Side 15 – Chik White: I Am Muck. You Are The Wind.
CHIK WHITE is the recording alias of Darcy Spidle, star and co-writer of the Canadian cult film, Lowlife, and the guy behind Canadian indie institution Divorce Records. Playing almost like a possible alternative soundtrack to Lowlife, I Am Muck sucks you into a starfish licking world of bizarr0 psych improvisations and avant soundscapes created from “experimental jews harp and acoustic guitar”. Exciting and fearless stream of consciousness music/noise/sound making—like the wind and tides blowing and flowing.
Side 16 – Holiday Rambler: It Lasted A Hundred Years, It Will Last A Hundred More.
“More like coal than gasoline”, HOLIDAY RAMBLER (aka D. Alex Meeks of Hooded Fang infamy) is one of those young men you meet where you simply know they have a time machine buried in their backyard. They’re just too comfortable wearing the attire and diction of yesteryear for it to be entirely an act. The title of this set of songs and sounds, It Lasted A Hundred Years, It Will Last A Hundred More, could be a reference to the timeless/old-timey nature of the Rambler’s American gothic folk-blues. Despite being a relatively young sprout, there’s a lot of gravelly down-home wisdom woven throughout the set of bluegrass and gospel informed tunes with a decidedly end-times feel. Kind of like a Smithsonian Folkways recording from the backwoods of Virginia in an alternate universe where the Great Depression never ended.
C50 // edition of 50 // pro-duped // DL code // glossy accordion fold insert // cloth bag with hand stamped product tag.
Release Date: April 1st, 2013.
Side 15 – Chik White: I Am Muck. You Are The Wind.
Side 16 – Holiday Rambler: It Lasted A Hundred Years, It Will Last A Hundred More.
CHIK WHITE is the recording alias of Darcy Spidle, star and co-writer of the Canadian cult film, Lowlife, and the guy behind Canadian indie institution Divorce Records. Playing almost like a possible alternative soundtrack to Lowlife, I Am Muck sucks you into a starfish licking world of bizarr0 psych improvisations and avant soundscapes created from “experimental jews harp and acoustic guitar” (that’s how Darcy sold me on the project but there’s other instruments and objects involved too). Exciting and fearless stream of consciousness music/noise/sound making—like the wind and tides blowing and flowing.
“More like coal than gasoline”, HOLIDAY RAMBLER (aka D. Alex Meeks of Hooded Fang infamy) is one of those young men you meet where you simply know they have a time machine buried in their backyard. They’re just too comfortable wearing the attire and diction of yesteryear for it to be entirely an act. The title of this set of songs and sounds, It Lasted A Hundred Years, It Will Last A Hundred More, could be a reference to the timeless/old-timey nature of the Rambler’s American gothic folk-blues. Despite being a relatively young sprout, there’s a lot of gravelly down-home wisdom woven throughout the set of bluegrass and gospel informed tunes with a decidedly end-times feel. Kind of like a Smithsonian Folkways recording from the backwoods of Virginia in an alternate universe where the Great Depression never ended.
Side 11—Nick Kuepfer, Tape Test For A New Year / Audrey’s Asprin / Grackles: Grinding string harmonies drone from the celestial abyss. Birds sing, forests crumble. A ghost trains thunders across the prairies, hammers on tin roofs as it passes. Somewhere to the south, a bank robber dies in the tumbleweeds, clutching a satchel full of money with a dusty hand. An entrancing, cinematic soundscape; a travelogue of the spaces between light and shadow.
BIO:Montreal-based guitarist Nick Kuepfer weaves nylon string and electric guitar pieces with live-sampled tape loops, recordings of animals, and drones from various sources. His predominantly wordless music ranges from subtle and static to frantic and abrasive, with a methodical, vigilant sense of experimentation guided by the search for consonance and dissonance with the sounds of “nature”.
