Monthly Archives: January 2025

Xorgett – Pareidol Detarutas (Opal)

Posted by John Lithium on

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Label Description: Xorgett’s latest offering occupies a singular territory where processed cello becomes a vehicle for deep listening and destabilized perception. Moving beyond the academic severity often found in electroacoustic work, these compositions achieve a rare balance between instrumental virtuosity and electronic intervention, creating environments that feel both archaic and hypermodern.

The integration of voice and strings produces moments of startling intimacy, yet the electronic treatments ensure we remain at a critical distance – never quite able to grasp the human elements before they dissolve into granular cascades and spectral residue. There’s a profound tension between the cello’s inherent warmth and the clinical precision of digital processing, suggesting both the comfort of familiar forms and their inevitable dissolution.

What distinguishes this work is its refusal to settle into either pure abstraction or conventional musicality. Instead, it charts a course through territories where recognition constantly slips away – like watching faces emerge and recede in clouds. The result is less a collection of compositions than a series of perceptual exercises, each track carefully dismantling our expectations of how acoustic instruments should behave in electronic spaces. This is music that demands full immersion while remaining eternally elusive.

In moments of “representational catastrophe,” Xorgett transports us into a hypnotic state, a radical sensory overload that dissolves meaning and thrusts us into “hypostasis”—a liminal zone where abstraction and the concrete collide. These tracks are a sonic journey from order to abyss, from symbolic meaning to pure, resonant sensation—a soundtrack to the world’s own oscillating dance between chaos and creation.

Andrew Liles – Without Wisdom (Self-Released)

Posted by John Lithium on

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Label Description: Without Wisdom features 8 new songs based on those anxious moments of anticipation in the dreaded dental waiting room.

In the 1970s when I visited the dentist, the music they played in the waiting room was slow melancholy jazz, jazz featuring the vibraphone. I alluded to this on my recording ‘Bad Vibes Waiting Room’, which appeared on the 2007 album Black Hole.

Teeth. Teeth are not really fit for purpose are they? All my neuroses and fears manifest in my mouth. You have to work at keeping your teeth, it’s an eternal battle. Natural teeth are disjointed, irregular shapes and never brilliant white. They are not neat and shiny and all in a row like a Hollywood grin, unless you are lucky of course. There is no beauty in them, they are ugly, they fail, they rot, they don’t grow back and at some point they will cause unmitigated misery for practically everyone.

I have always had weird teeth. My incisors are Draculaesque. I was ridiculed at school for having them. In later life I have been asked several times where I have had them ‘done’, people assuming I have willingly had them cosmetically altered. I always reply that it’s a congenital deformity. What makes them even more pronounced is the fact that the neighbouring two teeth are, bizarrely, still milk teeth.

I’ve had some terrible experiences at the dentist. I have been in waiting rooms with people running out screaming. Once, the dentist came into the waiting room covered in blood, moaning about patients only coming to him when they were in pain. I have had unnecessary extractions and unnecessary fillings.

I was very much a victim of the ‘heavy metal’ generation. For those who don’t know, in the 1970s, the NHS in the UK encouraged dentists to ‘restore’ teeth, which led to many children receiving extensive and often pointless dental work. The ‘drill and fill’ abuse of the 70s meant that dentists were driven by financial gain rather than the patients’ wellbeing. This resulted in the ‘heavy metal’ generation, creating victims of the predictable and ugly consequences of when money and healthcare coalesce.

A couple of years ago I had a wisdom tooth extracted. It no longer had any socket left to keep it fixed in place and needed to be removed. I asked the dentist if I could keep it.

You can own it… if you like. I am literally selling my own body parts.

Send an email to andrew@andrewliles.com with a price you would like to pay for it.

The highest bidder will win the tooth, which comes in a presentation box with a signed Polaroid.

Images can be found here – www.andrewliles.com/discography/without-wisdom/

Final offers are due by midnight GMT 14th February.

P&P will be added to your bid.

Teeth. Teeth are not really fit for purpose are they?

