It’s been a while since I posted; but rest assured there are quite a few things happening around these parts.

ONE: I’m delighted to say there’s a new release available to order on Dust, Unsettled. This is a wonderful new album by Glenn Bach entitled Radia.

Here’s how Glenn describes the album: With this new project, Radia, Glenn Bach builds quiet soundscapes from guitar feedback and field recordings captured at various state parks in California and Wisconsin. By combining the unpredictable aspect of analog signal with the mostly natural sounds of protected landscapes, Bach examines the blurred boundaries of geography, place and memory.

This disc has been a long time coming (all down to me, rather than Glenn – the most patient man on the planet!), but I’m convinced Radia is worth the wait. It’s a subtle and introverted series of slow soundscapes, abstract and minimalistic yet contemplative in nature. I really love it, and I’m so pleased Glenn sent it to me for release.

You can pre-order the album here; everything is at the duplicators now and it should be out in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can listen to all of the tracks on the Dust, Unsettled site or on our new SoundCloud page (and on the player below).

TWO: I will have a few new releases out soon.

The long delayed Suburban Electrification should be out in the very, very near future on Overland Shark. I understand that Andrew will be emailing those who ordered many months ago, so look out for something in your mailboxes from him soon.

Amulets is a new album released on tape by Brad Rose’s excellent Digitalis label. This should be out in the next month or so, I think, in Digitalis’s last batch of tapes. Expect more on this shortly.

THREE: I’m also working on new releases for Notice Recordings, sicsic Tapes and a few others. More on these soon, too.

FOUR: Matthew Shaw and I have a new Fougou album coming out shortly on Greengage Sounds. Entitled Further from the Centre of Disturbance, this is a follow-up to, and a progression from, our first album Reversed Dreams of this Nature. The album will be limited and nicely packaged by our great friends HK and Nan.

And that’s all for now, folks. Thanks for reading this far – there’ll be more on all of the above very soon!

As the wind howls around us here and the slates rattle ominously over the backdrop of a record I’m realising I first heard and loved more than 25 years ago—certain parts of which still make my spine tingle with happiness—one thing strikes me: there’s nothing as life-affirming as finally meeting people you’ve known previously only through the grace of that magical flow of electrons and signals that stitch together this rapidly-shrinking planet.

I’ve spent a reasonable proportion of the last week or so in the company of the wonderful Nancy Novotny and Hk Kahng, two of the warmest, most genuine, most literate friends I’ve yet had the pleasure to encounter. We’ve wandered along some interesting byways, all the while talking about music and books, cats and the esoteric, art and games and technology, as well as many other shared interests. It might be the single malt talking, or just the sadness of their leaving Edinburgh today, but I rarely make personal posts on this site and needed to record that I’ll miss them and hope we’ll meet again properly soon.

My great friend Andrew Paine is releasing a new tape of mine Empty Transmissions as part of his ever-eclectic Sonic Oyster roster. It will be released on 29 August.

You can listen to a short excerpt of the A side (Corridor of Stars) here:
Brian Lavelle – Corridor of Stars (excerpt) by Sonic Oyster Records

There are just 50 copies of this, in wraparound paper sleeves, and I’m told that there are only 8 or so of these left from the label. You can pre-order it here. I will have a few myself in due course but if you’re interested I’d get in touch with Mr Paine soon.

Empty Transmissions is – nominally, at least – the first part of a continuing space opera project entitled Binary Light. Stay tuned for the next instalment…

Almost here—just on the horizon—is a very special album to be released on cassette by that most eclectic of labels out of Kansas City, Overland Shark, run by the inspired and inspiring Andrew Heuback.

Entitled Suburban Electrification, this is quite an unusual album for me: 13 short synthesizer ‘miniatures’ that occupy relatively unusual territory in comparison to what’s gone before.

The album was put together with the notion of restricted instrumentation (i.e. one synthesizer) and short duration in mind: the challenge was to create pieces that convey the same emotional impact as my longform works. I don’t know if I succeeded, but it was fun creating the music on this album and it’s informed quite a bit of what I’ve recorded in the four or five months since I finished it.

The album will be released mid- to late-July 2011. You can preorder it here in both digital and cassette tape formats, although if you order the tape, you’ll also get a high quality download of the album in your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC or other digital formats. It can also be streamed in its entirety from that page.

OMG Vinyl had this to say:

In case we haven’t convinced you yet, let us say it again, Kansas’ Overland Shark is easily one of the best tape labels in existence. They’ve got two new releases up, both amazing and incredibly different from one another. Brian Lavelle’s “Suburban Electrification” is a near-perfect collection of short, precise synthesizer jams (quite different from his usual multi-instrumental, side-long movements). The genre conventions of drone and ambient are left behind, revealing fields of minimal electronic music ripe for cultivation. This one is fucking tops.

