimalist electronic sounding drones, slow to develop like marsh gas rising. The music is so slow and often almost imperceptible that the listener’s attention is drawn to the field recordings. Odd digital noises that seem to be unrecognisable speech appear at times. Reverb is added to the field recordings which sound set into a landscape, bird songs seemingly both close at hand and in the distance. Electronic effects and layered field recordings grow in tension, a controlled cacophony of nature. This falls away and the field recordings fade out leaving only the surreal drones, the soundtrack to uncontrolled dreams, our minds left to wander and loop until they find reason.

On the second part, hesitant plucked string sounds and distant accordion replace the drones, a distorted squeeze box and a sound like pigs snuffling combine to disorienting impact. Small chime sounds come in towards the end. In the third part a huge accordion drone starts set in a cavern of reverb, the air moving slowly through the reeds. Reflections of accordion notes hang in the air, the original notes fading into the distance. The never ending reverb gives the accordion notes a glacial quality closer to the works of Thomas Koner than traditional accordion music. Over time the original signal is lost, only the echoes eventually remaining. By the fourth part the sound is minimal even ominous, formless clouds of sound slowly seeping into the atmosphere. Over the course the sound is processed eerily giving the music a mood like that of a 1950s British science fiction film, the land infected, the air poisoned, each person alien to the other.

The fifth and final piece is both the most conventional and also disturbing. An accordion plays a broken, strange folk melody merged with crow sounds and odd resonant processing. A piano plays dislocated notes, so few it is as though you imagined it. Over time all the other instruments are removed leaving only an the piano and a feeling of superstitious unease. This is a highly experimental album but one that reveals itself slowly with a building doomed, almost macabre atmosphere atmosphere. Your garden has never seemed so disturbing. www.theunbrokencircle.co.uk

Tokafi.com
Two hugging teddy bears on the cover, a cat’s face on the CD, a title called ‘Without Season’ and a plastic, or is it ceramic(?), wheelchair-bound boy with the head of a fox: Visual impressions of an album, which lists Andrew Liles as the “Conductor”. So what to expect of a recording by this busy duo of musicians with a huge output of experimental music? Well, experimental it is and let’s just put it this way: This album is definitely worth listening to.
In his garden (which must be a real heaven!) Darren Tate taped some terrific field recordings. In Part One – of a total of five on this CD - we hear running water, and its sound makes you imagine a fresh, cool spring, dashing downhill over stones, finally ending its run in a quiet pond while birds are chirping away playfully and a mild wind runs through the trees, moving their leaves in a delicate underlying swoosh. There are buzzing insects, criss-crossing around, moving close only to get away in a hurry. All that accompanied by drones that sound like one continous tone of a bell, changing once in a while, sometimes harmonious and quieting, sometimes swelling to deep, almost threatening sounds. These drones are so very effective in making the listener more and more sensible for the sounds of nature! And yet, almost unexpectedly, they fade away, almost into non-existence, but they still are of important presence, while the sounds of living creatures take over. Only a short while later to be extinct by the drones again, which conquer the field and leave the listener in a dream and mantra-like condition.
This theme goes on through the recording in various variations. Disharmonic accordion sounds come in, changing their tune with the changes in the sounds of nature. Interestingly enough, Kathleen Vance is credited for the accordion play, while Darren Tate signs responsible for the ‘squeeze box’ play. Whatever you want to make of this (or the conductor-crdedit for Liles), we also find special thanks to Mitchell, who “thought”, and Potter, who “acted”.
But let’s get back to the music. While parts three and four feature the underlying themes which we looked at before, part five is really outstanding in its introduction of (yes, that’s right!) a waltz. The accordion – or was it the squeeze box(?) –  performs short-cut harmonies set in the waltz rhythm, accompanied by piano tunes, that refuse to join in the rhythm, but produce underlying, slow melodic chords. This creates a truly upflifting atmosphere, and to me it is the ultimate irony behind these recordings, which is already hinted at in the credits.
Really, this feels to me like frolicking around with the oh-so-serious approaches many people hold. This recording prooves that there is a lot of space for relaxation and enjoyment. Just let your feelings take charge and allow yourself to laugh about what you may encounter (even if it’s only you who thinks it’s funny!). This piece is great, especially in the very sense I’ve just described. Thanks to Darren Tate and conductor Andrew Liles, as well as all people envolved in producing this fine music, we all can finally smile when listening to experimental music. By Fred Wheeler

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Paul Bradley - Sophia Drifts

Mystery Sea label description
"Sophia Drifts" sees Paul Bradley venturing further into the territories of subtle mysterious drones & new minimal sound spheres of aural contemplation...