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viewing 1 To 10 of 10 items
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12"
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WHITEBOX 012EP
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Super limited 12" from Manchester's disco-rock finest Stranger Son. For fans of Liquid Liquid, P.I.L., LCD Soundsystem and the '70s soundtracks of Bernard Herrmann. Featuring Warp Records' Lonelady on guitar and members of the Manchester cosmic space-rock collective, GNOD.
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CD
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WHITEBOX 011CD
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After his impressive solo debut, Consolamentum, Manchester-based musician Richard A. Ingram returns with another slab of implacably somber cinematic electronic music. Perhaps without acknowledgement, Happy Hour occasionally hints at Rhythm & Sound-style analog manipulations, and at other times is reminiscent of Andrew Chalk's darker excursions. There are puzzles within this music too; clues lie within the titles, within the CD text and the audio itself -- we'll say no more, they are there to be uncovered. Richard's music has something of a signature lo-fi quality -- one which mangles the original sound source in such a way that you're not entirely sure what it is you're listening to. Album opener "Agile Drone" certainly highlights this, with what sounds to be a peculiar, tape degraded/filtered piano; shifting through resonant frequencies, bellowing and morphing, then decaying almost to the point of silence before delivering the album's killer bass drop. "Truncheon Tree" is perhaps more closely related to the Consolamentum material, with a sampled piano loop which slowly expands to a peak before resolving right back where it began. The album's final tracks entitled "Chaos Fortifier" and "Retro Morph" venture into the realms of aural perversity akin to the compelling yet disturbing visuals of Gaspar Noé (Enter The Void and Irreversible) and Michael Hanake (Funny Games) -- music as harrowing as it is euphoric, creating almost drug-induced states of unrest. Limited to 250 copies only.
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LP
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WHITEBOX 008LP
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The White Box label presents a release by Polish electronic experimental/harsh ambient drone musician Cezary Gapik. Gapik's deeply unsettling soundscapes go beyond the primal "power electronics" assaults (which the label adores and thrives on), of early Whitehouse and Sutcliffe Jugend. They go far beyond the capabilities of many of the supposed "dark ambient" artists releasing music today. Primitive forms have been discarded in favor of an articulate attention to detail, all for the benefit of the discerning listener. Fans of diverse, forward-thinking sound artists such as Philip Jeck, Kevin Drumm, Tim Hecker, Carlos Giffoni, Phill Niblock, Peter Rehberg, Fennesz and other SERIOUS people should take note. Gapik's sonic assaults and tonally perverse audio structures house such progressive depth, that upon discovering this music, White Box concluded there was simply too much good material to contain in a single release. Presented here is part one of a triptych; "Contrast I" comprises two pieces, and perhaps not surprisingly given its title, features two very different compositional approaches from the same artist. From the opening moments of side A's monolithic "#0473 [Tremor]," Gapik's music asserts an unflinching, confrontational prowess all its own; an articulate slab of cold, metallic sound, unrelenting, aurally oppressive and executed with total precision. If we're talking power electronics here (and as far as side A goes, we are), it doesn't get much more forward-thinking than this. Side B track "#0458 [Drowsiness]," offers an altogether different approach to its side A counterpart, its peculiar, clustered tones slowly creeping in and out of phase, seemingly designed to throw off the listener, traversing dark psychedelic territories. White Box will be releasing "Contrast" Parts II and III further into 2011. Limited edition vinyl release of 400 copies only. Features gorgeous sleeve art from Berlin-based painter Suse Kipp.
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CD
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WHITEBOX 007CD
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Manchester's Warm Widow present an urgent and unorthodox rock album, captured live in a matter of hours, entirely recorded on three rather shitty SM58 microphones in the grimy confines of some of Manchester and Salford's least-welcoming environments. The struggle the band found their sorry asses enveloped in to make this record is the very thing that gives Widower its character. You, too, would be keen to get the fucker nailed sharp-ish if you were working in a non-soundproofed room, above a gym full of pissed-off bodybuilders, keen to put into practice their abilities to kick the living shit out of the "noisy, talentless bastards upstairs." The trio of Lianne Steinberg (drums/totally fucked-up arm leading to a hiatus in performing for the best part of a year with the excruciatingly painful exception of this recording session), Zak Hane (bass and homeless), and Martin Greenwood (guitar/vocal/problematic approaches) offer a collection of lo-fi pop blasts that give a nod to some of the sexiest bands you've ever fawned over -- album opener "Cracker" recalls the Slates-period coldness of The Fall, Greenwood's uniquely scattershot lyrical imagery cutting its own dark path throughout the record. Elsewhere, there's the early Jesus Lizard-esque "Lost Dog." We find the Anglophile-via-U.S. pop sensibilities of Guided By Voices in there as well. Elsewhere, "Dogs In The Surgery" could have been co-written with Bob Mould during the Sugar period, and "A Million Butterfly Skulls" could have easily slipped its way onto Wire's Chairs Missing LP. Album closer "Back Of The Class" resolutely and unashamedly echoes The Fall's "Spoilt Victorian Child." There are undeniable points of reference to Warm Widow's influences throughout this album, but, like The Fall, their dark center is clearly a sound which could only be born out of circumstance in a bleak inner-city surrounding. Manchester is the culprit. Warm Widow is the band. This is the sound of a dark future scribbled by the buzz and screech of a blown-out amplifier. Meticulously mastered by Bob Weston (Shellac, Mission Of Burma) at Chicago Mastering Service.
