The debut album, Can we meet in San Diego? by Katy Coxwell is an exceptional, beautiful, winding and consistently intriguing work. Over 10 tracks, the listener is treated to a journey through myriad moods and delicate atmospheres picked out in gentle melodic phrases, artful modular synth patterns, strings and haunting soundfields. 

Coxwell marries a rarified, electronic machine tone appreciation of synthesised sound with an often classical chord structure and as a composer seems as at home on a grand piano as behind a bleeping, pulsing box of wires and knobs. The result is an album of immense depths that defies genre and is both unpredictable and uncannily moving.

Can we meet in San Diego?, listened to as a whole album undoubtedly creates a distinct mood, but certain of the tracks will stand out to many, such as The Great Washed, so it is not surprising it attracted the attention of the Adventurous Music label almost as soon as it entered the grey clay mix.

The album also does something very strange to time! Each track seems to command time and pace in an unhurried yet purposeful way which gives an impression of a much longer journey than the 33 minutes it plays for. Quite how that is achieved I don’t know but I love that it does this.

Katy Coxwell is a composer, artist and musician living near Toronto, Canada with a lifetime of making unusual acoustic and electronic music, both solo and in numerous collaborations. 

T.Čelet Apr24

Calma para Nós is a 28-track album playing 2 hours 50 minutes of diverse, jazz infused, experimental electronic/ electroacoustic composition by Luiz Ser Eu. The fact that this feature slot maxes out at 2 hours means, agonisingly, I am unable to play the entire album but 2 hours should certainly whet the appetite!

Where to start? Pulso - the opening track, introduces the lightness of touch, melodic atonality (through piano, guitar and woodwind) and the rhythmic assuredness that feature across the entire album in different ways, but interestingly also has voice.

Typically, the following track, cheiro de chuva, cheiro de vida takes you somewhere completely different in its gorgeously intoxicating looped electronic dreamy way; somewhere I have wanted to go back to time after time. Then comes one of the most haunting tracks, bonnatriz, which creates a totally unexpected state of relaxed uncertainty - like, if this was a film soundtrack, you would be exploring the glistening crystal interior of some creature’s mountain cave laboratory. For sure.

The album proceeds through a rainbow of moods like this, with a wild unpredictability, freshness but also warmth. The drunkenness of random discord married to a melodic and rhythmic order that never quite falls over, never quite becomes fixed. Whilst there are several tracks that jump with the full instrumental palette, there are also many many in which the artist demonstrates the masterful command of simplicity, where a single sound can carry the moment and take you right into it. 

One moment you are being affectionately tickled by impish synth burbles laid over jazz double bass and drums, the next you are thrust into a storm of detuned piano notes that gradually lean towards some order before disintegrating like a dying musical box in pizzicato slow-mo.

The track, rainy day stands out for me as well for its rising, swelling, plunging tonality, minimal palette and the fact he keeps it going for 15 wonderful drifting minutes, without breaking the spell or feeling the need to take it anywhere else, before snapping it off at the end.

This is a huge album, and I’m not talking about the length of it. The sheer vastness of moods and spaces it takes you to; the variety of constructions; musicianship; use and abuse of theory. It will challenge you in places, delight and enchant in others, but never falls into self-indulgence or lazy formula. So much has gone into it, it is almost impossible to do justice to it here. For most artists this would have been 3 or 4 albums but the fact that this artist gives it to you whole like this is as bold and generous as the music.

Multi-instrumentalist, multi-disciplinary artist Luiz Ser Eu is currently based in Brazil and has been making music ‘non-stop for 8 years’. 

In his bio on this website he writes, ‘A big part of being alive for me is discovering and seeing the unheard sounds. Finding and hearing the emotions that still have no name.’ 

(T.Čelet Apr24)

Celebrating the legend that is… 

INNER DEMONS RECORDS

This week on grey clay we are celebrating 20 years of Inner Demons Records. It was 2004 when Dan Fox Jr  first started the Florida based label, famous for its noise, industrial, drone, ambient, and other experimental/extreme audio material releases, including Dan’s own work (as Fail, Loss, TIWIHWYT, to name but 3).

Each day this week (Mon-Fri) listen to a different mix of work released on IDR by DJ Signalstoerung - playing at 5pm UK time (+1hr CEST, -5hr EST, -8hr PDT).  

What Dan has achieved is impressive to say the least. IDR is a socially responsible, transparent label that provides ‘a safe place to release and interact. Whether you are poor, mentally ill, gay, trans, Black, Asian, female, male, non-binary, or anything else, you are welcome here. Assuming you’re a good person, of course.’

In Dan’s own words…

I originally started the label to release my own material, but by the third release I was putting out the music of others. Back then (the early '00s) I was loving all these small little CDr labels that were everywhere, like Troniks, Fusion Audio, Crunch Pod, Zaftig Research, and others. I wanted to continue releasing work by other artists, but then life became extra chaotic and soul-sucking for a while and the label went dormant for nearly a decade.

