TTW#64 - John Chantler - Automatic Music, Volume II
Cassette only – limited edition of 150 copies
SOLD OUT AT SOURCE
Track listing:
A: For Nuno (19:44)
B: No Poetry (19:48)
Illustration – grohs.
Originally from Australia but now a long-time London resident after a stint in Japan, Chantler works with electronic musical instruments, organ and percussion and has collaborated with Lawrence English, Tujiko Noriko, Tenniscoats, Maher Shalal Hash Baz and others. He also convenes the Organ Octet – a large ensemble where everyone plays a similar type of reed/chord organ. This cassette is the second volume in his ‘Automatic Music’ series and presents two pieces of electronic music recorded in 2013. The first volume in the series – for synthesiser/organ – was self-released as a limited edition LP in 2012.
Chantler's last full length LP ‘The Luminous Ground’ was released in 2011 and included in The Wire magazine's top 50 releases of that year.
Reviews
Boomkat (UK):
Automatic Music: Volume II is the mesmerising follow-up to John Chantler’s self-released first volume, originally released in 2011, the same year as his The Luminous Ground LP was charted in The Wire’s annual top 50. Two extended pieces for synthesiser/organ yield contrasting results on each side. First, ‘For Nuno’ is the more melodic of the two, with melting, kinetic modular scree and wheezing organ motifs seemingly attempting to untangle a conundrum which only gets more perplexing across its 20 minute lifespan. Secondly, the lustrous drones of ‘No Poetry’ unfold with the concentrated, hypnotic subtlety of a Phill Niblock or Eleh piece, all glassy, resonant harmonic overtones and warm sweeping bass oscillations that have us hooked for the 20 minute duration.
Aquarius Records (US):
Automatic Music Volume II, as the title suggests, is the second in a series of recordings from Australian organist / soundscaper John Chantler, who has played with loads of folks, from Lawrence English to Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and who here presents two extended pieces of electronic music, obviously indebted to early electronic pioneers, but equally obviously quite modern, mixing glitchy fields of bleeping and blooping, with wildly chaotic bursts of noise, all laid atop a bed of super serene wheezing organs, it's almost like listening to the past and future collide, a man with a primitive pump organ, jamming with some twisted floorcore weirdo, or some brainy scientific soundmaker, surrounded by a mad scientist concoction of synths and electronics, blasting this sci-fi din, while right outside, a huddled figure hunches over a sruti box, the two inadvertently creating some sort of alien sonic ritual, heady and hypnotic, haunting and seriously out there, imagine Zomes remixed by the Radiophonic Workshop! Awesome.