JANUARY 2025: DESCEND AND DISINTEGRATE

T.A.G.C. – Iso-Erotic Calibration (Cold Spring)

Posted by John Lithium on

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Label Description:

Carefully constructed aural rituals from T.A.G.C., this album maps new realms in the area of sensual electronic music. Founder Adi Newton (Clock DVA) uses The Anti Group as an outlet for his research in psycho-acoustic music. “Iso-Erotic Calibration” explores the potent topic of human sexuality. Recorded over a period of three years, this could be considered on of their more “accessible” albums.

Originally released in 1994 (Side Effects, the label of Lustmord, Musica Maxima Magnetica, and Adi’s own Anterior Research Recordings), we are proud to present the album for the first time on vinyl, as well as the first official CD reissue, fleshed out with four bonus tracks: two were bonus digital-only tracks (2013); one track is taken from the soundtrack to the 2011 T.A.G.C. film ‘Given’; one is a remix of the title track.

The Anti Group Communications (T.A.G.C.) was devised by Adi Newton and Steven James Turner as early as 1978 as a multi-dimensional research & development project. TAGC are not affiliated to any one system of philosophy or epistemological paradigm or occult fraternity but are open more to individual systems and innovative thinkers Science, Art, Music Sonology, Visual Arts, Literature, Research & Publication are its main areas.

The artwork is filled with text and illustrations supporting the different songs.

• CD in 6-panel matt-laminate digipak.

• Black LP on 180gm heavyweight vinyl in a matt-laminate sleeve.

• Ltd 300 x Brown LP on 180gm heavyweight vinyl in a matt-laminate sleeve.

credits

releases January 17, 2025

All compositions and production by Adi Newton, 1994.
All tracks from original DAT masters recorded in Florence, Italy, 1993, at the Anterior Research Station.

Iso-Erotic Calibration originally released by Anterior Research Recordings (ARR 003), Musica Maxima Magnetica (eee 20) and Side
Effects (DFX 21).

Bonus CD tracks:

Track 8: remix
Track 9: from the soundtrack to the TAGC film ‘Given’ (2011).
Track 10 & 11: from the digital-only edition (2013)

Mastered for Cold Spring by Martin Bowes at The
Cage, Coventry.

Cover image by Leonor Fini, La Toilette Inutile (‘The Useless Dress’), 1964, oil on canvas. One of two paintings of Ophelia by Fini.

New artwork design by Adi Newton.
Layout by Abby Helasdottir.

Iso-Erotic Calibration: photograph of Unica Zurn by Hans Bellmer (used as the cover of Le Surréalisme, Même 4, 1958).

Union with Sirens: collage by Karel Teige, 1942

Mercurius & Neurological Engineering: montages by Adi newton, circa 2010.

Psychophonphilia: La Permutation Des Sens drawing by Hans Bellmer, 1950.

Annals of Sancity: 19th Century painting of Eerie Scene With Incubus Demon, after Johann Heinrich Füssli.

Ethemeral: Engraving by Louis-Jean Allais of a mural painting from Tomb KV9, Valley of the Kings, Egypt.

Kati Astraeir and Christopher Alvarado – Realms of Thoth (Petroglyph Music)

Posted by John Lithium on

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Label Description: Thoth, in Egyptian religion, a god of the moon,
of reckoning, of learning and of writing.
He was held to be the inventor of writing,
the creator of languages, the scribe,
interpreter, and adviser of the gods,
and the representative of the sun god, Re.
His responsibility for writing was shared
with the goddess Seshat.

Nordvargr – Resignation IV (Cyclic Law)

Posted by John Lithium on

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Label Description: Nordvargr Announces the Release of Resignation 4, the Fourth Installment in the Resignation Series

Swedish dark ambient and experimental artist Nordvargr (Henrik Nordvargr Björkk) is set to release the highly anticipated Resignation 4, continuing his sonic journey through rhythmic, atmospheric, and melancholic soundscapes. Building on the foundation laid by the Resignation trilogy, Resignation 4 expands the project’s signature blend of techno-inspired beats, dark ambient textures, and hypnotic soundscapes.

A Continuation of Sonic Exploration

Resignation 4 picks up where the acclaimed 2022 Resignation box set left off, offering a deeper dive into Nordvargr’s evolving sound. The album maintains one foot firmly in the techno scene, while also embracing moments of eerie calm and reflective melancholy. It is an album where rhythmic pulses and deep atmospherics converge, presenting a sound that is at once mesmerizing and abrasive, pushing the boundaries of electronic music.

