• Miasma & Slim

The various releases on Em:t, the ambient arm of Nottingham-based house label Time Recordings, with their smart Designer’s Republic (RIP!) packaging, uniform nature photographs for covers and titles consisting solely of their release dates, were a pinnacle, of sorts, of that whole post-Artificial Intelligence ambient coffee table electronica. Each release felt almost as collectable for its aesthetic values as the music inside, almost an ECM atmosphere, though the ambient pulses of Woob, Gas (not that one), Carl Stone and Russell Mill’s Undark were all fabulous. Not that you can find them these days without lashing out a lot of cash.

Hidden away in the label’s first wave were a pair of delightul discs assembled by in-house engineers Tom Smyth and Will Joss, known as Miasma. Their own record, despite the occasional smart use of ambient drones and delicate sound effects, has the melancholy early-hours air of Bark Psychosis and especially that gem from Pieter Nooten & Michael Brook, Sleeps With the Fishes. Their collaboration with singer Slim, meanwhile, slinks around wearing the same crystal-clear drum’n'bass mechanics of Everything but the Girl’s dance era.

Miasma – 1195, CD, Em:t, 1995

01. Miasma (1:50)
02. Plexus (11:24)
03. Pigment Stellae (14:09)
04. Mimesis (2:58 )
05. Hindsight (4:00)
06. Settled Storm (6:47)
07. Pleiades (4:04)
08. Lupine Stare (11:14)
09. Jezebel (9:43)
10. Solipsis (7:29)

Link | Discogs

…

Slim – 0097, CD, Em:t, 1997

01. What It Is (8:19)
02. Abducted (7:59)
03. Water (10:27)
04. Triple Threads (7:41)
05. Your Chair (6:51)
06. My Dangerous Life (8:18 )
07. Idyll (8:14)

Link | Discogs

• Spacebow – Big Waves

CD, Noteworks, 1995

Of course it’s all lengthy drones around here now, son, but back before you were born they were the province of either your bearded LaMonte Young style grumpy hippy gits, or younger sound sculpture types. Spacebow is a 1993 collaboration of Carsten Tiedemann (one half of the Hassell-esque Mo Boma with Skuli Sverisson) and sound artist Robert Rutman. What they’re playing here is a bunch of Rutman’s instruments, created in the early 1970s, from metal rods and curved sheets of stainless steel. As you’ll hear, these extraordinary sculpture-instruments produce some sensational overtone-rich drones and look pretty amazing too.

01. Warm Waves (8:50)
02. Long Waves (6:03)
03. Slow Waves (10:18 )
04. Storm Waves (2:40)
05. Big Hum (11:40)
06. Big Waves (12:40)
07. Deep Waves (7:15)

Link | Discogs

• The Hypnotist – The Complete Hypnotist 91-92 – Let Us Pray

CD, Rising High, 1992

Coulda shoulda posted this alongside the RH comps a few weeks back, but being honest now, we forgot. This is not best titled, being maybe fifty per cent of the complete releases of Caspar Pound and Pete Smith in this period if you count remixes of these tracks, but they got most of the very best ones onto this disc. For a while, beats were harder, basslines dirtier and acid riffs ever trippier. And for that we should give praise in the only way that is fitting, namely by whacking this onto an immense sound system and bouncing like nutters for eighty minutes.

Back in the day, that bellowed “hardcore you know the score” sounded cheesy. These days, it’s more of an of a time that’s long faded. Caspar Pound died five years ago this April.

1. Rainbows in the Sky (Original mix) (8:24)
2. Death by Dub (Original mix) (6:42)
3. Pioneers of the Warped Groove (8:29)
4. Death in Frankfurt (7:00)
5. Night of the Living E Heads (6:21)
6. Prometheus (Previously Unreleased mix) (5:21)
7. Hardcore You Know the Score (6:49)
8. Day of the Tripheads (6:25)
9. God of the Universe (5:38 )
10. The House is Mine (Original mix) (8:39)
11. Pypee’s Magic Journey (7:58 )

Link | Discogs

• The Blue Nile – Albert Hall, London 26 June 1997

live at the Royal Albert Hall, London, 26 June 1997

There’s a particularly choice kind of reverent hush between songs at Blue Nile concerts that you never quite get at any other event. The best part of seven years after our last visit to their world, a year after the third album. Decent audience recording, from one of the boxes we suspect, though there is perhaps one audience member you might want to stab. And check that encore.

