Brian Lavelle » www.brianlavelle.org

There’s a positive little review of The Petrified Forest in this week’s edition of Vital (issue 631), which had this to say:

Brian Lavelle recently surprised us [with] ‘Supernaturalist’, and the two pieces here were recorded just before that and show the best side of his: manipulating field recordings and very much altering them into microscopic detailed pieces of ambient drones. Slowly changing patterns of what seems to be rain fall, deep bass sounds in ‘The Wood Turned Dark And Silent’ and more synthetic in ‘This Twisting Glade’, which sounds like a church organ being dissected. Very nice. (FdW)

Thank you Frans!

I’m pleased to say that Supernaturalist has now been released by wonderful Belgian label, EE Tapes. I have some copies for sale, if you’re interested, and have also put a fairly rudimentary order page on the site for this and other releases.

I’m very happy with how this CD has turned out, and whilst for cost issues the colour photographic cover which I had originally designed didn’t quite make it to the final release (see the original front cover, back cover and insert), it’s still a beautiful object and Eriek van Havere has done me proud.

Vital had this to say of it:
There was a time when Brian Lavelle was more active than he is these days. In fact I can’t remember putting on a CD by him in quite some time. Perhaps it’s wrong, but I always lumped Lavelle in with “one of the laptop guys”, but listening to ‘Supernatural’ I think this might not be the right approach. Lavelle uses electronics, field recordings, synthesizer, piano and bass guitar for four lengthy cuts of ambient music. Surely there is some sort of sound processing going which one could classify as ‘laptop’ inspired, but that is only really a small part of Lavelle’s music. Take one of the longest pieces here, ‘Citadel’, which has a firm cemented foundation of drone synthesizers and (perhaps processed) piano arpeggio on top. Field recordings - wind perhaps - take care of the rest. Much more ambient than glitchy microsound. On ‘The Bright Day Is Done’ bird twitter take care of that. Lavelle cleverly avoids the path in the forest that says ‘new age’ and follows the path that says ‘dark ambient’ - it also a path that can be easily found in the forest of all mood music, but its dimly light course is one that we follow much more readily than the lighter and brighter (and duller) new age one. Slow music, out of time, beyond space, simply floating weightless around. Great, maybe not so surprising, ambient music. Perfect rainy day music; start at twilight preferably. (FdW)

So there you have it…

Released today on French label taâlem is my latest disc, The Petrified Forest. This is comprised of a couple of pieces recorded in February 2007. As with the other releases on Jean-Marc Boucher-Ancelle’s wonderful imprint, this is a 3″ disc with beautiful colour artwork from Cyril Herry based on a photograph I took in the woods surrounding Inchmahome Priory on the Isle of Menteith:

My thanks to Jean-Marc for the release of this disc; and to Cyril for capturing in his design what I intended to convey in the sound of this work.

I’m delighted to report that I’ve just released today (on Dust, Unsettled) a long field recording of mine recorded in Italy last year. This is the fourth release on the label, after two very limited private discs: The Extraordinary Silence of Winter and Alessandri’s Dream.

This single recording is entitled Torrente Resco and lasts for almost 70 minutes. It’s a continuous field recording piece, captured using binaural techniques in the afternoon sunshine on 18 June 2007 from a hammock by the river Resco, between the towns of Canova and Pian di Scò in the Valdarno region of Italy. I edited this here in Edinburgh on 7 July 2007 but, apart from some minor equalization and gain, the recording is unprocessed. It’s probably best heard with decent headphones. For those who are used to my electronic recordings, please note this is purely field recording-based.

Write to me if you’re interested in getting hold of a copy.

I’m delighted to report that my album, Supernaturalist, will be released on CD by EE Tapes in March 2008. This is a four part work which took me some time to finish but I’m very pleased with the results. There’s a 5 minute excerpt from one of the four pieces, You Fill with Wood with Wonder on my MySpace page. More news on this soon, I hope.

I’m also very happy to say that another new album will be released by Afe Records some time this year. Entitled Ustrina, it contains one very long piece of shifting, languid electronics. Again, there’s an excerpt from this single track Pyre Nullity on the MySpace page. More details on this too, as soon as they’re in. There’s no cover artwork for this one yet.

A happy new year to all my friends and my best wishes to those who’ve supported my music over the last year: you all know who you are! Thank you.

There should be lots of exciting projects happening this year, including full length albums on Afe Records and EE Tapes, plus my first ever vinyl LP on Diophantine Discs. Stay tuned for much more on these over the next few months.

I’m delighted to say that the Table For Six: All Quiet? #2 compilation CD has been released in the last week by wonderful Belgian label EE Tapes. My fifteen minute piece, Crucible of Sky, appears on this excellent disc, which also features some beautiful work from Objekt4, Andrea Marutti, Laurent Perrier, Lutnahimat and June11. Limited to 300 copies, the compilation is packaged in the usual EE Tapes 7″ sleeve.

Thanks to Eriek van Havere of EE Tapes for his support with this.

I’m delighted to say that the first available recording for some considerable time by Alistair Crosbie and me, a set entitled Disused, will be available on Alistair’s excellent Lefthand Pressings imprint on Friday 5 October 2007.

The material for this hour-long disc of dual monochromatic, time-slurring pieces was originally recorded here in Edinburgh in 2006 and remained, to all intents and purposes, completed for a long while. We decided to return to it earlier this year and the two tracks have now been reworked, reperformed and revived. My warmest thanks to Alistair for releasing this, and with such beautiful photographs (each disc has a different print attached to the cover).

Volcanic Tongue had this to say of the disc:
New limited two-part drone tunnel from these two Scottish avant heads, with Lavelle being a one-time collaborator with Richard Youngs and Crosbie best known for his emotionally-charged solo work and his collaboration with Opaque, Nackt Insecten et al. This collaboration conjures distant fuzzy Industrial-primitive whorls of metal sonorities and wind-scorched drones in a way that sounds a little like the whole David Jackman/Organum approach to improvised scrape and klang.
So there you are.

In other news, Alistair and I have also agreed to work on a retrospective set of our myriad recordings as Inversion. There are hours and hours of forgotten and rather startling material in the vaults, so a multi-disc release is planned. More news on this as and when work commences.

I thought it was about time I did something for those who’ve supported my music over the last few years.  The Extraordinary Silence of Winter is a very limited, 15-copy only private release for friends and is a single 27 minute composition.  The disc comes in a white card wallet, with a unique image affixed to the front, and is signed and dedicated to the recipient.  Most copies are already ’spoken for’, so to speak, but I may have one or two left over.  If you’re interested, get in touch.

Incidentally, in case anyone is wondering, the title for this release comes from a beautiful, short piece by Hildegard Westerkamp, Silent Night in the City.

With thanks to Eriek Van Havere, I’m delighted to say I will have a new fifteen minute composition, Crucible of Sky, appearing on the second volume of Table For Six from Belgian label EE Tapes.  More details of this soon.