Side 12—Khôra, Foris: Ringing in the shadows of a European cathedral, tones weave behind a camel train on the spice road and twist like smoke beyond the bazaars of Turkey before erupting like an Icelandic volcano, black ash on white snow.
BIO:Matthew Ramolo’s Khôra project is based chiefly on acoustic/electric guitar and field recordings, with extensive signal processing and digital interventions conditioning these sources to create an immersive soundworld of drones, chimes, rings and other pointillistic sonics. His longform compositions contain lovely stretches of relatively unprocessed and fully recognisable guitar work, with picking patterns and chord sequences that evolve/devolve into more signal-bent and DSP soundscapes. The results are highly organic and meditative while retaining plenty of icy shards, bubbling distortions and passages of controlled monumentalism, making this anything but an ambient listen.
C40 // edition of 50 // pro-duped // DL code included // hand-assembled window sleeves
Side 9: Avant improv bassist Aaron Lumleyhas been making waves lately with his harrowing long-player Wilderness. Of which Foxy Digitalis said “…searching for new methods to escape the limitations of technique, the human body, and the physical science of acoustics. By accomplishing this without straying beyond the boundaries of man and implement, he’s shown mastery of a vigorous beast, a task not for the faint of heart. Furthermore, the album is as appetizing for casual listeners as it is for serious improv mavens – a gravity-defying feat that is as rare as it is welcome!“
We posit this improvised session goes one further, both visceral and teeming with expression in the traditions of Dave Holland and François Rabbath. Recorded by Matthew Dunn in Toronto who, in Lumley’s words, “brought the fuzz and grime to the fore.”
And we have to agree. In the middle ages, people were burned at the stake for playing music like this—he’s clearly possessed by some kind of demon.
Side 10: We’re pleased to present the debut release for The Knot, the duo of cellists Tilman Lewis and Nick Storring. With allegiance to both form and freedom, they embark on sonic explorations that draw on various folk traditions and experimental musics. The pair love to bend the instrument’s lyricism, drawing not so much on extended techniques as on an array of audacious contra-techniques: preparations/ apparati (practice mutes, hair-clips, clamps, wine corks, mallets, egg beaters, plectrums etc.). They still, however, permit the cello’s natural beauty to have its place.
Their large palette of sonorities is channeled and combined into single unified textures, and everything from improvised heterophony, to stark contrast.
Intertwining beauty and discord meeting somewhere between the gravel pit and the northern lights.
The first cassette of our SPLIT TAPES SERIES 2 is set to be released on 2012/08/21. 20 minute sides; pro-duped; hand assembled outer sleeves. Edition of 50. We don’t have pre-orders set up but if you want to reserve a copy, you should email arachnidiscs@hotmail.comto get put on a list.
Side 9 is avant improv bassist Aaron Lumleywho’s been making waves lately with his harrowing long-player Wilderness. Of which Foxy Digitalis said “…searching for new methods to escape the limitations of technique, the human body, and the physical science of acoustics. By accomplishing this without straying beyond the boundaries of man and implement, he’s shown mastery of a vigorous beast, a task not for the faint of heart. Furthermore, the album is as appetizing for casual listeners as it is for serious improv mavens – a gravity-defying feat that is as rare as it is welcome!” We posit this improvised session goes one further, both visceral and teeming with expression in the traditions of Dave Holland and François Rabbath.
Side 10 is the debut release for The Knot, a cello duo made up of composer/improviser Nick Storring and avant virtuoso Tilman Lewis. Intertwining beauty and discord meeting somewhere between the gravel pit and the northern lights.
MOONWOOD – The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack, and the Strength of the Pack is the Wolf
Buy Now: CD – 13 tracks/48 mins. Atmospheric psychexotica. Pocket sleeve in translucent red lino block printed envelope w/ 3-pack of pin back buttons.