This latest chapter sees Nordvargr taking his unique grasp of genre fusion even further, blending ambient melancholia with hard-edged, rhythmic elements. Fans of both experimental electronics and the fringes of techno will find Resignation 4 to be a captivating continuation of his visionary work.

Origins and Evolution of the Resignation Series

The Resignation project began in 2008 as an exploration of rhythmic, repetitive music paired with dark ambient soundscapes. It was born from a collaboration between Nordvargr and Nils Ekholm, merging techno-inspired beats with samples from old 78 RPM records. The first album in the series was described as “techno, if invented in the late 1800s,” drawing inspiration from the ill-fated 1897 North Pole expedition by S.A. Andrée.

Over the years, the project has grown, with each album taking a distinct direction—ranging from dubby techno atmospheres to harsher, noisier electronic soundscapes—culminating in the haunting, cinematic experience that is Resignation 4. Along the way, the project has evolved from its early experimental roots into a genre-defying force, standing at the crossroads of ambient, techno, and industrial music.

A Look Back at the Trilogy

The Resignation trilogy was re-released in 2022 as a deluxe box set, remastered with unique and exclusive material, including previously unheard demo recordings and bonus tracks. This set offered listeners a complete exploration of the project’s evolution, from the early rhythmic ambient experiments to the harder, more distorted sounds of later volumes. Note that the quickly sold out 3CD has now been repressed.

Tracks like Totem Visitations, originally composed for a Polish film soundtrack, showcased Nordvargr’s ability to craft immersive sonic environments that complement the darker edges of film and narrative.

Looking Forward: Resignation 4

With Resignation 4, Nordvargr continues to refine his signature style, exploring new territories of sound and emotion. This album promises to be a highlight of his prolific career, offering a bold and dynamic listening experience for fans of experimental and rhythmic electronic music.

Release Formats and Artwork

The album will be available in multiple formats:

•Vinyl: Edition of 300 copies. 100 Special Edition on marbled brown & Black vinyl and 200 copies on black vinyl. Printed Innersleeve and matte lamination. 9 Tracks. Running Time 39:57 EAN: 3770033798171

•CD: Edition of 300 copies in 4 panel Digipak, matte lamination. 9 Tracks. Running Time 39:57 EAN: 770033798164

The stunning album artwork and photography are created by Sandrine Pelletier, capturing the stark, otherworldly aesthetic of the Resignation series.

Resignation 4 continues Nordvargr’s exploration of the balance between beauty and brutality, inviting listeners to immerse themselves in a world where atmospheric depth meets rhythmic intensity.

Various – 60 Minutes Of Laughter (Cause And Effect)

Posted by John Lithium on

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Label Description: For more info on 60 Minutes Of Laughter
including additional pictures and texts
www.haltapes.com/60-minutes-of-laughter.html

new digital transfer from the original master tape, November 2015

60 Minutes Of Laughter was recorded in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1981 and 1982, and was issued in 1983. 60 MOL was Deborah Jaffe’s tape project, the fourth issue of a small press magazine Debbie published called 12 Seconds Of Laughter. 60 Minutes Of Laughter features sounds by Hal McGee, Debbie Jaffe [aka Master/Slave Relationship], Viscera, Gabble Ratchet, Trish & The Swishettes, The Dancing Invisibles, Residential Rick (Karcasheff), and more. 60 MOL is a lo fi lo tech collage consisting of earliest recordings by Viscera, tape cut-ups, primitive noise jams, simultaneous poetry readings, deconstructed rock songs, a live dada performance recording in a Country & Western bar, weird pop songs, experimental music, and more.

