Hello you. Double bill of Fog Cast this week due to my tardiness in updating these pages, caused by a minor lapse in health, thankfully not caused by what one friend has described as ‘the trendy virus’. Turns out staring at a screen with your headphones on all day, every day isn’t terribly good for you. Which is a shame as I’m about to ask you to strap on your ear-goggles and receive an extra helping of Resonance FM‘s late-night, deep-listening isolation service. Fortunately the quality of both programmes is impeccable, with our first episode featuring perhaps the three tracks that actually inspired me to create Fog Casts in the first place. Plus the fact that Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s stunning piece was recorded using Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures squares this particular circle rather admirably!
Episode 7:
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe – Untitled [from Levitation Praxis Pt. 4, DDS, 2017]
Oliveros / Dempster / Panaiotis – Lear [from Deep Listening, New Albion, 1989]
Harry Bertoia – Energyzing [rec 1978, from Sonambient – Complete Collection, Important Records, 2016]
This week’s latest episode featured not one but TWO newly released LPs from legendary Argentinian composer Beatriz Ferreyra, plus a rather super new cassette from School of the Arts and an extended work from Luke Seomore’s Blessed are the hearts that bleed project. I know 2020 is proving a pretty rotten year, but good grief, don’t the rich musical pickings continue apace?!
Episode 8:
Beatriz Ferreyra – L’autre … Ou le chant des marecages [rec 1987, from Echos+, Room 40, 2020]
Maria Bertel & Maria Diekmann – Duo 2 / Diekman Solo 1 / Diekman Solo 3 [from Live in Murmansk, School Of The Arts, 2020]
Beatriz Ferreyra – La Ba-Balle du Chien-Chien à la mé-mère [from Huellas Entreveradas, Persistence of Sound, 2020]
Blessed Are the Hearts that Bend – Milk [from The limitless sweet love of precious suffering, 2020]
Indeed the rich musical pickings continue with two volumes of Isolation Tapes from Castles In Space, available to pre-order as of today and featuring a head-spinning number of tracks from a whopping contingent of the contemporary electronic music community. All tracks were produced under lockdown between 23rd March and 17th April, and the speed with which this compilation has emerged and the talent on display is testament to the genius of label head Mr. Colin Morrison. All proceeds are going to the Cavell Nurses’ Trust, so it’s a fabulous double album for a good cause. What’s not to like? It also contains the first fruits of a secret new collaborative project that due to an oversight might actually no longer be a secret at all, whoops-a-daisy. But more on that later. Probably…
In other news, I’ll be dusting off the tape machines and doing a live-streamed performance for Iklectik on Saturday 23rd May (tomorrow night at the time of writing), in a triple-bill with Zeno Van Der Broek and SW1n-HUNTER. I’m presenting an experimental new piece that I’ve been working on involving one tape loop stretched across two machines. It’s at the proverbial ‘interesting stage’ and the loop hasn’t snapped on me yet, so do please consider joining me on this journey of discovery. Plus Zeno’s Breach LP was one of my favourite releases of last year, so we’re set for a great evening whatever happens! You should be able to watch the performance live using the window below, the Iklectik youtube channel (where you’ll also find lots of lots of other live-streamed performances to enjoy) or you can buy a ‘ticket’ here and help support both artists and venue. See you then!
Lastly, as an attempt to get myself match-fit again after the recent lack of live performance action, I made a new track yesterday afternoon and have now posted it onto my long-dormant Soundcloud account with the subtitle ‘felt cute, might delete later’. It was created by layering a number of closed input feedback loops produced by ‘Daphne’, my UHER 6000 on top of one another in rapid succession, working quickly and embracing chance. I like how the different elements shift around each other and keep forming into new patterns, although Father Fog says he thinks the ending is a bit weak. It’s probably best not to disagree with Fog Snr. if I want those deliveries of homemade soda bread to continue, but for what it’s worth I think it works surprisingly well as a composition, given the deliberately random way it was thrown together. Have a listen below and see which generation of my bloodline you’re in agreement with, but do bear in mind there’s no baked produce in it for you:
Robin The Fog 