improvisation

Back On The Mechanical Bull

/ erratainexcelsis

Hi All,

After a month of being computer-less, I’m finally fully reconnected and functional. The unexpected failure of the replacement computer I’d set up after my earlier unexpected computer failure created some serious obstacles for me… I was unable to post the July installment of ‘Vesicular Distributor’ (or anything else), I couldn’t get any work done, I couldn’t access any of my files, I couldn’t access this website, and I could only get meagre internet access from one of those awful smartphones everyone seems to love so much. This has taught me to keep a written password key somewhere in my studio: these days there are more passwords than I can possibly commit to memory, so if the device with my password manager fails, it shuts me out of a lot of important resources. An old-styley analog backup can be a useful thing.

A public service announcement: do not order a computer directly from Dell! I’ve never been particularly knowledgeable about hardware, so I thought this would be a good way to get some proper tech advice from a sales rep before I bought anything. The result was hardly shy of outright fraud. I didn’t have any internet access at the time, so I called the Dell help line and placed my order on the phone (never do this!); I was sold a brand new computer with a good processor, but sent an old, discontinued computer with a older, slower processor, and was charged more for it than had been quoted over the phone. Fortunately, I was able to return the dud machine and get a refund, but it took endless hours of being left on hold to get it sorted out. And by the time I got my refund I had been left stranded for a month without a computer — which meant being unable to work, which meant being unable to generate any income. Most of you probably already know this and are more tech-savvy than I am, but in case you aren’t: stay away from Dell direct sales! In the age of reckless Amazon indifference, it seems impossible to find honest & transparent dealings anywhere.

Vesicular Distributor 08a cvr
Vesicular Distributor 08b cvr

On to more positive news: I have the July and August installments of Vesicular Distributor ready to post in time for Bandcamp’s no-fee Friday tomorrow. I’ve also put together a few other things to try to compensate for the month of income I missed in August. Apologies for putting out another clump of stuff all at once: if you can grab it all on the no-fee day tomorrow it would of course be very much appreciated, but everything will still be around after that if your finances are slim.

A Darker Shade OF Fat cvr

One of the new things offered tomorrow at the irr. Bandcamp site will be ‘A Darker Shade Of Fat’, the third plundering of my Nurse With Wound live recording archive. The first instance was of course the NWW album ‘Dark Fat’, followed by the outtake & extras irr./NWW collection ‘Dark Drippings’. The original ‘Fat’ was created to be part of a box set of NWW live-derived material, but Steve liked it enough that he wanted to give it a solo release; at that time, the box set was still going to happen, so I started work on some new material to replace the missing ‘Fat’. That is the provenance of these ‘Shade’ tracks. The idea for the box set gently evaporated, so I never needed to completely finish the replacement tracks, and they have languished in their penultimate state for the past 3 years. While looking for something very-nearly-done that I could get ready in time for the 4th, this project immediately came to mind. Just as the cover of ‘Dark Drippings’ was a spin on Steve’s collage for the ‘Dark Fat’ CD cover, the cover for ‘Shade’ is a spin on his collage for the DF vinyl set.

Another item scheduled for tomorrow will be a brandeloquenly-newified album called ‘Nocturnal Emissaries: An Audio Inquiry In Seven Secretions’. This material is an exploration in taking studio improvisation, nudging it part-way into textural abstraction, and then basting the results in a viscous, atmospheric gravy. Intended for the nourishment all sentient beings everywhere, but probably to the taste of only a modest few.

A third item is in preparation, but, if I manage to finish it in time, I’ll post about that when I send out all the links tomorrow.

All the best to everyone,

–msw

Displaced Materials

/ erratainexcelsis / Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here: partly from my being too busy, but also just another one of my periodic lapses from contact with the outside world. The previous few months have mostly been occupied with completing a new Nurse With Wound album with Steve Stapleton, which we’ve constructed out of extracts from the archive of live recordings I’ve been amassing for the past 10 years. It’s not a selection of live ‘highlights’ or anything like that, but an entirely new record built by combining some of the most interesting moments into unique new tracks. As I’m the one in the group that records everything — shows, soundchecks, rehearsals, off-stage events — it naturally fell to me to sort through and find elements that could work together. The project took longer than expected since it kept expanding as we went along: it was first planned as a single vinyl release, then an extended CD version was proposed, then an entire second disc was added, and then Steve decided he wanted to do a collaborative art edition — and we are now just wrapping up that final aspect of it.

