05.20

May has been and gone and, just as I said I would in my last post, I tried to slow down a lot from the pace of April. I have been incrementally moving towards having new sections to this site to host poetry and illustration work of mine – this is coming along well and I’m excited to publish both. I have also been recording, dubbing and posting for ‘Staticism III – International HNW Tape Swap 2020’, organised by none other than Petar of Fall Into Void Recs.

My offering was called ‘HNW: Rage 158’ and was made with my usual set-up but run through a Peavey Rage 158 amplifier and recorded in my room with a Tascam digital recorder. Below is an image I supplied the participants with of some finished results. I’m quite happy with the sounds contained and I was glad to feel myself getting less rusty with the mechanics and processes of dubbing as I went on with it. It has been a great force of forward momentum and inspiration to encourage me to do more home-dubbing.

At some point in either April or May I re-re-unearthed the ancient relics that were the finished recordings from D.E.S.T.T.C.C.O.L.L.V. – this was a very old collaboration between myself and Erika Leaman, between my Echoes throughout the caverns of Leytonstone alias for ‘dronegaze’ and her now-long-defunct alias for HNW, Distorted Souls Within A Corrupt Vision. A combination of these long-winded aliases create the monstrous amalgam you see in the acronym above – and the collaboration attempted to converge the sounds of the projects as well. The album features guitar drones and static noise from myself and a combination of wall noise, vocal chanting, strings and horns from Erika. Originally conceived in October 2014 and finally wrapped up in August 2016 – I was always really excited to work on this and I have always felt these recordings deserve to be unleashed onto the world. I have begun working on a limited run of tapes to self-release this on when I finally get the artwork ready.

Early in the month, on May 7th, I was happy to rejuvenate the SSN Technologies platform with a new release from an old alias – ENZYME_DYNASTY was in the original five-release batch that kickstarted the platform and it brings me immense pleasure to host this remix/re-working of the timeless Soichi Terada track ‘Time Station’ from the Ape Escape OST – one of the all-time best games to ever come out on the Playstation 1. The artwork is by yours truly.

Later on by the 13th I was happy to introduce Barry C Douglas and Wormhole to HNW alongside the long-awaited return of Hana Haruna. Sadly the only batch-release for the month as I took some time to step back and work on other things – I did receive one further submission in May but as many have now realised I have become supremely obsessed with the three-release batch for this netlabel specifically.

A few days later on the 15th I created a somewhat spur of the moment release that somehow found its way to my actual main Bandcamp page rather than Small Worm. ‘A Night in at the Races’ captures heady and grinding radio abuse (through none other than that same Rage 158) with some experimental digital collage artwork (that I intend to pursue further) – off the back of using similar process in my live-streamed performances on Twitch (and now catalogued on my Youtube) and my creation of the petite ‘Worst Case Scenario’ track for the Quagga Curious Sounds compilation – a true beast of a collection – QCS Loves the NHS. I cannot thank label-head Michael Ridge enough for inviting me to participate – and I’m happy I just so happened to be experiencing some inspiration when the invitation came so I could sneak in to the track-list early before the total avalanche of contribution really began.

Additionally, some things you can expect in early June: the long-delayed resurgence of the biosphere that is Terrarium – thanks to a truly cataclysmic (and very sadly long-delayed) offering from the mighty .birdeater. – and along with the plans for physical release of the above-mentioned collaboration I intend to create some ultra-limited artefacts for Small Worm – thereby ruining every chance it ever had of being considered my fourth netlabel.

I was very happy to introduce smolgost to the worm-fold – the luscious work of Jacob Mahlon of oath&oblation (who has blessed us with such enigmatic and interesting projects as (w)resting place, woundfont, Keen Orator and others still) – as well as to see May in on the very first of the month with a new addition from Rosie King to the bulking Dog Milk roster, Sea Lions.

Finally – I have a sure feeling I’ve forgotten to include something from the past month and I feel bad already for the omission. I will try my best to correct any mistakes in my June post.