Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Shapwick Owl Prints
Risograph prints based on the design of the owl on the back of Jon Brooks Shapwick LP are now available in the shop.
These were printed at Dalstons Ditto Press and are limited to 50 copies, on A3 300mg Munchen off white paper, numbered and signed by Frances Castle.
Monday, 4 March 2013
Jon Brooks Shapwick. 12" Vinyl LP
SOLD OUT
There will be another edition of Shapwick, so if you missed out on this one please sign up to the mailing list or follow on twitter/facebook.
Jon Brooks Shapwick on 12" vinyl is now avaible in the SHOP. 500 hand numbered copies, each with a download code. Featuring new artwork by Frances Castle on beautiful reverse mat board. Previously released as a CD in a limited edition of 110 hand printed copies it sold out within a couple of hours, and Clay Pipe were inundated with requests for the album to be made available on vinyl.
'Share his mysterious vision via snatches of half-familiar incidental music, swathed in memorial reverb, and found sounds such as the echo-location clicks of bats, all recorded on deliciously deteriorating used cassette tapes;
- Stewart Lee. The Sunday Times.
I had been stuck in a five hour long traffic jam on a motorway in the autumn of 2011. At the end of the ordeal, we left the motorway and noticed the traffic was backing up onto local roads near Glastonbury; streams of cars, full of hot-headed motorists crawling along congested highways, the roads groaning under a volume for which they were not designed.
I searched the map for alternative routes. We had several hours of further driving ahead of us and it was already dark. One such route was through an area close to Shapwick, a small rural village. As we joined the approach to the village, we headed through several miles of unlit roads, with nothing but gnarled trees and woodland either side, the car headlights suggesting the twists and turns ahead.
I felt a certain energy around the place. The images created by the trees in the dark conjured inspiration and it struck me that an album could be based on an imaginary impression of this area. I had already recorded some pieces that were in search of a home and the idea formed within seconds.
The music I had been writing was recorded directly to a four-track cassette recorder. There were some piano recordings that I had made at my uncle and aunt's house in Devon (where I had stayed prior to the traffic jam), along with other acoustic and electronic pieces. With the Shapwick framework in mind, I recorded much more material. Using everything from a song harp in a garden, to a modular analogue synthesizer, I set about creating textures that would place my own notion of Shapwick on some kind of map; to create a geographic narrative.
I carried forward the notion of recording on four-track cassette - a very immediate recording medium, where there is little chance to manipulate the sound after the fact. This way of working shaped the project further and the medium suggested textures by itself - I had been using very old second-hand cassette stock that had been recorded on by others; subsequently, fragments of recordings already on the tapes showed up at various points and took on their own new lives in the tapestry.
The reality of Shapwick is probably quite different to the impression in my own mind, but nonetheless I think it's interesting to form an impression based on how a place could be, just by passing through it in the dark... and building from there.
There will be another edition of Shapwick, so if you missed out on this one please sign up to the mailing list or follow on twitter/facebook.
Jon Brooks Shapwick on 12" vinyl is now avaible in the SHOP. 500 hand numbered copies, each with a download code. Featuring new artwork by Frances Castle on beautiful reverse mat board. Previously released as a CD in a limited edition of 110 hand printed copies it sold out within a couple of hours, and Clay Pipe were inundated with requests for the album to be made available on vinyl.
£14.99 +P&P BUY
'Share his mysterious vision via snatches of half-familiar incidental music, swathed in memorial reverb, and found sounds such as the echo-location clicks of bats, all recorded on deliciously deteriorating used cassette tapes;
- Stewart Lee. The Sunday Times.
'And
then Brooks brings out the real treasure: his most focused musical
compositions yet; think his Advisory Circle LPs cleaned of public
information films but beefed up with extra melody.'
-George Bass. Drowned in Sound.I had been stuck in a five hour long traffic jam on a motorway in the autumn of 2011. At the end of the ordeal, we left the motorway and noticed the traffic was backing up onto local roads near Glastonbury; streams of cars, full of hot-headed motorists crawling along congested highways, the roads groaning under a volume for which they were not designed.
