02.20

Being a leap year, I had my eyes set on making the second post of the year on the 29th February but unfortunately I’ve totally messed up and am now making two posts in March – this is the first.

First update is on the new 1/1 tape series I mentioned in my previous post. As I mentioned, these will all be hand-drawn, hand-dubbed, recorded straight to tape in real-time with no edits, no mastering, no nothing! They will each be dedicated to different friends and artists whose work has been an inspiration and influence to me. The first two tapes in this series were for Sven K. and Harrison P. – Sven is responsible for the Void Worship and Absent Erratum labels as well as the projects Panic, Opaque and a whole host of others I could hardly list off. Harrison is responsible for the former-project We Also Let Blood and the current Lost Graves – as well as a few others, and also drums in the great black metal band Everlasting Light.

Below is a scan that Sven kindly supplied me with upon request (I can’t thank him enough nor apologise enough for my oversight in not documenting before sending out!)

‘Late Night Excurion’ stradles the void between wall noise and harsh noise – it also takes the use of amplified metal and tries to weld together ‘junk noise’ and ‘cut up noise’, although the ‘cuts’ are unconventional as they are ‘blind’ – created entirely by forwarding the tape and starting recording again slightly ahead. Personally, I think the release may lose some of its charm knowing this much about the process (and I’m sorry if it does, Sven).

Second update concerns my netlabel activity – I had a great new batch fly in to me for HNW featuring wall noise releases from Seth Cooke, HOMExINVASION and a split between myself and Sado Rituals. And since, I’ve had tons more flying in towards a new compilation (it’s fourth ‘themed’ one, alongside a milestone for the 100th release) as well as new releases in varying degrees of readiness – keep the eyes peeled.

I’ve also recently had a new Mycotoxicosis album in from the amazing Petar (responsible not only for this project but the Fall Into Void label, the Bruising Pattern project and ‘Staticism III’ the International HNW Tape Swap of 2020 – which I will be posting about when it comes around to my month in May) to finally introduce some new culture into the biosphere that is Terrarium.

In further great news – serious headway has been made in a new huge release from my collaboration with Paul K. of vide médian and Runway – ᴶ ᴾ ˢ ᴷ. The new album takes in three ‘tapes’ worth of material and was originally intended to go towards the mammoth catalogue of the now-defunct Altar of Waste label. Future-current plans for release are for it to appear on the HNW netlabel I’m running with one third (or some partial form) of it seeking physical release elsewhere. Beyond the 1/1 tape series I mention above I am strongly considering a new micro-label of super limited editions focusing on HNW, much in the vein of the amazing label Paul founded, Static Dreams. I am beyond honoured to have kicked off that catalogue with the Violence & Lethargy album and it remains one of my favourites from my own work to this day (which is a sigh of relief). Like his, my label would also be entirely hand-made and most likely stick to 10-15 tape runs.

I have also begun work on so many other great collaborations – including one with Animal Machine following our live collaboration for the last Harsh Noise London event. I’ve also recorded new Kamex for the first time in a very long time – and I also had the newest Kamex drop on the BEST Pokénoise netlabel this side of Hoenn (including an image of the artwork I made for it below to spice this post up a bit).