Scissors And Sellotape - For The Tired And Ill At Ease

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5...according to our Mike on Wed 11 Jan, 2012.

John McCaffrey is one of those artists who goes under multiple pseudonyms to distinguish between his work of different styles. You might already be familiar with his work as Part Timer or Upward Arrows. On this record he's recorded a load of piano and organ in a church one afternoon with his friend and collaborator Heidi Elva, and then used those recordings as source material for an album of cut up samples and manipulated sounds. Although Elva found the resulting sounds “unrecognisable”, it's not mind-mangling musique concrete he's come out with, but a series of soothing, melodic, ethereal meditations. Gorgeously captured piano tones with swells of drone and occasional moments of field recordings and I think I spotted a violin at one point. The cover art is pretty cool, too. Very mysterious, with almost no text and a lovely big double-sided poster with black and white photos of cemetery angels. I guess for me this falls between the modern minimal tinkly likes of Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds and the more composed ambient/drone types like Stars Of The Lid or A Winged Victory For The Sullen. Rich, absorbing, detailed, glacially paced music that you'll find yourself smoking cigars to, on your own, late at night, on the balcony of an Eastbourne hotel, in the nude, in October, while a pair of homeless men fight over a sandwich in the car park opposite.

‘…For the Tired And Ill At Ease…’ is the cumulative result of several years of John McCaffrey’s shoulder to the musical grindstone; originally a member of electronica duo Clickits, McCaffrey moved from Accrington in the North West of England to Melbourne, Australia and started solo project Part Timer. His release as Scissors And Sellotape on Fac-ture follows the eponymous 2009 debut on Cotton Goods and numerous projects as both Part Timer and Upward Arrows for Moteer, Mobeer, Flau, Under The Spire and Lost Tribe Sound, including a number of solo self releases and collaborations with Nicola Hodgkinson, frequent muse Heidi Elva, multi- instrumentalist Aaron Martin and vocalist wife Danielle.

As Part Timer, McCaffrey concentrates on mixtures of delicate folk flavours and electronic augmentation. Upwards Arrows is an outlet for his drone material. Scissors And Sellotape is a different beast, an articulate mix of subtle electronic manipulation, field noise, restrained melody and maudlin texture. Recorded in 3 hours at St Mary’s Church in Thornbury, ‘…For the Tired And Ill At Ease…’ is an eleven-track deconstruction of the piano and organ pieces taken from the day, edited, resampled and stretched so comprehensively that after four weeks work even contributor Elva found them unrecognizable.

The album reflects an atheist’s fascination with the continuing hold that theology has over people – that despite years of humanistic advance, people still turn to their religion for meaning or relief from the pressures of the real world. The track titles link to this theme in more ways than one, joining on to either the beginning or end – “For The Tired And Ill At Ease…There Is No Succour”, “It’s A Long Slog…For The Tired And Ill At Ease”, “ For The Tired And Ill At Ease…I Say Get Used To It”.

“I think people see all kinds of things in religion…in some ways it’s whatever you need it to be. You can project your fears, hopes, or conceptions of justice on to it, and find some validating stream of thought.“ John McCaffrey

Listeners with sharp ears may recognize the track “Healing Touch” from the Fluid/Hibernate compilation ‘Kanshin’, and those familiar with this and previous releases will recognize a sure hand; an artistic confidence that could take the listener in any direction, at any given moment…

Standard Edition Of 100 Includes:

180 gm Pure virgin vinyl
300 gm Heavy matt FSC sustainable board printed using vegetable-based inks with black inner sleeves
A2 Bespoke photographic poster that folds down to A5 on 190 gm uncoated stock
Card and download code

Mastered by Taylor Deupree

Reviews:

The music is graceful, the mood dream-like, and the tempos slow and ponderous—a combination conducive to meditation, reflection, and mental drift that proves potent, no matter the precise nature of one's religious orientation. - Textura

For the Tired and Ill at Ease comes wrapped in the grand reverb of St Mary’s Church in Thornbury – the intimacy arrives as an embrace from all sides, with an emotional immediacy of soft notes and pedal clunks neatly juxtaposed with a sense of time blurred and distorted by the washes of echo. - ATTN Magazine

This album simply discovered me. All of its little quirks (the glitching on here is tastefully done) simply work towards making an emotional, dramatic statement. “For the Tired and Ill at Ease” is an instantly enjoyable, emotional, and oftentimes physical album. - Beach Sloth

A beautiful, haunting album of elegant minimal piano melodies. - Morpheus Music

Fitting fine inbetween recent projects of people like Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Clem Leek. - Ambient Blog

Music that has it's own fluorescence which is not visible to the human eye, but always favorable for ours souls. - Blear Moon

The listener could easily lay their own emotional interpretation over these gentle soundscapes - extremely fitting and complementary to the album’s backstory. - Binge Cringe Winge