Christopher A. Williams (born 1981) is a contrabassist, composer and theorist of experimental and improvised music whose artistic research takes the form of both academic publications and practice-based projects. "On Perpetual (Musical) Peace?" (PMP) is one of his projects – an experiment in musical cohabitation with large improvising ensembles. It is inspired by Immanuel Kant's essay "Zum Ewigen Frieden: ein Philosophischer Entwurf" which speculates that nations do better for themselves by sorting out their differences through an international federation instead of through warfare, thus proposing a path to lasting peace. (It later influenced the UN Charter and EU Constitution.) Williams argues that Kant's idea of hospitality, publicity (transparency), and perpetuality (sustainability) may help players in improvising ensembles to articulate and transform their ways of playing and thinking, thus opening up new ways of interacting with each other. Composing in this way becomes less about giving the players a compositional structure to realize, and more about tweaking inherent constellations that are already present within the ensemble. This LP features the results of PMP realized in Mexico City in 2019 with Liminar, a Mexican ensemble that works at the boundaries between composed and improvised music, performance and sound installation, and regularly performs in Mexico City's main chamber music halls as well as in museums, galleries and alternative venues. An extensive PMP concert took place at Bucareli 69, an art and concert space in a late-19th-century villa near the city's historical centre. The recordings for this LP were made afterwards in the studio NAFF. Edition of 300 pressed on UN-charter-blue vinyl, with printed inner sleeve.

Horacio Vaggione (born 21 January 1943) is an Argentinian composer of electro-acoustic and instrumental music who specializes in micromontage, granular synthesis, and microsound and whose pieces are often scored for performers and computers (mixed music). His music is regularly played worldwide in major centers and festivals of contemporary music. La Maquina de Cantar is his first solo recorded work; originally released on the Italian Cramps Records label as the 18th volume of the Nova Musicha series dedicated to contemporary avant-garde composers, La Maquina de Cantar is now made available again on Dialogo in a faithful reproduction of the original gatefold cover artwork, including also an inner sleeve with the English translation of the liner notes. From the original liner notes of “La Maquina de Cantar”: Horacio Vaggione was born in Cordoba (Argentina) in 1943. He co-founded, in 1965, the Centro de Música Experimental de la Universidad de Cordoba, Argentina. In 1966, he was awarded a Fullbright scholarship that allowed him to travel through the USA, where he visited several electronic music studios (Columbia, Illinois, California) and met John Cage. From 1969 to 1972, while living in Madrid, he belonged to a “live” electronic music group with Eduardo Polonio and Luis de Pablo. He was also in charge of the ALEA group’s electronic music studio. In 1973, he visited the Far East. In 1974/75 he toured in the USA and Europe, more precisely with E. Wiener and the Kevan Cleary and Dance Company, while he was working in various electronic music studios (New York, Oakland, Montreal and Paris). [From 1978 he] lives in Paris, where he teaches electronic music techniques (synthesisers) and collaborates with Martin Davorin-Jagodic and Costin Miereanu on audio-visual performances. - - - La Maquina de Cantar was produced in 1971, using the IBM 7090 computer owned by the data processing centre of the University of Madrid. Sound synthesis was carried out by a team under the technical advice of Florentino Briones, director of the centre. The complete system is a “hybrid”, as it is made up of digital and analogue operations. To begin, the composer writes his “score” in musical notation and then transcribes it into decimal numerical notation. This numerical notation is then transcribed into the machine’s language, in the form of punch cards; in this way, the computer receives all the data that it has to process and translate into sound. At the same time, the POPOVA program, which supports all the operations, is also launched. The sound is produced in the central unit of the IBM 7090, via high-speed magnetisation changes. So, the sound values will be expressed in the form of the number of magnetisation changes (bits). Once the sound and its envelope have been generated through this digital process, the next step is to send this information to an analogue section, consisting of a series of filters, a VCO (voltage-controlled oscillator), and an echo chamber. Contrastingly, Ending is a work for live electronic keyboards. In this version, three Minimoog synthesisers (played by the composer) and a Yamaha organ (played by E. Wiener) were used. The work is dedicated to Robert Ashley. 

