Simon Greenwood

Continuing a wander through Subexotic today.

• Simon Klee - Phototaxis - https://simonklee.bandcamp.com/album/phototaxis: a short collection of sparse but filmic modular workouts.
• Dogs vs Shadows and Simon Klee - Music for Nature Documentaries - https://subexoticrecords.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-nature-documentaries: I’m a sucker for a cover that looks like a BBC sound effects record, and the tracks don’t disappoint. Short, minimal incidental pieces that create mental wildlife films.
• Central Office of Information - Shadow Work - https://coinfo.bandcamp.com/album/shadow-work - Common themes of the kind of dislocation, shifted perception and misremembering that contribute to hauntology and vaporwave, with rhythmic and sometimes even funky drum and bass.

• Alan Sparhawk - White Roses, My God - https://alansparhawk.bandcamp.com/album/white-roses-my-god: First post end of Low solo LP from Sparhawk is primarily electronic, with a vocoder on the vocals that is disorienting in variable ways. It’s too tempting to read things into the drum machines and obscuring of the words, but as it progresses it finds a path and some moments as intense as anything Low created.
• Underworld - Strawberry Hotel - https://underworld.bandcamp.com/album/strawberry-hotel: Looking at The Quietus’ 2024 Hundred Best LPs reminded me that I hadn’t bought this yet, so I had to rectify that. Underworld, like The Fall and Mogwai, are always the same and always different, and this one is at times melodic and at others stripped back, with the usual grooves sometimes pared down to 7" rather than 12" single length and even not being grooves at all. There’s a theme and more of a collective effort to it, but it may need a couple of listens to work out what it is.
• Shellac - To All Trains - https://shellac.bandcamp.com/album/to-all-trains: I also didn’t buy this at the time, wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear it after Albini’s death, but of course it isn’t there this time, just a speeding train of taut riffs to get dragged behind, the best half hour’s joyride you’ll have today.

• Pefkin - The Rescoring - https://pefkin.bandcamp.com/album/the-rescoring: HT to @REEL: three immersive pieces based on layers of viola, synth amd voice. Sonically reminiscent of early Dead Can Dance between their post-punk and mediaeval phases, and autumnal lost wandering.
• Scholars of the Peak - Polymorphic - https://thescholarsofthepeak.bandcamp.com/album/polymorphic: Hauntological music from the High Peak area of Derbyshire, so it got my attention right away. Soundtracks for afternoon schools programmes on psychogeography with a nod to Plone and the Radiophonic Workshop.
• RadioPhobicSherkPop - low beats and fat fingers - A RadioPhobicSherkPop mixtape - @RadioPhobicSherkPop: https://soundcloud.com/user-967338943/low-beats-fat-fingers-a-radiophobicsherkpop-mixtape: a meaty, beaty, big and bouncy 20 minutes from the attic of Birmingham’s premier purveyor of wonky bedroom electrofunk and uneasy listening. A look inside the creative mind you probably didn’t want but glad you did anyway.
• The Home Current and Peter Wix - Unfortunes - https://thehomecurrent.bandcamp.com/album/unfortunes: Continuing my exploration of Subexotic’s discography. In which techno purveyor The Home Current makes a lyrical dance record with the lyrics presented as spoken word monologues in variety of voices, which create an elusive and ephemeral narrative that seems to walk similar maps to Iain Sinclair.
• Cub\cub - Trig Point - https://cubcub.bandcamp.com/album/trig-point: More from Subexotic: woozy BoC-sh electronics from Leeds based Cub/cub, stretched tape loops that for morning after country walks.

• Hardwicke Circus - Carlisle City Council - https://carlislecitycouncil.bandcamp.com/album/hardwicke-circus
• The Lanes Re-development - Carlisle City Council - https://carlislecitycouncil.bandcamp.com/album/the-lanes-re-development - A new project from Jonathan Sharp of the Heartwood Institute. Seemingly straight sounding syntheised corporate library music from the 70s and 80s. It would seem to tread the same concrete path as Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan but knowing Sharp’s Heartwood output, there’s something more elemental to it.
• Dwell Time - Xqui & Dogs Versus Shadows - https://subexoticrecords.bandcamp.com/album/dwell-time I’ve only just come across Subexotic and I’m having a look through their catalogue and wondering why I haven’t before. This one is warped muzak for abandoned shopping malls.
• Solstice 24 - Various - https://subexoticrecords.bandcamp.com/album/solstice-24 <- recent compilation from the above label, with a pretty diverse collection of tracks from a number of the usual suspects of the UK electronic scene. They have a subscribers club on Bandcamp which I think I might have to give a go.

