A bundle of eccentric wares from the hyper-productive homes of Castles in Space and Woodford Halse finish off a busy year for both labels

Properly attempting to wrap up the sonic loose-ends of this distorted year would not be possible without dipping once more into the relentless but admirable productivity streams of two key labels that have sustained and evolved themselves steadfastly throughout 2020; namely Castles in Space and Woodford Halse.

In terms of expanding exponentially, with its organisational reach and quality control, Biggleswade’s Castles in Space has had a very good run across the last twelve months. Its closing menu for this annum offers up four very diverse things to digest.

It’s satisfying for starters to see and hear the full-bodied return of Bristol boffins The Twelve Hour Foundation, with the handsomely packaged Six Twenty Negative, after a slew of choice compilation appearances from the twosome over the last couple of years. Finessing the modus operandi of 2018’s fondly received Tree Little Milk Egg Book and Other Non Sequiturs ‎LP, Jez Butler and Polly Hulse construct these tracks with synths, flute, field recordings and more musique concrete noises eked from household objects.

Soaking their sonic lab coats again in happy retro-futuristic science and technology spillages as well as thematically recalling Butler’s childhood travels betwixt Cleethorpes and Hull, Six Twenty Negative is an effervescently bubbling melting pot of rubbery juddering minimalism (“Elastic Limit”), low-slung motorik propulsion (“Polivoks”), arcadian wistfulness (“Creosote”), Wendy Carlos classicism (“Through Violet Perspex”) and a raft of reliably squiggly Look Around You-meets-Tomorrow’s World soundtrack miniatures (pretty much everything else). Although admittedly, the irrepressible giddy and gleeful bounciness can become a touch overpowering when taken in one large helping, it’s very handy to have such benevolently infectious anti-dystopian sounds to reach for at the end of a dark year.

Contrastingly, simultaneously dispersed albums from labelmates Kl(aüs) and Salvatore Mercatante occupy murkier mood spaces. The former’s Live 2020 CD release captures the Sydney-based duo of Jonathan Elliott and Stewart Lawler recorded on stage at a launch event for their compelling 2 LP back in January. Across the three 10+ minute cuts the signature Berlin School-graduated improvisations take a slightly mistier and more prowling approach than normal, in between kosmische beat breakouts, in part dictated by the lack of studio sheen but also through sliding into self-hypnotising trance-like states. Existing fans will love this extension to Kl(aüs)’s world, as will those of us with a fondness for Dirk Jan Müller’s ongoing Cosmic Ground venture.

The New York-dwelling Mercatante explores even more ethereal environs with The Foundations of Eternal Sin, an imposing album thematically reflecting on “humanity falling from grace and losing the pillars of what makes us human” no less. Heavy philosophical stuff for sure, yet through glistening Tangerine Dream-like pulsations, shades of 80s 4AD noir and passages of 90s ambient-electronica, a convincing case is made for contemplating the nature of civilisation in such a nocturnal serious-minded way.

A more evenly-balanced conception arrives in the shape of Scarred for Life 2. As with 2019’s preceding compilation, proceedings are again informed by both rose-tinted and nightmare-embedded memories of 70s/80s scores to children’s TV, public information films and sci-fi dramas. Over its duration we find many old and new extended Castles in Space family members devising imaginary small-screen soundtracks with a remarkable hive mind cohesion – but crucially no lack of variety.

Hence, amongst its 23 generously gathered recordings you’ll find more warped Radiophonic Workshop playfulness from The Twelve Hour Foundation (“The Brain Children”), space age flamenco from Handspan (“What’s in the Box?”), an oblique slowed-down nod to the World in Action theme tune from Oliver Cherer (“Down White Corridors”), madrigal synth pastoralism from The British Stereo Collective (“In the Tall Grass”), some deliciously squelchy micro-grooves from Vic Mars (“The Time Menders Return”), warming yet disquieting art-techno from The Home Current (“Theme from Lobster Boy”) and dreamy electro-bucolic blending from Apta (“Equinox”).

Latecomers looking for an easy entry into the Castles in Space interstellar realms could do well to start here, whilst those already converted will find much to re-confirm their ongoing faith.

Fast becoming one of the go-to places for curiously good-looking cassette releases, Doncaster’s Woodford Halse rounds out an equally productive year with three albums from prolific purveyors of home studio fashioned hauntology.

Having already delivered a staggering amount of quality produce elsewhere in 2020, Rupert Lally makes his album-length Woodford Halse debut with Hidden Transmissions Vol. 1. Culled from material devised for various radio stations, this first in an ongoing series of numbered sets unfurls like a composite of blurred-together broadcasts picked up from earth by approaching alien visitors. Condensed into two side-long twenty-minute pieces the collection stretches out the Switzerland-based composer’s musical range yet further.

Thus, across “Part One” there are overlapping movements of malfunctioning robot rhythms, otherworldly dronescapes, disembodied voices and ambient eeriness. “Part Two” bobs back and forth between sci-fi horror atmospherics, some fine Robin Guthrie-like guitar lattices and morse coded aural mysteries. Although a few of the stronger segments might have garnered greater recognition by separating them out into standalone tracks, the overall approach does still bode well for a second selection in this vein scheduled for 2021 on Concrète Tapes.

With two preceding recent LPs on Castles in Space, commemorating the lost island of Hy Brasil (A Spectral Isle) and time travel (Modalities of Time Travel), Mark Burford clearly can’t restrain his productivity as Field Lines Cartographer, now adding Formic Kingdom to his rapidly expanding repertoire. Inspired by Saul Bass’s 1974 film Phase IV and the 1983 computer game Ant Attack, this fantasy score to an accompanying tale of a military science experiment – on ants – gone rogue in the New Mexico desert immerses itself in unearthly crepuscular eeriness. Channelling John Carpenter, Vangelis, VHS horror B-movies and myrmecophobia along the way, Formic Kingdom adds to the FLC canon with creepy unsettling aplomb.

Similarly inclined as his temporary labelmates Lally and Burford, Lee Pylon returns under his dogs versus shadows guise with the fascinating Last Witnesses. Assembled in homage to Svetlana Alexievich’s 1985 book of the same name, detailing personal accounts of life in the USSR during World War Two, this 19-part suite of short wordless abstractions investigates shadowy historical narratives through clockwork clanking (“My Dear Dog, Forgive Me”), industrial glitching (“Through a Buttonhole”), synthetic waltzes (“We All Joined Hands”), elegiac Edgar Froese-style modular etudes (“They Lay Pink on the Cinders”) and ghostly sketching (“A Big Family Photograph”). Whilst there is perhaps only so much electronically-fashioned conceptualism that one set of ears can ingest in a year, hardcore aficionados of Lee Pylon’s world will easily find ways to be absorbed in decoding the enigmas of Last Witnesses.

Adrian
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