Well, I had brain failure moment and for some reason believed I’d already dedicated a post here to my goings on in October, and that just my November was late – and I look back now only to find out I was knocking out Septembers in arrears in early October and I’m actually two months behind.
Needless to say – not a whole lot went down in all that time – and there are some real, but personal, excuses as to why I’m only posting this update now.
Beginning with newest developments and working my way backwards, I decided to finally reassume my role as participant in the Noisevember ‘challenge’. My contributions consist of a daily track recorded on the fly, attributed to my own name at my main Bandcamp page for such work, imaginatively entitled N > V 2020 with an accompanying (very Worm-esque) illustration of mine for album artwork. And, speak of the devil, one of the small worms, Bedworm, has also begun the same exercise – with an ongoing work at the platform entitled noisevember from bed. Below are the artworks for each respectively.
When it comes to netlabel activity – I received no submissions, nor made any plans for releases of my own, for either SSN Tech or Terrarium in either month, and both platforms can essentially be considered on semi-hiatus pending arbitrary rousing (though there are two to three nebulous plans for things towards SSN at some future date at least). I received two submissions for the HNW netlabel, which are great works, but as I like to release in batches of three with this platform in particular I had been holding out for hope of a third, when it seems I should have just dedicated some time to filling out the slot myself to speed things along for the artists (and for that lack of judgement I apologise profusely to the two of you concerned). They will obviously still see the digital light of day – hopefully soon.
I spent a bulk of October getting 3/4 of the initial tape batch for Small Worm definitively finished. And I was successful in doing this and I am really happy with how these three releases turned out. As my post prior to the one before this shows, the batch is meant to contain four releases, and there’s been some delay in completing the larger, more ambitious project of the four (a double cs four-way split in a run of 20). I am currently weighing the decision to prolong the release of this split and announce and drop the three completed releases – but I’m honestly not sure where I’m going with that yet. There remains a small phase of deliberation – but since the second national lockdown of the UK was announced not so long ago, it seems well-timed to take a surprising step back to patiently wait and reflect more on how best to move forward with this (which is what I’m doing).
On the 15th October, a humongous interview with Musique Machine’s Roger Batty surfaced. It had already been available to the sites Patreon supporters for a week or two prior to this and was something I worked on by email with Roger over a span of weeks as well. I’m really happy and in fact humbled with how it turned out and the reception it has received from some friends and colleagues who wrote to me personally about it. In it we mostly talk about my now nearly a decade-long path through noise, my main former project A Raja’s Mesh Men, my curatorial role for the HNW netlabel and my surrounding thoughts and feelings on ‘noise culture’ at large. I feel it’s fairly in-depth though I think sometimes that might just translate as me going on too long about something. I’m a bit of a perfectionist but I can’t help but feel as much as there was time and patience and edits and re-edits put into this that some of my answers read so off-the-cuff and lacking in consideration. Overall though, of course, for the most-part I’m happy with how it turned out and I have such unending gratitude to Roger and the MM platform for inviting me to be featured in this way, alongside such great artists that have preceded me.
S H E A R M A N 