Space Weather - Low Earth

'Low Earth', the eagerly-awaited second album by Scottish astral voyagers, Space Weather, is released on 1 March 2010 again on the band’s own label, Space Weather Recordings (BwbW 02).

Following on from last year's eponymous debut, the trio of Alistair Crosbie (electric guitar), Brian Lavelle (synthesizer) and Andrew Paine (electric bass guitar) build upon the strengths of that earlier stellar outing to create a darker, more dense album in 'Low Earth', which is truly progressive in nature.

The album is limited to 100 copies only and comes in a pro-printed colour sleeve with pro-duplicated colour disc-print. The CDR release costs 5GBP and is available for pre-order now.

POSTAGE & PAYPAL INFORMATION - CDRS - In the UK, please add 50p towards p&p for one disc, £1 for 2 or more. Outside the UK, please add £1 towards p&p for one disc, £2 for 2 or more. Paypal is preferred - the address is sonicoysterrecords (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk.

Functions of Hedgerow - Andrew Paine (SOR31) - Norman Speaks!

Thanks to Norman Records for this recent review on 'Functions of Hedgerow' by Andrew Paine

"Spooky CDr from Andrew Paine. Occasionally employing a muted take on spoken word performance within the realms of these haunting, screeing & whirring tendrils of drone modulation, in the process creating a sinister but utterly captivating backdrop. I've always been a fan of spooked sounds and 'Functions of Hedgerow' doesn't remotely disappoint. The track 'Scent of Green', for instance, sounds like Broadcast creeping through a seriously haunted wood at the dead of night, wavering, quivering analog keys being enveloped by dark spectral shadows. I'd love to listen to this in the dark with just some flickering candles for company! Utterly beautiful, menacing stuff!"

Andrew Paine & Richard Youngs - Guide to Music (SOR33)

Richard Youngs & Andrew Paine - Guide to Music (SOR33)
CDR - Strictly Limited Edition (Numbered) 100 Copies £5.00

Richard and Andrew provide you with another 'singular release' - a range of oblique and idiosyncratic references from the musical spectrum. The whole thing represents a collision of popular styles, providing an energetic, exciting tour of undiscovered musical hinterlands. Released on 15 February : available for pre-order now and shipping on 12 February 2010. The CDR release costs 5GBP.

POSTAGE & PAYPAL INFORMATION - CDRS - In the UK, please add 50p towards p&p for one disc, £1 for 2 or more. Outside the UK, please add £1 towards p&p for one disc, £2 for 2 or more. Paypal is preferred - the address is sonicoysterrecords (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk. This is also the address if you wish to make contact for any other reason.

Tex La Homa - Driebergen Zeist (SOR32)

TexlaHoma - Driebergen Zeist (SOR32)
CDR - Limited Edition Edition 50 copies £5.00

Tex La Homa is the songwriting and recording project of Matthew Shaw who also makes music with 230 Divisadero with Nick Grey, The Blue Tree with Andrew Paine, Fougou with Brian Lavelle, Cat Lady with Michael Tanner and Grand Feast of the Dead with Mark Fry.

Matthew also runs the label apollolaan recordings, releasing music by Kawabata Makoto, White Hills, The A Band, Andrew Paine, Plastic Crimewave, Plinth, Brian Lavelle, Directorsound & many others.

Recorded between December 2009 - January 2010 Texlahoma's 'Driebergen-Zeist' offers the listener a perfect distillation on a corner of a season - a valediction on mindfulness:

"Snow turned to ice, followed by Fresh snow. Ponds turned to ice,
children skating. Old years eve, fireworks, and a new dawn, a new
year, a new decade. A Birthday celebration, family, friend and
good times. A warning, a test warning, only to be used if something
really terrible happens…..but for now calm almost complete
silence, just the faint sound of accordion, children’s toys and wind
chimes. The birds and red squirrels searching for food in the
forest and gardens, a beautiful clear sky and the sound of
laughter. Then the train to the airport, and onwards to home."

Driebergen-Zeist is now available for pre-order and will start shipping on 12 February 2010. The CDR release costs 5GBP.

POSTAGE & PAYPAL INFORMATION - CDRS - In the UK, please add 50p towards p&p for one disc, £1 for 2 or more. Outside the UK, please add £1 towards p&p for one disc, £2 for 2 or more. Paypal is preferred - the address is sonicoysterrecords (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk. This is also the address if you wish to make contact for any other reason.

Tokyo Garden Suite

Richard Youngs & Andrew Paine "Tokyo Garden Suite"
Sonic Oyster

Tokyo Garden Suite is quite unlike most other collaborations between Richard Youngs and Andrew Paine, and it definitely feels like their most Frankenstein work to date. This single 31 minute piece has an air of conscious construction despite its assortment of weird ingredients. At its heart Tokyo Garden Suite is a bewildering soliloquy, one that’s touched by a slight shift in time or space. Words and phrases appear out of the blue, taken from their context and jumbled up. As the piece progresses the text is switched between narrators, and ends up making a form of exquisite corpse cut-up sense. With vocals handled by Youngs, Paine and Steve Todd (a Youngs collaborator from way back), this is a tale told and retold across the airwaves. The track’s roots can be tracked back to the duo’s 2009 release “Earth Rod”, its closing track “Tokyo Suite (Intro)” a brief taste of what was to come (and adding to the release’s endless/always was feel). There are perhaps imagined, perhaps tenuous connections with the constructs of some of the word visions of some of England’s other sons. Though the revelations here are more tied up and weirdly interlinking, it’s less oblique and Blakeian perhaps - but there is a strand of Englishness here. It’s very much an odd out-of-state piece musically too; the worlds that are usually invisible between sepia piano (an instant reconnect to the past), the jagged blunt/raw tones of feedback from Youngs and the sounds of the shakuhachi are linked across this narrative. Youngs and Paine playing instruments that makes for unlikely bedfellows in an unexpected but very effective musical menage-a-trois. 8/10 -- Scott McKeating (2 February, 2010)

After Wednesday

Scott McKeating recently reviewed 'After Wednesday' for Foxy Digitalis:

Where much of Andrew Paine’s solo work has a progressive rock/experimental bent, this is probably the most pure ambient/scape piece he’s released to date. Just shy of 27 minutes long, “After Wednesday” is a gorgeously skeletal blend of both being-alone and loss formed from the seeds of empty room piano, gentle free percussion and bird sound field recordings. Paine has made a record that somehow feels outside of everyday reality, somewhere outside of real life but still connected through melancholy and remembrance. It’s also a record that finds itself placed between two different aural environments. With bird recordings sounding like they’re taken from deep in a wood, the artwork pushes the mind towards the idea of post-dawn drifting across a lake. There’s a kind of inward-looking detachment here, (making it tempting to want to get in touch and ask if everything’s ok), “After Wednesday” is a man’s quiet moments filtered through a sparingly glitter-flecked fug. 9/10