Tuesday 22 June 2010

North Wales Jaunt

this last week i was bumming around north west Wales.

we stayed here...
Llanfair pg

This was the view from our room
view from our room
the pointy mountain nearest the left is Snowdon.

Did a lot of mooching around but best of all we went to Port Meirion
port meirion

which was where they made...
port meirion

port meirion

port meirion

port meirion

port meirion

There are more photos on my flickr page

Tuesday 8 June 2010

Wonderful Wooden Reasons #34

hi folks
the new issue (#34) of Wonderful Wooden Reasons is now online as is the mixcloud mix.
It can be read either here or here

It's the usual mixed bag of genres. I hope you find something you like.

albums by...

Chemins
DIODAAR
Fukuoka, Garcia, Henritzi, Izarzugaza, Karpenter, Mantizidisor
Grozny Penthouse
Rolf Julius
Marinos Koutsomichalis
Richard Moult
David Newlyn
No Context
N.Strahl.N
Obsil
Quetev Meriri
Seasons (pre-din)
Sujo
Philip Sulidae
Syrinx
Darren Tate
Carlos Villena
David Wells
Simon Whetham

Tuesday 1 June 2010

First review of 'The Earth in Play' now online

big thanks as ever to Frans over at Vital Weekly.

Following his solo 'poppy' sample madness of 'Handle This Wino Like He Was Angel' (see Vital Weekly 721) Ian Holloway returns here to his familiar background that of drone music, along with Darren Tate, who is of course known as the man behind Ora. He plays 'squeeze box', guitar and percussion) here, while Holloway takes responsibility for piano, wooden flute and sea recordings. Its divided in two parts, of which the second is the longer piece. The first is an intro like piece for some flowing synthesizer like sounds, and then it goes into the second piece, the main thing. Its hard to recognize many of the instruments used in this tracks, squeeze box? percussion? A guitar, yes, sea sounds, yes, piano too. Its perhaps too easy to say that this is just a beautiful piece of music, but it is. A great slow flow of sounds, a quiet sea on a calm day type of music. Nothing more, nothing less than just that. Nothing new under the burning drone sun, but in these capable hands a great piece of
music.

.......................

I'm up to my eyeballs in work here at the moment. Between writing the new issue of WWR (online this coming Sunday all being well) and writing the lectures for the (now three) courses that i'll be teaching come September I'm drowning in work. Lecturing wise I'm trying to get as much done now as i can before i start the 2 year course i'm signed up for in august which will be a ridiculous amount of extra work. hopefully the extra cash will make things feel less of a chore cause i'm brutally skint.

anyway, i've been pottering around quietly with some tunes for the Pendulum 2 (not it's finished title) album i've been planning. i'm four tracks into it and it's sounding pretty good so far. this is one of them. the vid was made on my digital camera walking along Pennard cliffs, Mumbles promenade and Llangennith beach. hope you dig it.