What I can say about doing this label for 20 years is that I'm glad I've done it. It's a lot of work for someone who struggles as much as I do, but I've met some amazing people through IDR, including some that have remained close friends. Meeting and working with good people from all over the world has been a privilege, and I'm grateful for it. I have some artists that have released numerous albums on IDR, and there are even a couple that want to release only with IDR. That's an exceptional compliment in my eyes. And most of the people I've encountered are really cool. I have of course run into a few dirtbags, like right with extremists and qanon idiots. Those people are quickly bypassed as I move onto others more worthy of my time.

I'm not sure there was a single standout moment for me doing IDR. It all felt like a big single experience for me. Maybe just the friends I've made along the way?"

Inner Demons Records remains one of the coolest labels out there and so many people have so much to thank it for.

Here’s to the next 20. 

Cheers Dan! 🍻

[see schedule page for today’s mix track list]

https://www.innerdemonsrecords.com

https://innerdemonsrecords.bandcamp.com

(Signalstoerung https://adventurousmusic.bandcamp.com)

(T.Čelet Apr24)

As with the other work by Mntana Wexhwele playing on grey clay, this is a beautiful, beguiling and subtly experimental album of vast profundity. Described as ‘a sound journey’, !Habesi - Instrumental explores the medium of archiving ancient consciousness. Specifically the narratives and stories of Queen Dr. Ouma Katrina Essau: ‘venerating a living archive and consciousness of the Ncuu cosmology.’

What results are 8 distinct tracks composed of mixed traditional and electronic/manipulated instrumentation in which the magical, intimate and utterly intoxicating voice and expression of this great lady are honoured.

For many, like me, the meaning of her words will not be accessible but the life in them, the sincerity and emotion is captivating and universal. The body of work ‘gives life to the multiple genocides, epistimicides and violences inflicted on indigenous communities everywhere.’

Wexhwele has worked a particular magic with the atmospheres surrounding and underlying her words, with a lightness of touch and mesmerising pulse; never overtaking the voice interludes, and yet tonally interacting with them. It took, apparently, a week of communion by a group under the guidance of |Kx’am and thus a series of sounds was produced through the sitting with the vibrations of her story. 

Each word, song and sigh ‘held a universe of linguistic beauty…’

I cannot help but agree.

Mntana Wexhwele is a multi-instrumentalist musician, instrument maker, teacher, therapist, sound healer and cultural custodian of African indigenous knowledge systems and sound technology.

https://www.umnombo-institute.com

(Archive voice by Queen Ouma Katrina, Instrumentation, vocals and electronic production Mntana Wexhwele, Other voices Xola Hammid.)

(T.Čelet Mar24)

The album Hypnotic must be considered alongside the preceding EP, Tantric, by Alinovsky and Tetsuroh Konishi, because together they comprise a continuous body of work so exceptional that I again have to subvert my own ‘featured album’ concept (a bit) to do justice. You’ll find them both on grey clay radio now and it really is my privilege to be playing them.

Hypnotic, an album of 10 tracks, whose titles all end in ‘ic’, will really look after you on the journey, so don’t be afraid. They take you through a whole range of moods but somehow manage to keep up a pace and insistence that just won’t resign its self to the back ground because there’s always something so damn interesting happening.

Konishi’s fluid trumpet playing, processed through an infinity of divine circuits, seems to dance, glide, skitter and plunge across Aninovsky’s throbbingly rhythmic, jazzy spaces. This is a perfect meeting of styles and attitudes - you will not be disappointed.

Tantric, the EP, came out a month before Hypnotic (the album) but from the very first breathy, swirling, sexy exhalation of Konishi’s horn, as it rides through Alinovsky’s addictive electronic massage of textures, you just feel luxurious.

This is experimental, deeply expressive and

… lush.

Alinovsky is a musician from Brussel, Belgium, who also runs the Off Record label. Tetsuroh Konishi is a leading Japanese trumpet player, composer and improviser from Tokyo.

https://stilll-off.bandcamp.com/album/hypnotic

https://stilll-off.bandcamp.com/album/tantric

 (T. Čelet Mar24)

Panopticon by Grey Frequency is just the most elegant, compelling and hypnotic thing. 

I have listened to it for hours. Comprising two tracks, each of 7 minutes 15 seconds, is it constructed out of sounds recorded at the Panopticon Sound Sculpture (by architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu) in the Pennine Hills overlooking Burnley, Lancashire UK.  

Also known as the Singing Ringing Tree, in reference to the 1950s East German children’s magical adventure film, the sculpture, a towering tree-like form, made of metal tubes, resonates in the wind producing the tones utilised in the field recordings that are the basis of this release. The giant tubes ‘looking out’ in all directions giving the piece it’s more Bentham-related moniker.