I searched the map for alternative routes. We had several hours of further driving ahead of us and it was already dark. One such route was through an area close to Shapwick, a small rural village. As we joined the approach to the village, we headed through several miles of unlit roads, with nothing but gnarled trees and woodland either side, the car headlights suggesting the twists and turns ahead.
I felt a certain energy around the place. The images created by the trees in the dark conjured inspiration and it struck me that an album could be based on an imaginary impression of this area. I had already recorded some pieces that were in search of a home and the idea formed within seconds.
The music I had been writing was recorded directly to a four-track cassette recorder. There were some piano recordings that I had made at my uncle and aunt's house in Devon (where I had stayed prior to the traffic jam), along with other acoustic and electronic pieces. With the Shapwick framework in mind, I recorded much more material. Using everything from a song harp in a garden, to a modular analogue synthesizer, I set about creating textures that would place my own notion of Shapwick on some kind of map; to create a geographic narrative.
I carried forward the notion of recording on four-track cassette - a very immediate recording medium, where there is little chance to manipulate the sound after the fact. This way of working shaped the project further and the medium suggested textures by itself - I had been using very old second-hand cassette stock that had been recorded on by others; subsequently, fragments of recordings already on the tapes showed up at various points and took on their own new lives in the tapestry.
The reality of Shapwick is probably quite different to the impression in my own mind, but nonetheless I think it's interesting to form an impression based on how a place could be, just by passing through it in the dark... and building from there.
Thursday, 21 February 2013
Pre Order Jon Brooks 'Shapwick' Monday 4th March
Jon Brooks's Shapwick (12" vinyl with download code) will be available for pre-order on Monday 4th March. With the proper release date being Monday 25th March - because of manufacturing faults Shapwick has had to be re-pressed, hence the delay. If you would like to be reminded please sign up to the mailing list, or twitter /facebook.
To wet your appetite here is a great review of Shapwick from George Bass over at Drowned in Sound
Last year retro soundtrack wizard The Advisory Circle, aka Jon Brooks, took a breather from his native Ghost Box label to release Shapwick: a hand-printed CD of bewitching, original library music. The track titles and samples described a rural hideaway cut from similar cloth to his Advisory Circle output but much more melodic, and much harder to get hold of (the initial run of 110 printed by Clay Pipe was snapped up almost overnight). The imprint are now reissuing Shapwick on a larger order of vinyl - bad news for elitists, good news for anyone who wants to hear those replicated Cold War delights on authentic analogue technology.
Wherever the imaginary town of Shapwick, is you have to navigate a lot of ambience to find it - the elegant melodies Brooks has concocted are shrouded in fuzzy, unnerving mystique. ‘Stranded Work’ emits chirps recorded in an aviary, while ‘Location’ picks up the roar of a motorway and builds it to a screaming hiss. These are tasters, and later Brooks employs full field recordings that go to even quirkier places: ‘Bat Walk’ is a tape of a nature walk whose Karl Pilkington-like host blows raspberries, and ‘…little apple…' hides its analogue synths in a chopped-up answerphone message. Mix in drone horror, manipulated sine waves and twangs and you’ve got white noise so dark it’d confuse the hell out of anyone.
But beyond the strangeness lies an even more rewarding world, one of brief but brilliant lullabies. Unlike the spooky half, these are precisely the kind of tunes you want fizzing in your ears if you’re walking through dark countryside: ‘Winter’s Hamlet’ is a kids’ TV theme played on echoing, blurry piano, while ‘In The Slow Cold Air’ plays with Múm-like music boxes. These moments help take the edge off the creepy tracks, and light numbers like ‘Small Scales, Shrunken Spaces’ use chimes/Theremins/plucked springs to deliver expertly concocted shots of nostalgia. If you liked the music from The BFG animation you’re going to go crazy for this.
And then Brooks brings out the real treasure: his most focused musical compositions yet; think his Advisory Circle LPs cleaned of public information films but beefed up with extra melody. He delivers rich, tuneful vignettes: descending Eighties synths on ‘Please Drive Carefully’, ‘Quiet Movement for a Silent Night’ and its cracked Perfume Genius piano. It balances the shapeless ghosts of Shapwick with rhythmic electronica, and completes Brooks’ vision of a twinkling nightscape that honours the strangest parts of your dreams, including the feeling your teeth are disintegrating and the falling sensation/hypnic jerk.
