UK orders over £50 ship free!
...according to our Clinton on Fri 02 Sep, 2011.
The premise of this project is that Washington DC (not Tyne and Wear, sadly) sound artist BLK Bear re-works Yonokiero's Blue Apples album over the course of four tracks in a CD so sealed that for me to open it would require me to destroy it. Therefore I'm reviewing it off the Internet. The first ditty 'Casey Jr' features manipulated clarinets intertwining beneath breathy vocals while the impressive 'Sumimasen' recalls Grouper or Fieldhead's 'Riser' 10" in its use of distant, dusty cut up vocals. 'BLK Apples' contains scary, beautiful cello and viola drones whilst 'Blue Apples' takes a different tack altogether built around some kind of stringed instrument (dulcimer, zither?) distorted to within and inch of its life and odd slo-mo vocals. It both beggars belief and restores your faith in radio playlisting that this has been receiving airplay on Gideon Coe's 6 Music show. Just don't play it late at night in a draughty empty house, you may terrify yourself to death but its expertly done ambient bliss with moments of unrestrained beauty.
Original sound files are reconfigured and fragments of melody and lyrics are rearranged to accentuate audio decay and broken communications: the melancholy keyboard line from “Sumimasen” is in place sublimated by Morse Code; the Blues-shuffle of “Casey Jnr” is bathed in whispered vocalisations and sombre clarinet tones that punctuate looping cello and percussion. “Blue Apples” is reanimated as both the deep-drone “BLK Apples” and a second reconstruction wherein the original track’s acoustic jaunt is slowed to a snail’s pace of skittering prepared vinyl rhythms, ghostly vocals and the guitar processed to recall instead a samisen.
Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!
Norman Records,
Unit 20, Croydon House,
Croydon Street,
Leeds,
LS11 9RT, UK.
Tel/fax: (+44) 0113 245 4399
Email: phil@normanrecords.com
Follow us on Facebook
We want to be the best online record store in the UK, so please send us your ideas and feedback.
(We don't spam and we won't give your email address to anyone else. One email a week is all you'll ever get. Read our privacy policy.)
For payment and account functions on this site, all traffic is encrypted with SSL. Our SSL certificate is provided by Thawte: view our certificate.
This site is regularly audited for security problems by Netcraft. For more information please take a look at our Netcraft Security Seal.
We don't handle credit card details on this site. When it comes to taking your card payment we hand you straight over to eWAY - a secure, PCI DSS compliant payment gateway.