01. Over the Hillside
02. The Downtown Lights
03. Love Came Down
04. Happiness
05. Tomorrow Morning
06. A Walk Across the Rooftops
07. Body & Soul
08. Easter Parade
09. Soon
10. God Bless You Kid
11. Let’s Go Out Tonight
12. Stay
13. Saturday Night
14. Tinseltown in the Rain
15. Sentimental Man
16. Family Life
17. Headlights in the Rain
18. I Left My Heart in San Francisco

Link

• John Oswald – Plexure

CD, Avant, 1993

Blipvert constructions for hyper-short attention spans only. Stick it on repeat and you’ll start to worm your ears inside it.

This has been posted elsewhere in recent times, but all the links we found were dead, posts abandoned, all traces scraped clean.

1. Open (Bo No Ma) – i) Suck, ii) Rip (1:27)
2. Urge (Marianne Faith No Morissey) – i) Slow, ii) Slice, iii) Blink (1:46)
3. Manifold (Bing Stingspreen) – i) Philosophy, ii) Phase (2:14)
4. Blur (Bolton Chili Overdire) – i) Moment, ii) Wow, iii) Nest (1:10)
5. Zoom (Sinéad O’Connick Jr.) – i) Alone, ii) Gogh (1:20)
6. Cypher (Depeche Mould) (1:44)
7. Compact (R.E.M.T.V. Hammercamp) – i) Phase 2, ii) Snap (1:39)
8. Worse (Anthrax Squeeze Factory) (1:17)
9. Mad Mod (Jello Bellafonte) (1:27)
10. Temperature (Beastie Shop Beach) – i) Tempus Amoré, ii) Tempo Pact (1:47)
11. Massive (Ozzie Osmond) – i) Hazzard, ii) Warning, iii) Treacherous (2:13)
12. Velocity (Aretha Vanilli) – i) Tremendous, ii) Tremulous (1:11)

Link | Discogs

• Porter Ricks

Thomas Köner, quiet god of absolute zero drones. Andy Mellwig, master of the technology behind the world’s deepest dub techno recordings. Put them together, give them a particularly nautical nom de plume (Porter Ricks was a character on dolphin-bothering TV show Flipper – see, you learn while you leech here) and you have techno-dub so deep you… well, something or other/Jacques Cousteau/ bathysphere/Marianas Trench, blah blah. Three stunning albums, the last a split affair with the bolshier but equally bottom heavy Techno-Animal. Surely on the back of the Gas and Pole reissues some label with a modicum of spare cash has plans for a box set of these cavernous beauties?

Biokinetics, CD, Chain Reaction, 1996

1. Port Gentil (12:23)
2. Nautical Dub (5:46)
3. Biokinetics 1 (5:18 )
4. Biokinetics 2 (8:27)
5. Port of Call (9:09)
6. Port of Nuba (8:02)
7. Nautical Nuba (8:54)
8. Nautical Zone (12:06)

Link | Discogs

…

Porter Ricks, CD, Mille Plateaux, 1997

1. Explore (5:45)
2. Redundance 5 (7:00)
3. Exposed (4:22)
4. Scuba Lounge (10:26)
5. Redundance (Version) (4:13)
6. Redundance 6 (4:30)
7. Spoiled (9:45)
8. Redundance 1 (6:04)
9. Redundance 3 (6:17)
10. Spoil (7:54)
11. Decay Chart (7:15)

Link | Discogs

…

Porter Ricks vs Techno Animal, Symbiotics, CD, Force Inc 1999

1. Porter Ricks – Polytoxic 1 (4:49)
2. Techno-Animal – Hydrozoid (5:56)
3. Porter Ricks – Polytoxic 2 (6:18 )
4. Techno-Animal – Bio-Morphium (6:07)
5. Porter Ricks – Phosphoric (8:53)
6. Techno-Animal – Anthrazite (7:55)
7. Porter Ricks – Ionic (12:56)
8. Techno-Animal – Monosphate (5:45)

Link | Discogs

PS, more Porter Ricks over at Ripped in Glasgow.

• Chris Meloche – Recurring Dreams of the Urban Myth

CD, Fax, 1994

An unusual departure for Fax perhaps, when they picked up the first of two albums from this fairly obscure Canadian sound artist. But check this out – one loooong track of frosty drones and echoes, derived from a series of lengthy loops that stretch out against each other, never quite repeating themselves. The art gallery performance version of Recurring Dreams ran for six or so days, if we remember correctly, but the elements are all here in this excerpt. Not quite up to taking on Jem Finer’s thousand-year Longplayer, but a valiant effort. And again, crystal shimmers for these frozen, frosty mornings…

01. Loop 6 (73:22)

Link | Discogs

• Kazayuki K Null & Jim O’Rourke – New Kind of Water

CD, Charnel Music, 1992

He was a demonically possessed Japanese noise musician who had carved great chunks out of a generation’s ears with bands like Zeni Geva and ANP. Meanwhile he was a mild-mannered renaissance man from the US heartlands, veering between viola-scraping scree and some of the sweetest leftfield pop you ever did hear. But when dey gets togedda, it’s moida.

