Various Artists - Kanshin

WWW.KANSHIN.CO.UK

Kanshin is a two CD compilation album that presents a collection of sound design work from some of the scene's finest artists from across the globe. It has been put together to raise money for the current recovery in Japan following March's earthquake.

As the sensationalist media broadcasters find other things to talk about in the news, a huge recovery operation is still on-going as we speak. Many people have lost everything. So we decided to put together Kanshin so that via Ian Hawgood, 100% of profit from compilation sales will go directly towards the Japan recovery and on-going relief efforts. Ian lives in Japan and his wife is currently working with both the Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support organisation (JEARS)
in Sendai and surrounding areas, as well as the Direct Help for Victims and Animals Rejected from Shelters in Japan group who are going up to areas which are not receiving government support for food, water, basic
supplies, as well as rebuilding and cleaning up. By this means they are able to transport food, clothing and aid directly almost every other weekend and during holidays to areas which are not getting enough or any support.
Ian's wife has also arranged a house as a base in Sendai for volunteers and a temporary home for found animals who are then moved on through JEARS either to foster homes or animal centres. We felt that any funds we can send this way would probably have more of an immediate impact than donating via one of the larger UK charities.

Ian himself has contributed to the compilation in a collaboration with Peter Jørgensen and through 3 hours and some 30 tracks, the line up that comprises this album is surely as exciting as it gets...

Kanshin is curated by Daniel Crossley (Fluid Radio/Fluid
Audio/Facture) and Jonathan Lees (Hibernate/Rural Colours), with invaluable assistance from Ian Hazeldine (Cover art), Wil Bolton (Mastering) and Damian Valles (Digital distribution). This release is made possible by the generosity of all of the artists involved.

TRACKLIST:

1. Clem Leek: Light Passage II (Grief)
2. Hummingbird: Dancing Shadows
3. Relmic Statute: Lopery
4. Scissors and Sellotape: Heal
5. P Jørgensen & Ian Hawgood: Isles
6. Wil Bolton: Lost In Transit
7. Field Rotation: A Pondering Silence
8. Caught In The Wake Forever: LiaFail (At Dawn)
9. Damian Valles: Clime
10. Library Tapes: May (Variation)
11. Yellow6: Repeat
12. Maps & Diagrams with Yvat: Again
13. Felicia Atkinson: Chaleur Vacante
14. Hessien: Flightless And Nocturnal
15. Yann Novak: 3 Surfaces Excerpt
16. Offthesky With Ten And Tracer: Therapy Refuge
17. Orla Wren With Katie English: Swallowtail Yellow
18. The Moving Dawn Orchestra: We’re Here
19. Spheruleus: Residue
20. The Silence Set: So Will Everything We Love
21. Aaron Martin & Machinefabriek: Utsutsu
22. Szymon Kaliski: And Longing
23. Jeremy Bible & Jason Henry: Grainslip
24. Bengalfuel: Gorgon
25. David Newlyn: Landscape (III)
26. Tom White: Bright Rooms
27. Listening Mirror: The Cause Of It All
28. Talvihorros – Perigee
29. Alex Durlak: Bellows
30. Antonymes: Kiotsuketene
31. Kyle Bobby Dunn: Britannia Into Morning

"In The Bleak Wilderness Of Sleep" (Compilation featuring a Spheruleus track)

http://music.audiogourmet.co.uk/album/in-the-bleak-wilderness-of-sleep

1. Michael Trommer - Pushing Through Gray

2. Simon Whetham - Cold Shoulder (Part 1.2)

3. D'Incise - Octobre-Septembre

4. James McDougall - Scarborough

5. Specta Ciera - Under Cool Air

6. Deep Into Perspectives - Home

7. Francisco Lopez - Untitled #264

8. Spheruleus - Overcast

9. Small Things On Sundays - Harbour

10. Philip Sulidae - Aher

11. Natalia Noelia Siebuła & Bartosz Dziadosz - Ótta og kvíða

12. Julien Demoulin - Dull Ache

"As well as curating and putting together this compilation album to celebrate Audio Gourmet's first birthday, I've taken the time to put together a Spheruleus track for it. It's pretty intense; dark and brooding. It was recorded using guitar, violin, radio and vinyl static and voice."

