A box set version of the Seal Pool CD limited to 25 copies. As well as the main Seal Pool CD, it includes an additional CD-R with two long drone tracks. All the boxes are hand made in Japan by John Podeszwa and feature various photographs and ephemera sourced by him.
Tracklisting
CD as per regular Seal Pool Sounds
CD-R:
Fluorescent
Osaka by Night
Credits
Format: CD 25 of 500 copies, CD-R/Box, 25 copies
Release Date: 2005
Label: Seal Pool
Catalogue Number: None
Sleeve Design: John Podeszwa
1. Mesh of Wire/Objective/Car Situations/Mesh of Wire (Reprise)
2. Hodge
3. Solely From
4. Blackheath Episode
Bonus Tracks
5. He Rose up Again
6. 333
7. Table Matters Soundtrack
Philip Sanderson: VCS3 (1-5,7), vocals (1), tape loops (1,6,7), short wave radio (2), guitar (7)
Steven Ball: vocals (1), percussion (1,6), tape loops (6)
Sarah Pomeroy: guitar/VCS3 (1)
All tracks by Sanderson except "Car Situations" and "333" by Sanderson & Ball
Credits:
Format: CD, 300 copies
Release Date: 2020
Label: Klanggalerie
Catalogue Number: gg337
Sleeve Design: Philip Sanderson and Steven Ball. The sleeve images are from the Storm Bugs Super 8 film Table Matters (1980) by Steven Ball
Notes:
Originally released on cassette by Snatch Tapes in 1980, this 40th anniversary re-issue on CD by Klanggalerie contains a gently remastered version of the original tape plus three bonus tracks, two of which ("333" and "Table Matters Soundtrack") have not previously been released.
Side A
1 Rumble of The Ruins 02:23
2 Window Sill 02:18
3 The Elephant's Eye 03:00
4 Raven Row (You Know How it Goes) 03:06
5 Funicular Freedom 04:11
Side B
6 Au Coin Du Jardin 4.34
7 Funny Money 03:35
8 If You Take a Table 02:31
9 The Golden Fleet 04:12
10 Broken Morning 06:58
All tracks by Philip Sanderson
Credits:
Format: Cassette, 25 numbered copies
Release Date: 2020
Label: Snatch Tapes
Catalogue Number: tch 219
Design: Layout/ paintings by Philip Sanderson
Reviews:
Review by Ed Pinsent from the Sound Projector 27/07/2020
Last heard from Philip Sanderson with his very good LP On One Of These Bends, lovingly presented as a vinyl edition in an expensive jacket by Séance Centre of Canada. Today’s Sanderson item is Rumble Of The Ruins (SNATCH TAPES TCH 2020), a Bandcamp-only thing with a cover featuring a painting by the man himself – he seems to be making a venture in exploring the history of 20th-century European fine art on his own terms, turning in a mysterious tableau that contains faint traces of Paul Klee, Léger, and de Chirico.
Musically, Sanderson is getting back to what he does so well – songs and electronica, a form of synthop with drum machines and treated vocals, produced in a very eccentric DIY post-punk manner. This is quite different to the lush, soundtrack-y productions we heard on On One Of These Bends, and there’s a lot to be said for the immediacy of these concise and assured ditties, most of them clocking in at traditional pop-song length of three minutes. Sanderson may make it seem easy, almost throwaway at times, but I suspect there is a lot of craft underlying these songs, both in terms of composition, lyrical content, and sheer effort spent programming and overdubbing (or however he created it). Each song sounds both jaunty and slightly unsettling in equal measure; I’m not sure what is causing this impression, but while the rhythms are upbeat and foot-tappingly catchy, the melodies keep veering towards a darkened minor key, and the song delivery has a strange urgency to it.