Grey Frequency’s Panopticon captures the ringing metallic qualities as well as the wind blown drones and even some voices of other international visitors to the site which seem to accentuate the scale and distance that both the sculpture and this piece of music command.

This is a uniquely rich and beautiful release, masterfully recorded and constructed with a huge reverence of place, material and the elements.

Transporting.

Grey Frequency is the music project of UK artist Gavin Morrow.

http://www.greyfrequency.co.uk

 (T. Čelet Mar24)

A Voicenote to the Hierophant is a love letter to someone who doesn't exist, a fever dream that was over before it started.

A fool, inexperienced in the ways of the universe, manifests their ideal soulmate and stumbles across them but the stars are not in alignment, the trauma of the past is all too figural and their lessons are only half learned. 

The Hierophant, themselves an enigma, initially intrigued by the almost adolescent charm of the fool slowly recognises their distance left to travel.  The Hierophant, in this case an earth sign, fixed as they are, self aware and yet still compassionate to the needs of the fool, withdraws.  

The fool, lost yet wanting to learn, knowing both the destination and the road yet untravelled in order to reach it, seeking to be better than they are yet still craving connection in the hopes of achieving it, wrestling with what they know must be.  

And so the dream ends.  The fool, mutable as always, withdraws back into their solitude.  Further lessons to learn, but to learn alone.  Overcoming the trauma of the past, reconciling who they wish to be with who they are.   As for the Hierophant… who knows.. Another soul on their own journey, maybe further along the road and unlikely to be looking back.

Jettenbach resides in North Devon working in Child & Adolescent Mental Health by day and making weird noises when time allows.  

 (Jettenbach Feb24)

This, again, is not technically an album.

It is a 56 minute recording of Gas Organ - a pyrophone (from the Greek pyro-fire, phone-sound) installation that took place in London in 1999 and has just become available to grey clay for its 25th anniversary this year.

I have often been heard to say, “…it’s what comes out of the speakers that matters”, when discussing equipment, but in this case it really is what is making the sound that singles this out as a unique and intriguing thing - both in terms of the elegance of the idea, and what comes ‘out of the speakers’.  

The project of Lou Smith, Gas Organ was a set of church organ sized glass tubes, into which servo-controlled propane gas torches blew their flames, causing the air to heat up and vibrate in each differently lengthed tube. Pressure waves and air turbulence adding vibrato and ‘beats’ to the mix. Each tube also appeared to have its own character, bringing quite different dynamics to the sounds produced. 

The controller for this recording was an analogue random device designed by Dr Alison Payne of Imperial College. Later installations used a Wii remote or radio-controlled model aircraft transmitter. Visitors, using the remote control, could adjust the air/propane mix and gas volume to literally ‘play’ the tubes. 

Video still exists online of this strange and beautiful creature [link below] but now you are invited to spend an hour in its company on grey clay radio, courtesy of the artist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh8048G2AUk

Lou Smith is an artist, photographer, videographer and pondwatcher from South East London.

(T.Čelet, Feb24)

I am one of those people who have to form their own impression of music (or art) before reading up on it. I’m very aware that many people prefer to go about things the other way, and I guess both ways are valid. 

When I first listened to Ghost Circuits Menlo, I was captivated by the vast and varied sounds throughout the 54 minute, 16 track album. Captivated because it really felt like gazing into a huge tropical fish tank. Each of the myriad sounds seem to behave as if they are alive, like some creature or articulated character, flitting, oozing or scuttling through the scene, occasionally engaging in little dramas or mood swings before moving on. I’m sure I was unconsciously cued into this image by the regular watery trickling sounds that anyone who has lived with a big tank in their living room will know well.

So when I did read the information that goes with the album and learned that it is an exploration of the streets of suburban Galway, inspired by the photographs of Maeve O’Neill, I had to laugh at my unknowing self. 

But then reading the info again, I couldn’t help noticing certain words: wriggles… neon…gloam...drifting…labyrinth, and wondered if perhaps I’d picked up on the environment idea, and the characters I perceived were the ‘sonic sigils’.

I’ve never been to Galway but I do know that a truly deep and enduring work of art is successful because people can imbue it with their own meanings and interpretations as well as appreciating the artist’s original intent, which in this case is well worth pursuing.

Ghost Circuits Menlo is a majestic album. It launches into your space and fills it with a richness and detail that continually intrigues and delights the senses. 

Dive in.

The Cube of Unknowing is the project of Francis Heery, a composer and sound artist from Galway, Ireland. [see artist profiles for more]

(T.Čelet, Feb24)

OK, it’s a lie. 

Already! 

