Plutonic Rainbows

Five years ago the British folklore research project Folklore Tapes released Two Witches by label heads David Chatton Barker and Ian Humberstone. A vinyl version was released soon after by Demdike Stare and Andy Votel's Pre-Cert imprint. To celebrate, Folklore Tapes has put together the mixtape and zine project: Library Catalogue Cassette Volume 1: 2011–2016, which includes an extensive history of the label written by Jez Winship. It went on sale on Bleep last week and sold out in a staggering two hours.

The label has offered a stream of the mixtape. And you can read more about Folklore Tapes over at their website.

A new novel from the late author is due next year in June.

The year is 1876.

Among the warring Indian tribes and lawless gold-rush towns of America’s western territories, two paleontologists pillage the Wild West. They are hunting for dinosaur fossils, while surveilling, deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars.

Into this treacherous territory plunges the arrogant and entitled Yale student William Johnson. Determined to survive a summer in the west to win a bet, William has joined world-renowned paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh on his latest expedition. But Marsh becomes convinced that William is spying for his nemesis, Edwin Drinker Cope, so he abandons him in Cheyenne, Wyoming, a locus of crime and vice.

Soon William joins forces with Cope and stumbles upon a discovery of historic proportions. The struggle to protect this extraordinary treasure tests William’s newfound resilience, and pits him against some of the West’s most dangerous and notorious characters.

You can order from Amazon here.

Enjoying watching a series of science programmes first broadcast in 1978. Interesting to see how the future was spoken about and the point at which science was back in the late 1970s. Most of these are available on YouTube.

Brian Eno has spoken a little about the up-coming app edition on iOS devices.

Eno’s follow-up to his 2016 album The Ship further expands his pioneering catalog of ambient releases, including his full length LUX in 2012. Composed of just one 54-minute title track, the generative edition of Reflection was developed by Eno and his long-time collaborator Peter Chilvers. Here’s more from Eno on the generative Reflection versions being made available on Apple TV and iOS:

Reflection is the most recent of my Ambient experiments and represents the most sophisticated of them so far. My original intention with Ambient music was to make endless music, music that would be there as long as you wanted it to be. I wanted also that this music would unfold differently all the time – “like sitting by a river”: it’s always the same river, but it’s always changing. But recordings – whether vinyl, cassette or CD – are limited in length, and replay identically each time you listen to them. So in the past I was limited to making the systems which make the music, but then recording 30 minutes or an hour and releasing that. Reflection in its album form – on vinyl or CD – is like this. But the app by which Reflection is produced is not restricted: it creates an endless and endlessly changing version of the piece of music.

The creation of a piece of music like this falls into three stages: the first is the selection of sonic materials and a musical mode – a constellation of musical relationships. These are then patterned and explored by a system of algorithms which vary and permutate the initial elements I feed into them, resulting in a constantly morphing stream (or river) of music. The third stage is listening. Once I have the system up and running I spend a long time – many days and weeks in fact – seeing what it does and fine-tuning the materials and sets of rules that run the algorithms. It’s a lot like gardening: you plant the seeds and then you keep tending to them until you get a garden you like.

The app-based edition comes alongside more conventional vinyl LP, CD, digital download and streaming offerings. “Moving the composition into software allowed an extra opportunity,” said Chilvers. “The rules themselves could change with the time of day. The harmony is brighter in the morning, transitioning gradually over the afternoon to reach the original key by evening. As the early hours draw in, newly introduced conditions thin the notes out and slow everything down.”

The new album and the iOS app are released on the January 1st 2017.

There was lots of great music this year. A few discoveries came (as always) from the electronic music forum, We Are The Music Makers. These guys are passionate and very informative.

Below are the albums I enjoyed this year.

