Brian Lavelle

It’s been a busy week: today sees the release of a new Space Weather disc, The Weather’s Maiden, on our great friend Matthew Shaw’s Apollolaan Recordings. This is a little 3″ CDR with a single long track and I believe copies are moving fast, so get in there quick if you’d like one direct from the label.

Like all Apollolaan releases, it’s a labour of love, with beautiful, individual hand-painted sleeves in an edition of 60 numbered copies.

Thanks Matt!

I’m really delighted to say that today sees the release of Two Ostensions, my first cassette release in 12 years. It’s available in an edition of only 50 copies from Hooker Vision, one of my favourite labels operating anywhere at the moment.

The label is run by Grant and Rachel Evans, who are also, respectively, Nova Scotian Arms and Motion Sickness of Time Travel, and (together) Quiet Evenings. They are, quite simply, a force to be reckoned with and their friendship and enthusiasm are infectious, being in large part responsible for my own enthusiam for the cassette medium again.

Not only is this is a great looking tape, with colour collage artwork by Grant, but there’s an ultra-limited edition of only 10 copies housed in a hand sewn corduroy pouch inside a black leatherette photo box, along with a signed, numbered, and matted two colour etching by Grant

To say I’m very happy about this release would be an understatement. Thanks to Grant and Rachel again for all their hard work on this.

I’m very grateful to freelance writer and King Crimson biographer Sid Smith for this glowing review of Magdalena, from his always worthwhile Postcards from the Yellow Room site:

The very best ambient music often provides us with a screen onto which the listener projects the most wonderful imaginary movies. Brian Lavelle’s music ensures there’s plenty to see.

Although he’s previously released numerous collections of music on a variety of formats, this is the first time Edinburgh-based electronic and ambient musician Brian Lavelle has conceived a piece specifically for vinyl. Released on the US-based Diophantine Discs label, the benign drones and hums which fill the air are tremendously rich in texture and detail.

Lavelle’s compositions and editing also reveals a love of the dramatic. During “I Have Not Come Home”, tiny radiant dots of hyper-melody dart about in great shoals against a relatively slow-moving, aquatic backdrop. At other times, sonic events move suddenly into the foreground; it’s akin to emerging unexpectedly from a dark secluded alleyway into a bustling, exotic marketplace where one’s senses are jostled by the sheer velocity of the crowded space in which you find yourself.

I Did Not Go In, the outside world of traffic noise gently permeates the sombre washes of synths. Though it’s tempting to float away to ambient music, there’s a way it can make us focus on the everyday things we take for granted. Later in the piece, as the thrumming layers of density are added to build into a dazzling climax, an electric guitar can be faintly heard playing a mournful pibroch, it’s lilting melody gently piercing the shifting haze of distortion. It’s an altogether beautiful and moving encounter.

Thank you, Sid! And the album can be ordered direct from the label, Diophantine Discs.

I’m very pleased to say that I now have copies of Magdalena, and it’s even more spectacular than I’d hoped. Beautiful sleeve; beautiful coloured vinyl; I’ll let you decide on the music…

I have some for sale, on the Shop page, if you’re interested.

Magdalena, my first LP, will be released on Tuesday 27 July 2010, all thanks to my wonderful friend Kyle Wright of Diophantine Discs. The album is pressed on green marbled vinyl and packaged in an offset and letterpress printed jacket with a large colour photograph mounted to the cover. There are 300 copies of the LP and it’s dedicated to my beautiful niece, Megan, with love.

I will post some photographs of the finished article when I have those.

The cover photograph is of the 19th century bandstand in the Königin Astridpark in Bruges, a town that, for a number of reasons, will always be very close to my heart.

When Kyle and I first talked about me doing this LP, I suggested that an electric guitar album would be a curious notion, not in any way because that’s a particularly original idea, but because so little of my more recent work has been solely guitar-derived. I thought, perhaps naively, that I could get ‘back to basics’ but I realise now that that’s rarely possible and the eccentricities of the album betray the original concept. The LP does, however, only feature electric guitar and effects, so the original brief was fulfilled.

In fashioning Magdalena, I was forced to think, for the first time in more than 15 years, about two parts of a greater whole—the dual sides of an LP—and the recording process adapted itself accordingly: there are shorter opening and closing pieces to the record, with the second track on the first side, and the first track on the second side, being the album’s main pieces.

I can’t thank Kyle enough for all he’s done to make this album a reality. The work he’s put into getting this out there has been monumental, matched only by his patience, with a higher than usual number of test pressings and his tireless efforts in relation to the cover printing process. The look and presentation of the album are all due to his efforts; I have to take responsibility for the music contained in the record’s grooves. Suffice to say it’s an intensely personal album for me and I hope it stands up to scrutiny.

Let me know if you’re interested in getting a copy from me, as I’ll have copies soon. Anyone in North America and further afield than the UK and central Europe should contact the label and order from there. And while you’re there pick of some more of the amazing releases Kyle has put out on his superb imprint.

I was greeted this morning by this lovely little review of Avalonian from Terrascope Online. The comparison to Fripp & Eno’s seminal album (No Pussyfooting) is high praise indeed and really made me smile!