SylvieOn a related note, an expanded, double-disc reissue of the classic NWW album ‘Sylvie & Babs‘ was recently released by United Dirter, and I was fortunate to be able to contribute a variety of things to it: clean-up and mastering of all the different S&B-related cassette compilations tracks, a brand new track of my own in the S&B collage style, and a new graphic that’s been used for the cover of the inner booklet. It’s astonishing to think back to how much I loved that album when I first bought it over twenty years ago, and to now find myself involved in a version of it. If you’re on the east side of the Atlantic, you can get a copy at the new NWW shop: www.nursewithwound.co.uk. I only have five copies on hand to sell myself: not enough to warrant creating a listing in the shop, but if you’re in the States and would like to get one and save some pricey overseas postage, drop me a note at irrappext (at) gmail.com and I’ll let you know if I still have any left (and I’ll put up a short post to announce when they’re gone). I’ll be selling my copies for $20 each + postage (probably about $4 Media Mail).

Materieux Deplaces cvrBut the principal reason for this new post is to announce the release of the new irr. album Matériaux Déplacés. This is a expanded, double-disc version of the small-edition cassette released by the now-defunct ReadyMades Tapes label back in April. A full description of the album can be found on the item page, but, briefly, the original two 15-minute tracks from the cassette are now combined with several more tracks from the NDAS archives which were constructed using a similar approach, and linked with a series of short excerpts of varied location recordings and upright piano manipulation (similar sources having been an important part of those two original tracks). This release is limited to only 120 copies, as I suspect it will have a more limited appeal. You can grab a copy here.

A lot of other things are in the works: a second collaboration with Pentti Dassum’s Umpio project (which has only been held up by me trying to finish all the stuff listed above); a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel for the very slow-progressing collaboration with French pianist Sylvie Walder (all the tracks are now finished, and only the packaging needs to be sorted out); a bit more progress made in restoring the unreleased second irr. album from 1998 ‘Foreign Matter, Nor Frequency Carrier’; and a similarly long-in-preparation and exhaustively comprehensive online irr. discography (to balance out the jumble of faulty information available elsewhere). Some printed graphic collections with accompanying audio are in the planning stages, with the hopes that these might act as a remedy to the ever-plummeting record sales.

One final note: Nurse With Wound peformances in Bratislava (November 26th) and London (December 5th) are in the process of being sorted out, and I should be present for both of them. Travel arrangements have not yet been finalised, however, so nothing can be said with absolute certainty quite yet.

–msw

I Made This For Someone Else

/ erratainexcelsis

Hello All,

A new irr. app. (ext.) album, ‘I Made This For Someone Else, But They Didn’t Want It So I’m Giving It To You‘, has been added to the shop! The quaint title is derived from the fact that a lot of the source material was submitted to different projects & collaborations, but not deemed useful enough by the various recipients. Being an unflaggingly optimistic sort of person, I took the lemons life gave me and turned them into lemon meringue pie: 84% of the world’s population is in perfect agreement that this is the best album made in the last 51 years (after Julie London’s ‘Latin In A Satin Mood’ was released in 1963). Be sure to buy two copies so you can listen to both of them at once and really know you’ve lived.

irrIMADETHISFORSOMEONEELSE

This disc is another fully-printed, cottage-made CDR in the same style as ‘Tuberpendicular’ and ‘Orgonosis 4’. You can have a butcher’s at the particulars and bag yourself a copy here.

A digital version will be added to the irr. download resource in a few days.

–msw

New Downloads Available

/ erratainexcelsis

Hello All,

I’ve added 4 new download albums to the irr. download site: ‘Perekluchnie‘, ‘Resurrection Of The Senses‘, ‘CTIoU&PREITMoGDoVC‘ (all expanded editions) and ‘The Jennies Made Me Do It {1}‘.

The original plan was to release some of these in a physical format, but I’m sure most of you are aware this is becoming more and more difficult to manage. Physical sales have been on a steady decline for years, and the enormous increase in postage rates (particularly international rates, which used to account for the majority of my orders) has dealt an extremely abrupt and serious blow to an already dubious situation. I am aware that downloads are not an entirely satisfying option for most of you: my feelings are the same. They do, however, provide a very tidy ‘Gordian Knot’-style solution to the postage issue. Also, people are more and more frequently asking me whether back catalogue items will be made available as downloads, so it seems things are inevitably shifting in that direction anyways. I am going to continue to try to come up with sustainable strategies to make physical-format releases available. Several of you have been extremely supportive of my work regardless of the format, and to those individuals I give my continued sincere thanks.

Perekluchenie_front coverResurrection Of The Senses_front‘Perekluchenie‘ and ‘Resurrection Of The Senses‘ were originally released together in 2004 — ROTS included as a bonus disc with the subscription-only ‘art’ edition of Perekluchenie. Both albums have been thoroughly scrubbed and remastered, and ‘Wretched Density’ from Perekluchenie and all tracks on ROTS have been remixed from the original sources to allow more precise correction of flaws in the original audio.