To wet your appetite here is a great review of Shapwick from George Bass over at Drowned in Sound
*************************************
Last year retro soundtrack wizard The Advisory Circle, aka Jon Brooks, took a breather from his native Ghost Box label to release Shapwick: a hand-printed CD of bewitching, original library music. The track titles and samples described a rural hideaway cut from similar cloth to his Advisory Circle output but much more melodic, and much harder to get hold of (the initial run of 110 printed by Clay Pipe was snapped up almost overnight). The imprint are now reissuing Shapwick on a larger order of vinyl - bad news for elitists, good news for anyone who wants to hear those replicated Cold War delights on authentic analogue technology.
Wherever the imaginary town of Shapwick, is you have to navigate a lot of ambience to find it - the elegant melodies Brooks has concocted are shrouded in fuzzy, unnerving mystique. ‘Stranded Work’ emits chirps recorded in an aviary, while ‘Location’ picks up the roar of a motorway and builds it to a screaming hiss. These are tasters, and later Brooks employs full field recordings that go to even quirkier places: ‘Bat Walk’ is a tape of a nature walk whose Karl Pilkington-like host blows raspberries, and ‘…little apple…' hides its analogue synths in a chopped-up answerphone message. Mix in drone horror, manipulated sine waves and twangs and you’ve got white noise so dark it’d confuse the hell out of anyone.
But beyond the strangeness lies an even more rewarding world, one of brief but brilliant lullabies. Unlike the spooky half, these are precisely the kind of tunes you want fizzing in your ears if you’re walking through dark countryside: ‘Winter’s Hamlet’ is a kids’ TV theme played on echoing, blurry piano, while ‘In The Slow Cold Air’ plays with Múm-like music boxes. These moments help take the edge off the creepy tracks, and light numbers like ‘Small Scales, Shrunken Spaces’ use chimes/Theremins/plucked springs to deliver expertly concocted shots of nostalgia. If you liked the music from The BFG animation you’re going to go crazy for this.
And then Brooks brings out the real treasure: his most focused musical compositions yet; think his Advisory Circle LPs cleaned of public information films but beefed up with extra melody. He delivers rich, tuneful vignettes: descending Eighties synths on ‘Please Drive Carefully’, ‘Quiet Movement for a Silent Night’ and its cracked Perfume Genius piano. It balances the shapeless ghosts of Shapwick with rhythmic electronica, and completes Brooks’ vision of a twinkling nightscape that honours the strangest parts of your dreams, including the feeling your teeth are disintegrating and the falling sensation/hypnic jerk.
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Jon Brooks Shapwick Release Date Put Back.
There have been some problems with the pressing of Jon Brooks Shapwick, and it looks like we are not going to make the release date of the 25th Feb. As soon as I have a new release date I will let you know.
Thursday, 17 January 2013
Jon Brook's "Shapwick" Due 25th February.
I'm very happy to announce that Jon Brook's 'Shapwick' on 12" vinyl will be available from the 25th February 2013.
Previously
released
as a CD in a limited edition of 110 hand printed copies it sold out
within a couple of hours, and Clay Pipe were inundated with requests
for the album to be made available on vinyl. The vinyl release features
new artwork by Frances Castle on beautiful reverse mat board, and is limited to 500 hand numbered copies, each
with a download code.
It's funny how serendipity can shape the creative process. The most unlikely situations can provide a framework. Shapwick is just such a case in point.
I had been stuck in a five hour long traffic jam on a motorway in the autumn of 2011. At the end of the ordeal, we left the motorway and noticed the traffic was backing up onto local roads near Glastonbury; streams of cars, full of hot-headed motorists crawling along congested highways, the roads groaning under a volume for which they were not designed.
I searched the map for alternative routes. We had several hours of further driving ahead of us and it was already dark. One such route was through an area close to Shapwick, a small rural village. As we joined the approach to the village, we headed through several miles of unlit roads, with nothing but gnarled trees and woodland either side, the car headlights suggesting the twists and turns ahead.
