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Backwards
My Cat Is An Alien 'The Dance Of Oneirism'
£29.49
Backwards
My Cat Is An Alien 'The Dance Of Oneirism'
£29.49
Release Date: 27/11/2015
"Backwards is very happy and proud to announce the NEW My Cat Is An Alien studio double album! In our opinion, maybe one of their best album to date! From the extended foreword insert by David Keenan: ""What are we to make of My Cat Is An Alien, the duo of the brothers Roberto and Maurizio Opalio, titling this new extended sound work The Dance Of Oneirism? [...] None of the tracks have titles; instead we feel our way by number, by movement. Our co-ordinates are fixed, or more properly suggested, by the listing of instruments. Self-made double-bodied string instrument, handmade pocket harp, pedal effects, wordless vocalizations, modified analog drum machine, mini-keyboard, alientronics. But even here nothing is straightforward; everything is invented, shrunken, self-built, inchoate: alien-ated. The session was recorded – instantly composed – in MCIAA’s “Alien Zone”, situated in the Western Alps, and it sounds it. The central fact of MCIAA’s music has always been space but they have never sounded quite so far away, so removed. [...] The music is extremely sensual. The rhythms have a contrary cold/organic quality to them, the feel of the pulse as the breath is held, but soon even that dies down and we are left with an extended, timeless moment, the space between one breath and the next. Occasionally there is the sound of strings, strange steel resonances that populate the music like ghosts, the ghosts of Roscoe Holcomb’s high, lonesome sound, of Dock Boggs and the sanctified steel of Washington Phillips. Ash Ra Tempel met Timothy Leary in the Alps [...] The transmissions are fuzzy up here and at points it makes for a music of almost terrifying quiet. It is minimal, sure, but MCIAA are not so much interested in repetition as in eternal expansion. [...] The Dance Of Oneirism is a music of unknowing, a dance with a phantom, the letting go of a dream. It is MCIAA’s greatest long form work. It has tributaries that run deep into the past, ghost channels that facilitate two-way travel, even as its destination, in the words of the late Conrad Schnitzler, is determinedly future, future, future."" - David Keenan Available in a lavish edition: includes a photographic Art Book by Roberto Opalio. Silkscreened image by the artist on Side D.
Tracklist: 1:The Dance Of Oneirism #1 2:The Dance Of Oneirism #2 3:The Dance Of Oneirism #3 4:The Dance Of Oneirism #4 5:The Dance Of Oneirism #5
"Backwards is very happy and proud to announce the NEW My Cat Is An Alien studio double album! In our opinion, maybe one of their best album to date! From the extended foreword insert by David Keenan: ""What are we to make of My Cat Is An Alien, the duo of the brothers Roberto and Maurizio Opalio, titling this new extended sound work The Dance Of Oneirism? [...] None of the tracks have titles; instead we feel our way by number, by movement. Our co-ordinates are fixed, or more properly suggested, by the listing of instruments. Self-made double-bodied string instrument, handmade pocket harp, pedal effects, wordless vocalizations, modified analog drum machine, mini-keyboard, alientronics. But even here nothing is straightforward; everything is invented, shrunken, self-built, inchoate: alien-ated. The session was recorded – instantly composed – in MCIAA’s “Alien Zone”, situated in the Western Alps, and it sounds it. The central fact of MCIAA’s music has always been space but they have never sounded quite so far away, so removed. [...] The music is extremely sensual. The rhythms have a contrary cold/organic quality to them, the feel of the pulse as the breath is held, but soon even that dies down and we are left with an extended, timeless moment, the space between one breath and the next. Occasionally there is the sound of strings, strange steel resonances that populate the music like ghosts, the ghosts of Roscoe Holcomb’s high, lonesome sound, of Dock Boggs and the sanctified steel of Washington Phillips. Ash Ra Tempel met Timothy Leary in the Alps [...] The transmissions are fuzzy up here and at points it makes for a music of almost terrifying quiet. It is minimal, sure, but MCIAA are not so much interested in repetition as in eternal expansion. [...] The Dance Of Oneirism is a music of unknowing, a dance with a phantom, the letting go of a dream. It is MCIAA’s greatest long form work. It has tributaries that run deep into the past, ghost channels that facilitate two-way travel, even as its destination, in the words of the late Conrad Schnitzler, is determinedly future, future, future."" - David Keenan Available in a lavish edition: includes a photographic Art Book by Roberto Opalio. Silkscreened image by the artist on Side D.
Tracklist: 1:The Dance Of Oneirism #1 2:The Dance Of Oneirism #2 3:The Dance Of Oneirism #3 4:The Dance Of Oneirism #4 5:The Dance Of Oneirism #5
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However, the story was not quite over yet.. a third unreleased album ‘Fiveways’ had been recorded before they went their separate ways and now it’s finally seeing the light of day on South London label Scratchy Records, plus the band are re-uniting for some long overdue gigs to celebrate the release.
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THE PLAIN TRUTH==
we drifted through it, arguing.
every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom.
we sat down together and wrote it in one room,
and then sat down in a different room, recording.
NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody?
and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile.
the sun setting above beds of ash
while we sat together, arguing.
the old world order barely pretended to care.
this new century will be crueler still.
war is coming.
don’t give up.
pick a side.
hang on.
love.
Tracklisting: (NB: ALL CAPS is intentional punctuation for all. Duration: 54:09.)
1. SUN IS A HOLE SUN IS VAPORS
2. BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD
3. RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD
4. BROKEN SPIRES AT DEAD KAPITAL
5. PALE SPECTATOR TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS
6. GREY RUBBLE – GREEN SHOOTS -
What species is this? What century?' Forged in a rural idyll in Middle-England, the new album Pastoral, by Gazelle Twin, exhumes England's rotten past, and shines a torch over its ever-darkening present. Told through a troupe of multi-gender voices, in vernaculars old and new; from the shrill echo of folksong to tabloid-tinged jaunts, the artist aka Elizabeth Bernholz, presents the notion that 'there is horror in every idyll, and danger lurking beyond the 'quaint' '.Visit product page →
The village square - once host to centuries of public torture - becomes a floral framed postcard, dolled-up for the Summer Fête. A sunny, afternoon walk over the hills unsettles a cloud of angry flies feeding from unidentifiable remains. Bigoted vitriol gently murmurs amidst tearoom chatter, as the neatly framed pastoral picture dissolves into a solemn ennui.
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As its sole creator, Gazelle Twin 'The Composer, Musician and Producer' has crafted an album overflowing with a frenzy of traditional and contemporary musical tropes; from early music instrumentation - the harpsichord and the humble recorder, fed through myriad electronics - to the compelling, ritualistic application of found sample-looping. Beyond Bernholz's signature choral-infusions, here reverberating like a warped Sunday Service, there are even shades of 90s house and the once-thriving rural rave scene, albeit recalled as a watery, second-hand memory.
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2. Better In My Day
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4. Old Thorn
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8. Glory
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