That’s not to mention the lyrics, which today strike me as fairly bonkers (in a good way) – like an update on the king of balmy, red wine-soaked laissez-faire, Kevin Ayers. If I explored this pathway any further, we might end up making a case for situating Philip Sanderson in a line with other 1970s English songwriting eccentrics, such as Robert Wyatt, Eno, Pete Sinfield and Peter Hammill. I mention this as I think it’s a dimension of Sanderson’s considerable skillset which isn’t spotlighted too often, as he’s more often pegged as a cassette band / post-punk / noise artist. Personally, I also prefer his song-based work to the all-instrumental music of records like Seal Pool Sounds (2005). From 15th January 2020.
www.thesoundprojector.com/2020/07/27/fragments-shored-against-my-ruins/
Review by Neil Kulkarni The Wire September 2020
How odd l was listening to Hood's Cold House the other day and it's amazing how close Rumble Of The Ruins by Storm Bugs' Philip Sanderson shears to that period of post-rock where underground rock fans admitted they loved both Justin Timberlake and Disco Inferno. There's a similar fondness for startlingly poppy textures, a similar pleasure in the detournement of those sounds for determinedly art rock ends.
Sanderson's voice- check out the Canterbury via Medway psychness of "Window Sill" - now has a wonderfully unmannered, conversational feel, and the same talents in collage and subtle derailment of sources that he's made so evident in his Storm Bugs work are still present. It's the decision making within that process that's key, and Sanderson knows what to treat and what to leave untouched. So the poppiest choruses get deliberately amplified until they get glassy eyed and unsettling, the strange sonic detritus that populates these songs always executed and jettisoned before anything can detract from the melodic strength. "The Elephants Eye" and “Raven Row (You Know How It Goes)" deliver a flavour of what Kevin Ayers might cook up if he were alive and forced to work with the Residents.
Side A
Ritual (Jackman)
Side B
Offshore (Jackman & Sanderson)
Credits:
Format: Cassette, 30 copies (see below).
Release Date: 1980
Label: Snatch Tapes
Catalogue Number TCH211:
Sleeve Design: both cover designs by David Jackman
Notes:
There were two versions of this tape; the first limited to 5 copies had a photocopied cover with a stylised bird beak standing erect in a field (the lower image), whilst the second copy was limited to 25 copies and features the cover at the top of the page with the rats. 'Offshore' by David Jackman & Philip Sanderson was included on the CD reissue of Up From Zero in 2003
DISC ONE:
1. FIVE TIMES OF DUST – Computer Bank
2. THE KLINGONS – R.A.M.
3. CHRIS AND COSEY – Re-Education Through Labour
4. MALCOLM BROWN – Sedation Strokes
5. STORM BUGS – Little Bob Minor
6. THOMAS LEER – Tight As A Drum
7. BLANCMANGE – Holiday Camp
8. INNER CITY STATIC – Fractured Smile
9. WE BE ECHO – Sexuality
10.BOURBONESE QUALK – God With Us
11.NAGAMATZU Faith
12.O YUKI CONJUGATE – Disco Song
13.BRITISH ELECTRIC FOUNDATION – Optimum Chant
14.KEVIN HARRISON – All Night Long
15.VOICE OF AUTHORITY – Stopping And Starting
DISC TWO:
