sideb0ard's Last.fm Journal

10-20 ‘Landforms’ Series of EPs

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:17:39 +0000

Ed/10-20 has been hard at it since the release of his self-titled album a few months back, inspired by the really warm reception to it!
Now completed and mastered, we have 15 new tracks from him, which will be released over a series of four EPs, entitled the ‘Landforms’ series – ‘Isthmus’, ‘Mountain’, ‘Island’, and ‘Lake’.

He’s put together a fifteen minute mix using some of the tracks from the EPs’ which you can grab from http://highpointlowlife.com/?p=814

[hpll037] The Village Orchestra - I Can Hear The Sirens Singing Again

Tue, 9 Jun 2009 10:49:36 +0000

Hello there!
Always gotta be contradictory, don’t we?! Just when i say we’re going all digital, we then go do another limited run of 100 cd-rs! :)

[hpll037] The Village Orchestra - I Can Hear The Sirens Singing Again

Glasgow’s Ruaridh Law is as prolific as he is talented, with a multitude of aliases and projects to his name. From the prose inspired electronics of The Marcia Blaine School For Girls, his drone project as Accrual ( with Alasdair Satchel), the infamy of The Village Unit (live spoof ragga collaboration with fellow Marcian, Production Unit), his more techno leaning club sounds as TVO, plus several varied releases to his name as The Village Orchestra.

This project, ‘Sirens..’ was originally inspired after Ruaridh was introduced to the the magical surrealism of Takashi Miike’s ‘MPD Psycho’, a Japanese television series horror/comedy/art masterpiece akin to Lynch producing a mashup of Garth Marenghi vs. ‘The Ring’. From a conversation with one of the organisers of Glasgow’s Triptych festival came the idea to do a live soundtrack to the first episode to the series for one of the Triptych events. For the performance, and appearing on this recording, Ruaridh invited several other friends into the fold, including Konx-om-Pax(Display Copy), Production Unit(HPLL), Erstlaub(HPLL), and Chris Dooks(Benbecula).

At just shy of an hour in length, it’s a deathly beautiful journey into sound processing and manipulation, through varying scenes and emotions, sounds and textures slipping into and out of your range of perception; standing aesthetically in it’s own sonic right, but also as an immersive and engaging aural mystery as your brain tries to piece together the sonic c(l)ues into a cohesive narrative.

Physical release is in a limited run of 100 numbered CD-Rs, cased in slimline DVD covers with minimal manga inspired art design from Matheu Ranson, with liner notes about the process and idea from Ruaridh, and also a unique different comic cut-out in each copy.

Stream here - http://www.last.fm/music/The+Village+Orchestra/I+Can+Hear+The+Sirens+Screaming+Again

Buy Here - http://highpointlowlife.com/?page_id=265&id=39

**

We’ve had a lot of requests to keep doing some physical releases - it won’t be for all releases, but we do plan a few other ones in the upcoming months - aside from this Village Orchestra CD-R, we should actually have a couple of coloured 7″ due out before the end of the year too from 10-20 and Brassica.. stay tuned! Digital ones lined up also from alpine., Pausal, Calika, Production Unit and Mandelbrot..

**

cheers!
thorsten

[Highpoint Lowlife News] - April 2009

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:56:20 +0000

Hello 'dere!

Got a few wee Highpoint Lowlife updates for you again..

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[HPLL035] - Tigrics - Brokenret (Friskfisk mixes)

Our latest from the essential Mr Tigrics, this time ably assisted by one of his friends and favorite musician, Friskfisk - a 3track EP of twisted acidic overtones and analog drum machines.

Between Tigrics' fetish for home made modular synth kits, and Friskfisk's strict no computer policy, the sounds created and used in this EP are simply mindblowing, free flowing over tight rolling 606 patterns. Two of the tracks are collaborative remixes of tracks from Tigrics' earlier 'Brokenret' release, the parts of which he took over to Friskfisk's studio to work on, while the last track is a new composition they worked on over the same time.