BLURB:

On the 17th of May 2011, Audio Gourmet is precisely a year old. To celebrate this, we have been busy putting together a couple of compilation albums. One of which is 'In The Bleak Wilderness Of Sleep' available for purchase here as either a multi-format digital album or as a limited edition CDr. The compilation features 12 tracks from some of the globe's most talented sound-designers. It is a subtly rewarding headphone listen from start to finish; curated and ordered to purposefully induce a state of sleep. Starting off minimally, gradually gathering tone and atmosphere, the experience goes on without ever boiling over or reaching a crescendo. Parts of the album are light and restful whereas traces of it tread darker territory. All in all, the imagery that the album conjurs sits perfectly as a soundtrack to the dreams one experiences during a nights sleep.

The artwork was put together by French artist Eric Lacombe (Monstror) who some may remember for his cover art collaborations for Spheruleus releases in the past. Here for 'In The Bleak Wilderness Of Sleep', his surreal imagery lends itself perfectly to this mysterious dream invoking soundtrack.

The limited edition CDr release comes housed inside a recycled card case with the cover artwork slipped inside and printed to photographic paper. Along with a CDr copy of the album itself, the tracklist will be printed to high quality salmon coloured paper/card. On the front, the album title will be rubber stamped in brown ink and on the back, the Audio Gourmet logo will be cut out by lazers. It will be hand-numbered in brown pen and limited to 200 copies.

*The first 50 copies will include a second bonus image, taken by select friends and photographers. These include: Gerry McDermott, Harry Towell, James McDougall, Peter Nejedly, Seth Chrisman, Simon Whetham and Stuart Towell.

Everyone who purchases the CD version will be entitled to a free and instant digital copy of the album. For those that wish to purchase a digital only version, this can be obtained as usual through the Audio Gourmet Bandcamp account.

Spheruleus - Forgotten Outland (Resting Bell)

SPHERULEUS - FORGOTTEN OUTLAND

Resting Bell, February 2011

Description
The sound-art of Spheruleus is produced by British artist Harry Towell with a previous discography including releases on the likes of Under The Spire, Earth Mantra and Test Tube as well as his own label Audio Gourmet. Intrigued by all things old and rustic, his music is often inspired by the rural Lincolnshire surroundings in which he lives and his first outing of 2011, here on Resting Bell, is intended to really captured this.

A short collection of deliberately loose and degraded instrument samples and field recordings, ‘Forgotten Outland’ is presented as if it were an old record found discarded inside a derelict farm building on disused land.
It comprises of blurred melodic passages and offers a faded insight into times gone by when the farmland thrived. Just like the physical state of the farm itself, the record sounds timeworn, warped and a shadow of its former self.

The instrument leads and various sounds climb over one another as if fighting for a voice. Nothing seems structured or in order, although amidst the deluge of disjointed melody, subtle detail can be focused upon to reveal parts of this purposefully concealed soundtrack.

Release Date
25.02.2011

All sounds performed, recorded and arranged by Harry Towell between spring 2010 and winter 2011
Instruments used: Guitar, Vibraphone, Zither, Bugle, Keyboard, Harmonica, Trumpet and Violin

Artwork
Photography by Jonathan Lees, Cragg Vale Photography
(http://www.craggvalephotography.co.uk/)

Additional Photography, by Harry Towell:

18/02/2011 Spheruleus - Debris [Audio Gourmet]

http://music.audiogourmet.co.uk/album/debris

AG004: SPHERULEUS - DEBRIS
Audio Gourmet, February 2011

For the first Spheruleus outing of 2011, Audio Gourmet label curator Harry Towell has scoured his hard-drive to put together a collection of tracks that are born out of unfinished samples and discarded parts of previous projects. They have been presented as a four track EP which is aptly titled 'Debris'.

The source material was drawn from the usual collection of instrument samples that Towell's work typically comprises of, although heavily processed with 'vintage' style ambient production techniques. The resulting soundtrack is loose and drifting with moments of hiss and static - a production style that you might not always associate with the work of Spheruleus.
The aim was to draw out the near 24 minute duration as long as possible, giving the impression of time standing still and allowing these otherwise unused sounds a chance to have their 'day'.