1. COLIN POTTER – I Am Your Shadow
2. BRITISH STANDARD UNIT – D’Ya Think I’m Sexy?
3. FIVE TIMES OF DUST – The Single Off The Album
4. SPÖÖN FAZER – Back To The Beginning
5. GERRY AND THE HOLOGRAMS – Gerry And The Holograms
6. THE PASSAGE – Drugface
7. JOHN FOXX – A New Kind Of Man
8. 100% MANMADE FIBRE – Green For Go
9. THOSE LITTLE ALIENS – Sentimental
10.FINAL PROGRAM – Protect And Survive
11.THE HUMAN LEAGUE – Being Boiled
12.INSTANT AUTOMATONS – New Muzak
13.CULTURAL AMNESIA – Materialistic Man
14.WORLDBACKWARDS – (Leaving Me) Now
15.ALAN BURNHAM – Music To Save The World By
16.ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK – Almost
17.EYELESS IN GAZA – Kodak Ghosts Run Amok
18.SCHLEIMER K – Broken Vein
19.NATIVE EUROPE – The Distance From Köln
DISC THREE:
1. ZORCH – Adrenalin (Return of the Elohim Pt 1)
2. SEA OF WIRES – Robot Dance
3. RON BERRY – Sea Of Tranquility
4. MFH – Mistral
5. ADRIAN SMITH – Joe Goes To New York
6. MARK SHREEVE – Embryo (Extract)
7. EG OBLIQUE GRAPH – Triptych
8. CARL MATTHEWS – Encounter
9. PAUL NAGLE – Ynys Scaith
10.O YUKI CONJUGATE – Sedation
11.KONSTRUKTIVIST – Western Vein
12.ATTRITION – Dead Of Night (Excerpt)
DISC FOUR:
1. THROBBING GRISTLE – What A Day
2. A TENT – No Way Of Knowing
3. PORTION CONTROL – Go For The Throat
4. DC3 – Eco Beat
5. RENALDO AND THE LOAF – Dying Inside
6. BLAH BLAH BLAH – In The Army
7. LEGENDARY PINK DOTS – God Speed
8. MUSLIMGAUZE – Muslin Gauze Muslim Prayer
9. SUISSE – Live At Longborne
10.ALIEN BRAINS – Menial Disorders, Extract B2
11.STORM BUGS – Himeal (And She Blew)
12.THIRD DOOR FROM THE LEFT – In The Room
13.AL ROBERTSON – Dignity Of Labour
14.bcGilbert, gLewis, russell Mills – Mzui (Extract)
Credits:
Format: 4 X CD plus booklet . Also issued as double LP.
Release Date: 2016
Label: Cherry Red
Catalogue Number: CRCDBOX24
Notes:
A 4CD, 60-track set exploring the origins of electronica in the UK with a 48pp booklet with artists' sleeve notes and an essay by Dave Henderson. From the Cherry Red Press Release: "Featuring tracks from key figures from the cassette label underground alongside early releases by future stars of the movement." Alonside the likes of the Human League you get two Storm Bugs tracks as well as Alien Brains, Cultural Amnesia, and Sea of Wires all of whom appeared on early Snatch Tapes compilations. An edited double LP version was also released containing one Storm Bugs track.
1. Jelly Babies - 'Soylent Green'
2. 391 - 'Jet Plane'
3. Instant Automatons - 'Gillian is Normal'
4. Event Group - 'Concussion Edit'
5. Missing Persons - 'Sign of The Times'
6. Danny & The Dressmakers - 'Eggs on Legs'
7. Gravity Craze - 'Song For M'
8. Farming Jim - 'Cats in The Kitchen'
9. Chromosomes - 'Hi Fi Know How'
10. Mike Jones - 'Reckless Policies'
11. Living Dead No.5 - 'Never Give In'
12. Storm Bugs - 'Car Situations (Nasal Passage)'
13. Colin Potter - 'Power'
14. Digital Dinosaurs - 'Baby Snakes'
15. Twizlers - 'We are The Twizlers'
16. Casual Labourers - 'A Lapse is Due'
17. Midnight Circus - 'Suburbia Nervosa'
18. Aconite - 'The Truth about Cable'
19. Milkshake Melon - 'Walk Oates Walk!'
20. Cultural Amnesia - 'Repetition for This World'
21. The Get - 'The Leaders'
22. Stripey Zebras - 'Walking Home'
23. Funhouse - 'Teenage Bedrooms'
24. Danny & The Dressmakers - 'Kif Kif's Magic Hat'
25. Chimp Eats Bananas - 'Shopping List'
Bonus MP3's
Chromosomes - 'Rot all Rulers'
Dean Johnson - 'Another Letter'
Digital Dinosaurs - 'Elephant Germs'
Farming Jim - 'New Years Eve'
Jelly Babies - 'Candy Bricks'
Credits:
Format: CD. 500 copies
Release Date: 2008
Label: Hyped to Death
Catalogue Number: Messthetics 10
Notes:
Includes a 24-page booklet with histories, photos, artifacts and an essay from Mick Sinclair, who wrote the original Cassette Pets column for Sounds.
