NICK KUEPFER/KHÔRA – ‘Arachnidiscs Split Tape Series Sides 11 & 12’ C40 $9CAD (World)
Edition of 50 // pro-duped // DL code included // 16 page full-colour mini-zine. Side 11—Nick Kuepfer, Tape Test For A New Year / Audrey’s Asprin / Grackles: Grinding string harmonies drone from the celestial abyss. Birds sing, forests crumble. A ghost trains thunders across the prairies, hammers on tin roofs as it passes. Somewhere to the south, a bank robber dies in the tumbleweeds, clutching a satchel full of money with a dusty hand. An entrancing, cinematic soundscape; a travelogue of the spaces between light and shadow. BIO: Montreal-based guitarist Nick Kuepfer weaves nylon string and electric guitar pieces with live-sampled tape loops, recordings of animals, and drones from various sources. His predominantly wordless music ranges from subtle and static to frantic and abrasive, with a methodical, vigilant sense of experimentation guided by the search for consonance and dissonance with the sounds of “nature”. Side 12—Khôra, Foris: Ringing in the shadows of a European cathedral, tones weave behind a camel train on the spice road and twist like smoke beyond the bazaars of Turkey before erupting like an Icelandic volcano, black ash on white snow. BIO: Matthew Ramolo’s Khôra project is based chiefly on acoustic/electric guitar and field recordings, with extensive signal processing and digital interventions conditioning these sources to create an immersive soundworld of drones, chimes, rings and other pointillistic sonics. His longform compositions contain lovely stretches of relatively unprocessed and fully recognisable guitar work, with picking patterns and chord sequences that evolve/devolve into more signal-bent and DSP soundscapes. The results are highly organic and meditative while retaining plenty of icy shards, bubbling distortions and passages of controlled monumentalism, making this anything but an ambient listen.
SILENT LAND TIME MACHINE/MOONWOOD – ‘Arachnidiscs Split Tape Series Sides 13 & 14’ C44
Edition of 50 // pro-duped // DL code // full-colour insert // special custom poly sleeve packaging. Side 13 — SILENT LAND TIME MACHINE. They say everything’s bigger in Texas. That includes the mind-expanding tones coming out of out of Silent Land Time Machine’s epic looped violin compositions that weave and drone like tumbleweeds on crack’d black asphalt. Good sounds from bad lands. “Many Many Happy Returns” recorded LIVE at Marigold Studios (R.I.P.) in London, ON “The Contours Of Perfect Distance” recorded LIVE at Le Cagibi, in Montréal, QC, with additional amenities provided by Khôra & Nick Kuepfer. BIO: SLTM; an inadvertent aural accumulator; a fractured signal; a concerted, compassionate memory resistor; the IN/OUT of an organic circuit experiencing itself for the first time; a starry-eyed-bliss-transformer; nerves attaching, detaching, strengthening, and severing; aimed at the clearing of neural circuitry with the frequency of white wind. Side 14 — MOONWOOD, Soul Oaks. Moonwood guitarist, Jakob Rehlinger, works through six electric and acoustic solo guitar improvisations trying to get somewhere in the Easts (Far- and Middle-) while remaining rooted in the Americas. Lyrical, soaring airs played over dark, oily drones. Recorded direct to 2-track live in Moonwood’s rehearsal studio between Nov 2011 and May 2012. BIO: Moonwood is the psych-improv project of Toronto (ON) guitarist Jakob Rehlinger, often joined by Jacqueline Noire on percussion, vocals and woodwinds. Solo or as a duo, Moonwood’s music is informed by (while not necessarily adhering to the traditions of) Tibetan funeral chants, krautrock, Balinese gamelan, classic psychedelic rock, traditional Japanese and South Asian music, dub, free-jazz and the usual grab-bag of avant-folk styles