Entering ‘The Red and The White’, the first track on Scottish musician Brian Lavelle’s new release ‘Avalonian’ summons the force of early Tangerine Dream even though Brian’s music is much more filled with spacey details. Anyone familiar with Brian knows that he for about 20 years has released a huge amount of albums, solo or in collaboration (as with Richard Young) a lot of it constructed by layers of drones and processed field recordings. Over the layers of drones on the first track we hear vocals performed by…. processed bird song (I guess, but you’ll never know with Brian’s treatments) – and it’s brilliant. The drones are dark and beautiful and the bird singing is perfect. Following the 20 minute opener is the 26 minute closer, ‘Star Temple of Avalon’, the second epic of the album. Yet another spacey drone, flavoured with keyboards which is bringing it into psychedelic ambient spheres. After a couple of minutes a distorted guitar follows and soon also a repetitive bass pattern. Then the piece converts into dark free floating textures which brings to mind Fripp & Eno’s ‘Swastika Girls’, minus Bob. Brian Lavelle’s ‘Avalonian’ is very close to a masterpiece and I’m not at all surprised it’s released on the always über-interesting Apollolaan Recordings, strictly limited to 60 copies with a beautiful hand-printed cover.

Although the physical release is long gone, you can download it in lossless format on my bandcamp page, along with some other goodies.

For just over 6 joyful months now, I’ve been recording with Matthew Shaw (of Apollolaan, texlahoma, etc) in the duo Fougou.

The name comes from a peculiar type of subterranean structure only found in Cornwall in the extreme southwest of the United Kingdom. Theories differ as to their original usage, but it seems most likely they were intended for ritual or rite of passage use. Ian McNeil Cooke’s book, Mother & Sun: The Cornish Fogou (Men-an-Tol Studio, Newbridge, 1993) is the bible for the fogou obsessive, if you can find a copy.

When we settled on the name, we opted for the alternative spelling as found in the works of British archaeologist and psychic researcher, T.C. Lethbridge, and first seen in his Herdsmen and Hermits: Celtic Seafarers in the Northern Seas (Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge, 1950). It would only be fair to acknowledge that Lethbridge is one of our strongest influences.

Last weekend, Matt and I ventured down to the West Penwith peninsula of Cornwall, to visit the fogou at Boleigh and various other sites. The fogou is extraordinary, like nowhere I’ve ever visited before. Recording inside it, in the dark, to an audience of spiders and who knows what else, was an experience I won’t forget in a long time. And recording with Matt for the first time in person made the whole experience all the more memorable. It was an inspirational visit, not just for the fogou itself, but for the joy of friendship and new discoveries together, shared obsessions and shared fears (arachnaphobia and vertigo being just two!), and the magic of the Cornish landscape.

Our first album, Reversed Dreams of this Nature, has just been released on Finnish label Ikuisuus Records. The music reflects, we think, the unusual and unknown aspects of the idea of the fogou itself, with dense textural electronics, certain acoustic instruments, vocals and field recordings taken at particularly appropriate sites. The sleeve features a beautiful cover painting by Matt (above). A second album is currently being edited. At least some of the recordings we made in the fogou at Boleigh should feature on a “live” Fougou album, The Boleigh Working. And finally, for now anyway, Sonic Oyster Records, the label run by the inestimable Andrew Paine, is also to release a 3″ disc, Atlantis (for John Michell) at some point over the next few months. There’s plenty coming up and we’ll continue to record as long as the spirit of Fougou moves us. I suspect that will be for some time to come.

I’m very pleased to say that today sees the release of my latest album, Lambent, on my great friend Andrew Paine’s label, Sonic Oyster Records.

Perhaps best described as a haunting, minimalistic and mystical dream-narrative inspired, very loosely, by Viscount Samuel’s book ‘An Unknown Land’ (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1942), the disc is available in a very limited edition of 50 copies, most of which are now gone. I have a few copies, and Andrew may still have some at the time of writing. They come in handstamped sleeves: 25 in black ink on white card, 25 in white ink on black card.

Here’s our little “press release” and ordering details for the imminent new Space Weather album, Low Earth, which is officially released next Monday:

Low Earth, the eagerly-awaited second album by Scottish astral voyagers, Space Weather, is released on 1 March 2010 again on the band’s own label, Space Weather Recordings (BwbW 02).

Following on from last year’s eponymous debut, the trio of Alistair Crosbie (electric guitar), Brian Lavelle (synthesizer) and Andrew Paine (electric bass guitar) build upon the strengths of that earlier stellar outing to create a darker, more dense album in Low Earth, which is truly progressive in nature.

The album is limited to 100 copies only and comes in a pro-printed colour sleeve with pro-duplicated colour disc-print. The CDR release costs 5GBP and is available for pre-order now.

POSTAGE & PAYPAL INFORMATION – CDRS – In the UK, please add 50p towards p&p for one disc, £1 for 2 or more. Outside the UK, please add £1 towards p&p for one disc, £2 for 2 or more. Paypal is preferred – the address is sonicoysterrecords (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk.

That all round good egg Daniel Spicer played more of my music on The Mystery Lesson part 44, on Brighton’s 97.2 FM on 2 December. He featured two shart excerpts from The Red and the White and Star Temple of Avalon, both from my Avalonian disc on Apollolaan.

Thanks Daniel!