New Release: Carnivorous Plants - Mammon (CVC015) Limited Edition of 50 CD-Rs & Digital Download

Carnivorous Plants

Mammon

(CVC015)

Limited Edition of 50 CD-Rs & Digital Download

Available now via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

Crow Versus Crow is pleased to announce a new release in, Mammon, the latest work from Carnivorous Plants AKA Owen Chambers, a key member of Bristol’s Liquid Library, and fervent contributor to the No-Audience Underground scene.

Having previously self-released works via his own Carnivorous Plants Bandcamp, through the Liquid Library, the Wormhole World label, and Robert Ridley-Shackleton’s Cardboard Club label, it is an honour to be able to help spread the good word of Carnivorous Plants through Crow Versus Crow.

This release is developed from a bespoke cassette made as part of The Carnivorous Plants Automated Album Delivery Service, in which Owen recorded a pair of unique recordings for 10 people, based on a theme of the individual’s request. I requested a pair of recordings based upon Van Gogh’s Sunflowers series, which, after an email or two of gushing thank-filled praise, became the foundation for the recordings which were expanded upon to become what is now Mammon.

Spanning thirty-three minutes, Mammon is formed of three tracks of heavily textured, delicately layered, glacial-shift guitar drone and feather-light ferric hiss-coated field recordings and lulling piano. Subverting an oft-assumed machismo within the Noise/Drone field, Mammon eschews such negative confrontationality to explore themes of light and colour, producing complex works that reflect a heady mix of existential weight, joyful serenity and a personal transcendence felt during the process of their creation.

If it weren’t a crass, reductionist approach, for ease of reference one could say these recordings sat somewhere between Earth and Eno. *Yeurgh!*

Mammon is released as a limited edition of 50 hand-numbered CD-Rs and digital download via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp on Friday 29th November 2019. The physical version is presented as a white-faced, hand-stamped CD-R mounted onto an A5 postcard, featuring artwork by Crow Versus Crow, housed in a recycled plastic sleeve.

CD-R £5
Digital Download £4

Available now via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

New Release: Embla Quickbeam, Natalia Beylis & Neil Campbell 'House Sparrow Settle Back' (CVC014) Limited Edition Cassette & Digital Download

Embla Quickbeam, Natalia Beylis & Neil Campbell

House Sparrow Settle Back

(CVC014)

Limited Edition of 100 Cassettes & Digital Download

Available now via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

House Sparrow Settle Back is a document of two successive nights of collaborative improvisation between Natalia Beylis and Embla Quickbeam, recorded live at The Magic City, Todmorden on Saturday 4th May 2019; and Beylis and Neil Campbell, recorded the previous evening at CHUNK project space in Leeds.

Utilising and processing various found tapes, field recordings and synth, the collaborative pairings weave two glistening threads of kitchen sink psychedelia, all shimmering silver evening light, warbled bird song, tape loop stretch, green moss scent, static hiss, morning hum, ritual, reflection, refraction, ferric slip, whirling wind, skittering clatter, metallic scrape, essential throb, golden flux…

Such monumental themes as existential concern, environmental stability, ecological cohabitation, the role of the Individual and the Collective, and spiritual transcendence are spun from the complex layering and deft manipulation of the humblest of sound sources.

House Sparrow Settle Back is released as a limited edition of 100 hand-numbered professionally dubbed cassettes and digital download via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp on Friday 12th July 2019. The cassette version is dubbed onto a white shell cassette with gold and pink A/B identifying stickers, housed in a recycled plastic sleeve with A6 postcard featuring artwork by Crow Versus Crow. Each copy is individually hand numbered. Each copy comes with a limited edition 25mm metallic badge.

Tape £7
Download £4

Available now via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

New Release: Chlorine - Gallooner (CVC013) Limited Edition Cassette & Digital Download

Chlorine

Gallooner

(CVC013)

Limited Edition of 50 cassettes & digital download

Available now via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

Crow Versus Crow is honored to be able to present to you Gallooner, by Chlorine – alias of thee mighty Gateshead-based artist and multi-instrumentalist, Graeme Hopper. Following last year’s Loser Herd, released on the Panarus Productions label, Gallooner, digs deeper into the artist’s psyche to construct heavily layered and complex sonic evocations and excavations of the artist’s Self. It is by far the most personal collection of recordings Chlorine has produced to date.

Anxiety. Loneliness. Self-Loathing. Depression.

All hewn crude in catharsis.

That is not to say that Gallooner is a violent, nihilistic, ugly record. As with many creative expressions of melancholy, there is a deep, complicated beauty within the intricate soundscapes. It’s probably a hopeful record. But its seeds are sown deep in frustration and doubt.

Gall.

Bitterness. Bile. Audacity.

A skin sore caused by chronic irritation.

Brazen boldness coupled with impudent assurance and insolence.

Flaw.

And doubt.

