Mixing the Quiet World

It's been a pretty tedious day today. It's been pissing down all day and so I've spent it sat here feeling cooped up and slightly ill. I really wanted to spend the day under a tree with my book and a bottle but the weather put paid to that idea. also was meant to be going to a gig tonight but my lift cancelled at the last moment and i couldn't be bothered to go on my own so, crap day followed by crap evening.
but it did mean i could get on with something I'd planned to do the other day and so i busied myself making a Mixcloud mix of old Quiet World tracks. There's one unreleased track on there (the second) but the rest are all taken from previous QW and ECR releases. hope you enjoy.

Quiet World by Quietworld on Mixcloud

Gambolling dirt

After about 10 months of promising to do it i've finally finished the new collaboration with Darren Tate. It's a two track album called 'The Earth In Play' and it's a lot mellower and less intense than recent releases. no keyboard drones on this one it's all acoustic. Darren sent me some accordian and strange percussive noises (made on a guitar and a bowl) which i mixed with some field recordings, a great long layered wooden flute drone and some of my rudimentary piano playing. hopefully you'll dig it. i like it and darren's response was pretty enthusiastic. no release date as yet but i'd hazard a guess that it'll be in about a month.

Mixcloud for WWR33

it took me a while to get this together but here it is.

Wonderful Wooden Reasons 33 by Quietworld on Mixcloud

grave hunting

Went for a long walk the other day and took some photos. the second one was taken from where i was crashed out in the third one.

An ancient burial site in a place called Tinkinswood.


another ancient burial site. this one was for a greyhound.


taking a well needed break. it was unseasonably warm after such a long cold winter.

tired, so very tired.

have run myself ragged over the last week and a half but able to go back to work soon for a bit of a rest.

the new issue of the zine is up. no podcast as yet as i've not had time but hopefully soon.

a new review of A Brief Sojourn arrived today from Evening Of Light - my thanks to Oscar.

In terms of quality releases, things have been running smoothly for Welsh drone/ambient label Quiet World. A recent example is A Brief Sojourn, a collaboration between Banks Bailey and Ian Holloway, delivering well over half an hour of finely blended drones and field recordings.

The sound on this album is most comparable to that on Summerland, where both men worked together with Darren Tate. A heavy dose of nature sounds like rain, birds, rustlings, are combined with subtle melodies, drones, and pulses, together forming a varied and atmospheric whole. The drones and weather sounds form an organic backdrop for a broad scala of unique ‘voices’.

The release isn’t very extreme at either end of the intensity spectrum; it maintains a stable level of layeredness and volume, without any strong eruptions of noise or silence. A perfect companion piece for a journey, a meditation or relaxation session, and the like. It’s a tad dark and ominous at times, so A Brief Sojourn will primarily be of interest to lovers of more obscure drone and ambient, but that goes for most of the Quiet World titles thus far. Compared to what went before, in any case, this one is certainly no disappointment.

chilling with tea and a book

on holiday for two weeks. can't afford to go anywhere exotic so staying put and disappearing off on jaunts. today though is all about watching old episodes of doctor who, reading a victorian era who-dunnit, walking into mumbles for a mooch around and then getting a late breakfast in my favourite greasy-spoon cafe before heading home to repeat the first two.

got a new review yesterday for A Brief Sojourn and very nice it is too. thanks michael.

On A Brief Sojourn, Quiet World head Ian Holloway (formerly Psychic Space Invasion) constructs wonderfully solemn ambient gloriousness out of synthesizers and Banks Bailey's crisp, bucolic field recordings. It's a stellar match – this isn't the first time the two have collaborated – as Holloway's gloriously low-key drones coalesce perfectly with the incidental recordings: a trickling creek, wind in the thickets, insect symphonies... All together, the disc has that uncanny ability to take you to (your own mental rendition of) the sound sources themselves, though imbued with an inner tranquility that meshes perfectly with the pastoral nature of the audio. Through the album's lone, substantial composition, several stretches of mood are encountered, including periods of uplifting lightness, vague menace, and dreary longingness. Certainly, one of Holloway's core talents is his ability to conjure up these feelings with such minimal sonic output – it's all about sound placement and the choice of tones. Design aside, however, what results from all this is a thirty-six minute passage of sound that is at once marvellously listenable, exquisite to rest to, and more than a little reminiscent of ambient work by Biosphere – especially with regards to the field recordings, which remind one of a less polar formulation of Geir Jenssen's atmospheric designs. A subtle treat. - Michael Tau,

New items in the Quiet World Shop

I'm having a clearout and as i have a lot of stuff knocking around the house this may take a while.
Most of it will go on ebay (user id elviscoffee) but a lot of it will be added to the shop on the QW site.