Edition of 500 LP on black vinyl. Audiophile pressing. Gatefold cover, including printed inner. Perfect replica of the original packaging (with additional translated liner notes) and newly remastered for optimal sound.** Of all the historic labels associated with experimental music, few have garnered as much affection, or as devoted a following, as the Italian imprint Cramps. Its catalog reads like a who's who of the 1970s musical avant-garde, housing seminal albums by John Cage, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Giusto Pio, Demetrio Stratos, Juan Hidalgo, Robert Ashley, Walter Marchetti, Cornelius Cardew, Raul Lovisoni / Francesco Messina, Alvin Lucier, Derek Bailey, and so many more, the vast majority of which have remained largely out of print and nearly impossible to obtain for decades. Now, at long last, the Milan based imprint, Dialogo, has begun a stunning series of vinyl reissues from Cramps' Nova Musicha series - dedicated to contemporary avant-garde composers - beginning with Costin Miereanu’s Luna Cinese, originally released in 1975. Fully remastered and housed in a sleeve that beautifully reproduces the album’s signature design, complete with brand a new English translation of the original liner notes, this is a truly historic event. For its impact, Cramps was a relatively short-lived endeavor, running for roughly seven years between 1973 and 1980. Founded in Milan by the producer, publisher, and graphic designer, Gianni Sassi - publisher of counter-cultural magazines like Bit and Frankenstein, and the designer behind numerous covers for Bla Bla, including Franco Battiato's Fetus and Pollution - Cramps was the pitch perfect emblem of revolutionary Italian temperaments of its era; creatively radical, globally minded, without profit motive, and bridging numerous musical idioms, from progressive rock and jazz, to some of the most forward thinking and singular expression of sonic experimentalism the world has ever seen. Of all the seminal figures that recorded for Cramps, the Romanian / French composer, Costin Miereanu, remains among the most distinct and under-appreciated. The reemergence of his debut LP, Luna Cinese, issued by the label in 1975, will likely change that. Over the last decade or so, Miereanu has developed something of a cult following among experimental fans because of his stunning series of albums issued during the 1980s on his own Poly-Art imprint, skirting the border of ambient music and minimalism in highly individual ways. Luna Cinese, which dives into far more explicitly experimental territory, will undoubtedly be a revelation and expose the true underpinnings of the work that would begin to emerge of the next decade and a half. During his early years, Costin Miereanu was something of a wunderkind of avant-garde and experimental music. Born in Bucharest, between 1960 to 1966 he was a student of Alfred Mendelsohn, Dan Constantinescu, and Lazar Octavian Cosma, before moving to Paris where he earned a Doctor of Letters and a Doctor of Musical Semiotics, winning numerous prizes in writing, analysis, music history, esthetics, orchestration, and composition. Between 1967 and 1969 he was a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti, and Ehrhard Karkoschka at the Internationale Ferienkurse für neue Musik in Darmstadt, laying the final groundwork for a stunning career as both a composer and noted academic over the years since, often combining techniques drawn from Satie with the abstraction of Romanian traditional music into a sonic fabric that is guided by systems associated with Musique concrète. Luna Cinese, issued as the composer's debut LP by Cramps in 1975, is a stunning combination of all these elements. The work - stretching across the album's two sides, consists of continuous low-density repetitions, build from what the composer describes as “the kind of 'woven' silence you find on mountains – occasionally disturbed by irregular and very dense insertions – the kind of intense noise you find in the city.” The result, combining a vast range of environmental sound, voices chattering in various languages, fragments of acoustic instrumentation, and the pulsing and ambiences of synths and electronics, is about as singular and beautiful as experimental works from the 1970s come, while never for a moment sacrificing rigour or tension. A truly stunning, interwoven sonic expanse that lays pregnant with multiple meaning and interpretations - conceived by the composer to illuminate the complex ways in which meaning and narrative are constructed across time - and imbued with surrealism and the 'schizoid', Luna Cinese stands as an entirely distinct and original gesture within the canon of experimental music, displaying a remarkable density, while open, airy, and encouraging the subjectivity of the listener to play an active part. Easily among the best and important works from the original Cramps catalog, but sinfully overlook over the years since its release, Luna Cinese is as good as they come and an absolutely riveting and immersive listen. Issued by Dialogo in this newly remastered vinyl edition - the first since 1975 - with its original liner notes by Miereanu in a brand-new English translation, this one is impossible to recommend enough and will leave the composer ringing in your mind for a long time to come. 