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WHITEBOX 006CD
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Arkhonia is one-half of a UK collaborative project under the name of jz-arkh, and it is, indeed, a peculiar animal. It is a deep, deep listening experience which plunges the listener further into states of subconscious unrest -- time slows down or stops, as the listener slowly slips into a narcoleptic state through the slow decline into computer noise, or sound events which unfold with no discernable pattern or meaning. But rather than offering a monotonous serial drone, these tracks create an overall landscape, alternately dank and warm to the point of humidity, and cold, stark and sparse, all eventually dissipating into nothingness as the album closes, reprising the pulses and washes of its opening. This is a collection of drone-based, slow-moving progressions, all realized without the use of any live instrumentation, or any trained musical ear. Small fragments of sound have been stretched, edited, filtered, reduced and manipulated to create an often barren and solitary sonic landscape. The source materials have been either expanded from a limited input, broken down and transformed into something entirely distinct from its origin, or transmuted into a bold and dark shadow of its former self -- all collated into one seamless sequence. These tracks have been very consciously constructed, with edits and segments extracted from outputted "drift studies" (with a knowing nod to both La Monte Young and Brian Eno) that often run for an hour or so, and then dissected for key musical components. These explorations focus on ideas of musical "events and non-events"; subdued harmonic monotones and stasis contrasting with huge dynamic surges of processed tones -- insistent, at times bordering on the subsonic, and tonally identifiable as Arkhonia's distinctly digital sound signature.
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CD
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WHITEBOX 005CD
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This is the debut solo album from Manchester, UK-based Richard A Ingram. Consolamentum is a bold body of work and a fearless statement of intent. As guitarist in rock outfit Oceansize, little in Richard's day job suggests either the genesis or the source of this album. This music comes from somewhere else entirely, some undefined center; organic and ever-expanding, fiercely powerful compositions, tonal explorations and melodies, with Richard himself as its source. Using electric and nylon string guitars, piano, a variety of tape recorders and assorted electrical equipment, Consolamentum casts an oppressive shadow over a distant and very dark horizon, a vision of bleak futurism. While Richard admits to taking inspiration for the track titles from the history of the Cathars, he is adamant that "this is not a fucking religious concept album." Consolamentum could be classified as some form of "acoustic doom," perhaps some form of drone-based music, but it is none of these things; it exists entirely in a realm of its own. Despite its title, "Kll Thm ll..." presents a cautiously optimistic entry point, and is something of an overture for what follows: melody emerges from a backdrop of machine hum, where curious tonal phases suggest something unfamiliar yet exultant. Then comes "de Montfort" -- its sustained, opening (treated) piano chord planted with determined finality. Creeping piano segments and washes of static tape hiss create a tension that builds and builds, until it finally resolves back to its opening piano chord, bringing everything full circle. The beauty is in the simplicity of the parts -- Ingram's expressive playing and economical approach to the pieces, at times lo-fi, at times presented like field recordings, is the key to these stunning and peculiar arrangements. Take for example, the lurching emptiness of the title track, its drunken, hazy detuned guitar phrases, low and sustained, submerged under an ever-present silence -- the result is deeply unsettling. "Beziers" exacerbates the tension further, and, as the longest track, acts as a kind of centerpiece. "The Melioramentum" and then "...Gd Wll Rcgnz Hs wn" feel like mournful recapitulations of the four tracks so far, but there is little consolation offered, as the album comes to a close with the sound of all the machines slowly being switched off, until there is just hiss, and then it ends
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WHITEBOX 004CD
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This is the debut solo album from Danny Saul. Saul has been an active part of a largely undocumented Manchester music scene for nearly 10 years, having played with Stranger Son Of WB (bass), Easter (guitar), Polythene (attitude) and Barbarians (destroying stuff) amongst others, as well as continuing an ongoing live collaboration with Greg Haines as pub-ambient improvising duo Liondialer, whose LIVE! album was also released on White Box. As guitarist with Tsuji Giri, Saul self-released a Steve Albini-recorded album in 2005, with the band promptly self-destructing soon after. After all the tribulations associated with the process of production and shared decision-making, Danny rethought every aspect of how to perform and record with the minimum of intervention or interference; Harsh, Final is the culmination of a bloody minded pursuit for a personal satisfaction in both making music and doing things right. "Your Death" opens the album with softly plucked acoustic guitar, and proceeds to build layers of acoustic and electric guitars into a hazed atmosphere. Be sure -- Danny Saul is very much not a conventional singer-songwriter, as these are tunes sensitively drawn, defiantly made and deliberately too long for both radio and the short attention spans of his peers. The album builds to a head on the wonderful "Cannonball," just shy of thirteen minutes, and is bracketed by two shorter pieces "(harsh)" and "(final)," which bring a heady sense of disorientation and an unusual focus to the longer tune resting between them. Harsh, Final maintains this paired-down and deliberate atmosphere throughout -- recurring themes of death and escape culminate in a cover of a heartfelt lament for a personal loss by Manchester's Hotpants Romance (think a much more glamorous Shaggs), here reinterpreted as an oppressive and over-possessive love song. Its cumulative build of layered guitar and harmony vocals eventually fades, echoing the album as it began, with a single exposed musician (guitar, vocal), indelibly human and unforgettably resonant.
