In 2014, Wil released his highly-celebrated Bokeh for Home Normal. Featuring cover art by the Japanese photographer Hitoshi Ishihara, the album showed-off Wil’s carefully-layered, organic minimalist sound that he has truly marked his own.

Ian and Wil started collaborating almost eight years ago, yet Transparencies marks only the first full album release by Ian and Wil. Utilising piano, guitar, glockenspiel, flute, vocals, and found sounds, the album contains the fragile yet melodious nature both have become known for.

Following on from Wil’s own Bokeh release, Transparencies features cover art by Hitoshi Ishihara and package design by Christian Roth. We’re are so happy to finally be presenting this long overdue work to you here.

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The cover art for Skin Tones was created by David Toop and Rie Nakajima at the Takehisa Kosugi exhibition in the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 2015.

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In the spring of 2014 my wife and I stayed at a remote log cabin in the Black Mountains. Anne was taken ill from the moment we arrived and barely left the bed all week. I’d packed a laptop, small midi keyboard and portable hard disc recorder, and resolved that if we weren’t to have a break together I’d at least salvage something from the trip.

I’d spent a lot of time around then thinking about how haunted we are by our lost loved and not-so-loved ones. About how these ghosts can be more than just absences, that they can actually exist in some real sense as shadows cast by our fears and regrets. The horse-whisperer who owns the cabin told us when we arrived of the local belief that up in those mountains the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest. From the first nightfall to the very end of our stay I felt like the atmosphere in that place was charged, agitated somehow, like everything was on the verge of cracking.

Pines groaned in the woods all around us, walls and floorboards continually creaked and china rattled on the shelves. I recorded everything that made a sound, then manipulated and distressed those recordings, letting them bleed into one another, forming their own shifting rhythms and gritty, grainy textures. I added deep sub-bass sines, electronic washes and gently improvised motifs that felt in step with the strangely watchful energy of the place. Between the crackling of the open fire and the wild, wide landscape outside, I seemed to have stumbled into the perfect environment for exploring these unsettled yet tenderly nostalgic feelings I’d been having. The music flowed.

And now – thanks to Gosia Lapsa-Malawska‘s wonderfully plaintive artwork and Ian Hawgood‘s passion, belief and commitment – here is Killing Ghosts, my attempt to make some sense not just of that peculiar time, but of each and every day spent without those we leave behind.

Words by Ian Hawgood:

We came across the work of James Murray through his excellent Slowcraft Records label. In 2012 he released what was to become a bit of a seminal work that year in the highly praised Floods. He has since released superb records on a number of friends’ labels such as Hibernate, Eilean, VoxxoV, as well as a recent return to the Ultimae label.

I’ve personally known James for a number of years now after meeting at various shows around London, and we have talked and come very close to releasing music together over the years. As with all things where patience and honesty are involved, it has taken us to this point to finally bring something together that we are so thrilled to present now to you.

James’ work typically blurs the line between deep electronics and textured ambience. Yet in Killing Ghosts, James presents a truly perfect melding of exquisite sub-bass melodies under the surface of playful tones and fractured rhythms. The album itself has a feel of slow change and evolution as it journeys from the melodiously open electronica of ‘Footsteps’ and slowly down the rabbit hole as it waves us out with tracks such as ‘Allways’ and ‘Living Ghosts’.

The work embodies everything that is great about the work of this enormously talented artist as beyond its catchy entrance points, it is possibly one of the best examples of pure sound design we have been fortunate enough to release to date. Such a combination of melody and careful design takes a huge amount of skill, care, and patience, and we are so happy we have finally been able to all come together to release what is quite simply a genuine highlight in our eight years of existence as a label.

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Even though he hasn’t been inactive since then, having had several works released by labels such as Dragon’s Eye Recordings, Dronarivm and lesser known Tokyo Droning and Small Fragments – Vesterhavet however, does in many ways pick up where his last full-length left off almost four years ago.

“I started working on this album directly after ‘Everything Is Connected‘ was finished, so it kind of makes sense if this feels like a continuation of that sound. However, I’ve definitely explored some new ways of working on this album, both technically and musically”, Hellkvist says.

After self-releasing a five track version of the album in March 2016, we came together with Tobias and decided it was a great shame that Vesterhavet did not have a physical release of the album. We decided that it would partner his reissue of Kaskelot perfectly as it really highlights the breadth of his work from the beautifully direct melodies of Kaskelot, compared to the massive sounding layers of subtle melody that lie in Vesterhavet.

– Ian Hawgood –

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Having been described as “one of Sweden’s best kept secrets” when releasing his first widely distributed solo album (‘Evolutions’) back in 2010, Hellkvist has continued to gain worldwide recognition for his releases, exploring layers of heavily processed drones combined with acoustic instruments and field recordings.

One of Tobias’ little known releases appeared on our little sub-label Tokyo Droning back in 2011. ‘Kaskelot’ was a four-track E.P. that was incredibly popular in Japan, and coming housed in locally-sourced packaging, it was one of the highlights of this six-release label that was re-opened just after the Tohoku earthquake. Being incredibly limited as a Japan-exclusive, the album has long been sold out.

We are so happy that we will be releasing the updated edition of a personal favourite release of ours, and one that has continued the fine work Tobias had published for Home Normal with his revered ‘Evolutions’ in 2010, and his follow-up ‘Everything Is Connected’ in 2012. We had discussed a reissue of sorts for many years, and over a number of emails back and forth (and a good old chat in London when Tobias performed at The Vortex for us in March 2013), we came up with a list of remixers to expand on the original pieces which have since been remastered.

In offthesky and Segue, we have two dear friends who were also the two artists that opened the Tokyo Droning label in both its original form in 2009 and in its reopening in 2011. Many people will be aware of the work of another old friend in Chihei Hatakeyama (who will also be releasing a new album with us late in 2017). And we are thrilled to be working with such great artists as many of you will know in Steve Pacheco, Simon Bainton, Porya Hatami, and Chris Herbert.

The original E.P. was a departure for Tobias with a more direct melodic approach. Being improvised and recorded during one late night at Sundlaugin in Reykjavik, Iceland sometime between March 24th and April 4th, 2011, Tobias directly recorded piano, vibraphone, pump organ, guitar, pedal steel, loops, and percussion for a more natural and open sound. These original four pieces have themselves been remastered in conjunction with the remixes.

To say it has taken a while to get here would be an understatement, what with moves around the world, the label closing down for almost a year, and life’s constant upheavals. This reissue seemed destined to never go into print, but it is such a pleasure that after such a period we get to release not one, but two (!) superb albums by Tobias in this and Vesterhavet in the same week. It just goes to show that no matter how distant things can be at times, there’s always a home to come back to eventually.

– Ian Hawgood –

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