Available as 320s or FLAC direct from:
http://highpointlowlife.com/?page_id=265&id=37

Previews available on Lastfm:
http://www.last.fm/music/Tigrics/Brokenret+(Friskfisk+mixes)

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[HPLL034] 10-20 / 10-20

Wow, the reception for this has genuinely blown me away, thanks to all for your support!
FACT magazine have included it in their Top Twenty albums of 2009 so far, and have given it quite a bit of love, featuring 10-20 in their Producers to watch, and will also shortly be hosting an exclusive mix he's put together for them.

Been quite a few other lovely reviews too:

"10-20 has made an album that merges the weight of ambience and the afflictions of genres like hip hop, dubstep and techno, crackling it all together with panache and an irrefutably deft touch. Simply superb." Sonic Router

"The London Highpoint Lowlife label have actively monitored these developments, among numerous others maintaining a near buy-on-site level of quality control, not disappointed by this breathtaking debut by newcomer 10-20." Cyclic Defrost

"This self-titled masterpiece of darkened electrical disruptions is utterly fascinating and quite simply ear shattering" Igloo Magazine

Pick it up direct from us at: http://highpointlowlife.com/?page_id=265&id=36
or via any of the online stores.

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[HPLL031] Hot City - Yeah!/Headwork

Dang, Hot City has been well busy, with his new regular nights "Hows My Raving?" at Cargo, loads of upcoming releases planned, and a bunch of exciting projects and gigs coming up over the summer. Get a taste of his DJing magic with an old school UKG mix he's put together for FACT magazine - check it at http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2292&Itemid=98

Stay up-to-date with Hot City goings on via:
http://www.myspace.com/hotcitybass

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[HPLL014] The Village Orchestra - Et In Arcadia Ego

Ruaridh/TVO has been making some waves lately with his latest outings on Stuff Records receiving plenty of worthy praise and plaudits - with his debut album released in 2005, we thought it would be a good time to let more people hear it, and have teamed up with FACT magazine to give away 'Et In Arcadia Ego' as a free download in lovely 320kbps.

Check out FACT magazine's interview (conducted by Sonic Router's Oli Marlow), and download link for the album at:

http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2318&Itemid=99

Ruaridh has also put up an album page on his own site with liner notes about each of the album's tracks - check it =- http://ruaridh.marciablaine.com/et-in-arcadia-ego/

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[UPCOMINGS!]

We got loads coming up! We currently have three new releases all being mastered with Twerk at the moment - a 6 track beautiful EP from Alpine, who you may well know as one half of the Pausal duo. We have a full length collaborative live album from The Village Orchestra called "I Can Hear The Sirens Singing Again", where he is joined with various other glasgow bods - Konx-om-Pax, Erstlaub, Dirty Hope and Chris Dooks, and last but not least is a three track EP from Gravious of post-dubstep bass weight - exceptionally good stuff!

Thanks, and check the site and/or rss feeds to stay up to date with the latest news..

cheers!
thorsten

[Highpoint Lowlife] march meanderings..

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:50:35 +0000

Hey!

Back at ye with an amazing new album this month..

[hpll034] 10-20 - 10-20

If you've been following our blog you would have heard me mention this new release a few times, and there's also an mp3 available for download from -
http://highpointlowlife.com/downloads/1020_arcadeagle.mp3

The album is a claustrophobic hulk of a release, constructed from parts of discarded machinery, short-circuiting currents of krautrock, broken hip hop structures, dense aquatic substreams and spectral elements, all of which are funnelled towards a single cohesive hypnotic pulse.

Based in devon, the coastal and elemental forces of the producer's environment are evident in the scope of intricate sounds layered and woven into rough shorn textures, where only a filtered ghostly impression of club-land's influence can be discerned within the resultant sound.

Displaying a versatility in composition the album follows an arc from opening track 'miluvs''s vaccum sealed melody, the vertiginous ascent of 'nei'; the viscous sluggishness of 'jjuvxszla', confused machine-funk of 'wdtrhjvelgrad', and the amniotic warmth of 'InB'; culiminating in the post-gravitational trajectory of 'arcadeagle' and dub-soaked pressure of 'sA' before the elegiac closing descent of 'unde'.