"Obstacle #79: MEMORY IS CURRENT offers a sequence of works for player piano, a device which captured Rick Myers’ imagination in 2017. Divining a method from mathematical measurements and intuitive drawing systems, Myers obstructed piano rolls using adhesive tape. Performed in this altered state on a player piano in the hallway of Easthampton Machine and Tool in Easthampton, Massachusetts, the music embedded in the rolls was extricated from its history and given fresh life. Restriction forged a pathway to expanse. Here are the enchanting results.The workings of the machine are evident throughout, wistfully recalling music box fantasias, even as the tumbling notes confound expectations. The meticulously constructed scenarios invariably run amok, and in between chaos and melody, frustration and freedom, an impossible helix fashions its own celestial music. The sounds grumble against one another, summoning subterranean promises and unearthing unexpected delights.As the tracks run into one another, Myers interposes spoken dispatches, detailing aspects of the story behind the record. Like the sounds of the piano, they transcend mere reportage. Increasingly obscured over the course of the two sides, these ghostly interjections are part of the sonic fabric, enhancing both the narrative and acousmatic aspects of the project.Rick Myers is an artist whose decades-long career has studiously disregarded the confines of medium – there are books, drawings, sculptures, installations, exhibitions, videos, performances, design projects, texts, and combinations thereof. Sound, as evidenced by his recent focus on recorded material, is but another potent arrow in his quiver. Plus, it’s nothing new – he cut his teeth as a DJ.This record is an interior travelogue shot through with ecstatic truth. In furthering the process of obstruction by which the player piano makes its music possible, Myers is, in his own words, looking to “cast and dislodge time.” Like God or Loss or Love, Time is one of the bedeviling bottomless wells from which the most affecting art springs. This is the real thing.Rick Myers is not in search of lost time, he is attempting to lose it, and in so doing to chart the inevitable trajectory of that loss, of its apparent disappearance, its peculiar habit of hiding in plain sight." - Matt Krefting --- Released on Vinyl LP in an edition of 250Jackets screenprinted by Alan Sherry

After a near decade of solo and collaborative projects, Up in Air is Ben Pritchard's most confident foray into songwriting yet, nestling lopsided experimentation into a bed of lowslung blues and reflective folk. Up in Air is sewn from threads of everyday life: trails of thought, small stories and conversations with his daughter. Collecting, layering and condensing the world around him, his musings spill out in a palimpsest that renders both the material and metaphysical world. From describing a time where he inadvertently found himself on a hunting trip, recalling stories from doing role play and drawing together with his daughter, or scribing observations on the strange dedications people make in their lives, he explores the banal and the fantastical; the whimsical and the serious; the light and dark. Each line, aphorism or vignette carries with it weight that is looking to free itself, to embrace the impossibility of life distilled into simpler parameters. Ben's music acts as a motor for his words, weaving wistful melodic mantras and creaking guitar lines in and out as each song finds its feet. Although the album finds a rich array of influences dancing in an awkward balance, the emotive register of the music drinks from the fountain of the US rock continuum, with Supreme Dicks' uneasy indie, Low's slow unfurling grace and Neil Youngs' heart-worn drawl lifting each song to new heights. Expanding on this soundworld are collaborators Sholto Dobie (self-built organs) and bassist Otto Willberg, who provide drones, dissonant jolts and detuned paths for the music to open itself, but also curl into its own. Sounds are folded into one another, birthing new shapes, layers and sonic possibilities. Ben describes the album as "permeated by the sense that came from being around this sort of connection to the world where everything is immediate and fundamental." The album is representative of this shift inwards: on his own, socially, as a parent. But with that it also represents a confidence to deal with everything. The album is an excavation, both finding strange joy in simple findings and an unburdening himself of everything else, letting every thought and feeling whisks itself away up in the air. -- Fielding Hope (curator Cafe Oto, London) 