• In Vitro Tide - Surface 10 - https://dinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/in-vitro-tide-din8 Current free/pay what you want offer for DiN’s 25th anniversary, a rattling mix of sequencers and glitchy breakbeat before that was even a thing
• Portable Reality Generator - Field Lines Cartographer - https://dinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/portable-reality-generator-din85 A scenic ride through vast artifical horizons on a modular pony. Yes, they’re a thing look them up.
• Disturbing Dreams 27 Nov 2024 - Audio Interface - https://www.audiointerface.org/ Second outing for this new show, crunchy and spiky, like a mouthful of extra hot bombay mix.

• Pictobug - Engineers https://engineers.bandcamp.com/album/pictobug Engineers reconvened in 2019 as a duo and made an instrumental LP. Downbeat and introspective while still sounding like the core of Engineers
• Shoreline - Lyndon Scarfe https://cuedotrecords.bandcamp.com/album/shoreline First LP from the now seemingly abandoned Cue Dot Records, neoclassical and filmic ambience that soars at times

• Psychosomatic Waves - Mazanko: https://submarinebroadcastingco.bandcamp.com/album/psychosomatic-waves-2 apparent free form electronic skronk although that isn’t the case according to the web page. A good exercise in sound design
• Dark Air - Eko_Fisk and Gears In The Rain - https://www.zenapolae.com/zen300 Restful ambient/downbeat electronica
• Post:Soc Post:Script - Various https://submarinebroadcastingco.bandcamp.com/album/post-soc-post-script 2017 compilation from Submarine Broadcasting Company with a range of its artists. Their subscription is amazing value if you like experimental and left field music.
• Methods of Dreaming - Hawksmoor https://spunoutofcontrol.bandcamp.com/album/methods-of-dreaming Hazy, rural psychedelia, a walk through the countryside with a few mushrooms
• Coil - Ian Boddy - (WFR Subclub) Berlin School ambience from one of the UK’s longest established and best exponents, on the now closed WFR Subclub on Bandcamp. Drifting, spacey (in many senses) sequencer driven electronica
• The Corn Mother (Dawn Rising Edition) - Various - A Year in the Country https://ayearinthecountry.bandcamp.com/album/the-corn-mother One of a series of pastoral, hauntological compilations that draw on myths, legends, superstition, folk tales and otherness. They’ve been doing it for longer than you have.

• The Crystal Method - The Crystal Method https://www.discogs.com/master/642133-The-Crystal-Method-The-Crystal-Method Morning randomised shower listening, possibly inspired by my wife’s current ‘Bones’ marathon. The Method being The Method but they seemed to have settled into a sound at this point, need to hear their more recent stuff. Product contains some Hooky.
• A Constellation of Lies - Hy Vib @Weru https://chillway.bandcamp.com/ Three drifting chillout workouts that feel like the end of a great night out, when that was everyone back to mine and a smoke, rather than a cup of decaff tea and bed.
• 2024-08-24 Live Experiments Echo Vocation https://echovocation.bandcamp.com/ Downtempo live modular track that loops around a theme pleasantly
• Droneuary 2024 - Various Artists https://silbermedia.bandcamp.com/album/droneuary-2024 Huge collection of drones of all interpretations from this year’s #Droneuary. Interesting stuff but a lot to get through.
• Looking at Lifeforms - The Twilight Sequence: https://cissublibrary.bandcamp.com Four track EP of modular noodlings with a pastoral theme
• Dark Air - Eko_Fisk & Gears in the Rain https://www.clongclongmoo.org/2024/11/19/eko_fisk-gears-in-the-rain-dark-air/ HT @clongclongmoo Downbeat electronics from a Creative Commons Netlabel that deserves further listening

• Tall Trees (and other tales) - Kemper Norton «https://zonawatusa.bandcamp.com/album/tall-trees-and-other-tales>> (pre-release) Hallucinogenic dreams of dancefloors where the music means less than the experience and both are elusive memories.
• Musicke for Psychedelic Duelling vol. 3: The Loplop Pit - Rapid Eye Electronics Ltd (R.E.E.L.) @REEL «https://zonawatusa.bandcamp.com/album/musicke-for-psychedelic-duelling-vol-3-the-loplop-pit>> (pre release) Where Kemper Norton’s memory is driven by those pills, this is one is driven by bits of blotting paper with —something— on it. Dense.
• Doggerland - feinstruktur @feinstructur «https://feinstruktur.bandcamp.com/album/doggerland>> Environmental ambience mixing synthetics and field recordings to create an alien yet familiar landscape
• Music for Airports - Bang on a Can «https://www.discogs.com/master/108504-Bang-On-A-Can-Brian-Eno-Music-For-Airports>> Semi-classical cover of Eno’s LP that recreates an original that was made from tape loops remarkably well.