MT086a. Edition of 875 black vinyl copies in regular sleeve.
MT086. Edition of 25 black vinyl numbered and signed copies in handmade sleeve.
Lac16. Edition of 2 acetates.
Sleeve Notes
Original material by Nurse With Wound (
Steven Stapleton
and
Colin Potter
) recorded 2001-2003. Dismantled, raped and set fire to by Cyclobe (
Ossian Brown
and
Stephen Thrower
). Hurdy Gurdy by Cliff Stapleton. Bells performed and recorded by Ossian Brown
and Thighpaulsandra in St. Johns Church, Gdansk, Poland. Flute and sax by Hansi
Fischer and Tim Belbe of Xhol Caravan.
Apocalyptic guitar by David Tibet. Original material mastered by Denis
Blackham. Cover Paintings by
Babs Santini
. Beautifully photographed by Neville B. Tough.
This album is dedicated to Tim Belbe who passed away on August 18, 2004.
Sleeve Notes for Art edition
This is an edition of 75 individually handpainted disks to celebrate the
release of the three album set "Angry Eelectric Finger"
Nurse With Wound - Jim O'Rourke
"Angry Eelectric Finger 1"
Nurse With Wound - Cyclobe
"Angry Eelectric Finger 2"
The paint and vinyl were salvaged from the local landfill site at Inagh, County
Clare and recycled in Cooloorta during September and November of 2004. - Steven
Stapleton
Notes
Original material recorded by
Colin Potter
and
Steven Stapleton
between 2001 and 2003, sampled and edited from
recordings originally made by Xhol Caravan. Stapleton personally asked
Jim O'Rourke, Irr.App.(Ext.) and Cyclobe to "finish" his recordings and
Angry Eelectric Finger (Spitch'cock One)
was released on CD through
United Dairies
.
World Serpent Distribution went bust and the project became inherited
by
Beta-Lactam Ring Records
and all the material also surfaced on:
While O'Rourke presented an LP very much in a
Nurse With Wound style, Cyclobe have obliterated most traces of
Stapleton and Potter's raw material and instead produced a freak out of
frayed electronics that sounds much closer to the work of their former
colleagues in Coil. Although their "Part One" begins with sparse drones
and eerie ambience, the stereo field soon becomes a battleground on
which sharp bursts from analog synths whirr back and forth. Passages of
extreme noise are balanced by menacing quiet sections such as the last
several minutes of "Part One." Some of the sounds appearing early on
are so jagged and startling that these calmer sections produce the same
effect as the scenes in horror films in which an intruder is waiting
quietly behind a corner. It is no coincidence that Cyclobe's Stephen
Thrower was an integral member of Coil during the time they produced
music for Hellraiser (referred to in some places as "too scary to be
used in the film"). This album is interesting for the insight it may
provide into the working methods of Thrower and Ossian Brown as
Cyclobe. By not directly referencing the source material they may give
us clues as to how they construct their own music. Perhaps they always
tend towards manipulating source material beyond recognition. The
creaking ratchet sound that seems to be the project's signature motif
is audible here, as are the flute and saxophone played by Xhol.
However, they are merely hinted at underneath dense layers of sonic
debris, and are only heard briefly. Cyclobe have treated the source
material as a starting point for producing a compelling new work that
pays tribute to Nurse With Wound as much as it cements their reputation
as being superb producers in their own right, regardless of their Coil
associations. - Jim Siegel
Angry Eelectric Finger Part Two: Paraparaparallellogrammatica
Nurse With Wound / Cyclobe
UDCD0300. Edition of 2000 CD copies in digipak.
Edition of 3 vinyl test pressings in handmade sleeves.
Sleeve Notes
A selection that may or may not be included on the forthcoming 3 disc set ANGRY
EELECTRIC FINGER.
Cover art by
Babs Santini
. Thanks to Paul Jackson.
Notes
Apparently 3 vinyl test pressings of this release were made - no catalog
numbers - with handmade sleeves.