Pseudo-dadaist music, noise and poetry circa 1981 and 1982 from your friends at Cause And Effect. Our biggest seller to date, 60 Minutes Of Laughter is a wacky collage of nonsense bits and non sequiturs like “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” by Trish and the Swishettes”, “Dharma Proclivity/Butchered Calf” by Jolifanto Karawane and Mipoola Palinga and “Freedom To Be Immoral” by The Conversations. Also includes early ultra-minimal music by Viscera (“Starvation And Beating”, “Seeing The Future”, “Outraged Civilized World”, etc) and a ten-minute “Dada” performance by Karawane and Palinga in a country and western bar. For $2.00 what the hell?
– January 1985 Cause And Effect Cassette Distribution Catalog
www.haltapes.com/cause-and-effect-january-1985-catalog.html

60 Minutes Of Laughter Side A 31:21

Red House, Blue House – DJ & HM
Voulez In The Voulez – GS
Untitled/uncredited excerpt from “The Edge” – Viscera
Ant War – HM
Kurtz Kapers (Apocalypse Later) – Kurtz Memorial Band
A Different Kind Of Music – Viscera
Love In The Tropics
Starvation And Beating – Viscera
Floatin’ On The Waves – Dancing Invisibles
Love Is On My Side – Trish & The Swishettes
Home – Viscera
Composition – HM
Outraged Civilized World – Viscera
Another Simon And Garfunkel Hit
Three Blind Pigs – Residential Rick
To Tristan, With Love
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah – Trish & The Swishettes
Seeing The Future – Viscera
Airplanes And Engines (Are Beautiful) – Dancing Invisibles
Husband And Wife Scenario
New Eyes
Pain Research – Trish & The Swishettes
Improv – Gabble Ratchet
Apple Pie
Wurlitzer Intermission – DJ

DJ – Debbie Jaffe
HM – Hal McGee
JK – Jolifanto Karawane
LE – L. Extentensa (Toby O’Brien)
MP – Mipoola Palinga
RK – Rick Karcasheff

60 Minutes Of Laughter Side B 31:17

Wurlitzer Intermission (cont)
Collage/Gertrude Stein
Dharma Proclivity/Butchered Calf – JK & MP
Tinyness – Park Avenue Rick
Live At The Sanctuary – JK & MP
Bird Is Dead – HM & DJ
I Love You I Love You I Love You
Repercussive Illusion – HM
WWIII – Army Brats
WWIV – Army Brats
My Balls – LE
Public Lavatory, Blue Light – HM & DJ
The Edge – Viscera
Negative Image
Everything And Nothing – Viscera
Tiger Talk – Burnt Circuits
I Don’t Understand – DJ w/ “Mr British”
Silly Love Songs
Why Do You Do It?
Freedom To Be Immoral – The Conversations
Accepting Things As They Are – Viscera

Army Brats – HM, vocals; RK, drums; DJ, keyboards
Burnt Circuits – DJ & HM, vocals & keyboards
Dancing Invisibles – HM, vocals; Roger Vice, guitars; DJ, misc. items
Gabble Ratchet – RK, keyboards; David Mattingly, keyboards; Jack Sexson, guitar; DJ, guest vocalist
Trish & The Swishettes – Trish, vocals; HM, vocals, guitar; DJ, vocals
Viscera – HM, vocals; DJ, keyboards

60 Minutes Of Laughter was the first audiotape artwork on which I ever appeared. 60 Minutes Of Laughter was Deborah Jaffe’s tape project. It was the fourth issue of a small press magazine Debbie published called 12 Seconds Of Laughter.

I met Jaffe in August of 1981 while I was working as a prep cook at a Mexican restaurant in Indianapolis. We found that we shared a lot of the same interests in music, art and literature and Debbie and I became best friends. We often visited her friends Rick Karcasheff and David Mattingly, who knew a lot about weird avant garde music. They had a group called Gabble Ratchet and they played analog synthesizers, with Jack Sexson on guitar, and recorded their noisy experimental music on cassette tapes.

Debbie published a small press magazine called 12 Seconds Of Laughter, the subject of which was “the obscure, in all forms”. She took photos from foreign film catalogues, nonsense absurdist phonetic poems, cut-outs from advertisements, tracts, etc. and collaged them together to make non-statements about “love, sex, politics, psychology, religion”.

After publishing three print issues she conceived of an audio version on cassette. 60 Minutes Of Laughter was a compilation of audio routines of material by ourselves and our friends that Debbie and I had recorded on a small portable “shoebox” cassette recorder during 1981 and 1982. Deb made a collage of these recordings with various segments from poetry and language instruction records, a Wurlitzer organ, domestic audio scenes, her junior high school band and sundry sonic doodles.