Official release date is not for another couple of weeks till it hits the usual download stores, but it's available now from our site as 320's or FLAC from:
http://highpointlowlife.com/?page_id=265&id=36

First couple of review have been really postive:

"Flowing like a winding river through industrial landscapes, his productions embrace the poison and pollution of a lifetime spent pondering numerous genres of electronica. 10-20 has made an album that merges the weight of ambience and the afflictions of genres like hip hop, dubstep and techno, crackling it all together with panache and an irrefutably deft touch.
Simply superb."
http://sonicrouter.blogspot.com/2009/03/pre-order-10-20-10-20-highpoint-lowlife.html

"This is quite a challenging work, but there is something hypnotic about it, despite its rhythmic complexities. Pertinent comparisons could be made to Pan Sonic and Autechre, but there is more of a sense of dirty fingernails and oily boiler-suits about it than white-coated technicians. It feels more akin to engineering and industry than to pure science. It’s a claustrophobic work with occasional shafts of sunlight gleaming through, but nevertheless hugely engaging. It’s certainly one of the most original electronic albums I’ve heard for a while – I think we’ll be hearing a lot more from 10-20 whoever he or she may be."
http://dezji.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/album-10-20-10-20-highpoint-lowlife-hpll034-2009/

Production Unit - Half Of A Hole

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:47:20 +0000

[HPLL033] PRODUCTION UNIT - HALF OF A HOLE

Production Unit: a member of longtime art terrorist music makers, The Marcia Blaine School For Girls, alongside The Village Orchestra and Beaker, and also one of the DJ forces behind Glasgow’s forward thinking monthly club, Numbers.

Here he presents two distinct tracks woven together through a maximal use of low-end and dancehall derived rhythms and space.

The more technoid attack of ‘A Little Hope’ comes on with a thundering beat and a snaking synthline, before the wall of bass surges forward and shredded vocal textures create a hypnotic hook, all building toward an epic finale, before finally collapsing into a shimmering pool of syrupy ambience.

‘Dem Sirens’ on the other hand is a languid and woozy half time steppa, with a slow kick drum pounding out an incessant and skewed, almost hip hop beat, punctuated with finger clicks and tightly locked transparent layers of synth and melody, like a skunk hazed boogie down productions instrumental.

Available to purchase 320s or FLAC from:
http://highpointlowlife.com/?page_id=265&id=34

or stream in full here on lastfm at http://www.last.fm/music/Production+Unit/Half+of+A+Hole

"Ethereal dancehall? Gossamer dubstep? Somehow simultaneously both spectral, floating synth & monstrous, loping bass, topped off with a woozy whistle & ominous riffing: " http://earslend.blogspot.com/

"The languid techno stomp of “A Little Hope” has shades of early Warp acts like LFO, but with a pounding sub bass, and a mashed up vocal sample providing the melody. “Dem Sirens” comes in with a click rhythm and snaking bassline before opening up with great banks of analogue synth and what sounds like something midway between a theremin and a swanee whistle! At first it seems a little bizarre, but the juxtaposition of the great wash of sound, and the seasick whistling works really well. It’s one of the best tunes I’ve heard this year." http://dezji.wordpress.com/

Tigrics - Brokenret

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:36:07 +0000

Aiight, first missive of 2009! Hope yer all well.

If you've been following the blog ( http://highpointlowlife.com/blog/blog.php ) , you'll have seen we're making some major changes - going almost wholly digital! You'll find more info on the blog post about making the decision which was a hard one, but now that i've made the choice, it feels like a massive weight off my mind and such a rush of freedom and inspiration - rather than having only one or two releases planned for the next six months and the stress of shifting enough units to move onto the next, we should be keeping a regular release schedule of one a month, and we have some absolutely amazing releases lined up. I was scared of how a lot of our artists and friends would feel about releasing only digitally, but the response has been astoundingly positive. I think there will be a lot of labels making the jump soon, and i figured we may as well be one of the first!