Review
Though Steven Stapleton is inevitably characterized as a something of a "lone
wolf" — a vaguely psychotic outsider, compulsively and prolifically pumping
out mysterious and inscrutable musical esoterica from some dilapidated shack
deep in the Irish countryside — he has, in fact, remained a thoroughly
collaborative artist throughout his long career. It took 1999's compilation The
Swinging Reflective: Favourite Moments of Mutual Ecstasy to finally demonstrate
the impressive array of artists that Stapleton has worked with over the years:
from contemporaries like Foetus, Tony Wakeford and The Legendary Pink Dots to
artists like Stereolab, who are situated well outside of NWW's post-industrial
milieu. It is this same intensely collaborative spirit that manifests on Angry
Eelectric Finger (Spitch'Cock One), a newly-issued prologue to an upcoming
triple-album set featuring collaborations with Cyclobe, irr.app.(ext.), Jim
O'Rourke and Xhol Caravan. These were long-distance reciprocations, with
Stapleton sending raw materials to each of the artists, who were free to
recontextualize and mutate the sounds as they saw fit. These longform remixes
were sent back to Stapleton, who added some finishing production touches and
let them stand. This unique process has yielded a series of tracks in which the
personalities of Stapleton's musical accomplices come through very strongly,
even as they each reverently pay homage to the work of Nurse With Wound. The
disc opens with a piece credited only to NWW, a classic 11-minute brain-twister
that utilizes bending, distorted bass guitar strings to disorienting effect.
Each metallic pluck swoops and dithers around a senseless insectoid rhythm, the
piece eventually expanding into a blasted Cold War furnace factory dominated by
an ancient, wheezing iron lung. Erudite Nurse-o-philes will recognize these
sounds from An Akward Pause and the Current 93 collaboration Bright Yellow
Moon, Stapleton clearly enforcing the "recycled sound" aesthetic from the
outset. Next up is Cyclobe's "Paraparaparallelogrammatica," certainly the most
gorgeous track on the album, a stately science-fiction mind excursion of the
kind that dominated Simon and Stephen's immeasurably wonderful The Visitors.
It's a texturally rich space fanfare of the kind not heard since Atem-era
Tangerine Dream, and perhaps not even then. Its indulgent cinematic sensuality
bears little similarity to Stapleton's cod surrealism, save for the narrative
unfolding and nuanced, lysergic vibrations that dominate the track. It's one of
the best things I've heard from Cyclobe, and regardless of whether or not it
bears any resemblance to the original NWW source material, I'm certain that
this would have appeared on the infamous NWW Influence List had it been
released on some obscure German prog label in the early 1970s. Matt Waldron's
irr.app.(ext.) project has been responsible for some of the most intensely
rendered audio phenomena outside of the NWW camp, and their match-up —
tellingly entitled "Mute Bell Extinction Process" — again reflects primarily
the interests of the remixer, rather than the remixed. While eerily recalling
such creepy NWW classics as "Fashioned to a Device Behind a Tree,"
irr.app.(ext.) once again shows a unique talent for thought cancellation,
creating an insistently clandestine, industrial trance-scape that uses
repetition to progressively wipe clean all thoughts and prepare the listener
for the loss of physical cohesion. The last track is Jim O'Rourke's "Tape
Monkey Mooch," a laptop-concrete take on the history and mystery of Nurse With
Wound. In its own unique way, O'Rourke's contribution is probably the oddest on
this record. Strange to think this was created by a current member of art-punk
darlings Sonic Youth and the creator of an endless barrage of John
Fahey-influenced indie-pop; not so strange, however, to anyone who has ever
witnessed one of O'Rourke's freeform laptop collage performances, which often
reference the 80's post-industrial tape-music underground of Roger Doyle and
HNAS. O'Rourke sound collage creates an abstract web of richly-detailed sounds,
compounding details that give way to form and structure, which melt into
abstraction and back into structure. It's a gloriously baffling riddle, and if
its quality is at all indicative of the material on the forthcoming three-album
set, I can hardly wait. - Jonathan Dean
Simon Norris Stephen Thrower
Calina de le Mare - violin on tracks 2 and 4
Sarah Willson - cello on tracks 2 and 4
Ossian Brown - hurdy-gurdy on track 1/diple on track 5
additional production on track 5 by Thighpaulsandra
THE VISITORS is the new album by CYCLOBE, the first since the hugely successful 1999 debut LUMINOUS DARKNESS. CYCLOBE combine their fascination with both melodic and dissonant, acoustic and electronic music to forge new connections between the romantic and the experimental. THE VISITORS carries intimations of cosmic conflict - several tracks (Sentinels, Brightness Falls From The Air & Strix Nebulosa) embrace traditional popular Turkish and Arabic motifs blended into a violent and uncanny metamorphic sound world. Conflict and chaos mesh with a search for alien beauty and the joyful inhalation of star - light.