On Chorus is a national public sound artwork by Christopher Steenson that broadcast field recordings of Dublin's inner-city spring dawn chorus across Ireland, using Ianród Eireann's network of train station PA systems. These sounds were played every morning between 8am and 9am, from 16 November to 29 November 2020. By transmitting the sounds of lockdown, the artwork sought to highlight the use of listening as a connecting act during times of social distancing, as well as using sound as a way of ‘listening to the future’ and imagining new architectures for cohabitation between human and non-human species. This artist LP collects two field recordings made by Steenson, which document the birdsong being transmitted in two Irish train stations. Side A features a recording from Friday 20 November 2020 at Dublin Connolly Station. Side B features a recording of Dún Laoghaire Station on Sunday 29 November 2020. The LP is pressed on 180g black recycled vinyl, and is housed in a gatefold package designed by the artist. An 8-page booklet features 35mm photographs taken by Steenson during the artwork's creation, as well as a specially commissioned text by visual artist Ann Maria Healy, which uses the format of an LP lyric sheet to expound on ideas related to potential futures, hyper-reality and communal listening.

Second LP release by The Oval Language on Edition Telemark after Hibernation in 2017, this time showcaseing Klaus-Peter John's Waldkonzerte (woodland concerts), recorded in 2016.The Oval Language is an autonomous art project founded in 1987 in Leipzig, East Germany, by Klaus-Peter John and Frank Berendt. Since Berendt left in 1995, it has been continued by John, sometimes with collaborators, but recently mostly for solo activities. Its fields of activity have included sound-noise performances, conceptual works in open spaces, installations, land art projects, photography, and more.From the beginning, the space or location itself has been a central aspect within many of their site-specific sound-noise performances. When working at a certain location, the performers tried to not bring in anything from outside, but exclusively use material already available at the space. This way, it becomes possible to thoroughly feel out and explore the site, allowing a distinct site-specific sound to emerge that is integrated into the performance. Throughout the 1990s, the sites used often were abandoned buildings in Leipzig, available in nearly unlimited quantity, from vacant factories to unused former public bathing facilities.   During the recent years, Klaus-Peter John has focused on a minimisation of means and developed a unique vocal technique without amplification that he has used in a number of performances. In 2016, he attempted to integrate his voice into pure nature, in his own words the biggest challenge to date. His goal was not to perform any kind of singing or the like, but to use voice as a means similar to the site-specific tools used in previous performances by The Oval Language.He performed five concerts without audiences in a forest ravine in Döben, near Grimma, between June and November. The concerts parallel the course of the seasons and their related acoustic changes and conditions.This double LP is presented in a die-cut single sleeve with two printed inner sleeves. The inner sleeves contain one photo made during a Waldkonzert on each side. By switching the order of the inner sleeves, four different front sleeves can be generated.