[hpll032] Tigrics - Brokenret

Our first release of 2009 is a three track EP from our favorite hungarian noisemonger, Tigrics, entitled 'Brokenret' - Immaculately produced dark uptempo acid tinged tracks, with nanoscale attention to details; First track 'Snyki' is a hard wired current of fidgety rhythm, frequencies to fry you head, and turbulent synth; but it's second track 'Boko (Katchkanari Acid Mix)' with it's monster squashed introduction building up to a runway juggernaut beat for only the freakiest dancefloors, which really kicks off! The EP closes with 'Volatile', a more melodic epilogue, to wind down a lovely release.

Listen in full: http://www.last.fm/music/Tigrics/Brokenret
Buy FLAC or MP3: http://highpointlowlife.com/releaseinfo.php?id=33

[hpll033] Production Unit - Half of a Hole

Next month see's a two track single from Production Unit, currently being mastered by Twerk. Dancehall rhythms, speaker busting low end bass, hip hop swing and techno texture - dave has totally outdone himself on these! Full links and more details next month..

Soon be onto a new site too - was hoping i'd have it ready this morning - I've been hammering away on a new version of it for the past week, porting the whole thing over to wordpress, so i can utilize a lot of the plugins and widgets and well written code, rather than my own skanky handwritten scripts. had a look at it in IE this morning - borked! dang! So aye, a few more days on that i think..

Check out the Tigrics EP, keep an eye out for the new site, and as always i welcome your thoughts and feedback!

cheers,
thor

[Highpoint Lowlife] - December news 2008

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:21:30 +0000

back now, after a week away at the Curfew Tower in Northern Ireland - absolutely awesome time! (see blog for details: http://highpointlowlife.com/blog/blog.php )

perfect timing too, The Hot City 12" landed this morning, and is now up for sale on our site at: http://highpointlowlife.com/releaseinfo.php?id=32 (all 12" sales will come with an email link to the 320kbps files too)

His recent set for the Mary Anne Hobbs show went down really well, and for those that missed it, you can download an archive of the show from:
http://core.thomaslaupstad.com/mary-anne-hobbs-experimental-2008-11-26-mount-kimbie-vs-hot-city/

Heres my blurb of Hot City from the website:
"Hot City melds together his love of UK and US dance music, taking cues from UKG/2Step and early rave, splicing it with the raw energy of early chicago, detroit and new york house music; aiming straight at the dancefloor, his heavily swung rhythms, shuffling snares and tight edits roll with deep bass punch and classic synth stabs, at once evoking memories of bygone eras, yet absorbing contemporary production and memes to create some wholly modern steppa's!"

Grab a sample track from http://highpointlowlife.com//downloads/hotcity_headworkedit.mp3 or preview the whole EP at http://www.last.fm/music/Hot+City/Yeah%2521%2B%252F%2BHead%2BWork

Couple of seasonal gigs coming up in the lead-up to the holidays too..

this saturday, we'll be taking over The Foundry, on Old Street, London, for the evening; we being myself, Hot City, and Mat/Spatial. Should be a messy one! Right aferwards, Actress is playing at FWD>>, so we'll be round there to follow it up!

Coming up on tuesday, 16th December, we'll be back in Cafe Oto, Dalston, this time for our xmas party proper - Keung/Mandelbrot and John Eden (uncarved.org) will be DJing first, then live sets from Love's Tru Flavour and Hot City. Free entry, free records, movies and Sierra Nevada beer too! come along, it should be really good.

Aiight, well, think thats about it for the year - have an excellent holiday season! I'll leave you with a parting gift - i've uploaded one of our classic old albums, N.LN's 'Astronomy For Children', now exactly 5 years old (shite, we're getting old!), and awarded the BBC Experimentals' album of the month in january 2004. Grab here: http://www.mediafire.com/?mxzvxxbc2nw

cheers!
thorsten

Hot City on radio one, Mary Anne Hobb's show

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:38:12 +0000

hey! new Highpoint Lowlife signing, Hot City, played a 15 minute set on last night's Mary Anne Hobbs' show - listen here for the next 7 days:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/maryannehobbs/

Jacob Borshard's new album!