I only started doing this earlier today and as I'm otherwise occupied over the coming weekend it's unlikely to be added to in the next few days but over time there'll be a large amount of cds and books appearing on there.

Contact me if you're interested in anything.

Celtic Mystic?

another review of the new album, this time from The Sound Projector. I'm a pretty new convert to the zine. i've known about it for a while but it kept slipping off my radar. he updates weekly with about 5 new reviews and i think it's well worth ckecking out.

Celtic mystic Ian Holloway was last heard from us when he was musing about the fragility of dragonfly wings at the end of last year. On Handle this wino like he was an angel: Baubles & Gewgaws 2002-2008 (QUIET WORLD 13), he delves into a secret folder on his home PC, contents of said folder of a nature and value known only to himself. Said contents built up over time when he was producing numerous albums and tracks as Psychic Space Invasion between 2002 and 2008. On that basis, one might be forgiven for thinking this is just a collection of anonymous computer music, but this little Chinese puzzle is a far more interesting listen than the banal filtered samples and boring processed loops that most creators manage to summon up from their Samsungs. I rather feel Holloway has somehow left a collection of his own mental imprints in the very circuits of his PC, and he needed only activate a few keystrokes to let these strange ideas and impressions come tumbling out.

I'm so glad Wino is getting nice reviews. I really didn't know what to expect as it's so different from anything else i've done in recent years. it's a good feeling when you get positive feedback on something.

have a great weekend.

The reviews are coming thick and fast at the moment

this is from Indieville and is written by fella called Michael Tau who i did that little interview with last month. He says very nice things about my music and I thank him for it.

Nothing delights me more than a forty minute ambient epic, and Holloway delivers in spades. Treading the same water as Biosphere's Substrata album, She Loves to See the Sky moseys gradually through a metamorphosing passage of sound, toying with various background textures, field recordings, and synthesizer drones along the way. It's a relaxing but substantive trip, imbued with a naturalistic quality that is evoked by way of faraway birds chirping, wind rustling, and general outdoorsy audio. Seldom does this disc force its way into the sonic foreground, so to speak, although some indefinable metallic clatter is heard on occasion – seldom to grating effect, but more so to add variety to an otherwise subtle release. She Loves to See the Sky is, ultimately, a fundamentally restful album, and it's perfectly suited to accompanying the listener to bed. With lights out and a comfortable nook ready, this is nothing short of a marvellous treat.

A Brief Sojourn reviewed in Rumbles

Banks is most definitely not from South Wales - Arizona actually - but another nice review.

Ian Holloway & Banks Bailey are a couple of sonic explorers from South Wales, here presenting their album "A Brief Sojourn," which is a single thirty-six minute track taking electronics and natural sounds as a basis for work. The synthesizers drone and sway in stereo, while other sounds lurk deep in the mix. The natural sounds are subtle and don't take over; a deep and melancholy mood covers the piece. Very good indeed, and ideal for that 'last CD of the evening' moment.

there's still copies of the album available should anyone want one.

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Winter finally seems to be over and it's been a beautiful spring day here. It's still pretty cold but the sun is shining the birds are singing and the park is full of muticoloured wild flowers. Had a good walk through Clyne and fed the ducks which was something i hadn't done for a long long time.

I have some field recordings here that i'm going to upload to here some point soon so you may want to keep an eye out for them. for now though it's time for some tea.

first review of the new album

Always super quick off the mark, the ever lovely Frans over at Vital Weekly has posted up the first review of the new(ish) album.

He's wrong about it being my first album of shorter tracks, there've been 6 others, but on the whole I think it's a pretty fair assessment.

IAN HOLLOWAY - HANDLE THIS WINO LIKE HE WAS AN ANGEL: BAUBLES & GEWGAWS 2002-2008 (CDR by Quiet World)
As far as I can remember, I think that all of the releases by Ian Holloway had just one track. Usually a drone based piece of around forty minutes. That's about the extend of his work, with minor differences here and there. Then this new release comes a major surprise. Apparently Holloway sometimes creates weird, little pieces on his computer, which he calls 'little diversions, games, distractions and brainstorms' which never fitted on any 'real' release. All of these little pieces were kept over a period of eight years and are now collected here. This is by far not the Holloway we know, no long form drones here, hardly any organ like sound, but something which is probably best defined as plunderphonics. Lifting his sounds from various types of media (CDs, TV, internet: who knows) he cuts and pastes them together in a highly vibrant manner. The CD opens with 'Why M', which seems to be more a click 'n cut piece, but quite soon after orchestral music comes in. Looped, transposed, shifted in true plunderphonic fashion. As said sometimes things are more abstract, in a clicks 'n cut manner, but these tracks are all pretty short. Its a pretty interesting release, but perhaps a bit long for the limited amount of ideas that these pieces have. I think Holloway could have been a bit more selective with these pieces, throw out those with the weakest ideas and over the top effects, like 'Monday's Time', and have with ten or so (instead of fifteen now) a much stronger album. Now its all a bit too sketch like and a bit crowded. I am pretty sure his dedicated fans will be shocked by this release, but I thought it was pretty good as well as funny. (FdW)