The Storm Bugs track is 'Car Situations (Nasal Passage)' from the A Safe Substitute Cassette.
Side A
1 Maps (Philip Sanderson)
2 Thief (Philip Sanderson/Michael Denton)
3 Merry Christmas Adolf (Michael Denton)
4 Drinks and Aeroplanes (Philip Sanderson)
Side B
1 Ups and Downs (Philip Sanderson/Michael Denton)
2 Apostrophe S (Philip Sanderson/Steven Ball/David Jackman)
3 Spy Garden (Philip Sanderson)
4 Mr. Sound (Michael Denton)
Credits
Format: Cassette, 5 copies.
Release Date: 1986
Label: Telephone Music
Catalogue Number: tel 001
Sleeve Design: Michael Denton & Philip Sanderson. Photo by Michael Denton
Compiled and produced by: Philip Sanderson
Notes:
The tape compiled collaborative and solo tracks by PhilipSanderson & Michael Denton from bertween 1981 and 1986, plus the track 'Apostrophe S' by Philip Sanderson & Steven Ball (with flute by David Jackman). The tape came in two sleeves, a white 7-inch single sleeve (sealed using brown parcel tape) with a grey photocopied label on the front and back and a design with the camouflage plyers. 'Maps', 'Drinks and Aeroplanes', and 'Spy Garden' (retitled as 'Tale Chase') were re-issued in 2018 on the LP On One of These Bends.
Track Listing:
Bright waves
Reprint 1
Nein Nein Nein
Reprint 2
Under Press of Sail
All tracks by Philip Sanderson, except 'Nein NeinNein' by Philip Sanderson & Steven Ball. 'Bright Waves' by Philip Sanderson & Nancy Slessinger.
Credits
Format: CD, 500 copies
Release Date: 2003
Label: Anomalous
Catalogue Number: NOM 23
Sleeve Design: Philip Sanderson
Re-issue of the 1980 cassette originally credited to Claire Thomas & Susan Vezey.
Reviews:
From: the Wire Magazine by Jim Haynes:
"...what may have been consigned to the dustbin of 1980's cassette culture turns out to be a marvellous find, as good as any of the recently recovered cassettes of recordings of Cabaret Voltaire or Throbbing Gristle."
From: WFMU a review by Program Director Brian Turner:
"Reprint was originally a cassette under Claire & Susan's moniker, and regardless of what name is on it today it stands as a great marker on the home-brewed experimental/electronic timeline. Glad to see Anomalous brought this back to the surface."
Oil on Troubled Daughters
Feeding Time
Big Glass
Umwell
Flume
Sea Swell
Seal Pool Sounds
Pilot Light
March of the Bugs
Radium Lab
Nude Nights
Left then Down
Lude
All tracks by Philip Sanderson
Credits:
Format: CD. 500 copies
Release Date: 2005
Label: Seal Pool
Catalogue Number: Spool 02
Sleeve Design: Philip Sanderson and John Podeszwa, all CD booklet photographs taken in Japan by John Podeszwa except the photograph on the back of CD whcih is a found image of an original 1930s Seal Pool
Notes:
There is also a limited edition box set version of the Seal Pool CD in an edition of 25 copies. As well as the main CD, it includes an additional CD-R with two long drone tracks. All the boxes are hand made in Japan by John Podeszwa and feature various found photographs and ephemera. More information here.
Reviews:
From Mimaroglu
The return of philip sanderson... I’m an unabashed mega-fan of the storm bugs as well as philip’s various projects over the years (remember the claire thomas & susan vesey track on the cherry red comp “perspectives and distortions?” i do...) so it’s great to listen to this mish-mash of different approaches to electronic music, all constructed with various synthesizers (software, hardware, and otherwise...) over the last few years.