Debbie and I recorded numerous simultaneous poems. We chose texts from a wide variety of sources — our own poems, magazine articles, shopping lists, advertisements, The Bible, etc. The often arbitrarily-chosen texts clashed, collided and melted into one another.

Debbie and I read in the newspaper that a local Country & Western Music bar called The Sanctuary had an open microphone night every Wednesday. Anybody could go into the little performance area and play a song. We constructed big paper cones to put on our heads. We chose Dada names for ourselves: I was Jolifanto Karawane. Debbie was named Mipoola Palinga. We wrote our new names on the hats. I taped the words of Hugo Ball’s Dada abstract phonetic poem “gadgi beri bimba” (1916) onto my beat-up $70 acoustic guitar. We both donned long black coats. When it was our turn we donned our big tall cardboard cone-hats and walked to the stage. Deb went to the microphone on a stand stage right. I sat down in a chair in front of a boom mike lowered to my mouth level. I spoke into the microphone, addressing the audience:
“The first step is to realize you’re asleep.I mean, would it really matter if you stuck your head in a Waring blender?”
I began to rub and scrape a grooved stick against the guitar strings, pulling the stick back and forth roughly over the strings and striking the body of the guitar with my hands and the stick. I increased the speed of the rubbing and striking and abrasive scraping up to a big crescendo. I cried out in a loud voice inflected with a pseudo-Caribbean-tribal wail, stretching the phrasing out and down and around as far as I could: “Gadji beri bimba!”
Debbie took up the response in a long cascade of wails, yelps and pseudo-operatics. Our vocal lines crashed into silence.
Then I took up the next call: “Glandridi lauli lonni cadori…”
We continued this call and response of a line from Ball’s poem with Debbie providing the elements of contrast, background and setting. Debbie warbled and chirped and giggled like a maniac and screamed and bellowed out and swooped in big arcs up and down. I leaned into the microphone, coughed up the words, rolled and gargled them around in my mouth and throat and spitted and barked them out – going through a rapid-fire catalog of exaggerated phrasings, monkey chattering, accents and character voices from Monty Python and bad jungle movies.
The audience soon started to make lots of noise, with lots of loud talking and people standing up, shouting and yelling and shaking their hands and gesticulating. People yelled out their responses to what we were doing, things like: Devo!
We were up there making a bunch of racket, just yelling a bunch of stuff, and me beating and misusing and abusing my guitar. After several minutes of this chaos we brought the assault to a close and the audience burst out yelling and clapping and shouting – united together in their response to us. As we finished a guy in the audience yelled out “Heil Hitler!”. And the rest of the audience burst out cheering and laughing in agreement at the sentiment. They were clearly excited and everybody was having a good time.
We were scared and decided it would be a good idea to pack our stuff and head out the door as quickly as possible before we were attacked. Neither of us wanted to get beaten up and we didn’t think it was unlikely if we hung around much longer.

Debbie knew a guitar player who idolized Tom Petty. Deb and I tried to work out some songs, with Deb and I doing some vocals along with Roger’s hot electric playing. “Airplanes And Engines” was extracted from an epic nine-minute version. I had written a poem of several pages treating the subject of how technology, in spite of its drawbacks, will be the instrument through which we will transcend earthly, bodily limitations and enter into different realms of the spirit or consciousness. I do my very worst imitation of Jim Morrison. “Floatin’ On The Waves” was another example of how Deb and I banalized and deconstructed rock music. The excerpt here shows us reducing song lyrics to mere arbitrary sounds, with no regard to content – only to the way the words sounded together.

A couple of times that fall of 1981 we visited a waitress I knew from the restaurant where I worked. We all had a lot of fun sitting around in her house doing trio vocal improvisations – stream of consciousness – start with no preconceived idea – listen to the others – make sounds in reaction to what you hear – whatever came into our heads. Deb and I were trying to cultivate a kind of artistic infantilism, to draw closer to true uninhibited expression. We experimented quite a lot with babbling, shouting, crying, screaming, whining and giggling. We also cultivated artistic “primitiveness” in an effort to communicate as directly and instinctively as possible.

“Ant War” is a recording of me playing my cheap electric guitar through a small amplifier. I liked to misuse, abuse and overuse the tremolo and reverb effects on the amp. I was trying to create something that had a lot of energy but that evoked visual imagery. A driving rhythmic pulse, with noise in overlapping, frothing currents of distortion and crackling electricity, controlled feedback and pitch manipulation.

