06.20

June has been a pretty confusing month – I felt like I would end up slowing down creatively compared to May but I think I ended up keeping a steady course somehow – and I also magically turned a year older.

The D.E.S.T.T.C.C.O.L.V. collaboration I only mentioned in my May post came to the surface a touch earlier than expected and dropped on the very first of the month – alongside a very limited edition of ten tapes that managed to sell out within a day and a half of going up. The enthusiasm I’ve felt off the back of this has pushed me into a number of plans to continue in this vein. I plan to announce an inaugural batch of similarly limited physical editions for the label soon (much behind the scenes work has already begun but sadly most of it I can’t, or won’t, spill the beans on here).

Since then, I have announced the inaugural double-release for ambient noise wall hum-and-crackle worship project A Ghost’s Ghost – Spectral Voices and Formless Veils – as well as welcoming Nicholas Maloney, of Warm Milk Recordings, with a bit of slow-fade sensation on S/S and Bedworm with yet another double-feature, the neighbours are doing DIY and computer keyboard. So the good ol’ Worm has been pretty productive writhing in the meantime as well – and this is not to even mention the upcoming Remix Party release that will see many old worm-bits return for a rework. Below is a gallery of the illustrative work I’ve been doing for the aforementioned releases.

I also drank a bit too much coffee one morning (actually that’s most mornings) and quietly shuffled this out of my body and onto my Bandcamp – Touch Typed was a very spur the moment (re)interpretation of lowercase meeting with wall noise (or noise in general, for that matter), with some automatic writing in a notepad application being recorded – the release presents the raw sounds alongside a processed (harshened) counterpart.

Some two weeks into the month I hit a bit of a productive streak and began work on a new series of texture-focused wall noise, largely the ambient kind, beginning with Mask of Architectural Excavation which I hosted at my own page. I had the pleasure of hosting the next two at labels who had expressed an interest in having something from me shortly before I began the series – Mask of Hypnos at Gates of Hypnos and Mask of Warming Tendrils at Warm Milk Recordings. The idea of a ‘mask’ here is meant more as an abstract symbol than a specific reference to masks – as the somewhat surreal ‘nature’ of the ‘masks’ might have suggested to the puzzled listener. The nature and purpose of the titles is intentionally enigmatic, I wanted something to mirror the visual style I was developing for this series which involves digitally framed photographs of skies and clouds. I often like to cloud-gaze (especially while listening to HNW) and it often feels to me as though it’s a naturally occurring Rorschach I’m looking at – I wanted both the thematic and the visual elements of this series to evoke this same quality.

I have also been quietly working on a few things that haven’t ended up being totally finished in June but are right around the corner in varying degrees – one of these things is finding it’s home at Kenneth Wood’s label Isolationist Recordings and another is going to take hold of the Stoned Demon From Outer Space, a third thing is the fourth in the Mask series which is going to be back at my own page again when it does arrive.

This month also saw the long-overdue return of Jåshlýkk with The Ancient Stone Golem of Adrimelch, a comparatively small album compared to previous works from the project, it felt really good to finally be back in the dungeon synth seat so I’m going to try and make the wait a bit shorter for the next. I also got to use an unearthed and incredibly old illustration I did for it.