Augmenting the original tracklist of Perekluchenie is ‘Hypothetical Tardigrade Resurrection, part 1’, united with its fellow Hypothetical Tardigardes for the first time, and the Wretched Density remix ‘Dented Switchery’. Both of these were formerly released on split 7 inch records in 2004 and 2008, respectively. Both have been revised and remastered so that they are closer to what was intended.

For ROTS, a new 13-minute track (‘Lassa Valde’) has been created ROTS extra 6 - vellum insert 2foil tardigrade 01using extracts from the lurching, guitar-based ‘Festina Lente’. Festina Lente itself was the focus of a considerable amount of work: I was determined this time to create the best possible mix, as I always felt the original version (the best I could do at the time) was significantly lacking in certain respects.

Both albums include all original graphics and texts. To Perekluchenie has been added the artwork I submitted to both split 7″ records, plus 7 of the hand-drawn ink-on-foil tardigrades that came with the original Perekluchenie art edition; to ROTS has been added 10 of the hand-drawn inserts I created for surplus copies I had for sale.

For those of you who own the original releases and aren’t interested in having to purchase the remastered versions in their entirety, the bonus tracks are all available as individual downloads.

CTIoU&PRE_front coverCTIoU&PRE_image01

The next download addition is the more recent ‘Concerning The Incidence Of Unexpected & Prodigious Radial Expansion In The Matter Of Generative Diversity Of Varied Character‘, released in 2013 in a 30-copy cassette edition by ReadyMades Tapes. The original tracks have been given a little extra scrubbing, and two related tracks have been added to the download version: ‘A Predictable Vector Of Development Overwhelmed By Abrupt Heterogeneous Radiation’, which was a submission to the Nine Day Antler Society at the same time the cassette material was created, and a radically altered version of ‘Incident II’ from side A of the cassette.

The Jennies Made Me Do It_frontcoverThe Jennies Made Me Do It_backcover

The final item in this batch is ‘The Jennies Made Me Do It {1}‘, the first collection of tracks from split releases and other projects instigated by my friends in At Jennie Richie. This set collects the irr. side from 3 split cassette projects released in early 2013: ‘The Monsters Are Due On Alder Court’ (featuring the unique guitar stylings of my very own sister) from ‘For You And Telly Savalas’; ‘Foregone And Ungotten’ from ‘Unknown Invertebrate Drama’; and ‘Studio Backflow’ from ‘Backflow Background’.

The next back catalogue items planned for the download shop are ‘Cosmic Superimposition’, ‘Dust Pincher Appliances’, and a combined release of  ‘Drone Works 10’, ‘While Unconscious In Compost, I Was Momentarily A Motile Vesicular Cluster’ and an unreleased track created around the same time as those two. They should be available within the next couple months. The slow work of finishing the reconstruction of the second irr. album ‘Foreign Matter, Nor Frequency Carrier’ is almost done, and I’m still looking into ways of releasing it in a physical format.

The download shop can be found at irrappext.bandcamp.com.

best wishes to all,

–msw

Shop closed from March 26th to April 16th

/ erratainexcelsis / Leave a comment

A couple quick notes:

I’ll be heading overseas for a NWW event in a couple days and so the shop will be closed between March 26th and April 16th. I am not likely to have any regular (if any) internet access, so I will probably not be able to respond to any messages — and will definitely not be able to process any orders — until after I get back. I appreciate your patience.

Sirr(xt.) Heapp.ds cvr

Also: the new irr. + Six Heads collaborative cassette is now available through the Readymades Tapes site here. My own supply was very small and was essentially claimed before I even received any copies, so for anyone interested it’s best to grab one through Readymades while they’re still around.

 

See you in April!

–msw

Monstrous Outcomes

/ erratainexcelsis / Leave a comment

irr + umpio OBSERVATION AFFECTS THE OUTCOME cvrirr - NEOGNATHAE PORTENTOSUS cvrTwo of the new releases mentioned in the last update are now in stock and listed in the shop: the limited 3″ CDR ‘Neognathæ Portentosus‘ and the irr + Umpio collaboration ‘Observation Affects The Outcome’. Full details can be seen by clicking the links in the titles or cover images. Combined postage packages for both are included at the bottom of each item’s page, as well as a combined package with the Thomas Carnacki / Vulcanus 68 ‘Split’ LP. The irr + Six Heads collaborative cassette should be available within a couple of weeks.