The blurb is fairly spot on... there’s a bit of raymond scott’s “soothing sounds for babies” sound-world, inasfar as there are child-like melodies mixed with more abstract sounds & processing... on top of that there’s a bit of a-grade electro-acoustic collagery, all kinds of crazy location recordings of animals (echoing basil kirchin’s zonked “worlds within worlds” series)... all dripping with a certain nod towards surrealism & a woozy diy home-recorded aesthetic that made sanderson’s early 80s music so... unique (check the recent “reprint” disc on anomalous for a taste.)
Some of the tones are occasionally off-putting (the intital 20 seconds had me checking the cd player to make sure i hadn’t put the wrong disc in!) but the unorthodox sound assembly/construction methods of the disc taken as a whole leave no doubt in my mind that the same brain that conjured up the snatch tapes universe 25 years back is still coursing, full of great ideas and the means to realize them... an excellent disc.
From Aquarius Records
It's been a very, very long time that Philip Sanderson has released anything new. Up until Seal Pool Sounds, the last recordings for Sanderson date back to 1982! During the late '70s and early '80s, Sanderson had been very active in the Britian's DIY cassette culture, producing music as the Storm Bugs (with Steven Ball) and as Susan Thomas & Clare Vesay (whose fictional femininity caused a minor bout of controversy between Sanderson and Cherry Red records). He also collaborated frequently with David Jackman who at that time had yet to form his seminal drone-scrape project Organum. Many of these recordings emerged on Sanderson's own Snatch Tapes; and some of those original cassettes have slowly been reissued in recent years. In the mid-'80s, Sanderson made a stylistic jump to film and installation, offering an explanation as to his whereabouts during all those years.
Within the murk, hiss, and Frankensteinian electric constructions of his early work on Snatch, there was a peculiar and perverse sense of humor in Sanderson's work. On Seal Pool Sounds, he allows the playful aspects of that sense of humor to occasionally emerge with these much cleaner squiggles, jolts, and drones of electronic sounds. Alternately, a plaintive melancholia hangs upon other abstracted tones and broken rhythms, ending up sounding like more primitive constructions from Mika Vainio's solo work, those Microstoria albums, and even Manhatten Research era Raymond Scott.
Review by Ed Pinsent from the Sound Projector magazine 14th issue.
Great record by Sanderson, themed around a concept of marine life found at the zoo. Might be worth comparing this with Merzbow's 24 Hours: A Day Of Seals box set, although Merzbow's take on similar subject is much wilder and untamed, suggesting the sheer terror of extreme nature in the raw. Sanderson locates his work in a more domesticated setting. as suggested by the photographs taken from a seal pool in Osaka, and his record has an overall 'friendlier' sound. Think of The digital-era Residents, or those fine MoebiuslPlank LPs on the Sky label from I 98 1- I 982.
Seal Pool Sounds is a brilliant collection of assured, skewed and sometimes rather queasy electronic abstract paintings. The opening track 'Oil on Troubled Daughters' is closest to being a portrait of the seals themselves; certainly it's very suggestive of those agile, slipppery black bodies turning about under the surface of the water. Lovers of pop melody are advised to click on to 'Feeding Time', a slice of jaunty analogue synth melody that owes much to Delia Derbyshire and The Residents, and its jollity will have you clapping your flippers in appreciation. 'Big Glass' features a midi piano, while 'Umwell' contains sound effects, distorted voices and backwards tapes. Although some of the later tracks are a bit silly - eg 'Nude Nights' and the dribbly nonsense of 'Radium Lab', overall this is very creditable. It could almost be used as a TV soundtrack record, if anyone working in television these days had any imagination left ...
Philip Sanderson has collaborated with Organum and is best known for his work in Storm Bugs, a 1980s cassette band whose work is sporadically being retrieved in assorted reissue programmes; you all recall the Reprint CD issued by Anomalous Records. His music is perhaps no longer as edgy as that early work, but he's still full of ideas, and for this record at least he wishes to evince an interest in Raymond Scott, Marcel Duchamp and French New Wave film music. Try a dip .. it's cool in the pool.
