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LP
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OTRLP 007LP
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Once encountered, the exquisite, low-key charms of Craig Tattersall, Andrew Johnson, and Nicola Hodgkinson's band, Remote Viewer, leave an impression that lingers long after their records stop playing. A decade since departing with I Can't Believe It's Not Better (2008), Other Ideas recalls their lower case sound as you've never heard it, presenting ten previously unreleased songs drawn from minidiscs "before the last functioning MD player in Prestwich gave up the ghost", and pressed it to vinyl. Perhaps the greatest champions of drizzly, Lancastrian mood music ever known, Remote Viewer formed as a splinter group from Leeds-based Hood with their eponymous 1999 debut, taking the opportunity to pursue a fragile, downbeat strain of electronic song-craft and experimentation that quietly held steady against the grain of much electronica during that era. Over the course of four albums and four EPs, they addressed ambient pop music's barest essentials with a succinct blend of miserablism and refined, adroit technicality that they could safely call their own, and more or less sprang a whole scene of copycats in their wake. Us. In Happier Times is the Remote Viewer's typically ambiguous title for this collection; ten grainy and richly evocative pieces of haptic scrabble and jaded gestures as inviting as a warm brew and a two-bar heater on a piss wet night. It's the sound of glacial English valleys after-hours, finding them animating ambient embers and wilting pop hooks with clipped, Teutonic glitches, and subby pulses. The results form a curious and emotionally intelligent adjunct to then-contemporary dance or pop music, a sound best received on punctured sofas in small coffee shops and living rooms, one which will forever be reminiscent of wet mornings back at the turn of the century. With the flickering fizz of "Tonight It Feels Like Spain", you hear all three members in intimate dialogue, opening a session that variously takes in SND-like garage minimalism and what sounds like Muslimgauze fever-dreaming in two-step on "Complaining Of Feeling Unwell", or a pre-echo of autonomic D&B in the Arovane-esque nerve pinch of "The Sound Of Old Helmshore", whereas "This Old Face Dates Me" is like a prickly Arran to the suave, cashmere gentility of To Rococo Rot, and the crackling group harmonies of lullaby closer "When It Was Over" forms possibly the loveliest finale to any record you'll find in 2017. RIYL: Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, To Rococo Rot, Hood. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton.
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BLOCK 025CD
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"Somewhere in the Greater Manchester Area, on an average street, in an average attic of an average house, every now and again, time stands still. This is when Andrew Johnson and Craig Tattersal sit down and switch on their machines, opening the gates to the land of The Remote Viewer. This, however, does not happen too often, just in case you want to know why it took so long to compile new tracks for a new release on CCO. After their album Here I Go Again On My Own released in 2002, we are happy to announce the return of The Remote Viewer. You're Going To Love Our Defeatist Attitude picks up where Andrew and Craig pressed the Stop button after recording their last album, but at the same time takes their sound to a completely new level, a much more acoustic one. With Nicola Hodgkinson (from Empress) on vocals, Andrew and Craig dig deeper, haunt some friendly ghosts in detuned pianos, introduce a vocoder to the band, polish their little rhythms and make them shine even brighter. It is an intimate world these two gentlemen are orchestrating, a world in which time doesn't really matter, a world which is always there, which always awaits you with open arms."
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LP
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BLOCK 025LP
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