Distant Animals – ‘The Frequency Of The Heart At Rest’
The Frequency of the Heart at Rest uses a custom tuning system (based upon multiplications of the frequency of the human heart whilst sleeping) to construct a dense, enigmatic sound world. Modular synthesis, alongside violins, trumpets, and percussion, are processed through reels of analogue tape, the speed of their playback on the tape adjusted in order to match the works bespoke tuning system. Parts have been re-recorded several times over, their distinct tonalities bleeding into one another to create a unified, claustrophobic sonic tapestry. Drawn from the composer’s own battles with extreme sleep loss – waking as often as every 15 minutes throughout the night for a period of almost 3 years – the work encapsulates the haze of the perpetual tired. Snatches of pleasant, nostalgic melodies filter through a wall of grit and noise, the result of the repeated over-dubbing of reels, an increasingly worn tape medium burying whatever clarity there might once have been in an endless wash of artifacts and decay. Merging minimal neo-classicism with drone, minimal electronica, noise, glitch and sound design, the album offers a tense and fragile journey through a disparate, impoverished landscape, the soundtrack invoking a sensory world always on the brink of collapse.
Score – ‘Still Moving’
Recorded in 2017 & unreleased until now, ‘Still Moving’ is Score’s fifth album for CN & the stepping-stone between the dark dissonance of ‘Slump’ (2016) & the more melodic optimism of ‘Vent’ (2018). A lush work of shoegaze-dream-pop-tronica with impeccable production detail that Chris Tate is famed for. The perfect soundtrack for an autumnal duvet day.
Todeskino – ‘Debutante’
Hailing from Düsseldorf, ‘Debutante’ propels the listener into a Lynchian experience that draws warm, dreamlike ambience combined with lo-fi field recordings & classical sounds, creating a nostalgic trip back to sweet & melancholic memories.
Mitternacht – ‘The Snake’
Loosely conceived as a soundtrack to driving along the mysterious, historic route through the Pennines which connects the composer’s hometown of Liverpool with his childhood city of Sheffield, this album attempts to evoke the fierce natural beauty of this treacherous road via electronic soundscapes that veer between blissful ambience & lo-fi techno.
Cavesnake – ‘Cavesnake’
London-based duo, Cavesnake started writing and creating together circa 2013. Oxgoat and Sikander Louse came together through a shared love of ugly, blown out Black Metal, achingly beautiful ambient soundscapes, and deep space horror. They use the interstitial zone of Cavesnake to explore themes of loss, emptiness, ontological insecurity and the righteous acceptance of the impending apocalypse. Cavesnake record straight to tape and through a rigorous process of layering, drenching samples in reverb, re-amping guitar drones through monstrous cabinets, they force their music to hang listlessly in a void space akin to an event horizon. They created Cavesnake to reach the stars, but it has gone much, much further than that. It tore a hole in our universe, a gateway to another dimension. A dimension of blissful chaos. Where Cavesnake are taking you, you will not need eyes to see.
Francesco Terrini & Luxury Mollusc – ‘Choir Of Deluded Mass’
Dark ambient experimental noise & power electronics from the Philippines meets atmospheric harsh scrap abuse & ditch-drone from Ireland, in a sound-clash that’s not for the feint-hearted.