Of course this sounds like barnacles being removed from the underside of battleships while a terrible new worldwide ice age threatens to shatter drowned skyscrapers like icicles. One would be surprised if it didn’t. If anything, it would have been far more revolutionary if they’d made a set of sweet country-tinged pop songs. But this will do until that far-off day dawns.

1. Abyss (12:24)
2. Gibakaze (7:20)
3. Live at Lounge Axe pt.1 (19:09)
4. Septic Moon (8:11)
5. Neuro Geometry (3:53)
6. Live at Lounge Axe pt.2 (6:56)
7. Operation DNA (9:17)

Link | Discogs

• Asmus Tietchens – Sinkende Schwimmer

CD, Barooni, 1991

The weather here (respectively, just outside Chicago, and south-west edge of London) is harsh and bitterly cold, so it seems the perfect time to drop an early Barooni release. It would be almost too obvious to stick up some Thomas Köner for you, even if the frigid drones of Permafrost or Nunatak Gongamur fits the weather outside like a mitten, so here’s a typically steely release from the inscrutable Asmus Tietchens. A very prolific sound shaper who has always ploughed his own furrow regardless of outside influence, he’s a hard man to be completist about, but always worth dipping into. Open all the windows, turn off the heating, crank this up. Just don’t come whining to us if you get frostbite or hypothermia.

1. Neue Menschen (2:12)
2. Topos E (1:47)
3. Speeclus 2 (6:24)
4. Kein Schöner Traum (4:44)
5. Folienschall (3:45)
6. Topos 4 (1:55)
7. Reso 1 (3:36)
8. Reso 2 (3:01)
9. Kurzer Ballonflug (2:34)
10. Herr Und Hund (1:22)
11. Speeclus 1 (3:13)
12. Arnheimer Recyclica (2:56)
13. Sediment 2 (3:40)

Link | Discogs

• Various – Monsters, Robots & Bug Men

2CD, Virgin, 1996

Towards the end of its short life, Virgin’s Ambient series – from which we’ve already tasted Isolationism and the two Macro Dub Infection collections – started to venture further afield. Subtitled “A User’s Guide to the Rock Hinterland”, it’s a comprehensive look at post-rock, math-rock, alt-rock and a whole variety of short-lived terms that hyphenated with “-rock”. It’s a great collection, and a shame it’s been out of print for over a decade. The Ambient series would drift yet further, with David Toop’s Sugar & Poison funk collection stretching the original label concept to breaking – but pretty much everything on the list is worth acquiring.

DISC ONE
01. Bardo Pond – Tantric Porno (6:10)
02. Long Fin Killie – A Man Ray (3:34)
03. God – Gold Teeth (Charles Atlas Mix) (4:27)
04. Third Eye Foundation – Sleep (6:50)
05. Hair & Skin Trading Company – * (2:46)
06. Füxa – Photon (3:14)
07. Run On – Pretty Note (4:07)
08. Ui – The Grand Piano (13:55)
09. Bowery Electric – Slow Thrills (10:15)
10. Brise-Glace – Neither Yield nor Reap (6:49)
11. Pram – Sea Swells and Distant Squalls (6:05)
12. Magic Hour – Chance Was (4:56)
13. Labradford – SEDR77 (4:09)

DISC TWO
01. Mercury Rev – Everlasting Arm (5:13)
02. Flying Saucer Attack – Feedback Song (5:17)
03. Jessamine – Ordinary Sleep (3:39)
04. Yona-Kit – Dancing Sumo Wrestlers (3:24)
05. Windy & Carl – Preparation (7:12)
06. Godflesh – Crush my Soul (Ultramix) (14:11)
07. Sabalon Glitz – The Lonesome Death of Elijah P. Woods (6:22)
08. Stereolab – Les Yper-Yper Sound (5:10)
09. Cul de Sac – Doldrums (9:20)
10. Roy Montgomery – Departing the Body (4:38 )
11. U.S. Maple – Aplomado (1:52)
12. Space Needle – Before I Lose my Style (5:29)
13. Stars of the Lid – Goodnight (6:07)

Disc One • Disc Two | Discogs