“Composition” was composed with a Casio VL-Tone, and is an early example of my use of programmed music. The VL-Tone was the first keyboard ever made by Casio. The VL-Tone was a hybrid calculator/musical instrument.

There are two recordings of Rick Karcasheff and David Mattingly’s experimental music group Gabble Ratchet on 60 Minutes Of Laughter. Both date from the months before I met Debbie, Summer 1981. I admired Gabble Ratchet’s improvisational style, and their use of Korg MS-10 analog synthesizers.

“Improv” is a short snippet from a much longer jam. Debbie included it here to showcase her weird stifled scream. “Collage/Gertrude Stein” is composed of a collage of pop music, news programs, TV ads and other sonic detritus, mixed completely into the left channel; and in the other speaker, a Gabble Ratchet jam tape with Deb doing readings from a book by Gertrude Stein.

Rick’s two short tracks are original works that clearly point to an infatuation many of us had at that time with The Residents. “Three Blind Pigs” is based on a traditional nursery rhyme I knew well from childhood, but in the original it was three blind mice. In Residential Rick’s world the mice become pigs.

On 60 Minutes Of Laughter Debbie Jaffe included several audio scenes and oblique references to her life that illustrated some of the themes that she would later develop in Viscera and Master/Slave Relationship. Debbie’s early life experiences caused her to doubt and rebel against common notions of romance, marriage, family, religion and popular taste.
The pieces “Husband And Wife Scenario” and “New Eyes” were from a recording Deb made of her much older half-brother Jim, his ex-wife Val talking with their church minister in 1973 in Des Moines, Iowa.

“Kurtz Kapers” was taken from a recording Jaffe made of her junior high school band in 1976. She played clarinet in the band.

When Debbie lived in Marion, Indiana she went to the Wurlitzer Electric Organ shop downtown and played the organs, which were available for rent on an hourly basis. There were cassette recorders built into the organs. Debbie took extracts from her hours of organ jam tapes for the “Wurlitzer Intermission” segments on 60 Minutes Of Laughter.

Deb got the sound effects, language and poetry records from the main branch of the Indianapolis Public Library. One of her great finds was the Gertrude Stein record that had a scratch on it that caused the phrase “sometimes Vollard mumbled” to repeat over and over. Debbie used this recording as a segue into the first Viscera piece on the 60 Minutes Of Laughter tape.

60 Minutes Of Laughter contains the earliest recordings by Viscera, from the Summer of 1982. That Summer Deb and I started developing some pieces in which I would recite, sing or act out poems and stories we’d both written, and Deb would compose a minimalist background/ backdrop or mood setting using simple instrumentation – mostly our Casio VL-Tone mini keyboard. We wanted to get right to the heart and guts of the matter of life and existence: to live and show the pain and torment of existence through the art. There was no redemption in life except for the artistic expression of our experiences. This expression must be direct and bare, devoid of artifice and rationalization, all the loose psychic wires hanging loose and going every which way. Erratic mood swings and spurts of energy followed by lassitude…our fragmented perplexed perception of the world outside and our fragile mental states.

Music we were listening to during that time included: Patti Smith, Talking Heads, The Residents, The Doors, Eno, Joy Division, New Order, Lemon Kittens, Nurse With Wound, Throbbing Gristle. Plus, we were reading lots of books on dada and stuff by William Burroughs.

Originally released by Mirth And Merriment Productions. Reissued by Zidsick.

Scanner – The Magician’s Hat Vol.4 Studio 2024 (Self-Released)

Posted by John Lithium on

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Label Description:

Volume 4 of my series, The Magician’s Hat, this time, offers an insight into my studio work from 2024.

Like many other creative people, there’s a significant amount of work that is never experienced, so thought I’d take this opportunity to share a few pieces sitting on the studio hard drive in 2024.

None of them are finished works as such, mere ideas with a sonic playground for experimentation. They range from works exploring different techniques, synthesisers(sic), guitar pedals and software.

Perhaps some of them might be reworked into something else, but for the moment enjoy this little voyeuristic view through the window of the studio.