What happens when Penny Goring and I collaborate on a words and music project? BOLUS, that’s what. Penny is, as any of you who know her work from her blog and the Year Zero Writers website, a pretty extraordinary writer – and her spoken word delivery marvellously detached and deadpan.

I’ve wanted to do more instrumental backings for spoken word pieces for a while – and when Penny sent me recordings of her works “House” and “Temporary Passport” they seemed ideal. Musically I’ve drawn inspiration from William Basinski’s “Disintegration Loops” plus my beloved doom/drone metal, as well as using some more folky instruments – the Appalachian dulcimer makes an appearance, as does Estragon the deluxe shruti box. There’s even a tuba solo in there somewhere.

Here’s an excerpt from Temporary Passport:

BOLUS – Temporary Passport – excerpt by Stuart Estell

You can buy the mini-album as an MP3 download from Amazon for just £1.38 by clicking here.

It’s also available on iTunes but thanks to a pricing cock-up in the hands of the electronic distributiony people it’s considerably more expensive on there. Plus you can also listen on Spotify here.

What or who are Cultus Sabbati?

They’re a group from Australia, who maintain closely-guarded anonymity and are practitioners of magick rituals involving vocals, guitars, home-made electronics, and massive amplification.

The rituals are recorded and then edited into compositions of quite terrifying density and sonic extremes. Whatever these rituals may or may not involve, they’re certainly not good for the hearing of anyone concerned.

Regardless, whether or not you buy into the occult schtick is largely irrelevant. The Garden of Forking Ways is simply a masterful drone/power electronics album.

It’s also got a mangled foot in the black metal camp, but this isn’t black metal as we know it. The vocal style reminds me both of Xasthur and of the Crypsis/Eurostopodus Argus 10″/7″ double-pack by fellow Aussie(s?) Grief No Absolution  - the harsher, rasping vocals are heavily-processed, possibly even subjected to massive bitcrushing, whereas more chant-like vocals are buried deep in the mix with loads of reverb and very little treble. It’s all brilliantly unsettling, and unsettlingly brilliant. But it might send you running back to Merzbow for some easy listening.

If you can get hold of the vinyl release, it’s doubly great – it’s on thick blood-red marbled vinyl in a beautifully-produced sleeve, and sounds incredible. The digital version simply doesn’t do this unholy squall of noise proper justice. There are just 333 copies – obviously they couldn’t afford a complete beast – and I have one of them.

I can’t recommend this highly enough if you like drone/noise stuff.

I also posted this on Audioboo last night – an ad hoc recording of Howard Skempton’s piece June ’77.

You should of course buy this, and play these glorious miniatures: Howard Skempton’s Collected Piano Pieces

This may of course change, depending on which way the wind is blowing…

I didn’t know Trish personally at all, but still vividly remember her amazing ice-cold stage presence during the only time I saw Broadcast perform live at the Irish Centre in Digbeth. Incidentally, that was the very same evening that I met John Peel and talked with him about The Fall and Polythene.

The score is available at the IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library at imslp.org

The programme is yet to be finalised but is probably going to be something along these lines:

Howard Skempton
Well, well, Cornelius
June ’77
Piano Piece 1969
Swedish Caprice
Quavers 3

Reflections

Notti Stellate a Vagli

Interval

Philip Glass
Mad Rush

Morton Feldman
Palais de Mari

I may replace the Glass with some more Feldman – that’s the thing I’m unsure of at the moment. I’ve had a very interesting few weeks playing all of this very quiet music; technical demands are (almost) absent, but the musical demands are absolutely huge. The whole enterprise is proving to be most enlightening…

I’m hoping that there will be a mystery première too.

Aficionados of black metal, drone metal, doom metal, “griefcore” and whatever other metal genres have sprung up in the last fifteen minutes might like to investigate Vasculum. The group/artist’s page has a few songs for download – I like it very much, but then I would.

The Vasculum manifesto is, apparently,

no audience engagement – no promotional engagement – no performance – no collaboration – no photographs – identity of no significance – location/eating habits of no significance – to be listened to at massive volume or not at all

It’s safe to assume that it’s music in the best tradition of one-man lo-fi black metal projects, I think, and puts me in mind of the likes of Xasthur and Leviathan. If anything Vasculum is (are?) a lot less refined and a lot more brutal. Listen here: http://vasculum.co.uk

Seeing Bavouzet perform Ravel’s Concerto pour la main gauche at the Proms last Friday was an immensely inspiring experience. His technical assurance was such that he made the flashier, more mercurial runs and fiendish final cadenza seem like a spontaneous outpouring.

I had some serious goose-bumps several times during Bavouzet’s performance, which more than made up for the lacklustre première of Arvo Part’s fourth symphony, which I’d be inclined to describe (at best) as inoffensive.

It’s only recently that I’ve seen other pianists perform works for the left hand in concert. The other was James Rhodes, in recital at the Guardian Hay Festival. There, James played the Blumenfeld Étude pour la main gauche in A flat – and, as was the case with Bavouzet, one really wouldn’t aware of it being a single-handed performance, were it not for the fact that both pianists at various points used their right arms to brace themselves against the side of the piano.

This element of posture interests me – I’m not sure (and perhaps James will be kind enough to comment on this if I prod him on Twitter) whether it’s deliberate or almost unconscious. You see, when I play pieces for the left hand alone, I tend to keep my right hand rather demurely anchored on my right knee.

Now, I’ve never noticed any extraordinary aches or pains while playing, for example, the Bach-Brahms Chaconne, but when I work on the Ravel – particularly the evil (for me)  jumps up and down the keyboard at the end of the first cadenza – I come away feeling a bit the worse for wear, particularly in my back muscles. It’s early days – I don’t have to have the piece learned until next spring – but I’d be interested if any of you who play pieces for left hand alone have any thoughts on the matter… does a gentle lean into the piano with the right arm help matters?