Browse by Label: APERTURE (UK)

Artist:	OBERMAN KNOCKS
Title:	13th Smallest
Label:	APERTURE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	AP 001CD

"Andrea Parker is to release the first album on her new label aperture which will be combining all things experimental. Breaking from convention. It will be based around concepts, soundscapes and mystery. 'It is all art after all.' The release in question is the 10 track, out-there debut album from Sheffield born Oberman Knocks (aka Nigel Truswell), who now lives in the badlands of Walworth, South London; and also works in Whitechapel as one half of graphic design studio Pony. After first listening to Nigel's demo Parker says 'I was pleasantly surprised and instantly addicted. It was what I had been waiting for. Haunting sounds that rise and fall with seams of vulnerability. Heavy yet beautiful, underlined by deep rumblings (and I do like my bottom end!) A timeless piece. Setting the scene for the next David Lynch film. (Oh and did I mention it's dark!!??)' The album is produced with three pieces of software, a minidisc recorder and a cheap little microphone. With no interest in the latest plug-ins, tech-talk and very limited technical know-how, the tracks are all about the creation and manipulation of sounds for the pure pleasure of the production itself. Spurning sterile accuracy and clinically happy tunes for sounds that bring back some of the dirt and darkness that has been swept away of late, these are tracks happy to inhabit the dark corridors of the mind through to large expanses of concrete space waiting to be filled. Influenced by funk, motown and hip hop as much as by the likes of WARP and Skam. The Human League's 'Being Boiled' was the first record Nigel ever brought (and what a classic) but it was through Autechre's Sean Booth and fellow WARP recording artist Mira Calix that Nigel was first encouraged to start making his own music. Initially recording under the moniker Alkin Engineering and later WG Machines, he has released tracks on Static Caravan, Unlabel, Nastycandy, Shima and October Man Recordings. 13th Smallest is Nigel's debut outing as Oberman Knocks."

Artist:	CLIFFORDANDCALIX
Title:	Lost Foundling 1999-2004
Label:	APERTURE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	AP 002CD

"Warp artists Mark Clifford and Mira Calix have been good friends for a long time. During the 5 year period between 1999 and 2004, they'd meet up from time to time, hang out, drink a lot of coffee, smoke too many cigarettes, stay up all night and make some noise. The songs on Lost Foundling come from this very loose and irregular working period. Their initial plan was to come back to the tracks at some point, mix them and release them. However, they were both busy with other projects and when Andrea Parker expressed an interest in releasing the material on her newly established Aperture label, the duo discovered it was impossible to go back and meddle in their material. Mira and Mark had recorded their songs on an evolutionary range of formats, whatever was to hand, and when they went to dig out the computer files, dat tapes, floppy and zip drives, they were reminded that most of these had become obsolete, in what felt like a brief decade. There was no going back. The duo selected 13 of their favourite tracks, leaving them untouched. Lost Foundling captures a slice in time, a document of their discovery and experimentation as musicians, the songs have survived, uninhibited, tender and instinctive."

Artist:	ORAM & ANDREA PARKER, DAPHNE
Title:	Private Dreams and Public Nightmares
Label:	APERTURE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	AP 003CD

This is the third album release on Andrea Parker's avant-garde Aperture label, a label carving its own niche in experimental electronic music. Other artists to date have included Oberman Knocks, clifordandcalix, and remixes from the likes of Luke Vibert, Freeform, Majestic 12, Andrea Parker and Daz Quayle. The album at hand is a concept album which re-works and re-interprets original, unheard sounds from the Daphne Oram archives to create eight unique original pieces culminating in an album which includes two live performances by Andrea Parker and Daz Quayle. Done purely as a labor of love in their spare time, Parker and Quayle have incorporated some of the less-obvious, unnerving sounds they discovered hidden in the archives to explore a different side of Daphne Oram -- a darker side. What developed was a deeply personal album, drawing on Parker's in-depth knowledge of Daphne Oram's life and works, containing pieces created as they hoped Daphne Oram herself would have done with the sounds that she had made. Daphne Oram needs no introduction... British pioneer and forerunner of modern electronic music, and founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, she's the genius who built the Oramics machine. She is also one of Parker's idols. It was her obsessive interest in collecting sound effects records and her passion for electronic pioneers that first introduced her to Daphne Oram and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. A chance meeting with Phil Howlett at The Royal Festival Hall ultimately led to her direct involvement with the Daphne Oram Trust, through trustee Dr. Mick Grierson, who gave Parker permission to create a unique concept album using some of Daphne Oram's original sounds. In doing so she became one of the first people to be given unrestricted access to the Daphne Oram Archives, containing hundreds of tapes (211 to be precise) of original, unheard sounds created by Daphne Oram herself. Private Dreams and Public Nightmares starts with an interview featuring Daphne Oram recorded for women's hour for the BBC. Followed by two pieces performed live by Parker and Quayle, one for the Short Circuit Festival supporting the BBC Radiophonic Workshop at The Roundhouse and also for "Oramics: The Life and Works of Daphne Oram" at The Royal Festival Hall. The album sounds minimal, yet in some pieces, up to 80 insular sounds were used to create a detailed path to lead your ear through the unknown. An intense piece of work. This album is challenging and isolationist, using a spectrum of dark sounds running throughout with the occasional beat, lots of bass that certainly weighs it down, giving it a distinctive, moody and ominous sound. There are chords as well as lots of bleeps, electronic clangs and plenty of sinister drones that force their way into your consciousness, leaving you feeling possibly unstable with emotional tension. It's fearsome, haunting and downright scary at times, certainly not for the faint-hearted. It's definitely not easy listening, but be patient, and you will find extraordinary pieces delivered in an unnerving way.

Artist:	OBERMAN KNOCKS
Title:	Beatcroff Slabs
Label:	APERTURE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	AP 004CD

Beatcroff Slabs follows Oberman Knocks' first release on the Aperture label, the widely-acclaimed 2009 debut album 13th Smallest, and is comprised of 16 tracks that take his sounds down yet darker, more twisted corridors and into ever-expanding sonic spaces. Beatcroff Slabs' evolving sound has essentially been built around the same core elements as 13th Smallest -- those of manipulated, synthesized studio sounds, fused with field recordings of the everyday and Knocks' travels. The vocals, both snatched in public and his own, are contorted into instrumentation, and conversely synthetic sounds mutated into those with a vocal resonance -- human and beyond. The album is produced with the same rudimentary set-up and continues Knocks' unabated and unique trajectory in sound. With Beatcroff Slabs, Oberman Knocks (Nigel Truswell) has produced a visceral album which further explores his trademark themes -- densely claustrophobic cinematic pieces, as with the opening track "Ak-himp Rise," the use of arrhythmic beats such as in "Leckren Verso" and his love for bottom-heavy sonics, found on "Konshun Four." The tempo of the album veers from the thundering "Scanlon's Heaping Gore Pull" and tripped-up beats of "Degonnt Type Runners," through to the metallically-spatial and delicate "Tek-fir Blades," along with one of the album's mellower moments "Mighton Ogan Lode," where Knocks demonstrates that machine music can indeed be evocative and imbued with human emotion, as well as fully-charged with mechanical vigor.

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