Copyright ED PINSENT 23/07/2005
Side A
1 Pole of Cold 08:17
2 Racing the Arctic Shadow 06:56
3 Snow Drifter 04:17
Side B
1 Summer with the Snow Bees 04:20
2 Vostock Station Hallucinations 09:10
3 Whiteout Woman 05:26
Credits:
Format: Cassette tape,100 copies.
Release Date: 2015
Label: Fragment Factory
Catalogue Number: FRAG34
Sleeve Design: Philip Sanderson & Michael Muennich
Review:
by Aquarius Records
aquariusrecords.org/bin/search.cgi/2%7C25/Keyword=FACTRIX%20
Philip Sanderson has told more than a few tall tales in his time. Back in the early '80s, he produced a handful of industrial-dirge-drone tracks under the pseudonym Claire Thomas and Susan Vezey, nearly convincing the nascent Cherry Red Records to publish a full album from Claire and Susan until they found out that two women were not behind the project. Sanderson and his cohort Steven Ball were the miscreants behind The Storm Bugs and they ran the very impressive Snatch Tapes imprint, much of whose back catalogue had been finely reissued by Vinyl On Demand. Sanderson had also been the author to the project Ice Yacht, which had only released a single track on one the Snatch Tape compilations. The story behind this tape reads as follows - Sanderson (or as the press release states, just Ice Yacht) had the daft idea of retracing the journey of Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen to the North Pole sometime in the early '80s. Here's where the story breaks down, as Sanderson / Ice Yacht somehow lost the only recording of an unreleased album while on that journey, only to have the 'vacuum-sealed tape' find its way into the hand of Fragment Factory in Germany. Hardly plausible, but then, many were convinced of the authenticity of those Jurgen Muller recordings. While there could be something about there being a long-lost Ice Yacht recording from back in the '80s, it's more likely that Sanderson has recorded in this day and age. Thankfully, he's bolstered his fictions with a deliciously vintage sounding album of crude/cold sequences for oblique metallic synth-noise monotone. Somewhere between Factrix, Thought Broadcast, and of course Sanderson's own Storm Bugs. Numbered tapes of just 100 copies.
Side A
1. David Jackman - Blues
2. Storm Bugs - Dull Sound of Breath Inside a Tin
3. Mannequin Moves - The Girls You Left Behind
4. Philip Sanderson - Under Press of Sail
5. Tony Clough - Untitled
Side B
1. The N4s - N4
2. Alien Brains - Song
3. Karl's Empty Body - 1464
4. Oroir - Call
5. Claire Thomas & Susan Vezey - Diamonds & Ashes
Credits:
Format: LP, 500 numbered copies
Release Date: 2006
Label: Vinyl on Demand
Catalogue Number: VOD32
Sleeve Design: Philip Sanderson
LP compiled and mastered by Philip Sanderson
Notes:
The LP sleeve is in matt reverse card but there also exists 5 copies (hand numbered) with a glossy cover instead of matt.
A4, A5, B1, B3 origianlly released on Snatch 1.
A3 origianlly released on Snatch 2.
A1, B2, B4 origianlly released on Snatch 3.
A2, origianlly released on the Storm Bugs Gift cassette.
A5, previously unreleased.
Reviews:
From: the Sound Projector 16th Issue by Ed Pinsent
We've been hearing a fair bit from Storm Bugs over the years, so here's this welcome and timely survey of Philip Sanderson's Snatch Tapes imprint that operated in the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He issued three compilation tapes (called Snatch 1-3), and some of the best contributions tothat series are now reissued here on vinyl via a selection made by Sanderson and representing the years 1979-1981.