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WHITEBOX 003CD
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Liondialer is the debut full-length collaborative project from Manchester, UK/Berlin duo Greg Haines and Danny Saul. Liondialer LIVE! is a sequence of stunningly beautiful compositions which were entirely improvised and recorded live throughout various venues in Manchester (and one on Antwerp radio). Using cello and guitar as a starting point, Liondialer compose and process their sound to devastating effect -- laptop pub-ambient, anyone? Greg Haines has already gained a reputation as an incredibly ambitious composer with his previous solo debut album Slumber Tides, released on Erik Skodvin's impeccable Miasmah imprint. Haines and Saul's second-ever public collaboration was an improvised performance with John Twells aka Xela, which was subsequently released as The Twelfth Chapel on Rite Records, a limited edition, one-sided 12" which sold out immediately. The songs on this record are glimmering evocations built from dark cello drone and echoing guitar meanderings that sound almost too beautiful and fully-realized to possibly be improvised. Looped meditations for stringed instruments. For fans of: Talk Talk, Stars Of The Lid, Tony Conrad, and Loren Connors.
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CD
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WHITEBOX 002CD
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This is the debut full-length release by Manchester's Stranger Son Of WB. Featuring main member Gareth Smith, who physically dismantled his previous band TVH3, to date, Stranger Son Of WB has been through about ten different line-ups -- the shifting sound held together by the underlying style of Gareth's punchy writing and snarling vocal delivery. Following on from a couple of highly-acclaimed singles on the Kum Ba Yah and Marquis Cha Cha labels, as well as a Marc Riley BBC session, Smith locked himself away in his Chorlton flat and battered out the scratchy, 4-track demos of the songs that would eventually become Einstein's Getaway. With an emphasis on nailing a "vibe" over tidiness, the results speak for themselves. Take the album's opening title track, for example, with its spazzy, Mondays-esque "it's grim up North" funk groove, Gareth's dysfunctional vocal separating it from any obvious Madchester dubiousness. Then comes the lean disco-not-disco vibes of "Engine" -- a pummeling, alt-rock floor-filler. Just when you think you've understood them, they drop "Crawl" -- a visceral monster of a track, brutal and gigantic, recalling the terrifying vibes of The Birthday Party's "The Friend Catcher." Elsewhere, "Mog's Pill" carries a rather disturbing narrative about a man who thinks he can see the color of his bones. Einstein's Getaway is the sound of Manchester now -- sure, there are comparisons to The Fall, ESG, etc., but this is not some limp pastiche of the Northwest's previous musical glories, polished-up to appeal to the masses. A ridiculously tight rhythm section shores up scrawling guitar and Smith's howling/shouted vocal stylings, and one cannot help but jerk along. This is a raw burst of primal energy, with songs that are as catchy as hell.
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12"
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WHITEBOX 001EP
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Stranger Son of WB present their debut 12" for Manchester's new White Box imprint with a primal burst of raw, no-nonsense energy. Three minutes of hardened, lean and taut synth-pop, and a disco beat with teeth. Snarling vocals are backed by a super-tight band. This one is for fans of The Fall, early Factory Records, New York post-punk/disco-not-disco innovators like ESG, The Contortions and Liquid Liquid, all fuelled by lethal amounts of Suicide-style energy. One-sided, limited to 300 copies.
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