Photo's from the Windmill in Brixton gig by M.Zombini.
Wednesday 16 July 2014
Raisedbygypsies on Bloodhounds.
8 stars from Norman Records for Bloodhounds LP.
https://www.normanrecords.com/records/147946-time-attendant-bloodhounds-
https://www.normanrecords.com/records/147946-time-attendant-bloodhounds-
8/10 from Mike (Staff) on 11 July 2014
I was somewhat dreading listening to this because I was told "I think it's going to be noisy soundscapes" when it was handed to me. I'm relieved to discover that isn't really the case at all. This is strange and deeply psychedelic lo-fi electronics from Paul Snowdon, aka Time Attendant, a broken but strangely intriguing sound sort of like if Hacker Farm smoked a load of bongs and tried to do something cosmic and uplifting but it went a bit west.
There's strange stumbling percussive loops, spooky field recordings of footsteps and babbling water and mysterious machinery paired with ominous synth whooshes aplenty, plus some occasional vocal textures that are echoed and blurred into babbling smudges. It moves between moods and textures quite a lot but rarely in a harsh and overpowering way. I'm particularly liking the spaced out spook-dub throb of 'Inky's Pitch' and the weird robotic fanfares of 'Flashy Pointer' on first listen but there's so much going on throughout the LP that you'll keep coming back to it just trying to get your head round its baffling quirks.
Review of Bloodhounds by includemeout blog.
'your brain is bound to get chewed up in the cogs'
Original post is here:
http://includemeout2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/time-attendant-bloodhounds-exotic-pylon.html?spref=fb
Friday, 27 June 2014
Time Attendant - Bloodhounds (Exotic Pylon)
From Sun Ra's cosmic keyboard thrashing on Gods Of The Thunder Rain (Live At Montreux) to Time Attendant's Ermine Fever, that was my sonic experience this morning and the two were quite compatible. Afro future past, analogue future present - they're linked by different approaches to percussive rhythm, the natural and mechanical/sampled. Sun Ra is partial to a chant, but whoever is saying what cannot be understood on Ermine Fever adds to the the mystery and atmosphere (like a lost soul in space crying out to be saved).
(Is that link tenuous? Possibly.)
Paul Snowdon always avoids falling into the ghostly-by-numbers trap and this record is no exception. Nettle Sting Riddle conjures up the spirit in the machine without resorting to spook cliché; packed with small details, layered ethereal textures of twilight twinkling, field samples and tormented equipment. Inky's Patch has a basic dub-style template which in the hands of others would be just that with whizzy effects, but what Snowdon adds to the background colour on this canvas exceeds what most mortals would imagine. The simplest of melodies is warped with varying bass tones, subtle echo and swooping electronic punctuation.
Horses, horses! There's one on here (Flashy Pointer). And a barking dog. Many samples (?) and field recordings are buried in the mix. The mix is everything. The composition, if you like, if that's not lending it too much weight. I don't think so. Snowdon does compose and in that he's a rarity amongst modern electronic music makers. Without exactly being radical and sometimes using simple beats, he still pieces together tracks that continue to present previously unheard components upon replaying. Bloodhounds may not get into top gear speed-wise, but as some tracks chug along your brain is bound to get chewed up in the cogs of Snowdon's cunning mechanics.
'your brain is bound to get chewed up in the cogs'
Original post is here:
http://includemeout2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/time-attendant-bloodhounds-exotic-pylon.html?spref=fb
Friday, 27 June 2014
Time Attendant - Bloodhounds (Exotic Pylon)
From Sun Ra's cosmic keyboard thrashing on Gods Of The Thunder Rain (Live At Montreux) to Time Attendant's Ermine Fever, that was my sonic experience this morning and the two were quite compatible. Afro future past, analogue future present - they're linked by different approaches to percussive rhythm, the natural and mechanical/sampled. Sun Ra is partial to a chant, but whoever is saying what cannot be understood on Ermine Fever adds to the the mystery and atmosphere (like a lost soul in space crying out to be saved).
(Is that link tenuous? Possibly.)
Paul Snowdon always avoids falling into the ghostly-by-numbers trap and this record is no exception. Nettle Sting Riddle conjures up the spirit in the machine without resorting to spook cliché; packed with small details, layered ethereal textures of twilight twinkling, field samples and tormented equipment. Inky's Patch has a basic dub-style template which in the hands of others would be just that with whizzy effects, but what Snowdon adds to the background colour on this canvas exceeds what most mortals would imagine. The simplest of melodies is warped with varying bass tones, subtle echo and swooping electronic punctuation.
Horses, horses! There's one on here (Flashy Pointer). And a barking dog. Many samples (?) and field recordings are buried in the mix. The mix is everything. The composition, if you like, if that's not lending it too much weight. I don't think so. Snowdon does compose and in that he's a rarity amongst modern electronic music makers. Without exactly being radical and sometimes using simple beats, he still pieces together tracks that continue to present previously unheard components upon replaying. Bloodhounds may not get into top gear speed-wise, but as some tracks chug along your brain is bound to get chewed up in the cogs of Snowdon's cunning mechanics.
Review of Bloodhounds by ears4eyes blog.
"a musical version of Marcel Duchamp's 'Nude Descending a Staircase'"
Click the link to view the original post.