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:07:51 +0000

finally - the long wait is over - Jacob Borshard's new album 'A Glow In the Dark' is now available for free download from his website at http://www.creebobby.com/ - the third and final in his epic trilogy of ukulele outsider art, full of wry funny lyrics, tales of lost love and dreams of a slowly receding youth. Like a good comic book, you find yourself lost in his world of words even when the protagonists luck is firmly out, which is pretty much all of the time. Like Charlie Brown meets Happy Days, drawn by James Kochalka, and soundtracked by a 13 year old Brian Wilson on a pink toy uke! With all these comic book references, it's no surprise that he also does some amazing comic strips also over on his website.

[Highpoint Lowlife] October Newwwws 2008!

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:00:28 +0000

Hey, hope all is well!
Couple of new things for ye this month..

[HPLL030] KWAIDAN
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Intrepid explorer Mat Ranson, more well known around these parts as Fisk Industries, may well have just taken off on an around-the-world expedition, but he didn't leave without dropping a few new releases our way.

His first release is called Kwaidan, a one-off project inspired by Masaki Kobayashi's ghost movie of the same name.

Awash with kinetic energy, the music bristles with texture and ghostly treated sound sources, aiming to hint at the eerieness of Kobayashi's original ghost stories. Two tracks, each close to 12 minutes, and wound around a similar trajectory, built upon intricate punchy drum programming, pounding out an incessant rhythm with waves of sawblade synths vying for attention against an aggresive low-end bass, trying to rend and pull apart the forward motion.

Using the longer time frame, themes are able to fully develop and be explored with subtle nuance, slowly building up a sense of dread and claustrophobic foreboding, whilst simultaneously allowing more space for the sound to breathe, and a more natural flow and ebb to the listening experience.

This is the first in our series of digital 12"s - high quality mastered releases, and available exclusively only as FLAC or 320kbps MP3s. You can buy the files at:
http://www.highpointlowlife.com/releaseinfo.php?id=30

Sound Sample at:
http://highpointlowlife.com/downloads/masaki_excerpt.mp3

and full previews:
http://www.last.fm/music/Kwaidan/Kwaidan

WEB RELEASES
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Aside from that, we also have two new excellent free web releases up
on the site this month:

[HPW033] The Village Orchestra - LIVE AT CAFE OTO
This recording was made at our 'Towards The Singularity' event at Cafe Oto in August. A Beautifully tailored Max/MSP live set using geographic recordings made in and around Dalston and Stoke Newington.
http://www.highpointlowlife.com/webrelease.php?id=33

[HPW034] Fisk Industries - TRIPTYCH
The second of Mat's farewell releases, three tracks of tightly wound immaculately produced electronics, sloping along on crisp off-kilter rhythms.
http://www.highpointlowlife.com/webrelease.php?id=34

GIGS
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[NETAUDIO FESTIVAL / SHUNT, LONDON] 22nd - 25th October 2008
The Netaudio festival is a four day festival celebrating the creative
output of networked musicians and online communities, and has an
incredible lineup including Lackluster, Disrupt, Appleblim, Autisici
and many more. I've been helping Last.fm curate one of the nights on
thursday, October 23rd, where we'll have the The Village Orchestra and
Production Unit DJing in the bar alongside John Eden from
Uncarved.org, while in the main room A.R.E. Weapons, SJ Esau and ddd
will be playing.
http://2008.netaudiolondon.cc/festival/

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I shan't bore with you with too much other random stuff, if you'd like to know more about whats going on behind the scenes, what we're listening to and reading, then you can find out more over on at The Highpoint Bloglife:
http://highpointlowlife.com/blog/blog.php

take care, thanks!
thorsten