Outside of David Jackman (who opens the comp with an exceptionally strong piece) and Sanderson's projects, all the names here are new to me. The thing that struck me was how unique and distinctive everything sounds here, yet all recognisably part of a very English cassette band scene that seems totally bound to that time and that place. I don't just mean the home-made feel, the use of primitive drum machines and basic synth programming, but the overall polite, cold and strained feelings that seem to emanate from almost all of this music. Every cut is slow and sad, melancholic with a bleached beauty. I'm already starting to get nostalgic for the harsh winter of 1981.
Three of the ten cuts are devoted to Sanderson-related projects Storm Bugs, the Claire Thomas and Susan Vezey hoax, and a solo recording. All are excellent in ways that we have already remarked on in previous issues, with the unreleased version of 'Diamond and Ashes' being particularly stunning (true to its title, it has a crystalline beauty). And Storm Bugs' 'Dull Sound of Breath Inside a Tin' exhibits some spectacular inventions in terms of the arrangement of its simple elements, as though the creators were pushing blocks of noise around like playing cards. Jackman's 'Blues' from 1980, heard here in a two-track tape version, is a rugged experiment of cymbals and tape loops generating an embryonic form of the heavy droning that he would later mastermind as Organum.
That's pretty much it as far as 'experimental' goes on this LP, however. The remaining cuts are equally attractive, and they are in the main examples of very good UK post-punk bleakness, expressed as instrumental or song; plenty of alienation, mystery and edginess, but nothing radically innovative in the arrangements or playing, which remain grounded in rock music. I think this is true of the tracks by The N4s and Karl's Empty Body, much as I love their wayward gnarly-rock capabilities. Mannequin Moves do a great song 'The Girls You Left Behind', wherein feelings of love have never seemed so futile; their use of cold synth and plodding drum machine is inspired. Orior manages a similar chill on the instrumental 'Call', but it's an oddly pointless exercise. Only Alien Brains, with his 'Song', returns us to slightly more dangerous turf; in just two minutes, he effortlessly combines raw electronics with radio samples to create a real sense of paranoia. The riots in Brixton and Toxteth have left a ghostly but discernible imprint on this track.
A perfect 'autumnal' listen for UK music fans, although I am certain this quality music is being lapped up with relish by the fans who subscribe to label owner Frank Maier's aesthetic and enjoy music of this vintage. The rush to explore this cassette era is somehow symbolised by the cryptic cover, but the disembodied hands so eagerly reaching for the tape box appear to be made of wax, or dummy's hands. It's slightly disconcerting.
Needless to say, this will appeal to fans of the modern field of limited cd-r label free noise ambient sound makers, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, PseudoArcana, Digitalis, if you've been loving all that stuff, this will absolutely hit the spot.
Rewind
Side A
Introduction
Prefabrication
Chance Operation
Tooting Broadway
The Secret Of The Fountain
Low Flying Branches
Bodysnatcher
Side B
Mr. Electrico's Revenge
Crystal Set
Pickle Pin
Hard Shoulder
Spaghetti Tension
Credits:
Format: Vinyl LP, 100 copies
Release Date: 2012
Label: Puer Garvy
Catalogue Number: PG002
Sleeve Design: Philip Sanderson
Notes:
Limited to 100 numbered copiesd each with laser etched labels and silk screened sleeves. All tracks by Philip Sanderson.
Review:
From: the Wire magazine, September 2012 by Edwin Pouncey
Philip Sanderson, electronic musician, installation artist, co-founder of Storm Bugs and founder of underground British tape label Snatch Tapes, returns with Hollow Gravity, a beautiful slab of vinyl with laser etched labels that flicker gently on the turntable as the disc rotates and the sounds pulse. This latest solo release from Sanderson follows 2005's album Seal Pool Sounds, a melancholic portrait of zoos that was also spiced with a mischievous erratic humour.
Hollow Gravity is sombre but still playful, as Sanderson bolts together an imaginary science fiction soundtrack with his collection of analogue synthesizers, delay pedals and any other electronic junk that comes to hand from the pile. The results are zany and mysterious, occasionally flecked with a hint of menace, a sense of danger, a boiling vat of electronic music that occasionally sounds like the work of a mad scientist.