With Gallooner, Chlorine has produced six varied yet cohesive soundscapes that range from throbbing, percussive, post-Dub, post-Industrial, post-Techno, sunk ravers, to heavily textured string-scraping, tape-hissing evocations of nocturnal wanderings, both dreamlike and concrete. Found sounds and field recordings coalesce with keys, strings and percussion to form intricate compositions rich in a symbiotic sense of geographic and psychological place.

Gallooner is released as a limited edition of 50 hand-numbered professionally dubbed cassettes and digital download via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp on Friday 12th July 2019, featuring artwork by Hopper. 

Tape £6

Download £4

Available now via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

Coming Soon: Chlorine - Gallooner (CVC013)

Chlorine

Gallooner

(CVC013)

Limited Edition of 50 cassettes & digital download

Available Friday 12th July 2019

via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

New Release: Posset/Ulyatt - A Jar Full (CVC012) Limited Edition Cassette & Digital Download

Posset/Ulyatt

A Jar Full

(CVC012)

Limited Edition of 70 cassettes and digital download

Available now via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

Crow Versus Crow is honoured to be able to present, A Jar Full, the first set of collaborative recordings from improvising cell0-wranger, Charlie Ulyatt and Dictaphonic tape-jaxxer, Joe Posset.

Charlie and Joe became aware of each other’s work via mentions in the excellent TQ fanzine. When Joe was offered a show in Charlie’s hometown of Nottingham, he asked Charlie along to play a one-off collaboration.

(Improvising cello versus improvising Dictaphone; what could possibly go wrong?!)

Meeting for the first time a few hours before the show, with no previous rehearsal, practice or jam, things seemed to go rather well (CVC ed. - read: ‘blisteringly excellently’). It is this first ever show in Nottingham’s Angel pub that graces Side Two.

With a side of live dicta/cello wonk in the bag, Charlie and Joe spent a few weeks sending sound files back and forth to improvise over. What you hear on Side One is first-take improvisations over each other’s recordings. To keep things fresh, they agreed to not listen in advance but simply set up the recorder, hit play and record the outcome.

(But what will you hear?)

The rich tone of the cello slinks out between gobby horsehair friction and thumb-wrinked ffw action, speedy-jump cuts of smeared tape noise wrestle the gristle of fat wound strings. Sensory grenades explode letting out wafts of classy rosin and hot melting Bakelite. Thoughts and images coalesce into plump wobbling shapes until they are speared with a sharp sonic jab only to deflate with the dignity of a fainting dowager. Cello and Dictaphone flatter each other with audio-compliments and certainly make a handsome pair. The low tones afforded by resonating wood play off the fragile tape magnetics. The scribble-scrabble of the bow lends texture to the foggy Dictaphonix. Two distinct voices singing in drunken unison!

A Jar Full is released as a Limited Edition of 70 professionally-dubbed full-colour on-body printed cassettes, with artwork by Crow Versus Crow full-colour printed onto a hand-numbered j-card, housed in a white-backed cassette case. A digital download is also available.

Tape £6
Download £4

Coming Soon: Posset / Ulyatt - A Jar Full (CVC012)

Posset / Ulyatt

A Jar Full

(CVC012)

Limited Edition of 70 cassettes & digital download

Available Friday 7th June 2019 via the

Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

New Release: Penance Stare - Solanaceae (CVC011) Limited Edition Cassette & Digital Download

Penance Stare

Solanaceae

(CVC011)

Limited Edition cassette and digital download

Available now via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

Crow Versus Crow is honoured to be able to present, Solanaceae, the second full-length record from Penance Stare, the Gateshead (UK)-based project of songwriter Esmé Louise Newman. Following the much-lauded Scrying (2018) and House of Bastet EP (2017) cassettes, this bleak and haunted recording captures Penance Stare at its most fully-realised thus far.

Previously known for her work in Melting, Commiserations, and Etai Keshiki, among many others, Esmé has spent the last two years deep in sonic exploration, developing an incredibly rich sound that, “whips together atmospheric black metal with darkwave, shoegaze, stormy ambient, and witch house… as soothing as it is intense” (Kim Kelly, Noisey).

Beautifully mastered by Stephen Bishop (Opal Tapes, Basic House, Drunk in Hell), Solanaceae deals lyrically with themes of trauma, illness, ageing, neglect and regret, and is rendered with a sonic palette of heavy drum machine rhythms, degraded chamber music passages, low fidelity guitar fuzz and blurred out vocals.

With blatant disregard for the oft-perceived sanctity of aesthetic dogma, Penance Stare draws voraciously from a wealth of seemingly disparate musical sources, twisting the gothic ephemeral grandeur of Cocteau Twins, the blunt mass of industrial noise, the layered textural intricacy of ‘Loveless’ and the raw, razor thin brutality of contemporary Black Metal, to form distinctly articulate works of personal expression.

Solanaceae is released as a limited edition of 50 hand-numbered, on-body printed aged bronzed cassettes, housed in a heavyweight recycled card sleeve with full-colour artwork by Crow Versus Crow. A digital download is also available.

PLAY LOUD

Tape £6 / Digital £4

Available now via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

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