TTW#40 - Old Apparatus - 15:24-15:46
Cassette only - limited edition of 250 copies
SOLD OUT AT SOURCE
Track listing:
A: 15:24-15:46
(B-side left intentionally blank)
Illustration – Old Apparatus
Old Apparatus are a four piece audio/visual collective transmitting from East London that have been releasing bass orientated electronic dance music on Mala’s underground label Deep Medi Musik.
This edition for The Tapeworm is an improvised instrumental piece using guitar, piano, violin and found sound ambiences recorded entirely in the front room of the house they share together. Given that most forms of electronic music are bound by linearity and grid based digital audio workstations, Old Apparatus consciously embarked on an exploration of nonlinear forms of musical expression. The audio on the tape is a snapshot in time of that exploration.
Click here to view documentation of the recording process.
Reviews
Boomkat (UK):
With two mysterious singles and a remix of Shangaan Electro to their name, Old Apparatus step to The Tapeworm for their most detached, esoteric transmission yet. ‘15:24 - 15:46’ features the East London four-piece forgetting about their signature Bass weight and improvising for over twenty minutes on guitar, piano, violin and found sound ambience in the front room of the house they share together. Over the 20 minute playing time they share a mystic, pastoral vision hinting at neo/avant-classical structures and modes of expression with a sensitive electro-acoustic rendering, capturing a snapshot of four minds which are anywhere but the front room of a house in East London. Their thoughts are airborne and weightless, non-linear and beautifully diffuse, flying at tangents like a bird navigating windy aerospace, but equally prone to take on weight without notice and metamorphose with dramatic gravity. It might not be what you're expecting if you've heard their other releases, but then again it might well be…
Awkward Moments (UK):
Old Apparatus are arguably the best known to release currently on cassette and most suited to it of this list. The experimental act consisting of five(?) or so members who surprised us with an astonishingly good live show last year to accompany their own releases which blew us all away. I was expecting more of their signature composition (which is to say not knowing what to expect) but was somewhat thrown by the fact that they seem to have skipped past the bass scene altogether this time around, going closer to field recordings. At first I didn't get what had happened, but once I'd worked out that the b-side was blank and rewound for a second listen, expectations were suitably managed and it was a pretty damn good listen. The tone of the 21-minute release is just nice and well constructed, and pleasant. ‘15:24-15:46’ is lacking the depth and electronic emotion of the rest of their catalogue but rather fills that void where you just want to get lost in music creation, without feeling drained afterwards. As a result I've kept reaching for it since purchase, so definitely have to recommend checking it out. Like an overhyped movie, just go in with no expectations.
Aquarius Records (US):
Yet another batch of aural oddities from the esteemed and mysterious UK tape label, The Tapeworm, this one the result of an improvised home recorded bit of abstract electronic experimentation, from this audio/visual collective who in real life tend to specialize in a much more dancefloor driven sort of electronica, but here, the group are loose and free, conjuring up spaced out clouds of blurred psychedelic drift, laced with bits of glitch, sonar like pings, haunting pianos, bowed violins, strummed guitars, everything wreathed in tape hiss, the sound almost Caretaker-y at times, melancholic and mysterious, slow burn shimmers that wrap themselves around glistening guitar harmonics drifting weightless in fields of electronic crackle, Morricone-ish twang, wreathed in reverb and draped over long wavery tones, a sort of tentative unearthly dronemusic, a super abstract deserty slowcore, the vibe dark and ominous, soundtracky and mesmerizingly atmospheric. There’s a deep throbbing low end running throughout, occasionally pulsing minimally, but also occasionally blossoming into something thick and viscous. The hushed drifts of smeared sound adorned with swoonsome strings, darkly delicate piano, all manner of field recordings, tangled melodies, murky swirls, all woven into a hazy soft focus landscape of dreamlike ambience, and ethereal slo-mo dreamdrift dirgery. So gorgeous. And like all Tapeworm releases, SO LIMITED. Grab one before they're gone.