From: Aural Innovations blog by Jerry Kranitz
Puer Gravy is the vinyl only label run by Eric and Matt of Vas Deferens Organization and Philip Sanderson's Hollow Gravity is the label's second release. Let's start with some historical notes…
Philip Sanderson was in the thick of the UK post-punk DIY homemade music/cassette culture scene that enjoyed a brief period of visibility (if not significant sales) in the late 70s and earliest of 80s, with regular coverage of hometaper releases in the nationally distributed New Musical Express and Sounds, airplay by John Peel, and even some distribution through Rough Trade. It was a heady period when people believed that DIY releases could actually break the stranglehold of, or at least subvert to some extent, the major record companies.
From 1978-81 Sanderson's Snatch Tapes label released compilations, the first recordings of David Jackman (Organum), and tapes by the Storm Bugs, Sanderson's recording project with Steven Ball, which encompassed noise, soundscapes, cut-ups and collage, songs… all manner of sonic exploration. In fact, Sanderson had a leg up on most of his peers, explaining in a Sound Projector interview (issue #16, 2007-08) how he had access to the electronic music studio at Goldsmiths, University of London, the result being that Storm Bugs releases often consisted of both bedroom studio recordings and those done in the electronic music studio at Goldsmiths. In the same interview Sanderson also describes how during this brief window of time he could take Snatch Tapes releases to the Rough Trade warehouse and they would buy copies without even listening to them, and had a Snatch Tapes display in the Rough Trade shop, all pretty remarkable when you stop and think about it.
I could go on as hometaper/cassette culture history is a fascination of mine but I felt a little Sanderson background was important. So… on to the new Philip Sanderson LP, his first album of new material since 2005_s Seal Pool Sounds CD. Hollow Gravity consists of 12 tracks and Sanderson employs an arsenal of gear, including Korg Montron, Yamaha CS-15, Circuit bent Casio PT-280, Long and Short Wave Radio, Guitar, Evans EchoPet EP-100m WBL 4014, NDA Plug-ins, Soundforum Synth, SoundEdit 16, and Sound Studio 3.
The album includes an intriguing variety of electronic, spaced out, and creatively tape manipulated concoctions. Among the highlights is Prefabrication, on which Sanderson lays down a strange electro guitar-ish/percussive pattern that reminded me of a track from Goblin's Suspiria soundtrack, and indeed the music has an intense sci-fi/horror flick vibe, and even develops an oddball rhythmic groove. The titles on the back of the LP include little descriptive blurbs, and Chance Operation is described as “For circuit bent piano and cut-up Cage”, featuring a sparse piano melody, eerie soundscapes, narrative voice samples, and other effects. Cut-ups… Chance Operation indeed.
Among the more whimsical fun-with-tape tracks is the jazz band tape manipulation of Tooting Broadway, mixing wild sounds and voice samples from some old advertising or educational recording on The Secret Of The Fountain, the captivating combination of angelic ambient waves and bleepy blurpy electronics on Low Flying Branches, the fun strange spaced out bouncy electro melody of Crystal Set, and the Residents Goosebumps toy instrument style of Pickle Pin.
We've also got some really cool and off-the-beaten-path space excursions. Bodysnatcher is like early Tangerine Dream remixed to inject a melodramatic orchestral edge. Described as “A ballad for J.G. Ballard”, Hard Shoulder consists of spaced out soundscapes that starts off with a claustrophobic feel, but slowly adds layers until I felt like the sole passenger on a space station. And Spaghetti Tension has similarly spaced out soundscapes, but with more sound experimentation plus a strange and hypnotic sense of melody.
In summary, Hollow Gravity serves up a creative and often fun blend of electronics and sounds, all cleverly tape manipulated to create music covering of range of spaced out and experimental realms. Note that the LP has been released in an edition of only 100 copies and is pressed on 180-gram laser etched vinyl (which vinyl junkies will dig for sure).