Browse by Artist: XELA

Artist:	XELA
Title:	Bobble Hats In Summer/Danse Macabre
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$6.50
Catalog #:	T7PE 006EP

John Xela is one of Type's label founders. It was always going to irritate vinyl completists that the track "Bobble Hats in Summer" was cruelly left off the vinyl version of For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights -- so he generously plonked it on a 7" along with "Danse Macabre" (another vinyl exclusive) for your listening pleasure. Lovingly re-mastered and cut by those legends at Dubplates and Mastering until both moody, crystalline tracks absolutely sparkle. One of Xela's finest moments finally gets the treatment it deserves.

Artist:	XELA
Title:	For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 017CD

Four years after its release and almost seven after its conception, Type label boss John Twells' debut album under the Xela moniker is finally ready to be re-issued once again. Featuring all-new artwork from Matthew Woodson, two bonus tracks and with all tracks fully re-mastered at D&M Studios in Berlin, the album has never looked or sounded better. John wrote the album in-between working at a car parts shop selling car audio and busying himself with an art degree at University, which had the added bonus of providing him with large speaker systems to test out prospective tracks. The record was created in response to two key things -- a sense of alienation in the small ex-industrial town of Walsall, and most importantly to the electronic music he had just begun to hear. John had been brought up on a steady diet of indie, punk and metal and was exposed to electronic music fairly late, but as soon as he heard his first washes of analog synthesizer he knew his life would change. It quickly led him to put down the guitars and save his pennies for cheap electronic equipment -- synths, drum machines and tape recorders, and before long he was crafting homemade electronic symphonies. These early demos caught the attention of Lee Norris (Metamatics) who ran the Neo Ouija label, and he encouraged John to put together a full-length record. The result of this would become For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights which harnessed John's love for glacial electronics, the ultra-minimal sound of Mille Plateaux and 12k, hip-hop and of course indie rock, melting them all down into a vague narrative across the course of the record. This new issue has been fleshed out by two extra tracks, which were written shortly after the album's completion, and the entire release has finally been fully mastered. It might be four years old now, but For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights still sounds as beautiful and as inviting as the day it was first released -- this is where it all started.

Artist:	XELA
Title:	The Dead Sea
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 018CD

This is the third full-length release from Manchester-based Xela (John Twells), and his first release on his own Type label imprint. Showing an astonishing evolution in sound from early releases such as For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights and Tangled Wool, through to the ink-blot atmospherics of The Dead Sea, what originated in the clinical environs of digitalis was gradually eroded by thickly-hued instrumentation and sublime arrangements. Featuring a fantastically macabre set of illustrated cover art from Matthew Woodson (www.ghostco.org), The Dead Sea is Xela's ode to all things maritime -- with the album's thematic thread detailing a doomed ocean voyage that meets an abrupt end amongst a swarm of malignant zombies. Drawing on the work of 1970s horror directors (Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and George Romero, et al.) and their respective soundtracks, The Dead Sea pays a considerable debt to the likes of Goblin or Fabio Frizzi -- albeit frayed with a bloodied disposition that reveals a love of Earth, Circle and Wolf Eyes. Nowhere near as oppressive as this description could have you believe, Xela also exposes a deep seam of kaleidoscopic folk amongst his collection, with generous nods going to the freewheeling antics of labels such as Fonal and The Jewelled Antler Collective. Opening through the lace-curtained drone of "The Gate," Xela presents a cold-water batch of foggy soundscapes that briefly part to reveal some insistent percussion. Next up are the heat-haze melodies of "Linseed" and its tender coalition of acoustic shards and mealy rhythms, before a Victorian music box is exposed to some virulently thrumming necromancy on "Drunk On Salt Water." From here Xela continues to coax both light and dark from a diverse palate of instruments ranging in style from the throbbing, Theremin-heavy electronics of "Creeping Flesh" and the tarnished grandeur of "Savage Ritual," through to the seething distortion of "Humid At Dusk" and the nervous shimmer of "Briefly Seen." Horrifically good!

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