Following this album are two other releases on cassette: Amulets, on Digitalis; and Empty Transmissions, on Sonic Oyster Cassettes. 2011 is the year of the tape, it seems…

I’m very pleased to say that, hot on the heels of the split tape with Nova Scotian Arms on Tranquility Tapes, my new album, Hyperboreans, was released on 25 April on Siren Wire Editions, the rather wonderful label run by Susan Matthews. Apologies for the late notice on here – I’ve changed to a new hosting provider and managed to make a mess of the transfer…

Hyperboreans is a 30 minute soundscape composed of minimal electronics and field recordings, quite different in style from some of my more recent work. The sleeve photographs are by Susan, with design by her partner Mark Ingram: much thanks to both of them. I hope you enjoy! Copies are still available from Siren Wire.

I’m really delighted to announce that my split tape, with Nova Scotian Arms, is just out on Tranquility Tapes. It’s a 60 minutes tape, and my side is entitled Estuarial.

This is Franklin’s write-up:

Here we have richly varied, transoceanic transmissions from a Scotsman and a Southerner. Edinburgh’s Brian Lavelle begins the hour-long affair with a beautifully composed set of electronics. Billowing, Voigt-ian clouds of synth and guitar ultimately give way to delicate sequences and organ patterns that swirl majestically around field recordings. Lavelle has been releasing experimental music for more than 20 years and his masterful ability to digitally blend and degrade sonics to the point of perfection is well evidenced herein. Georgia’s Grant Evans (Quiet Evenings) answers boldly via his Nova Scotian Arms project with an utterly disorienting curve ball. Dissonance is the recurring theme here, with synth loops and burnt guitar riffs weaving in and out of each other and gradually pushing toward a hazy enlightenment. Like a high gravity brew, these two sides work in tandem to leave you at once blissed and dizzy. Pro-dubbed and imprinted chrome cassettes, featuring designs by Caroline Teagle.

It’s an edition of 100 copies and it’s available from the label now. Thanks to Franklin for the release, and to his sister Caroline for the amazing artwork on this and the other Tranquility releases in this Spring batch. The other split tapes are by Motion Sickness of Time Travel/Tidal, Christopher Merritt/Reedbeds, Cliffsides/Cenote Glow and Sundrips/Sound Out Light.

All you cat lovers, remember all the millions of cats mewling through the world’s rooms lay all their hopes and trust in you, as the little mother cat at the Stone House laid her head in my hand, as Calico Jane put her babies in my suitcase, as Fletch jumped into James’s arms and Ruski rushed towards me chittering with joy.
William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside (1986)

A little over a year ago, my friend Andrew Paine (of Sonic Oyster Records fame et al) and I jointly released a limited edition compilation album, The Continuing Saga of the Visiting Kitten. It came out on our conjunct of a label, Sonic Dust Recordings.

We promised at the time that all proceeds from this release would be donated to Cats Protection in the UK and I’m so pleased to be able to report that all copies of the album have been sold. After the deduction of manufacturing costs and postage charges, the net amount of £232 has been raised from sales of the album, a very pleasing figure given that there were only 100 copies of the album available and they were sold relatively inexpensively. With the use of Gift Aid for the charity donation, which adds an additional 25% to the amount, we’ve been able to donate a total of £290: wonderful!

Here’s a scan of the thank you letter from Cats Protection (click the image to open a bigger, more easily readable version in a separate window):


Andrew and I would like to thank all the cat-friendly artists who, in addition to the two of us, gave exclusive material for the album (texlahoma/Matthew Shaw, Richard Youngs, Space Weather, Alistair Crosbie and ILK); and can we also thank all those who were kind enough to buy it in the first place: we hope that, as well as the satisfaction of making a financial contribution towards the great work that Cats Protection does, you also found something of value in the compilation itself. You’ve made us very happy that we could make this donation! Thank you thank you thank you! My own cats, Hamish & Bob, two beautiful brothers who were rescue cats from Cats Protection, thank you, too, from the bottom of their kittyhearts.

And we’re talking seriously about curating a second volume to be released later this year, in a different format and with more exclusive material; felinophiles, stay tuned for more!

The final plug: if you’re in the UK, you can also make separate one-off or regular donations to Cats Protection here.

We’re only half way through January and already 2011 is shaping up to be a very busy and intriguing musical year for me. Here are the highlights, some of which are more definite than others.

• The new Fougou album, Further from the Centre of Disturbance, to be released soon on Greengage Sounds. Matthew and I also have another, ‘acoustic’ Fougou album, The Boleigh Working, ready for release, with new recordings planned for the fairly near future.