From the meditative opener, “So The Darkness Shall Be The Light, And The Stillness Be The Dancing” to the rambling opium den epic of “Where The Flowers Blossom Red”, the album smoulders with Javanese go-go gamelan gongs, smoky Cambodian funk, wicked Celtic ragas, deep Saharan blues, simmering Sufi surf and spacedout Indian soul. A heady fusion for heady times (times like, say, 1972 or, possibly, 1912). RIYL: Six Organs, Dengue Fever, Robbie Basho
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness be the dancing 4:47
The Palace of Malice 3:20
Phnom Penthouse 2:58
Invite me to stare into the darkness 3:12
Grafitti Blossoms 3:16
Geedoodles, it’s Captain Judas! 2:47
Hyaenas know the dead are safer meat than the even weakest living treat 3:21
It takes a child to raze a village 2:21
The twilight swallows the thicket 2:44
Fireflies trapped in a cracked pint jar 3:26
Woodwose walks wicked and wild 2:22
And the snake shall be your watchman 3:32
Where the flowers blossom red 10:18
Also available in a convenient digital format at BANDCAMP.
Watch the videos for “Grafitti Blossoms” and “It Takes a Child to Raze a Village”
“Theo Angell’s side contains an entire cannon of American folk and story telling warped through his wizard beard. Moonwood mixes fuzzy reverb from a desert with mystic percussion and spiritual chimes. If you ever consider going on a vision quest, trying to start a New Church of Man, I suggest you take this with you.“
And Dying For Bad Music listed the Moonwood side specifically at #9 in their top 23 records of 2011.
Vol. 5 in the Moonwood rehearsal tapes series. Just over an hour of material edited down from 4 sessions of solo improv guitar jams. Meditative ragas, analogue space drones and black ritualistic fuzz.
Theo Angell / Moonwood (C-80) 2011. Deluxe cloth bag edition of 50 w/full colour insert and sticker. Free digital download link included.
$7.00 CAD (includes shipping)
Side 5: Theo Angell – Live @ Secret Project Robot 4-17-11
Mightily impressed by his Auraplinth and Dearly Beloved albums, we’re pretty excited to present this 40 minute live set by Theo Angell (JOMF, Hall of Fame) accompanied by one Hamish Kilgour (The Clean) recorded at Secret Project Robot in March. Arcane Eastern ragas and spooky Appalachian rags; ethereal whispers and raging acoustic freak-outs; jaunty alpine whistles and deep desert ceremonies. This here is bare bones psyche-folk wedding the weird and the beautiful to make babies with odd numbers of limbs and psychic eyes.
Side 6:Moonwood – The Path
Recorded by Moonwood during the same sessions as the mostly instrumental River Ghosts material, these nine vocal songs are vaguely woven together by Taoist mysticism and modern day beards. Southwestern reverb, droning psychedelic fuzz, Eastern percussion and plucked acoustic instruments mix with ritual chants and soft-spoken tales about death and small woodland animals.
12: Gown / RobRobRob (split) 2010. Cassette. Deluxe cloth bag edition w/fold-out (limited run of 50). Free digital download link included. The first two sides in our new split cassette series.
1: GOWN - Jake’s Strut (Live in Sackville, 2009 w/Omon Ra) (20 mins) “MacGregor’s voice floats through the murky composition like a lost firefly, giving off light every so often in hopes that he’ll be found again. A foggy oasis steeped in washed out guitar effects, psychedelic clouds of harmonies that float by like the first black clouds before a beautiful thunderstorm.” ~ Foxy Digitalis
2: RobRobRob – Water / Garden at Night / Pocket Thesaurus / Untitled / Sun on curtains (20 mins) Hailing from Scotland via The Netherlands, guitarist Robert Gray’s style floats between harsh beauty and gentle noise. Free-form improvisations that are neither acid-folk nor shoegaze and somehow both. Something new called Folkgaze? Maybe.
Posted by arachnidiscs 
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness be the dancing 4:47
It takes a child to raze a village 2:21