interestingly Darren Tate said something similar about it needing pruning but the whole point of releasing ths album was that it was a folder full of tracks that i'd grown to be inordinately fond of and so to leave any out would have felt odd.

It's always nice to get the first review back i'm not overly concerned with them but it is a good feeling when someone says something nice about your tunes.

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have spent most of today discussing the impact of punk music on subsequent genres with a bunch of music technology students. there are definitely worse ways to spend a day.

some photos from Oxford

I got to be disgustingly old back in January (40 if you must know) and so sue decided to indulge my passion for all things brass and victorian and took me on a jaunt to Oxford to the Science museum and the Steampunk exhibition they were running. We also got to check out the new look Ashmolean - notable only for the slice that the staircase took out of my finger - and the beautiful Pitt-Rivers Anthropology museum and the Natural History museum which had the best roof i've ever seen.

anyway, here's some photos - i hope you dig them.

* The photos in landscape are getting clipped by blogger so click them to see the full version.

this is the Pitt-Rivers. check out that amazing totem pole. You could lose weeks (and children) in this place. It's jammed with stuff.


T-Rex at the Natural History Museum

Just the most amazing roof. i could have stared at this for days.

The Science Museum goes pseudo science.
This is a real exhibit (not part of the Steampunk stuff) and my favourite thing there. it's for measuring skulls. Isn't it wonderful.

An 'Eye-Pod'
I want one of these suits.peace
ian

ps - it's my brother's birthday today. Happy birthday Stuart here's to many, many more.

New album out now

Between 2002 and 2008 I recorded and released 7 albums, 2 EP's and various compilation tracks under the alias of Psychic Space Invasion. They were, I'm happy to say, a stylistically varied bunch that ranged from the sinister (This Quiet World) to the cosmic (Pendulum) with excursions into minimalism (All God's Children Got Space), noise (Lullaby For Rhodri) and musique concrete (In the Mean Time) with a few other detours along the way. It was undoubtedly the most creatively rewarding period of my life to that point.

All the time I was making this music there was, hidden on my PC a separate and very oddly named folder into which I fed all the interesting little diversions, games, distractions and brainstorms that simply didn't fit on whichever album I was working on at the time.

The title, 'Handle this wino like he was an angel', was robbed wholesale and wholeheartedly from the novel 'Trout Fishing In America' by beat author Richard Brautigan which I was reading at the time. Only ever meant to be an interim title for the folder it became, over time, increasingly apt as I grew ever more enamoured of it's contents and these previously discarded compositions took on a new life.

These 15 tracks represent a period in my life of constant exploration, of trying to find a route through music that was interesting and satisfying. These little stabs of sound are the much loved bastard offspring of that search.

The album is available from the Quiet World website here or alternatively you can listen to it by clicking the play button on the mixcloud player below.

I hope you dig it.

Handle This Wino Like He Was An Angel: 2002-2008 by Quietworld on Mixcloud

new old music on it's way

over the last couple of weeks I've been toying with the idea of releasing a new album. It's a collection of outtakes dating from 2002 to 2008, the time when I was making music under the psychic space invasion guise. it's 15 tracks of music that never fitted onto one of the albums or was made purely for the joy of making an odd noise.
I'm fairly brutal with my music and if i don't like something it usually gets deleted but all of these tracks must have caught my ears in some way as instead they were archived in a folder named after a line in a Richard Brautigan book i was reading at the time. over time i found that the tunes in this folder were something that i played increasingly often when nothing else was doing it for me and so became increasingly fond of the little blighters.
So, cutting to the now and I've decided to put it out and let others have a listen. Designing the sleeve took forever but I'm pretty pleased with the one i finally settled on.

I guarantee it's like nothing you've ever heard from me before. It's playful, it's obtuse, it's angular and it's fun.
it'll be available from the 28th of February.

i did an interview

it's here.

i'm also working on new tunes for the first time in 14 months.
it's a good feeling.