• Odd Nosdam - Sisters
• Sandra - The Long Play
• Patrick Cowley & Candida Royalle - Candida Cosmica
• 1991 - No More Dreams
• Ulrich Schnauss - No Further Ahead Than Today
• Suzanne Ciani - Lixiviation (1969-1985)
• Delia Derbyshire & Elsa Stansfield - Circle Of Light
• Blue Oyster Cult - Mirrors
• Peter Bardens - Write My Name In The Dust
• Phenomena - Phenomena
• Casino Versus Japan - Frozen Geometry
• 36 - The Infinity Room
• Pet Shop Boys - Super
• A Guy Called Gerald - Black Secret Technology
• Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Bang
• Laura Branigan - Self Control
• The Caretaker - Everywhere At The End Of Time
• Def Leppard - Pyromania
• Tears For Fears - Songs From The Big Chair
• John Carpenter - Lost Themes II
• Rick Wakeman - Rhapsodies
• Vangelis - Rosetta
• The Art Of Noise - Into Battle With The Art Of Noise
• Philip Bailey - Chinese Wall
• Propaganda - Noise And Girls Come Out To Play
• David Bedford - Star's End
• Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Crush
• Borden, Ferraro, Godin, Halo & Lopatin - FRKWYS Vol 7
• The Future Sound Of London - Environments 6.5 & 6.0
• Yello - Toy
• Journey - Raised On Radio
• Biosphere - Departed Glories
• Lustmord - Dark Matter
• Phono Ghosts - Solar Dream Reel
• Daryl Hall & John Oates - Big Bam Boom
• Ian William Craig - Meaning Turns To Whispers
• Pye Corner Audio - Stasis
• Devon Folklore Tapes - The Lost Village Of Clicket
• Broken Lift - Maximum Comfort
• Bernard Herrman - Mysterious Island
• Laurie Anderson - The Heart Of A Dog
• Basil Poledouris - Conan The Barbarian
• Pino Donnagio - Dressed To Kill
• Maurice Jarre - Julia And Julia
• The Human League - Crash
• Disconcious - Hologram Plaza
• Paul Giovani - The Wicker Man
• Cliff Martinez - Drive
• Maurice Jarre - No Way Out
• Odd Nosdam - More Lost Haunted Remains
• Mark Isham - The Beast
• Howard Jones - Human's Lib
• Aphex Twin - Cheetah EP
• Pino Donnagio - Don't Look Now
• Ennio Morricone - State Of Grace
• The Northern Lights - City Of Angels
• 36 - Seconds And Forever
• Fabio Frizzi - The Beyond
• Howard Shore - Dead Ringers
• Circles - Structures (1985-1989)
• Odd Nosdam - Trish
• Sand Circles - Motor City
• Jerry Goldsmith - Poltergeist
• Vince Clarke & Paul Hartnoll - 2Square
• Plaid - The Digging Remedy
• Maurice Jarre - After Dark, My Sweet
• Pye Corner & Dalhous - Run For The Shadows EP
• Belbury Poly - New Ways Out
• Nile Rodgers - B Movie Matinee
• Wham - Make It Big
• Eighth Wonder - Fearless
• Steve Hauschildt - Strands
• Donna Summer - Donna Summer
• Sandra - Into A Secret Land
• Paul Williams - Aquarius
• Duran Duran - The Wedding Album
• Enigma - The Fall Of A Rebel Angel
• Sangam - You Forget This
• The Orb - COW/Chill Out, World
• Anodyne - Nothing Lasts
• Winter Sleep - Dreams
• Brad Fiedel - Let's Get Harry
• Lone - Levitate
• Alan Silvestri - Shattered
• Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool
• Paul Simon - Stranger To Stranger
• Heruco S - For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have)
• Metallica - Master Of Puppets
• Jean-Michel Jarre - Oxygene 3

This collection from 1985 is one of the best books I have read in recent years. It features four tales that have a meticulous construction and subtle use of horror.

Critic S.T Joshi:

In close to 25 years of writing Klein has only two books and a handful of scattered tales to his credit, and yet his achievement towers gigantically over that of his more prolific contemporaries.

I totally recommend finding a copy if you can.

I recently watched the Blu-ray edition of William Peter Blatty's 'The Ninth Configuration'. It's a very strange and somewhat disturbing experience. Recommended.

Mark Kermode spoke about it a few years ago. [^n]

a breathtaking cocktail of philosophy, eye-popping visuals, jaw-dropping pretentiousness, rib-tickling humour and heart-stopping action. From exotically hallucinogenic visions of a lunar crucifixion to the claustrophobic realism of a bar-room brawl, via such twisted vignettes as Robert Loggia karaoking to Al Jolson and Moses Gunn in Superman drag, Blatty directs like a man with no understanding of, or interest in, the supposed limits of mainstream movie-making. The result is a work of matchless madness which divides audiences as spectacularly as the waves of the Red Sea, a cult classic that continues to provoke either apostolic devotion or baffled dismissal 20 years on.

There is also a book available here.

[^n]: Reviewed by Mark Kermode, British Film Institute - Sight and Sound, July 1999 issue

Mike Oldfield's follow-up to 1975's Ommadawn will have a release on January 20th. It will be his twenty-sixth studio album. As well as CD and vinyl editions, there will also be a CD+DVD edition which features a 5.1 surround mix.

Pre-order from Amazon Compact Disc and Vinyl.

Multi-instrumentalist returns to his classic 1975 album that paved the way for the ethnic and pastoral electronica that became so fashionable during the 1980s.

You can pre-order from the official store here.