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

New Release: Sophie Cooper - The Curfew Tower Recordings (CVC007 / cassette & digital download)

Sophie Cooper

The Curfew Tower Recordings

(CVC007)

Limited Edition of 50 cassettes and digital download

Available now via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp

Sophie Cooper’s The Curfew Tower Recordings consists of two collages produced from recordings of various musical pieces, actions and field recordings taken during the artists weeklong IMPOSE||LIFT residency, part of The Penthouse’s 18 month curatorial programme (http://thepenthousenq.com/), at Bill Drummond’s, The Curfew Tower, Northern Ireland. The work presented here documents Cooper’s questioning of the potential for dialogue between trombone and voice within the song-writing process. These sketches document an intuitive exploration through improvisation.

Cooper’s tribute to La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s Oceans is a wholly apt reference point in relation to The Curfew Tower Recordings, as the influence of Minimalist pioneers, along with the early electronic experiments of Daphne Oram, for example, can be heard through the undulating, shimmering abstractions that blur the lines between Cooper’s layers of effected trombone and vocals.

Interspersed through these explorations are recordings of Cooper’s Dial-a-Bone project - personalised trombone improvisations, performed in response to random callers’ requests… from within a public phone box.

Sophie Cooper is a musician living in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, experimenting with the conventions of song writing through guitar, the trombone and vocals. Cooper, in addition to solo work, is a member of The Slowest Lift, with Julian Bradley of Vibracathedral Orchestra, and often records and performs improvised works with French pianist Delphine Dora. Her previous records have been made available through the Was Ist Das?, Rural Colours, Wild Silence and Front & Follow labels, amongst numerous others.

Order Now via the Crow Versus Crow Bandcamp