On The Haunted Gramophone

Who can understand where your brain will go next with regards to what you are gong to listen to? I'm still really enjoying The Advisory Circle's excellent 2014 album From Out Here. Perhaps it's the best ever release on Ghostbox. It's definitely up there with The Focus Group's Hey Let Loose Your Love and Belbury Poly's The Willows in my book. I just wanna keep hearing it and I know I've already written about it a couple of times before but hey it keeps growing in my estimation. It's probably not very cool to be into GhostBox these days but I don't give a fuck. Hipsters can go and listen to their fka twiggles, shite z-grade house and whatever else.

Gesellschaft Zur Emanzipation Des Samples

Actually some other stuff from hauntological zones has had my attention also. I went back and had a listen to the G.E.S. album Circulations and fuck me, after having a reaction just a notch above lukewarm to it back in 2009, I'm starting to think this recording is one of the best in its field now. If you dig those first couple of Focus Group albums and haven't heard this you need to check it out. Circulations is a gloriously random sampleadelic collage and a mini-masterpiece. Apparently a couple years after this release G.E.S. did a second volume which passed me by but now I'm on the search for that.

Listening to that has in turn led me all the way back to 1999. Leyland Kirby's first release under The Caretaker pseudonym was issued in 1999 but I didn't hear it till the early 00s. Anyway those first 3 Caretaker albums Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom (99), A Stairway To The Stars (01) and We'll All Go Riding On A Rainbow (04) have had me captivated again. It's a bloody great concept ie. the haunted ballroom is The Gold Room in The Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's novel The Shining. They made a movie too that you may have seen, directed by a guy you may have heard of. Of course The Caretaker is named after the caretaker Jack Torrance from the aforementioned ghost story. Concepts are pretty meaningless though, unless the music is the goods. They're sometimes meaningless even when the music's expertly executed too. On this trilogy though music and concept are in sublime synchronicity. These records are perfectly out of time, sentimental, nostalgic, revenant, disorientating and even sometimes quite lovely. The Caretaker's secret is to keep it subtle and let the music insidiously haunt you. This trilogy is a magnificent achievement. The mood The Caretaker creates lingers on long after you've stopped listening and I find myself going back time and time again to experience the inexplicable feelings this music elicits (sorry couldn't bring myself to say uncanny Mr Fisher). The Caretaker is possibly the most artistically successful of anyone who has been cast as hauntological.

Finally this brings me to Actress. I didn't mind their R.I.P. record from 2012 and I thought 2010's Splazsh was quite ace. I never would have imagined they'd end up in such exhausted zones as those on last year's Ghettoville though. Darren Cunningham's exemplary arty electronic melange was always a restrained version of tech, house, garage and other club styles. I don't know if tunes from Splazsh or R.I.P. ever got played out but you felt like it was maybe possible with some of them. I can't imagine anything from Ghettoville getting a spin in a club though, unless its a disco at a funeral or a zombie rave. This is post-millennial electronic music that's broken down, malfunctioning and barely able to transmit through its frayed circuits which is not dissimilar in spirit to Mordant Music's requiem for rave Dead Air from 2006. Ghettoville feels like the final death notice for rave memorial services. I mean 'wake for rave' has become a sub-genre hasn't it? With the likes of Burial, Lee Gamble, Mordant Music, Leyland Kirby's V/VM et al. This could be the final death knell for the technoid future in ruins or is their further sonic depletion on the horizon?

You Might Also Like - eMMplekz

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eMMplekz

I'm in 2012 now

Whilst waiting for the new Boards Of Canada & The focus Group LPs I find my self still engaged in 2012. It's nearly bloody May. What's going on? I missed the eMMplekz LP IZOD Days when it came out, not getting it till after Xmas. This could possibly have been my record of the year had I heard it before the festive season. I don't recall it in any end of year lists at all. IZOD Days is my most played record of 2013 by far. This album has given me a renewed interest in Mordant Music. I loved Dead Air which I see as the key wake for rave album. Dead Air is an endlessly listenable record. When Symptoms (the follow up to Dead Air) came out though I was Perplexed and thought they'd gone all rock, you know, with vocals and shit. On Dead Air there was a track Fallen Faces which was quite incongruous as it had vocals and rock like sounds. I thought why did they put that track on? When Symptoms was released I saw that that's where Mordant was heading. Symptoms was quickly turfed but now I want to hear it again along with any other Mordant Music releases that followed.

Ekoplekz, who can keep up with this guy? It's similar to James Ferraro 3 or 4 years ago when every time you'd turn around he would release a new tape or cdr. All the Ekoplekz material I've managed to track down is quality. Nick Edwards aka Ekoplekz is definitely an artist going through an unstoppable purple patch.

This collaboration between Baron Mordant & Nick Edwards is totally inspired! A musical match made (I was about to say heaven, but that's not quite right) in late capitalist dystopia. It's the perfect blend of both artists. They both shine equally. Usually in these projects one artist has more influence over the other or both collaborators sleepwalk through the recording. There's a track that I think might be a love song to an Automatic Teller Machine. Some of the language I don't quite understand. Is some of it made up? What the fuck is an IZOD Day? I hope this is not a one off performance but a continuing entity.