Now THIS is exciting. Well, for me, at least. But assuming you’re visiting this site of your own free will, you might just find it a teeny bit exciting too:
Very pleased to be announcing that I’ve made a contributtion to a compilation on Front & Follow Records set to be released on the very day of my birthday next month. And I’m being featured alongside a cachet of some of my favourite contemporary artists such as Pye Corner Audio, Some Truths (aka Bass Clef), Hacker Farm, VHS Head, Baron Mordant… the list goes on! This will be the best birthday present ever!
The compilation bears the title of and is released in collaboration with the UK’s foremost uncanny audiovisual event, The Outer Church. Chief programmer Joseph Stannard has compiled ‘a stunning 28-track double album of all-new previously unreleased material from a host of incredible conspirators’.
Joseph writes:
“Wind the tape all the way back to Brighton in 2009. The uncanny influence seeping into contemporary music from ‘elsewhere’ had become impossible to ignore. Magazine pieces I had written in my capacity as a music critic were revealed to contain subliminal memos for my own attention. Unusually vivid dreams and unsettling anonymous telephone calls imparted curious instructions. I was to establish a space in which various forms of unheimlich audio would converge with moving images of a similarly anomalous nature. Equipped only with a well-thumbed copy of The Beginner’s Guide To Psychic Architecture, I resolved to build a Church.
“This compilation presents a selection of the artists who have performed at The Outer Church, with the exception of illustrious filmmaker and composer Graham Reznick, who lives in faraway Brooklyn and kindly permitted us to screen his tremendous psychedelic campfire tale, I Can See You, in Brighton and Dublin. All of the recordings here are previously unreleased. Together they advance the argument that something weird is stirring in modern music which resists categorisation, manifesting itself in unsettling cadences and temporal distortions across a wide variety of occult strategies.”
The Outer Church was established in 2009 by music writer Joseph Stannard (The Wire, Mojo, The Quietus). Since then it has brought the finest in uncanny film and music to Brighton, including live sets from Demdike Stare, Raime, Pye Corner Audio, Old Apparatus, Moon Wiring Club and The Haxan Cloak plus screenings of new independent films such as I Can See You, Die Farbe and Overhill.
The Outer Church and Front & Follow present F&F028: Various Artists – The Outer Church featuring 28 previously unreleased tracks from the uncanny underground. 2CD and download out August 5th. Strictly limited first edition of 300 in letterpress packaging with inserts and poster by Alexander Tucker. Pre-order here and here
That Exciting Tracklisting In Full:
Embla Quickbeam Crystal Sea
Grumbling Fur Tilda Holds A Sword And Lilies
Some Truths Some Truths #24 (Edit)
Kemper Norton Melegez
Pye Corner Audio Black Mist
Black Mountain Transmitter Drawn In Silhouette
Angkorwat I Hope He Had
Position Normal Siegfried & Roy
Ekoplekz Outercountry
BrokenThree (TVO + Production Unit + Erstlaub) 96D
Anna Meredith The Binks
Hong Kong In The 60s Summer’s Bird
Baron Mordant & Mr Maxted Roehampton By Night
Graham Reznick Tomorrow In New York City
Old Apparatus Patter
VHS Head Freight Night
The Wyrding Module Thrones Of Nitre
Silver Pyre Frosted Tropic
These Feathers Have Plumes An End To Drought
Hacker Farm Bluebeam
Robin The Fog Unnatural History
Tidal Scry Baby
Vindicatrix Huemmana
Wrong Signals Waiting On A Beach
Sone Institute Time Itself
Paper Dollhouse Swans
Time Attendant WHOA!
IX Tab The Burned Wretch
But there’s more! To coincide with the launch of the compilation, The Outer Church is hitting the road with a series of ‘Summer Outings’. The first takes place in Joseph’s native Brighton on Thursday 25th July and I’m very happy to announce that South London’s premier improvised tape-loop sextet Howlround are on the bill! We shall be bringing our decidedly unportable Revoxes back to Brighton for a sequel to our first gig ever a few months back and will hopefully be spooling up an exclusive set! There’s a Facebook event page for those of you well-versed in social media and tickets can be purchased here. After that The Outer Church rolls into London, Brighton (again) and then Manchester, each night with an exciting line-up of artists featured on the compilation. Peruse this poster for further information:
But there’s still more! Well, for Howlround anyway. Because we’re also hitting the road and heading up to Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria for another gig the following evening at the Full Of Noises festival, where we’ll be playing alongside Felix Kubin, Tom James Scott, Lee Gamble, The Bohman Brothers to name a few. We’re very excited and only slightly perturbed by the logistics involved with playing separate ends of the country on subsequent days. Plus it’s near my original neck of the woods, so I’m hoping for an appearance from my parents, whose approval I desperately crave.
Howlround is now on Twitter so feel free to follow us using @Howlroundmusic and see how we get on. Rumour has it we’ll be forced to leave halfway through The Outer Church and drive all-night, as appalling a thought as that would be – don’t want to miss Hong Kong In The 60s for one thing!
Oh, and the new Howlround album is finished, mixed, mastered and sent off to the pressing plant. We’re hoping for an early September release in time for the official launch party in Belgrade. But that’s for later. Don’t want to bombard your delicate sensibilities with too much excitement just yet…
Gosh, isn’t it hot today? I’m writing this listening to Bossas, Mambos and Cha-Chas while wearing a rather fetching Hula Skirt. Send £300 to the usual address if you’d like a photo…
Robin The Fog 