Atmospheric and evocative of experiences you haven't had, it is steeped in the weird and uncanny. The music is deeply odd, but not the alien oddness of cold machine process; there are clearly hands at these dials, switches and wires; what those hands are connected to I wouldn't like to guess. ‘Nettle Sting Riddle’ is a drum pad beat in thick moss, a drummer boy separated from his troop in a thickly fogged endless meadow; suffused with a weird internal logic that defies easy unpacking. ‘Sugar Beet Perfume’ deploys pitch-bent guitar noise and a precarious beat patterned around interlocking rusted wheels. The frog-chorus of weirdly phased and overlapping electro-croaks on ‘Inky’s Pitch’ is combined with small bubbles of bass and static. ‘Crystal Mascot’ mixes the gentle clumping thwok of wood chime and crushed bird-song with hazy drones and bleep-melodies in a frame of hissing tick-rhythms that speed and slow like a broken record player.
Sounds pile on sounds in unlikely serrated blocks, a dada assemblage that is challenging to make sense of. The answer is to not; it is what it is, and that is remarkable enough. Spun together with human ingenuity but warped with garden-shed-bound lunatic urges; the album often resembles a brain where neurons must fire across weed-choked drainage canals. With ‘Bloodhounds’ Time Attendant presents a noise-world runny around the edges, its modular-synth gravitational core a shifting kaleidoscope of trumpets, horses, voices, passing trains – a parade of almost-shapes smashed into non-linearity, a musical version of Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’; a paradoxical mix of motion and mind-consuming self-examination, the forward drive of ‘Bloodhounds’ is frequently distracted by bizarre road-side monoliths.
Time Attendant’s recent live performance at London’s Brixton Windmill saw him at one point channelling the motorik chug of Neu. The smooth glide along endless utopic Autobahns was suddenly diverted onto Ballard’s Westway, a crash expelling Snowdon onto a concrete island where he patches together synths from wind-blown crisp packets, crushed Coke cans and the occasional whirling hubcap. Growing old with a squirrel in each pocket of his dirty overcoat, he plays infinite sets of broken techno to a menagerie of rat skulls, urban foxes and stranded badgers; the music almost entirely lost in the constant roar of traffic.
Michael Holland at 09:07
"a musical version of Marcel Duchamp's 'Nude Descending a Staircase'"
Click the link to view the original post.
http://ears4eyes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/time-attendant-bloodhounds-exotic-pylon.html?m=1
Wednesday, 16 July 2014
Time Attendant - Bloodhounds (Exotic Pylon)
Echoing bloop-fugue drift album ‘Bloodhounds’ is the debut long-form release from Paul Snowdon in the guise of shuffling synthotist Time Attendant. It follows several excellent EPs for More than Human and Exotic Pylon records.
Wednesday, 16 July 2014
Time Attendant - Bloodhounds (Exotic Pylon)
Echoing bloop-fugue drift album ‘Bloodhounds’ is the debut long-form release from Paul Snowdon in the guise of shuffling synthotist Time Attendant. It follows several excellent EPs for More than Human and Exotic Pylon records.
Atmospheric and evocative of experiences you haven't had, it is steeped in the weird and uncanny. The music is deeply odd, but not the alien oddness of cold machine process; there are clearly hands at these dials, switches and wires; what those hands are connected to I wouldn't like to guess. ‘Nettle Sting Riddle’ is a drum pad beat in thick moss, a drummer boy separated from his troop in a thickly fogged endless meadow; suffused with a weird internal logic that defies easy unpacking. ‘Sugar Beet Perfume’ deploys pitch-bent guitar noise and a precarious beat patterned around interlocking rusted wheels. The frog-chorus of weirdly phased and overlapping electro-croaks on ‘Inky’s Pitch’ is combined with small bubbles of bass and static. ‘Crystal Mascot’ mixes the gentle clumping thwok of wood chime and crushed bird-song with hazy drones and bleep-melodies in a frame of hissing tick-rhythms that speed and slow like a broken record player.
Sounds pile on sounds in unlikely serrated blocks, a dada assemblage that is challenging to make sense of. The answer is to not; it is what it is, and that is remarkable enough. Spun together with human ingenuity but warped with garden-shed-bound lunatic urges; the album often resembles a brain where neurons must fire across weed-choked drainage canals. With ‘Bloodhounds’ Time Attendant presents a noise-world runny around the edges, its modular-synth gravitational core a shifting kaleidoscope of trumpets, horses, voices, passing trains – a parade of almost-shapes smashed into non-linearity, a musical version of Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’; a paradoxical mix of motion and mind-consuming self-examination, the forward drive of ‘Bloodhounds’ is frequently distracted by bizarre road-side monoliths.
Time Attendant’s recent live performance at London’s Brixton Windmill saw him at one point channelling the motorik chug of Neu. The smooth glide along endless utopic Autobahns was suddenly diverted onto Ballard’s Westway, a crash expelling Snowdon onto a concrete island where he patches together synths from wind-blown crisp packets, crushed Coke cans and the occasional whirling hubcap. Growing old with a squirrel in each pocket of his dirty overcoat, he plays infinite sets of broken techno to a menagerie of rat skulls, urban foxes and stranded badgers; the music almost entirely lost in the constant roar of traffic.
Michael Holland at 09:07
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