Here's another new label. It's called Hibernate and it's going down the whole nice drifty floaty river that you all know and love. The first release on the label is by Ian Hawgood the proprietor of the rather excellent Home Normal label and the brand new Tokyo Drowning label! It's all go down Mr Hawgood's house! Anyhoo the CD is called Wolfskin and it's packaged in a rather nice fold out colour picture of a wolf. I like wolves so, err... So far so good! On the shiny music dish itself you get 7 tracks of drifty drone music which are apparently created with guitar and piano though you'd be hard pushed to hear anything that sounds remotely like either of those instruments in there. What you do get is some quite processed sounding fuzzyness with some haunting drones which combine to make some gorgeously lovely soundscapes of fluffy drone ness. It's not quite fluffy pillows though as it's pretty intense and some of the frequencies aren't as friendly as you'd get in a lot of drone music. It's very lovely though and I suspect headphones will prove essential for this one! Also there's only 100 you'd better get on the fluffy bus before the driver says its full and drives over your shopping.
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Sound clips for Wolfskin by Ian Hawgood: on CD at Norman Records UK. CD, Hibernate, HB001, £12.99.
Ian Hawgood curates not one, but three labels, including the highly regarded Home Normal and calls both Tokyo and London his home. “Wolfskin” adds to his already considerable creative palette. A cathartic and cleansing collection of soundscapes, created by guitar and piano, imbued with a personal touch that is such a hallmark of his previous work. With an approach that is both abstract and melodic, “Wolfskin” runs through the full gamut of emotions, taking some deft left-turns, keeping listeners on their toes before drawing to a close with a degree of poignancy with the superb epic “Let’s Dance Until The Shallows Break”. This is a record where repeated plays pay dividends. Michael Henaghan (Phantom Channel)