2011 is to be a big year for Spheruleus, with CD album 'Voyage' scheduled for release on Hibernate this summer and another short album coming out on Resting Bell at the end of February. Not to mention the debut Paper Relics album recorded with brother Stuart due out in March/April...

spheruleus.blogspot.com
creditsreleased 18 February 2011
Recorded and produced by Harry Towell
Photography by Stuart Towell

Hibernate Records/Rural Colours forecast mix...

Hibernate/Rural Colours Selection by Fluid Radio on Mixcloud

Jonathan from Hibernate and Rural Colours has put together a mix for Fluid Radio that delves through the catalog of forthcoming releases on both labels.
I've an album coming out on Hibernate myself this summer called 'Voyage'. An unmastered and un-final edit of a track from this called 'Submerged' is included in this forecast - click play to hear for yourself....

15 questions to Harry Towell/Spheruleus | Interview on Tokafi

INTRO (Tobias Fischer, Tokafi)
There's nothing inherently mysterious about working with sound. Sometimes, in fact, it simply means giving in to the simple pleasures in life: Not all too long ago, at a time when most of Britain was hiding from an unexpected bout of „snow of considerable proportion“, Lincolnshire's Harry Towell put the extreme climatic conditions to good use by spending the entire day roaming the countryside with childlike curiosity, trudging through the white with his portable recorder and listening to the soles of his shoes creating gnashing, grating and gritting little patterns in the snow. Back home, most likely over a hot, steaming cup of coffee, he then arranged his found sonic objects into what would become the 2009 debut album of his Spheruleus project, The Disguised Familiar. It is telling that Towell didn't just degrade the field recordings resulting from the hike as a backdrop to his drones and ambient textures, but rather respectfully treated them as music in their own right, aiming for his melodies and harmonies to bring out the beauty of the sounds and not the other way round. The episode, recounted in more depth on the artist's MySpace site, may seem trivial. But it goes a long way in defining the territory which has served as a home for Spheruleus ever since: Perhaps due to Towell growing up in a rural surrounding, nature plays an essential role in his oeuvre, its quietude, moods and beauty extolled by the covers of his releases, its sounds seamlessly integrated into the textures of the compositions, its shapes mimicked by their organic architecture and flowing arrangements. Rather than seeking to conceptually translate physical landscapes to the world of sound, Towell is creating his own, personalised environments, equally intimate and mysterious spaces marked by „blurred perspectives“ and „silent collisions“, by rot and decay – in short, by the eternal cycle of life and death. It is a kind of music which doesn't just re-attune the senses of the listener, but effectively makes them perceptive to the seemingly imperceptible hidden underneath the surface: On the follow-up to The Disguised Familiar, A Vision Obscurred, time first stands still and then it fades away completely, leaving nothing but an infinite horizon over a solitary landscape of absolute forms and objects across which, with spectre-like weightlessness, the dreamy guitar lines of his brother Stuart sail like blood red clouds. This time, propelled by „deeply personal reflections“, the path was leading inwards, to the subconscious as a place of unworked-through emotions. As in a surrealist painting, one can still clearly identify the multitude of metaphors and references – anyone who's read Towell's list of favourites knows the eclecticism of his taste as well as his insatiable appetite for new and fresh sounds – but their meaning has been strangely deformed. If these scenes should occasionally seem to take on Freud'ean qualities, then that is by no means a coincidence: Towell's only release so far under the guise of Eyes Flutter Beneath wasn't called Inside the Dream Laboratory for nothing after all, and quite a few of the fifteen-minute EPs of his Audio Gourmet label are marked by a similar feeling of spinning out into the fantastical. This, of course, is the real reason for the outwardly mysterious facade of working with sound in general and Spheruleus's oeuvre in particular: The mere act of juxtaposition and re-contextualising can turn even the simplest, every-day items into spiritual symbols.

INTERVIEW: (Tobias Fischer, Tokafi with Harry Towell, Spheruleus)
VISIT http://www.tokafi.com/15questions/15-questions-harry-towell-spheruleus to read the full interview

Spheruleus 'Forgotten Outland' coming soon on Resting Bell

Wilting Bounds by Spheruleus