Arkhonia - Trails / Traces

Key Selling Points: - Slow-burning drone constructions for fans of Andrew Chalk , Thomas Koner, Machinefabriek, Lawrence English and Alva Noto’s ‘Xerrox Vol.1’
- Another release from Manchester’s White Box label, continuing to source an unacknowledged and untapped pool of local music-makers
- Features the previously unreleased full length original version of the sought-after track ‘DDRhodes’
- Debut release from one half of jz-arkh, as included on the Kompakt ‘Pop Ambient 2002’ compilation and Neil Tennant’s ‘Back To Mine’ mix in 2005

Info: This is a collection of drone based, slow moving progressions, all realized without the use of any live instrumentation, or any trained musical ear. Small fragments of sound have been stretched, edited, filtered, reduced and manipulated to create an often barren and solitary sonic landscape. The source materials have been either expanded from a limited input (a couple of Fender Rhodes notes into tracks 2, 3 & 4), broken down and transformed into something entirely distinct from its origin (a few picked acoustic guitar chords on FyldeFF), or transmuted into a bold and dark shadow of its former self (a snippet of a live recording of a Liondialer pub gig into GDLadyburn) – all collated into one seamless sequence. Arkhonia’s music is indeed a peculiar animal. And it’s a deep, deep listening experience which plunges the listener further into states of subconscious unrest – time slows down or stops, as the listener slowly slips into a narcoleptic state through the slow decline into computer noise (BCTrails/CDTraces), or sound events which unfold with no discernable pattern or meaning (Events/Non-Events). But rather than offering a monotonous serial drone, these tracks create an overall landscape, alternately dank and warm to the point of humidity, and cold, stark and sparse, all
eventually dissipating into nothingness as the album closes, reprising the pulses and washes of its opening. These tracks have been very consciously constructed, with edits and segments extracted from outputted ‘drift studies’ (with a knowing nod to both LaMonte Young and Brian Eno) that often run for an hour or so, and then dissected for key musical components. These explorations focus on ideas
of musical ‘events and non-events’; subdued harmonic monotones and stasis contrasting with huge dynamic surges of processed tones - insistent, at times bordering on the subsonic, and tonally identifiable as Arkhonia’s distinctly digital sound signature.

Background: Back in 2001 a grey vinyl 7” emerged by an anonymous duo operating under the rather inconspicuous moniker of jz-arkh (or
www.jz-arkh.co.uk, the ‘jz’ being J.S. Zeiter/ MCMLXV). Their first 7” (ddrhodes / js_orch) created something of an small buzz due to its subtle tonal manipulations and slow looping repetitions. A second clear vinyl 7” followed (arkh_06v2 / fastwav_r), attaining an equal measure of ‘under the radar’ praise. DDRhodes in isolation (featured here in its original unedited form) acquired something of a life of its own, appearing on Kompakt's Pop Ambient 2002 comp, soundtracking a dream sequence in a short experimental film, then used in an advert for the Norwegian Postal Service(!), and finally turning up on Neil Tennant's mix for the Pet Shop Boys Back To Mine compilation in 2005. Up until now then there have been no further releases by jz-arkh or Arkhonia, although various live gig recordings made by Arkhonia have appeared on various small releases (live recording and editing work culminating in ‘Liondialer LIVE!’ (WHITEBOX003) last year, a sequenced CD album culled from over 6 hours of live improvisation by Greg Haines & Danny Saul’s duo). ‘Trails/Traces’ pulls together an album’s worth of material taken from a sizeable body of unreleased work made over the course of the past nine years.

Tracklist:

1. AAOpening
2. BCTrails
3. CDTraces
4. DDRhodes
5. Events/Non-Events
6. FyldeFF
7. GDLadyburn
8. DDClose

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