I felt a certain energy around the place. The images created by the trees in the dark conjured inspiration and it struck me that an album could be based on an imaginary impression of this area. I had already recorded some pieces that were in search of a home and the idea formed within seconds.
The music I had been writing was recorded directly to a four-track cassette recorder. There were some piano recordings that I had made at my uncle and aunt's house in Devon (where I had stayed prior to the traffic jam), along with other acoustic and electronic pieces. With the Shapwick framework in mind, I recorded much more material. Using everything from a song harp in a garden, to a modular analogue synthesizer, I set about creating textures that would place my own notion of Shapwick on some kind of map; to create a geographic narrative.
I carried forward the notion of recording on four-track cassette - a very immediate recording medium, where there is little chance to manipulate the sound after the fact. This way of working shaped the project further and the medium suggested textures by itself - I had been using very old second-hand cassette stock that had been recorded on by others; subsequently, fragments of recordings already on the tapes showed up at various points and took on their own new lives in the tapestry.
The reality of Shapwick is probably quite different to the impression in my own mind, but nonetheless I think it's interesting to form an impression based on how a place could be, just by passing through it in the dark... and building from there.
- Jb
**************
It's funny how serendipity can shape the creative process. The most unlikely situations can provide a framework. Shapwick is just such a case in point.
I had been stuck in a five hour long traffic jam on a motorway in the autumn of 2011. At the end of the ordeal, we left the motorway and noticed the traffic was backing up onto local roads near Glastonbury; streams of cars, full of hot-headed motorists crawling along congested highways, the roads groaning under a volume for which they were not designed.
I searched the map for alternative routes. We had several hours of further driving ahead of us and it was already dark. One such route was through an area close to Shapwick, a small rural village. As we joined the approach to the village, we headed through several miles of unlit roads, with nothing but gnarled trees and woodland either side, the car headlights suggesting the twists and turns ahead.
I felt a certain energy around the place. The images created by the trees in the dark conjured inspiration and it struck me that an album could be based on an imaginary impression of this area. I had already recorded some pieces that were in search of a home and the idea formed within seconds.
The music I had been writing was recorded directly to a four-track cassette recorder. There were some piano recordings that I had made at my uncle and aunt's house in Devon (where I had stayed prior to the traffic jam), along with other acoustic and electronic pieces. With the Shapwick framework in mind, I recorded much more material. Using everything from a song harp in a garden, to a modular analogue synthesizer, I set about creating textures that would place my own notion of Shapwick on some kind of map; to create a geographic narrative.
I carried forward the notion of recording on four-track cassette - a very immediate recording medium, where there is little chance to manipulate the sound after the fact. This way of working shaped the project further and the medium suggested textures by itself - I had been using very old second-hand cassette stock that had been recorded on by others; subsequently, fragments of recordings already on the tapes showed up at various points and took on their own new lives in the tapestry.
The reality of Shapwick is probably quite different to the impression in my own mind, but nonetheless I think it's interesting to form an impression based on how a place could be, just by passing through it in the dark... and building from there.
- Jb
Thursday, 20 December 2012
Seasons Greetings
Thanks to everyone who has supported Clay Pipe Music this year, it has been hard work but exciting and now I'm looking forward to 2013 and the first vinyl releases on Clay Pipe.
Jon Brooks 'Shapwick' is being pressed as I write this, and if all goes to plan we are hoping for a late February release. There will be 500 hand numbered copies and each copy will come with a download code. I'll be posting updates in the New Year, so keep checking back to the website.
Later in the spring I will be releasing Plinths 'Smalls Lighthouse' on vinyl - this was initially released on Second Language in a edition of only 150 CDs, and is long due a re-release. It is a really beautiful piece of music that deserves to be heard by more people.
As usual I'll be throwing all my energies into making these interesting and well designed packages.
Plinth - Sirens (excerpt) from michael tanner on Vimeo.