Liam O'Gallagher's audio work, People's Opera aka Aerosol/or the Computer That Couldn’t Hear: An Inter-Media Opera, features nine transistor radios (four tuned to FM stations and five to AM stations), a telephone system, and soloists on tambourine, flute, oboe, and French horn. Here are the notes on the presentation, by O'Gallagher's himself: “The ‘conductor’ signals the operators of the radios to approach the microphones or recede from them. Soloists play according to any predetermined plan. Two soloists play in the studios and two phone into the studios and play their parts through the phone system. The ‘scorer’ works from the main broadcast control room of the radio station and controls the mix and effects of the various inputs. He determines the final signal or output. The ‘orchestra’ selects their stations and maintains them throughout the performance. If possible, stations should represent various genres or segments of the community, such as Chinese language, soul, Spanish language, rock, popular tunes, spiritual- and Bible-toned stations. The time limit is agreed upon in advance by the participants. Drop out, turn around, tune in.”

As an artist and a thinker, Massimo Magee has been consistently drawn towards patterns: traditions, lines of influence, schools and the unexpected intersections of each. This album, Toneflower, presents a solo programme, meditating on many of those concepts. As an entirely improvised set of pieces, it is also inspired by Anthony Braxton’s solo alto tradition and the larger solo saxophone canon. Similarly, it draws from Magee’s prior percussive experimentations with Tim Green and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s use of contact microphones. In Magee’s words, it offers rich parallels with many other saxophone schools, “the ceaseless streams of broken air column wizardry of Evan Parker, the angular atonalism of Tim Berne, the earnest beauty of a Pharoah Sanders melody, the breakneck urgency of Kaoru Abe, the sinuous and unpredictable ebullient elegance of Eric Dolphy, the eerie whistling of Tamio Shiraishi, the satisfyingly round-toned repetition of Steve Lacy, the heavy low-end honking of John Coltrane in a certain mood. The listener might even hear a dash of the motivic minimalism of Terry Riley.”  Throughout the album's 5 tracks, Magee pays close attention to the siloed divisions of each school, as part of a larger interrogation of a music industry that privileges singular musicians, cultivating musical traditions and loyal fanbases. Following diverse and distinct musical lineages, Magee curates an informed, thoughtful constellation of influences and traditions, captured through his particular lens of reinvention.

Following two singles, two albums, and a bunch of compilation tracks, Ultra Eczema is proud to present Miaux’s third LP. Mia Prce, originally from Sarajevo and a Belgian resident since 1989, was reared on a psychedelic diet of Krautrock and similarly serpentine music by her artist parents who were part of the Antwerp-based (and over fifty years old) Ercola collective. Beautiful songs that break hearts without using a sharp object! More tears for the creatures of the night.

TEETH001 comes from Malvern Brume, who has already notched up releases on cult labels like Low Company, Alter, Infant Tree and Kashual Plastik. Brume’s practice is something akin to audio collage, a layering of sounds each with a strong sense of time and place but nevertheless otherworldly and disorientating. The title, Pacing The Hollow Path, was initially the name of a collaborative piece between Brume and Wes Knowler which ended up on the cutting room floor. However the discarded text from the collaboration, which focussed on the act of walking - Brume’s principle obsession, came to inspire this record. Pacing The Hollow Path is inspired by a daily walking practice that saw the artist return to similar places again and again, such as Sydenham Woods, Catford and Nunhead Cemetary. During those walks he visualised the scores and text which would become the six tracks on the album. The result is, in the artist’s words “both an emotional response and I guess an explanatory process to recounting these walks.” Sonically, rough textural notes combine with insectoid drones and distant crackle against the occasional entry of more familiar, albeit ruptured, instruments like the piano.