POISON FANFARES: MACHINE GUNS DEFEATED BY ARCHANGELS
VACCINES ESCAPING INTO THE ATMOSPHERE
ET APRES - NOUS LE DELUGE
Calina De La Mare who played on the first Cyclobe album, LUMINOUS DARKNESS, Cellist Sarah Willson and teenage genius Ossian Brown join Simon Norris and Stephen Thrower.
Anticipated and found were: the visions of beauty in the blindness of chaos, the sound of confusion to adore, the overlapping of panic into sensuality, and the questioning angels in the shadows. The setting — a subterrenean sunset still from Orphee. So if it's good enough for Cocteau then it's good enough for me - listless beauty and all that. What I hadn't anticipated was to find that Cyclobe have embraced even further the peripheral vapour-trails left by Luminous Darkness, their debut, and created a stunning and completely unique take on what I call ectoplasmic music: it feels like the sounds are leaking out of the speakers and seeping into the listeners ear-drums. It has taken form, if that's the right expression, and unfolds over the seven tracks of 'The Visitors'. Or it could also be the little specks of chaos only hitherto peeked at in Sun Ra moog solos, LSD-period Coil, early Throwing Muses and The Fall.
'The Visitors' is a constantly evolving, shape-shifting work that moves elegantly (or uncomfortably) between a state of grace and the struggle to hold onto that grace. "Brightness falls from the air" makes this notion explicit from the outset, the unsettled rumbling giving way here and there to gentle swathes of melody and hideously warped keyboards. It shudders and vibrates at the same time, and is a devastating combination: the celestial is both welcomed and feared. Similarly for "The body feels light and wants to fly"; the sounds are so subdued, the structure so viscous and arrested, that once it breaks free and actually flies, the listener is tempted to gulp for air.
"If you want to see that nothing is left" wraps its pulsing, subdued electronic textures around a spiralling string section, each struggling to overpower the other. In the end though, its the organic, bodily aspect — the strings — that win. "Replaced by his constellation" literally replaces itself over and over, in an endlessly building serenade that could be mounting orgasm or encroaching panic; and when it suddenly breaks free into a shimmering set of harmonies you realise it is the former.
The apprehension and threat of Luminous Darkness is replaced by a barely restrained infra-music that seems constantly at the brink of metamorphosising onto a new plane that Cyclobe themselves can't forsee. The Visitors vibrates and crackles. - Terry McGaughey
Simon Norris Stephen Thrower
Calina de la Mare - violin on tracks 6 & 15
Niall Webb - bass clarinet on tracks 6 & 15
Synopsis:
The result of instrumental work, sampling and grotesque combinations of the two, Luminous Darkness by Cyclobe represents the first fruit of two years work and constant mutation.
You may hear... sounds threaded through squid's guts and neural shredding machinery, keyboards with a nasty rash, voices that don't let on, poison juice mulched out of pop music left-overs, beats where the sun don't shine, outdoor sounds field-recorded by agoraphobes, inner ear oceanics, silent hovering visitors and moments of loathsome beauty.
Obsessions include:
Transcendental pornography, phallic navigation, four or many-legged things, violent death majesty, telepathic bedroom exercises, brute reality juggling, dreaming being awake, sick jokes in other dimensions, persistent swelling and always colour; ESPecially the tuning of it.
Comments:
"The music is to do with the condition of awareness at the time of listening, or maybe trying to achieve higher awareness... with sounds as pathfinders. Using intuition, emotion and the power of the senses - the wish to explore...
We're working very close to the abstract but each piece is structured dramatically. Drama requires that something be at stake; not a feeling you often get from abstract music. Emotion entails danger and emotion is the factor we use to devise structures. We want to make music that plays with a sense of jeopardy and surprise, whilst remaining slippery and daemonic in the details. Hovering threats and imminent ecstasies...
The songs work like invocations, summoning both alien and intimate energies. Each title is a key, with special access to the resonance of each piece - they get you into (or out) of the situations aroused. A title like Inevitable Black Horn or YouÜre Not Alone YouÜre Dreaming is a catalyst for the attention; after which the music outlives the words, seeping spectral vibrations into the spongier parts of things."
"Luminous Darkness isn't beautiful, It's worse"
Produced by David Kenny and Cyclobe
Tracks 13 & 15 were originally commissioned for theatre projects by David Ellis / The Address
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