Hello You. And welcome to a most exciting and auspicious day in the History of Howl! For it is today that, following a seemingly endless period of keeping the whole thing under our hats, I can finally reveal to you Howlround’s latest and greatest work, a unique audio-visual project produced in collaboration with filmmaker Steven McInerney and bearing the title A Creak In Time.
Two years in the making, the original soundtrack LP is now available to pre-order from the Psyché Tropes label, pressed on heavyweight 180g vinyl with printed inner sleeve. Plus each copy comes complete with digital album download and a link to stream the film in full online. All that for a bargain £12 plus shipping. Not too shabby!
Pre-order your copy here.
It’s a hugely proud moment to be sharing this with you, it’s been a long trip putting this project together we’ve been stubbornly refusing to let anything out the gate until it was just right. Steve in particular has been a real lynchpin, agonising over every shot, every cut and every frame – but as you can see from these production stills it’s been more than worth the effort. Just take a look at some of the images below, they’re nothing short of astonishing!
From The Obligatory Press Release:
The players: Comprised of Robin The Fog, Chris Weaver and four reel to reel tape machines, Howlround create unique and immersive compositions and performances by direct manipulation of natural acoustic sounds on magnetic tape, with all additional effects and artificial reverb strictly forbidden. For this soundtrack, their most ambitious yet, the group have created a striking body of work made entirely from field recordings of different objects creaking: tiny and insignificant sounds, that, when amplified and extended via magnetically charged oxide particles begin to take on a curious new identity.
…Taken from source material discovered in London, Yosemite and the Mojave desert, these sounds, through simple manipulation, gradually cast off their moorings and head into space, leaving their original identities far behind and chiming perfectly with the film’s recurring themes of transformation and altered perception, switching scale in a heartbeat from microscopic topography to the vast distances of the cosmos. Shot entirely on 16mm film with a musique concréte soundtrack, it’s both science and fiction and marks a dramatic new direction for all involved.
The Director: Steven McInerney is an Australian born multidisciplinary artist based in London. He is the founder of Psyché Tropes, an experimental label and film project focusing on the synaesthetic intersections between sound and its visual counterpart. Working predominately with 16mm and sound he creates recherché non-narrative works using in-camera and camera-less filmmaking techniques while performing live audio visual shows as Merkaba Macabre.
Official Album Launch and Premier Screening on Saturday December 10th
Of course any album worth it’s 180g needs a launch party and it just so happens that we have two – sort of! First off there’s the Official Launch and Premier Screening of the film at London’s Iklektik on Saturday 10th December as part of a two-day residency by artist Pascal Savy. It will be the first ever public outing of A Creak In Time and there will be live performances by Howlround, Steve’s Merkaba Macabre alter-ego and of course Pascal himself to celebrate. A former Buddhist temple and one of the Capital’s best-kept secrets, we can’t think of a more appropriate venue from which to launch this new project in style! Further information is available here and tickets, which are expected to sell sharp-ish, can be found here. Please come celebrate with us if you can!
If you can’t make Saturday night, Howlround will also be playing a (moderately!) more traditional tape loop set at the world-famous Brunel Museum the following evening, Sunday 11th December. No stranger to unusual venues, we’ll be spooling up inside the tunnel shaft itself alongside Lee Patterson, Áine O’Dwyer and Wajid Yaseen & Anthony Elliot, all at the behest of of Goldsmiths as part of their regular EAVI events. OK, so not exactly a launch party per se – it would be a little cheeky/wildly inaccurate to suggest that all these goodly folk were gathered here purely because we happen to have a new record to show off, but we’re certainly hoping it will help spread the word a little further. Tickets are available here. NB as both of these events happen to be spread over the weekend, do please make sure you’ve got the right dates!
In Summary…
New Howlround Vinyl! Hurrah!
Tickets to the Premier Now Available! Hurrah!
Robin The Fog 