Chapter XGOLD
The Closing of the Circle
Sacred acoustics, landscape and the contemporary drone
Showing all 017 works
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001
The Untuning of the Sky
Sarah Davachi
Debut LP The Untuning of the Sky (2013) tapped into this unpredictability with rich, slow-burning drones from synths such as the ARP, Buchla and Mellotron intertwined with organ and harmonium; her sonorous drones feel imperious, immovable.
Album 2013 Open ↗ YouTube -
002
All My Circles Run
Sarah Davachi
Even on non synth-based albums like All My Circles Run, Davachi’s drones are palpably present, filling every corner of the room – ‘for strings’, for example, is intensely maximal, drawing on her usual technique of recording and then layering and manipulating post-production, treating the studio as a separate instrument.
Album 2017 Open ↗ YouTube -
003
Gave in Rest
Sarah Davachi
The following year’s Gave in Rest explored Davachi’s love of church acoustics more explicitly, alongside early music influences.
Album 2018 Open ↗ YouTube -
004
Hunter Huntress Hawker
Laura Cannell
Combining an ancient bearing with an obtuse, modern minimalist sensibility, Hunter Huntress Hawker was recorded in the ruins of St Andrew’s Church in Covehithe, Suffolk while The Sky Untuned (2019) was made at another St Andrew’s (in Raveningham, Norfolk).
Album 2017 Open ↗ YouTube -
005
The Sky Untuned
Laura Cannell
Combining an ancient bearing with an obtuse, modern minimalist sensibility, Hunter Huntress Hawker was recorded in the ruins of St Andrew’s Church in Covehithe, Suffolk while The Sky Untuned (2019) was made at another St Andrew’s (in Raveningham, Norfolk).
Album 2019 Open ↗ YouTube -
006
Simultaneous Flight Movement
Laura Cannell
Simultaneous Flight Movement was recorded in one take inside Southwold Lighthouse, the mournful scrape of Cannell’s violin evoking local avian life in flight.
Album 2016 Open ↗ YouTube -
007
The Earth With Her Crowns
Laura Cannell
Describing the album as being akin to a ‘duet with reverb’, it’s an idea explored equally strongly on The Earth With Her Crowns (2020).
Album 2020 Open ↗ YouTube -
008
Lastglacialmaximum
Richard Skelton
A wildly prolific producer (some twenty albums and counting) Lastglacialmaximum (2020) took the last ice age as a pivot to explore glacial, ominous tones; the Wolf Notes series (alongside Autumn Richardson) took the landscape of the Duddon Valley in Cumbria as inspiration; Border Ballads was a melancholic evocation of the Scottish borderlands.
Album 2020 Open ↗ YouTube -
009
Wolf Notes
Richard Skelton & Autumn Richardson
A wildly prolific producer (some twenty albums and counting) Lastglacialmaximum (2020) took the last ice age as a pivot to explore glacial, ominous tones; the Wolf Notes series (alongside Autumn Richardson) took the landscape of the Duddon Valley in Cumbria as inspiration; Border Ballads was a melancholic evocation of the Scottish borderlands.
Album Open ↗ YouTube -
010
Border Ballads
Richard Skelton
A wildly prolific producer (some twenty albums and counting) Lastglacialmaximum (2020) took the last ice age as a pivot to explore glacial, ominous tones; the Wolf Notes series (alongside Autumn Richardson) took the landscape of the Duddon Valley in Cumbria as inspiration; Border Ballads was a melancholic evocation of the Scottish borderlands.
Album Open ↗ YouTube -
011
Peasant
Richard Dawson
Richard Dawson’s masterful Peasant (2017) is a case in point.
Album 2017 Open ↗ YouTube -
012
Pastoral
Gazelle Twin
Likewise Gazelle Twin (Elizabeth Bernholz), whose brilliant Pastoral (2018) took the seething malcontent, pettiness, rage, idiocy, bad faith, irrationality and bloody-minded arrogance of Brexit Britain and transposed it to a turbulent maelstrom of splattering beats, distorted vocals, rattling snares, drones, rave sirens and arpeggios while reaching back to the past with heavily treated recorders, harpsichords and organ.
Album 2018 Open ↗ YouTube -
013
Just Say No To The Psycho-Right Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine
Gnod
The suitably titled Just Say No To The Psycho-Right Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine (2017) was a caustic howl at the rage-inducing, stultifying, slack-jawed idiocy of the Brexit era, drawing on a layered barrage of detuned guitars, feedback, submerged noise and chanted vocals that called to mind the despondent desolation of early Swans, tribal rhythmic drive of Test Dept and hypnotic storm of Hawkwind.
Album 2017 Open ↗ YouTube -
014
Mirror
Gnod
Mirror (2016) – a shot of equally caustic noise rock written and recorded in the wake of the 2015 general election – was driven by disgust at the British political landscape and, equally, the addictive digital shadow that most of us feed compulsively.
Album 2016 Open ↗ YouTube -
015
The Somnambulist’s Tale
Gnod
Elsewhere – in a sprawling discography – Gnod have traded in everything from ambient drone (The Somnambulist’s Tale) to skewed techno (various 12-inches as Dwellings and Druss) and barrelling psych rock (Chaudelande).
Album Open ↗ YouTube -
016
Chaudelande
Gnod
Elsewhere – in a sprawling discography – Gnod have traded in everything from ambient drone (The Somnambulist’s Tale) to skewed techno (various 12-inches as Dwellings and Druss) and barrelling psych rock (Chaudelande).
Album Open ↗ YouTube -
017
Infinity Machines
Gnod
The drone, improvisation and extended jams are constantly recurring themes, however, and the cavernous Infinity Machines (2015) showed Gnod at their most mesmeric: a raw, intensely psychoactive trawl that took in narcotised beats, mournful foghorn-esque sax, guitars that plink rather than rage and all manner of creeped-out echo box effects and vocal samples – a masterful dragnet through Salford’s shadowlands.
Album 2015 Open ↗ YouTube
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