Posset - Silver Conch

Posset Biography

Your browser may not support display of this image.  

Posset uses the grainy texture and skewed juxtapositions afforded by multiple Dictaphones and tapes to improvise on the quiet noise of everyday life using sound sources as diverse as washing up, commuting to work and parenting.  

Background

Posset started sometime around 2000 with Lee Etherington (sampler/drum machine) and Joe Murray (sampler/devices).  As a duo Posset played with Kaffe Mathews, To Rocco Rot, Disco Operating System and were remixed by Otomo Yoshihide’s Turntable Hell Orchestra.  They featured on Radio 3's flagship experimental music radio show Mixing it and released vinyl, CD-R and tapes on various tiny labels.   

In around 2005 Lee left to concentrate on No-Fi promotions and recordings.  Joe carried on as Posset, changing the emphasis from digital sound manipulation to rusty magentic fumpf using multiple Dictaphones.  Posset have made a name on the European tape music scene playing with Rhodri Davies, Aki Onda, Sindre Bjerga, Jazzfinger and Lasse Marhung’s Testicle Hazard also winning commissions to perform at Echolalia and AV festival 2010.  As well as playing regularly in and around Newcastle Posset has released a whole bunch of full-length CD-Rs in the last few years, been included on numerous compilations and is still amazed and delighted people find his spooled droolings interesting.    

Posset regularly collaborates with pre-teen improvisers The Gloom and (the) Solar Plexus.  He also plays noise guitar for improvising big band giants Helictite.   

Discography

Live @ Rotations (RSI recordings) 3”CD-R 2001

(oTo) 27 (ordnance tape only) tape 2001

Posset/Gommorahh (RSI recordings) split 7” vinyl 2002

She looks like Lisa from Hate (Fencing Flatworm) 3” CD-R 2003

Posset v Slow Sound System (Kabuki Kore) CD-R 2003

Posset meets Si-cut.db (self released) CD-R 2003

Wrest (self released) CD-R 2003

Jelly & Jam (Kabuki Kore) CD-R 2004

Snakes travel in my blood (Dirty Demos) split CD-R 2006

Red Rice (self released) CD-R 2007

Six tape recorders in an quiet cinema (self released) CD-R 2007

Stabilo Boss (self released) CD-R 2008

Roadie Sputter (self released) CD-R 2008

The child tells a lie (Fuckin’ Amateurs!) CD-R 2009

Mump Grumpy (Infinite Exchange) CD-R 2009

Oval Soul Animals (self released) CD-R 2009

Diamond of radiant colour (Bell’s Hill) CD-R release date TBC

Silver Conch (Striate Cortex) CD-R 2010

Various tracks on numerous compilations from Kabuki Kore, Bell’s Hill, Fuckin’ Amateurs, Dirty Demos, Striate Cortex (as Dictaphonic Youth) Jazzfinger & Evil Eye Tributes and one-off private commissions.

With Helictite.  5 Petals (Hard up & parish damned) CD-R, No Borders (Fuckin’ amateurs!) CD-R, The long winded way of saying it (Infinite Exchange) CD-R, Helictite Box Set CD-R x 3 (Fuckin’ Amateurs!)  

With (the) Solar Plexus.  (the) Solar Plexus (self released) CD-R

Reviews

 
Scott McKeating said this about roadie sputter on Foxy Digitalis.  
 
Squirreled away in an unassuming brown paper sleeve, this latest Posset disc is defiantly nothing to be keeping under wraps. “Roadie Sputter” refuses to settle on a single personality, each of the four songs here giving a separate musical facet of the artist. The exploratory foreplay of the opener “Curly Grunt” summons up a wonky nearworld of Jandek/Bailey guitar, a stumbling-home piece of wood/metal/Dictaphone intricacy. The piece falls somewhere between the frantic tiptoeing of a spider’s work, the crudely fragile fusing of separate veins and a strangled meltdown – a prettily spindly affair. Even with this track's closing with shards of swordclash noise, it’s still hard to equate the harshness of “Strength of Lions, Speed of Eagles” to any Posset performances I've seen and heard before. This is venomous pedal noise aggression ribbed with garbled and gutturally acute screams, maybe a noise / PE pedant could spot the construction within it but it has the energy open-handed analogue gutspilling. While “Dazzling Smiles” runs with compellingly simpler tone experiments, “Huzzan Amp Huffin” is the best piece here. Slowly carving out another piece from the analogue world, Posset ends on something that sounds like a piece of ecclesiastical music that’s been scoured clean of all the unnecessary baggage. A piece of music worn down to shapeless nocturnalisms, a perfect closer.  9/10

Scott McKeating said this about the child tells a lie in Rock A Roller magazine  

An impressive combination of hands-on tape manipulation and outsider guitar self struggle, Posset gets documented on Blyth’s snapshot-of-scene label.  The scope of the landscapes touched here is pretty epic – cassette slouch, lo-fi porch sounds, radiator clank-n- shake to hands-on tones. ‘White sliced life’ is a leaden chime, bursts of tape movement and strung-out muzzled feedback, a highlight among highlights.   

Scott also said this about (the) Solar Plexus self titled debut in Rock A Roller magazine.

This Posset/The Gloom collabo features two satellites of as-it-happens art/energy blasts that cover virtually all the important ‘jam’ territories.  There’s micro-improv, balloon man-handling, metal bashing, vehement noise and amp hum – and is done to great effect.  The stand out though is ‘irregulation’ – thick feedback and tape sabotage flow as stickily as sticky icky.    

Alt Vinyl (Ben Jones/Richard Dawson) said this about four recent releases: stabilo boss, six tape recorders in a quiet cinema, red rice and mump grumpy

 
Stabilo Boss.  Fantastic slice of bashed-up free-splazz electronic gutter-improv from Newcastle's very own, very mysterious Posset. What's a posset?  I hear you cry. It's a hot milk drink, popular in the Middle Ages for its supposed medicinal properties.   
 
Six tape recorders...Perverse rumblings and tainted scratchings from the North East's answer to the end of the world. Mesmerising, hot and thick like a sickly silver liquid. Yow!  

Red Rice.  Another great CDR-puffer from the elusive Posset. Has a way of getting into your brain without you even noticing... Before too long you'll realise the inside of your skull has been scraped clean. Fascinating, fabulous stuff, for fans of Fossils, Jazzfinger and Andrew Coltrane.  

Mump Grumpy.  Totally great new stuff from legendary North-East wonk-merchant Posset - Nobody does this sort of bruised, dilapidated peculiarness better than Posset.... super limited and beautifully packaged.

I found this un-credited review of snakes travel in my blood recently on a website.

Noisy - hardly analogue but metallic crashes - imagine a maniac on a fork lift truck in a steel works - then strangely track 4 seems a continuation of the fork lift sequence - very strange but quite likeable -and some 3 or 4 minutes of silence at the end - or is the Walkman now on the blink?  I think that just about sums things up.

So, what do you think? Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!