Stephen James Buckley, aka Polypores, follows up 2020’s Terrain album with a second set of intricate and otherworldly synthesiser compositions for Frequency Domain.
Partially inspired by the artwork he had in mind for the release – a vast mushroom cloud of manmade structures and protruding foliage by the artist sØlar – Stephen set out to create something that sounded both huge and overwhelming. Many of the tracks feature significant use and abuse of an Eventide harmonizer; most commonly used on dry, monophonic sounds like leads or vocals, he found himself running all sorts of sounds through it, from reverb drenched chords to multiple elements of the same track, often with the harmonizer struggling to keep pace.
The result is Gargantuan – a relentless stream of intense studio explorations, presented to the listener as two dazzlingly colourful long-form pieces. “To me it’s an album where something is going on the whole time,” says Stephen. “It doesn’t give you chance to think. I guess it sort of reflects the emotional response to life in 2021. Social media in particular can leave me feeling a bit frazzled. The album reflects that constant bombardment of information.”
Front & Follow and The Gated Canal Community present: YOU CANNEVER LEAVE F&F065 – DL Released: 25th June 2021
Front & Follow and the Gated Canal Community present YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE – alternative soundtracks to a luxury apartments advert, featuring 31 artists including Field Lines Cartographer, Elizabeth Joan Kelly, Her Majesty’s Coroner for Wirral, The Leaf Library, Polypores, Hattie Cooke and many more. Why? We aren’t sure, but it all started with this video and went from there –
This project is not affiliated with Deansgate Square in any way – the video was our inspiration for this project, and for each artist’s soundtrack.
All sales from this release will go to Coffee4Craig, which provides vital support for Manchester’s homeless and people in crisis. Find out more here – coffee4craig.com
“Sharply dressed sales assistants and eagle-headed PPI enthusiasts march over freshly risen piazzas. Oxbow lakes of cement dissolve into dreamy quadrants. A Yo Sushi was there. Now it isn’t. This is where the gold is. The real gold, tucked under the receding gum-lines of once cobbled streets, stuffed into the rain-tinted domes hidden in plain view. Ignore the fringe of green that laps forever onto the city’s shores. Forget the municipal spaces, their fleshy tales creeping from beneath roller shutters and seeping from the cracks in boarded windows. And as you stride about with vertical chin, you feel a prickle inside of something sharp but unfamiliar. Like a snagged cricket jumper you begin to unravel, spooling out behind yourself as you walk ever onwards.
Find them in the Imitation Rothko Gymnasium. Smashing it in the Imitation Rothko Gymnasium.”
Tracklist
1. Bone Music – Reality Will No Longer Burden You 2. Field Lines Cartographer – Consume and Prosper 3. Hattie Cooke – Groundhog Day 4. Von Heuser – Pass Through The Tear (Deansgatetohell Video Mix) 5. F-Lithium – Never Leave 6. Kepier Widow – Nothing To Regret 7. Giants of Discovery – Terror In The South Tower 8. Elizabeth Joan Kelly – The Insufferable Shame Of The Pine Nut Bulk Bin 9. Guerrilla Biscuits – Manchester, So Much To Answer For 10. Phexioenesystems – White Plasterboard Weltschmerz 11. WELTALTER – Die Hure Babylon 12. The Metamorph – The Assimilation 13. Polypores – Calm, But There’s Insects 14. TVO – The Intense Humming Of Evil 15. Rupert Lally – Stepford Home Dreams 16. Acid Wilhelm – Changing 17. Her Majesty’s Coroner For Wirral – Contemporary City Living 18. K – Visibility Report 19. The Leaf Library – Representational Space/Signal From The Tower 20. The Burning Trestle – The Agenda Set 21. Friends, Business Colleagues or Family – Find Your Epic (A New Level Of Hell) 22. Everson Poe – Societatis De Electi 23. Moray Newlands – We Live In The Sky Now 24. Nicholas Langley – The New Day, The Gated Canal 25. Apta – You Have To Be Louder 26. Megaheadphoneboy – Sponge Dean Square Gate 27. Salford Electronics – Deansgate Square (Robert Laing Mix) 28. Mark S Williamson (Spaceship) – The Sauna Must Be Booked At Least 24 Hours In Advance 29. Sun Curves – I Live in Your House 30. The Snaps Jar – Timed Soundtrack 31. Cahn Ingold Prelog – Demonsgate
Front & Follow explored the outer reaches of modern music with the sole, perhaps overly ambitious, aim of offering you something a little different. Front & Follow was a project of the Watson Marriage Experiment, but is currently in hibernation. Don’t tell anyone.
Gated Canal Community was dreamt up in the pub by Spenser, Justin and Becca. The name came first, and then we built stuff around it. It is how all good things are created. We play records on the radio, we write about them, and we write about other things.
Sublime sonic rumblings from the Hypostatic Union label, who are sadly mourning the recent loss of veteran recording engineer, composer and producer John Hannon (Liberez/ Woe/ Understand / NO Recording Studio)
First up the transcendant Seraph EP by Enclosed & Silent Order (Stafford Glover & John Hannon)
The Hypnostatic Union website highlights a forthcoming posthumous solo album from John Hannon as well as a second full album from Enclosed & Silent Order slated for early ’22, so keep an ear out for those.
To be released by Hypnostatic Union on June 1st is the new solo full-length from Dead Rat Orchestra mainstay Daniel Merrill – a UK musician / producer now based in Cairo, Egypt – under his new guise, Nujumi. A significant departure from his work with Dead Rat Orchestra, the album, Bayt Clarke, brings minimalist electronica in the vein of Kraftwerk, Subotnik and Riley, juxtaposed with neo-romantic string orchestras. The new approach came very much as a result of his situation in Egypt, and the various opportunities and barriers encountered. As Daniel explains:
“Having constructed a studio in an semi-legal rooftop shack in Tagamoa, I set about building a new sonic architecture, where the process of composing and recording were thoroughly entwined. Returning to my teenage love of minimalist synthesis techniques, combined with my interpretation of Egyptian and Nubian drum patterns and technique, threaded together with my enduring passion for string orchestration.”
Hypostatic Union is a label in the east of England, making small releases from artists working in the fields of noise, ambient, grind and other sonic forms that challenge, provoke or invoke. Formed in 2019 by long-serving Extreme Noise Terror bassist Stafford Glover to release his own experimental projects, the label now aims to become part test-bed / petri-dish for new work and sometime chronicle of a loose collective of musicians linked by historical association and geographic locale.
Wyrd Daze 