Remastered from original tapes by Paradigm Discs' Clive Graham, 'Rock and other four letter words' is a genuinely psychedelic obscurity originally pieced together and released in 1968. The work of one J Marks (1930-2001) and his buddy Shipen Lebzelter (1942-1986), it revolves around a stockpile of cut-up quotes taken from Marks' interviews with rock stars of the time for his eponymous book (essentially a book of photos by Linda Eastman, soon to be McCartney). The likes of Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Brian Wilson, Grace Slick etc. all feature, spliced with progressive rock, wigged-out electronics, tape loops and even gospel songs about baked beans in a unique conflagration of sound poetry, Stockhausen-esque compositional strategy and free-ranging, experimental '60s psychedelia. It's understandably achieved cult status since then, not only for its sampled sources, but also an illustrious cast of contributors including jazz players Alan Silva, Andrew Cyrille, Roswell Rudd and Burton Greene, alongside the studio assistance of John McClure, who produced this, along with 100s of other recordings at CBS, including the Harry Partch records. Placed in context with other seminal records of that pivotal year - Zappa's 'Lumpy Gravy', Terry Riley's 'In C', Walter Carlos' 'Switched On Bach' - it stands out as a real anomaly, offering similarly positive, mind-boggling sorts of sonic possibilities on one hand, whilst providing an incisive, perceptibly sardonic attitude towards the times, on the other.

New release from London's Mosquitoes out on Knotwilig Records, due to land in April. *UPDATE - NOW DUE MAY 12th* "Music fans, journalists and so on have been puzzling words and phrases to describe the impact of the music of Mosquitoes. I am indeed talking about "impact".Lumping them in the nowave/postpunkdub/rockdeconstructivism bin is way too easy. Of course there are references, but then again: not really. I honestly believe every single second they released not only set a bookmark, but also stands out as a landmark in music history such as PIL's Metal Box, Oval's Diskont and Stockhausen’s Kontakte for instance.Every note is an evolution in an oeuvre which specialises in having an immediate impact on the listener. Reverse Drift / Reverse Charge is a natural progression, and a step forward from their previous output. Like ocean waves gently invading dune territory.Muffled vocals, haunting bass fragments, deconstructed loops/guitars and a crumbling rhythm in a world which barely holds itself together. This music deserves to be played through grant speakers, even in silenced mode.Everyone who ever had the chance to catch them on a stage know what impact they have on an audience. Mostly baffled, speechless and holding breath because your guts just tell you so. The new tracks are of a similar calibre. They immobilize you instantly in whatever you are doing. You simply need to surrender and listen to it, again and again and again... What would the world be without these 22 minutes of sheer beauty?"

Thomas Bonvalet is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist. Having commenced his vocation as a bassist he cemented it as a guitarist at the heart of the band Cheval de Frise (1998-2004). Progressively straying from the guitar, he began to integrate foot tapping and various wind and percussive instruments into his performance, incorporating mechanical elements and stray amped-up objects into the soundscape. This formed the guiding principle of his solo project, L'ocelle mare, initiated in 2005, and continues to form the core of his instrumentation. The release of Serpentement in 2012 marked the end of a cycle of four progressive stages, homogeneous but distinct from one another, released with successive regularity, proceeding with the elaboration of his singular set up, implicating the human body into a simultaneity of associated gestures and sonic tools and forming a commonality of timbres and tremors. This structure remained fluid and adaptable, finding a balance which lent itself quite naturally to collaborations, entering into the fields of improvisation, folk, rock and contemporary music. In recent years Bonvalet has collaborated, most notably, with Powerdove, Arlt, Radikal Satan, Jean Luc Guionnet, Arnaud Rivière, Will Guthrie, Gaspar Claus, Daunik Lazro, Fred Jouanlong and Sylvain Lemètre. Without renouncing his solo work, his interruption from it has allowed a slower and more elastic evolution, permitting ancient shapes to gradually metamorphose. In this way new compositions successively articulated themselves in an almost self-determining manner. Temps En Terre is the fifth album release from L'ocelle Mare, and the first to have been recorded in a studio. The preceding releases were characterised by a marked acoustic: the echoey reverberations inherent to Serpentement were thanks to the protestant temple it was recorded in; Engourdissement was entirely recorded in forest expanses, upon ponds and enclosed within remote wood cabins; Porte d'Octobre was recorded entirely in urban spaces; and his first, unnamed album was entirely recorded in caves and churches. The pieces forming Temps en Terre however, are recorded under a harsher gaze, presented in far cruder light, comparable to that of a live recording. The instrumentation is composite, rustic, yet paradoxically sophisticated: piano, 6 string bass banjo, mechanical metronome, tuning forks, claves, hand and foot clapping and tapping, mini amps, amps, subwoofer, microphones, small mix desk, bells, mouth organ fragments, concertina, componiums, "stringin it", audio ducker, drum skins, clockwork motors...  --- Kythibong, 2018 Kythibong - 2018