Jon Brooks 'Shapwick' is being pressed as I write this, and if all goes to plan we are hoping for a late February release. There will be 500 hand numbered copies and each copy will come with a download code. I'll be posting updates in the New Year, so keep checking back to the website.
Later in the spring I will be releasing Plinths 'Smalls Lighthouse' on vinyl - this was initially released on Second Language in a edition of only 150 CDs, and is long due a re-release. It is a really beautiful piece of music that deserves to be heard by more people.
As usual I'll be throwing all my energies into making these interesting and well designed packages.
Plinth - Sirens (excerpt) from michael tanner on Vimeo.
Friday, 12 October 2012
Tyneham House
**SOLD OUT**
This is the second edition of the CD that was originally released as a split between Second Language and Clay Pipe, it differs to the first edition in that it has a green cassette and comes with a download code for the audio on the cassette.
Limited edition of 50 numbered copies of CD and cassette in a Gocco printed card box, with a handmade canvas covered booklet of illustrations by Frances Castle.
*Only one order per person.
*****************************
The small village of Tyneham, on the beautiful Isle of Purbeck, in Dorset, was once a thriving little community – that is until the British Government requisitioned it for training manoeuvres and other ‘strategic purposes’ in the run up to WWII. This was supposed to be a temporary measure, but the area remained in military possession long after hostilities had ceased, causing distress among former inhabitants, many of whom were farmed out to prefabs in nearby Wareham and Swanage.
Tyneham
was characterised by its red telephone box, a tiny parade of shops –
Post Office Row – and a grand country pile which stood about half a
mile away from the village: Tyneham House. The army removed the
building’s oak panelling and ornate decorative details and promptly set
about using it for target practice. So great was the shame expressed
locally about the damage inflicted upon one of Dorset’s grandest houses
that the powers that be decided to grow a copse around the remains of
the structure to give the impression that it was no longer there.
Despite this, a substantial part of the structure remains intact,
including its Saxon hall.
Land
access around Tyneham was opened up in the 1970s, but admission to the
house remains strictly verboten. Those who’ve been found around the
premises, especially anyone wielding a camera, have felt the full
weight of military trespass law. Tyneham today is regarded as a nature
reserve by some – as a national embarrassment by others. It’s still a
political hot potato, in Dorset at least.
The pastoral, wistful yet ineffably disquieting music of Tyneham House
is made by artists who have previously graced Second Language
releases, but who wish to remain anonymous here, save for their
eponymous title. The musicians are happy, however, to let it be known
that these recordings have been around for some years (many of them
complied from old cassettes) and that they take inspiration from the
1960s/’70s/’80s work of the Children’s Film Foundation – a body who
really ought to have made a film about this mysterious West Country
curio. At least now we have its endlessly poignant soundtrack.
'Tyneham House' is
a joint release between the London-based independent labels, Second
Language and Clay Pipe Music. This 14 track CD album comes packaged in a
Gocco-printed card box with booklet and cassette tape of bonus
material (18+ minutes) - all beautifully illustrated throughout by
award winning artist Frances Castle of Clay Pipe Music.
This is SL015/Pipe003_02. Limited to 50 copies only.
Tracklisting (CD) :
• A Chalk Horse
• Rookery Wood
• Coppice Walk
• Binoculars
• Bletchingley
• Post Office Row
• The Crows Circle
• Winter Carriage
• The Ragged Cat
• I Shall Not Cross The Sleeping Hill
• The Porch Room
• Saxon Chapel
• Last Village Before The Sea
• Lit Room At Midnight
• Rookery Wood
• Coppice Walk
• Binoculars
• Bletchingley
• Post Office Row
• The Crows Circle
• Winter Carriage
• The Ragged Cat
• I Shall Not Cross The Sleeping Hill
• The Porch Room
• Saxon Chapel
• Last Village Before The Sea
• Lit Room At Midnight
Tracklisting (Cassette) :
A: A School Holiday, 1977
B: May Day, 1981
B: May Day, 1981
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
Darren Haymans Lido - Edition 2
Now available the second edition of Darren Haymans Lido, it has a different Gocco printed cover to the first edition and is limited to just 200 copies.
Buy it in the SHOP
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