From a darkened radio studio within an unassuming office building in a crepuscular backstreet somewhere near London’s South Bank, Johny Brown and The Band Of Holy Joy take over the airwaves every Friday night to bring you Bad Punk on Resonance 104.4FM. And for this latest edition they’ve very kindly thrown open their doors to The Howling, for a full ninety minutes of ‘pure trash perpretation’. The show opens with a recording from the launch of Ken’s latest book Paradise at the Horse Hospital before launching into a live session in collaboration with the Holy Joy Players that takes in the first ever performance of a recently discovered archive text ‘Under God’ and then a brand new track from The Howling’s forthcoming third album Be Quiet In This Church, out later this year on The Tapeworm, plus some new Howlround tape loop experiments and even a singing bowl or two. It’s quite a trip. For more information on the show and all the many and varied activities of Johny Brown (including his recently published book Corpse Flower, visit http://johny.co.uk.
Speaking of The Tapeworm, Nigel Wrench’s remarkable and harrowing audio documentary Switch Off That Machine is out now on their sublabel The Wormhole. Recorded between 1986-88 in Apartehid-stricken South Africa, it’s a combination of reportage, oral history and field recording dedicated ‘to everyone who has raised their voices against authoritarianism. And those who still will’. Needless to say in our current climate the themes it explores prove more relevant than ever. I’m proud to say it’s also my first EVER official mastering job! I’ve never marketed myself as a mastering engineer – it’s a dark and strange art – but burrowing out archive recordings from underneath mountains of tape hiss is very much my wheelhouse!
Robin The Fog 