Konstrukt made contact with both Alexander Hawkins and Alan Wilkinson during their presence at Konfrontationen Festival in Nickelsdorf in 2013 where the band performed for the second time in Austria after Saalfelden Jazz Festival with Marshall Allen in 2011. All three parts were excited and have agreed to get together sometime in the future. The result was a night of music with high energy and a wide musical perspective. From drum & bass to ethnic funk vibes, from straight free jazz bursts to spiritual chantings, the whole performance here shows a wide range of outer wordly aspects of all musicians present. --- Korhan Futaci / alto & tenor saxophones, flutes, sipsi, kaba zurna, voiceUmut Çaglar / electric guitar, gralla, bamboo flutes, pocket drum machine, xylophones, percussion, tape echoBarlas Tan Özemek / electric bassEdiz Hafizoglu / drums, cymbals, bells, turkish hang drum+Alexander Hawkins / acoustic pianoAlan Wilkinson / baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, voiceDaniel Spicer / pocket trumpet, bugle, bamboo saxophone, shenai, recorder, pan pipe, whistle, cow bell, kalimba, voice --- Omlott Records, 2018

Seditionary art music and hypnobeat from (The) Mudguards, the (very) English duo of Nelson Bloodrocket and Reg Out, a properly f****d bricolage of end-of-the-pier agit-pop, nauseated industrial cut-ups and the kind of demolished-man techno that transports you to an alternative universe where E was never invented.Active in East London and Essex between ’81 and ’93, and inspired by quintessential English working class entertainment – music hall, skiffle, drinking songs and broadsides – (The) Mudguards’ theme, or rather career-long obsession, was the “commodification of dissent”. In fact what makes their work special, and more resonant today than that of your typical sloganeering anarcho bleater, is their awareness of their own complicity in the things they despise, and all the self-loathing that comes with it. VERY relatable. But though in some ways it transcends history, this stuff was born of a very specific time and place. As Johnny Cash-Converter writes in his brilliant sleevenotes, the backdrop was one of genuine civil unrest, with Mrs T gleefully overseeing “the dismantling of welfare and the deliberate creation of poverty as a social control mechanism.”Intense corporatisation, and the attendant feeding frenzy of land-grabs, sell-offs and privatisations left large swathes of industrial Britain looking like Tarkovsky’s Zona, empty spaces that would, for a time, be repurposed by the resistance: squats, warehouse parties, experiments in communal living and/or communal oblivion. It’s in this milieu that (The) Mudguards established their hunt-under-the-wreckage praxis, “maximum content with minimum hardware”, creating improvised installations/performances with noise-makers and visual props built from re-appropriated scrap, vintage sound equipment and circuit-bent electronics.This was the era when post-punk, industrial and noise scenes and sensibilities were overlapping with the arrival of electronic dance music: and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a band or project who capture that brief confluence of disparate things quite so brilliantly as (The) Mudguards. One minute they’re plainly and openly addressing Harold Wilson and the state of the National ‘Elf, the next they’re unspooling narcotic/neurotic minimal synth raga like a dole-queue Monoton. And somehow, despite their preoccupation with class war and the treacheries of the state, they retain a sense of humour – well, if you find Ceramic Hobs funny…Sterling maiden release from London-based label Horn of Plenty