Thursday 30 May 2013

Endless Tapes EP


Sometime ago, I connected with Brescia based drummer/multi instrumentalist Alessandro "Petrol" Pedretti, whose rhythmically interesting, kaleidoscopic and minimalistic ideas immediately appealed to me, and who was up for helping me develop some of my own musically compatible sketches. 

Working on the material together at various times has also been a great opportunity for me to do a lot of things that either I don't do very often, or sometimes don't do at all, for instance, ebow, slide/feedback style noise guitar, various electronics as well as programming, and also to explore some of the depths of my "further out" FX  (like the Ravish Sitar and my very under-used VB-99 for example). 
I am also pretty sure I've ended up playing every bass I have in my collection at some point, from fretless and upright to my foam muted vintage Ovation Magnum II .- plenty of colours.

Our remote compositions were shaped, honed, edited and mixed with sessions together late last year at Taverna Studios in Brescia, Italy with the assistance of engineer Domenico Vigliotti, and the final results mastered by a friend of mine, Brighton based producer/mixer Paul Mex.

Pedretti and I settled on the name "Endless Tapes" to work under, which I feel is appropriate for the simple reason that, although having of course a linear flow, the music contains a lot of cyclic, sometimes odd meter, circular elements, and in a lot of cases I can imagine the compositions might have resolved in a completely different way to how they have ended up. There's a certain geometric logic to some things, but the mathematical influences are not overiding or distracting in any way, and for me the music retains its emotional elements and also has a great deal of warmth.

I hope listeners will find Endless Tapes fluid, evolving, transparent, spacious, sonically adventurous, atmospheric, hypnotic and highly engaging, reflecting the natural flow that bought it all forth.

Our first release, "Endless Tapes EP" consisting of four tracks, will be available on CD and also a limited edition cassette.


Carl Glover from Aleph has designed a very fitting CD cover....see above, and Petulia Mattioli has made a video for one of the tracks, which I'll be sharing very soon.

I was for many years, a major listener of music on cassette, only recently exchanging the tape deck in my car for an ipod based system. There's something about the inability to instantly skip from one track to the next (I never had one of those tape decks that found the silence between tracks) that often led me to persevere with some tracks I didn't instantly connect with, which is no bad thing.


Anyway, cassette actually seems like an appropriate format for Endless Tapes, as perhaps the music is really best listened to whilst watching those little wheels go round and round.......

I'll be posting up some more info soon....

Best,

Colin

Thursday 16 May 2013

Astarta/Edwin - Live at Kraina Mriy Festival in July.





More cyrillic...the above poster is for the Kraina Mriy World Music Festival in Kiev, Ukraine in July, where I'll be performing live with Astarta/Edwin, i.e. myself and Ukrainian vocal duo Astarta.
 I am very pleased to have also persuaded my Burnt Belief partner Jon Durant to make the trek from Boston, USA to join us and add his amazing guitar stylings.
Jon has made some great contributions to the Astarta/Edwin material, (which is still work in progress at the moment), so it's fitting that he joins us, more details in due course.

Above - In Vyshgorod, near Kiev.

                                                          Astarta  -  Inna left, Yulia right.

Despite having an avid interest in all things mythographic, I must to confess to having been slow off the mark and totally not recognising the origin of the name Astarta, which is, I now realise, the Ukrainian-ized name for "Astarte", the Ancient goddess, certainly appropriate given the "Yin" energy that Inna and Yulia have in abundance....

Best,

Colin

Thursday 9 May 2013

Live Photos Metallic Taste of Blood.

Some live photos Metallic Taste of Blood from Wroclaw, thanks to Veronika Klimonová and Kamil Downarowicz for the pictures.

Balazs Pandi




My Wal


Eraldo Bernocchi tunes up...
 Roy Powell
Roy's hands

Eraldo Bernocchi




Balasz Pandi

Solo Work

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