• A tape of short and melancholic synthesizer pieces for the Overland Shark label run from Kansas by Andrew Heuback. Almost finished, this is provisionally titled Suburban Electrification.

• One side of an hour long split tape with Grant Evans’ project Nova Scotian Arms for the Tranquility Tapes label.

• An album, on CDR and as yet untitled, for Susan Matthews‘ Siren Wire Editions label.

• An album, on tape and again so far untitled, for a new label operated by Jen Marquart and Cory E. Card from Rochester, NY, //cae-sur-a//.

• A new collaborative project with Eddie Keenan of The Driftwood Manor, provisionally called The Powder Tower.

• Further recordings with Alistair Crosbie and Andrew Paine as Space Weather; and I hope further recordings with both of them for collaborative projects.

And there are bound to be other things I’ve forgotten. More on all of these soon, I hope.

I’d almost got myself to the point this year where I wasn’t going to do an utterly subjective list of top 10 releases of the last year. But then I buckled under the pressure and so: here we are…

One of my reasons for doing it at all is that I realised I’d stumbled upon so many great releases by lots of new (to me) artists on some truly inspirational labels.

Small print and disclaimer: I know there are releases here by friends, and on labels run by friends. There’s even a release I put out. But in those cases, this is honestly music I would not be without now, and so it doesn’t really seem relevant, to me anyway, who released the thing in the first place: the fact that it exists at all is the reason it appears here.

So here it is, in alphabetical order. I’ve tried to include links to artists and labels, to encourage those who are interested to explore further. And apologies to those who didn’t make the list: it is hugely subjective and I heard so much great music this year. Suffice it to say the list could have been much longer.

230 Divisadero The Silent Watcher CDR (Apollolaan)
Alistair Crosbie I’ve Never Had A Face CDR (Dust, Unsettled)
The Driftwood Manor Found Photographs of Ancestors CDR (Apollolaan)
Bernardino Femminielli La Montaña Del Capricornio cassette (Hobo Cult Records)
Motion Sickness of Time Travel Seeping Through The Veil Of The Unconscious cassette (Digitalis)
Nova Scotian Arms Skyed Out cassette (Hooker Vision)
Andrew Paine & Richard Youngs Robot CDR (Sonic Oyster Recordings)
Polymer Slug Warm Forms cassette (Overland Shark)
Pye Corner Audio Black Mill Tapes Volume 1: Avant Shards digital release (Pye Corner Audio Transcription Services)
Violence and the Sacred performing as VioSac Dawning Luminosity CD (VATS)

My thanks and best festive wishes to those who have shown their enthusiasm and support for my music this year. And here’s to a happy, productive, peaceful and—above all—musical 2011!

I was delighted to see this 10 out of 10 review for my Magdalena LP on my return home this evening, through the ice and snow. It appeared today on the Foxy Digitalis site:

Brian Lavelle gets his feet wet in ooey-gooey wax for the first time. And it is appropriately my first introduction to this refreshing artist as well. Let me just begin by saying that Lavelle’s level of skill and inherent passion to create something of such beauty revives all the awe in me that was first beset in me upon my earliest initiations into the world of soundscapery. I remember back a few years ago when I delightfully heard the enchanting drones of Peter Wright, Steven R. Smith, and Fabio Orsi. Everything was so new and exciting. I never knew such art existed. Well, Lavelle has helped rekindle that spark of pleasure with these world-class drones. His processed guitar mantras remind me a lot of Peter Wright. Lavelle, like Wright, is able to develop a compelling aesthetic of shimmering and calming yet powerfully captivating splendor. These have an incredibly organic feel and they’re very easy to internalize and make a part of you. It’s as if when you cease from your labors for just a moment and concentrate solely on the heavenly aura emitted from your speakers you almost forget that it’s not the spirit of blood flow or of respiration. Absolutely natural, biologically adaptable drone.
All four tracks of “Magdalena,” two on each side, are each just as equally pleasurable. “Proem” [5:09]; “‘I did not go inside’” [9:18]; “‘I have not come home’” [11:18]; and “Coda” [3:25] are each exquisite foci of contemplation that are as welcome as the air we breathe and the love we feel. And the LP sleeve is a really nice piece of art in itself. It’s a pure, raw cardboard design with a very lightly hinted, implicit depiction of the cover photograph. But the real, vivid full color photograph is as irresistible to the eye as the toy inside a cereal box is to a 3-year-old. Gorgeous silver lettering is elegantly scripted. This is unfortunately limited to only 300 copies, pressed on green marbled vinyl. So, join me in a reminder of why we got into drone in the first place. Let these tracks give you a much-needed life enhancement. Lavelle is more than able to satisfy.
Diophantine Discs
10/10

Thanks to Dave Miller for this lovely write-up. The LP is available from Diophantine on the link above.