Got a couple of CDRs (20/02/2024) from Moonside Space, a small UK label possibly run by the same fellow who is is part of Opt Out and made the cassette Prismic Passageways (under another alias), which we heard in Feb 2021. Primarily a Bandcamp service, but what we have today are CDRs in jewel cases without front cover artworks.
Take The Purple II: Murex Race is by Golgotha Communications Ltd., and was originally realised in 2019. Beyond that we know next to nothing, and the creator blanks out their composerly and musical intentions as much as their own veiled identity. Even the music exhibits a certain blankness, alternating between strange electronica experiments and desolate ambient drones, such as ‘For Tan and Black Strength’, which conveys a profound loneliness and distancing effect, like the body of an astronaut floating alone and adrift in deep space. Other tracks have a little more action, being built from loops, samples, backwards tapes, and sometimes arriving at patterns and structures in a very oblique manner. It’s as if Golgotha Communications Ltd. had decided to reinvent avant-techno, not by listening to other records, but by working backwards from the information displayed on an online shop catalogue. What emerges are very fractured beats and very little warmth. This coldness becomes a positive virtue as they build their own alien environments – gardens made of steel, with trees of cast iron. Except they’re more like brief glimpses of these environments, and we never dwell in them for very long. I may not be selling all of this to a prospective listener, but there’s an original mind at work here, and some of these avenues warrant a little exploration by foot wearing rubber soles on your boots.
The second CDR is credited to Opt Out and is called Wilujeng; just two tracks here and less than 15 mins of music. According to the recent release on kirigirisu, Opt Out are the duo of Erv Wilson and Kraig Grady – or are they? The fellow who sent this claims never to have heard of him before I mentioned Grady and his Anaphoria project in that 2021 review, but now says he’s become a “major influence”. So now I’m confused, or someone is pulling our leg, or trying to throw us off the scent. At any rate, it seems that the Grady / Anaphoria tuning system “metaslendro” was used on the second track here – and although there is a web page describing this in great detail, it’s thoroughly mystifying and may amount to another bit of gentle hoaxing, especially as the “Anaphoria” project refers to an Asian country that doesn’t even exist. At least this ‘Lamentation in the Court of Lions’ is more engaging and approachable than the oddly skewed vistas and off-centred tones offered by Golgotha Communications Ltd., but the tuning for these layered droney synths is certainly unusual, probably purposefully designed to appear jarring to a Western pair of ears. The term “metaslendro” is evidently intended to prompt thoughts of the Slendro system in Gamelan music of Java (the other system is Pelog), and the cover art collage incorporates a votive object from Tibetan or Thai religions; other than that I’m completely clueless.