This isn’t ‘an album’. It’s grey clay’s selection of work by artist William Henry Meung (et al - as several tracks include other musicians/band names) but I’m just so damned into this music I’m compelled to use this feature as a vehicle for giving it the attention it deserves.

I will also admit I went looking for a grey clay vibe in Aotearoa as the land is close to my heart and famous for its dangerously independent minds. What I eventually found was someone who describes themselves as an experimental outsider, in Dunedin. I actually did the gold dance.

Where to begin? This is passionate experimental music. You could fall in love with it, as I have done, but I think it is music to fall in love to. 

There is a definite low tech, live feel to all the recordings which is an absolute joy and makes all the tracks so much more intimate. Distant distorted keyboards and shuffly drum boxes collapse unexpectedly into the sweetest moments of harmony with janky piano or guitar and long white clouds of white noise and subtle voices that half the time I’m thinking I have imagined. 

Some tracks seem to contain just one complex, straining sound that etches out its melodics on your heart. Others are sketchy guitar phrases that reset you before the next achingly beautiful piece. But don’t get me wrong - there is fierce attitude in this and the sweetness is painted in some pretty gnarly colours. 

I knew I left part of my heart in Aotearoa all those years ago. Hearing this I think it’s been quite happy there.

_________________________________________

Enjoy this grey clay selection for the duration of the feature (around a week) or you can request tracks thereafter when ever you like, or better still, head over to https://williamhenrymeung2.bandcamp.com/music and fill your boots!

(T.Čelet, Jan24)

Gloucester is a jewel of 23 tracks, each around  1, 2 or 3 minutes in length, amounting to 51 minutes 8 seconds in total, but don't let the brevity fool you - this is a work of immense profundity. 

The whole album was made using a 1/8 violin, a viola, a pure data processor and a ring modulator, with which Tourney demonstrates spectacularly the vitality and depth of emotion that can be summoned from such a specific palette.

Despite the diverse and wryly poetic track titles (such as: You sing, you who also wants; You will know no law; The Earth with a city in her hair), this is a beautiful, single, rotating 23-sided prism that I have had playing on rotation for hours without finding a beginning or an end, or wanting to. 

An absolutely masterful work of poise, courage and sweetness where the performance, the source sound and the processing have become one lithe and shimmering voice. Be not afraid.

Nicolas Tourney is a French experimental musician, multimedia artist and is manager of the label Snow in Water Records. 

(T.Čelet, Jan24)

This is an exquisite album. Haunting, strident and strangely surprising, despite what could be regarded as a moderately restricted sound palette. All the stronger for it, as any cook knows, when you start with the highest quality ingredients. 

Comprising seven tracks, or days, that grow in duration up to Day Four and then shorten again to the end, it impressively takes control of time. Quite uncompromisingly so. Ritualistically, this breathes you in and then purges.

Ryo's voice appears from nowhere; finding accord with the classical instrumentation. Intimate and subtle against the electronic/processed sound elements so masterfully painted in. She chants so musically - notes suddenly rising behind her words to create these utterly beautiful accents and nuances. Even instrumental passages feel like they are talking.

And the album is a ritual. It is an interpretation of ancient Japanese spell binding chants, the title translating as 'late night ritual'. The accompanying booklet poetically portrays the protagonist's own journey with their pain and gives another edge to the whole experience .

This is not an album to dip into or scan through. If you do, you will miss it. It requires of you your attention but will reward you handsomely. You may even find you have had your own ritual while doing so. I know I did.

Fabio Keiner is a sound artist from Wien, Austria. You can find more of his work at  fabiokeiner.bandcamp.com/music

Ryo Utasato is a Japanese singer/composer /musician. You can find more of her work at Ryo Utasato.

(T.Čelet, Jan24)

Impulses is one of a clutch of releases from late 2023 by the hugely talented and prolific artist, Hypnotic Transmissions. Like all HT releases, a story builds as you listen and they feel like they have been getting a lot darker this year. 

This particular one is about someone who is taken by a dark spirit and succumbs to its whispers. The opening track, Its Out There sets up an uneasy tension right from the start, and then the whispers begin!

From here on a dangerous chaotic energy lets loose; jagging in the foreground and thundering aggressively in the distance. This is one of HT's most expansive, industrial-sounding albums.

Suddenly with Transfixed the mood snaps into full focus foreground, the pace rising and dropping before the unnerving lull at the start of the aptly named Primal Instincts, perhaps the real stand out track on the album for its masterful control of the tense, hammering yet eerily suspended feeling.

The narrative closes with The Shape as the subject 'turns into the monster they are capable of being'. It feels like the story has moved to another place now; a new normal. The subject has transformed and emerges in its new twisted, grotesque form.

Hypnotic Transmissions is an electronic music artist from Centereach, New York, USA.

(T.Čelet, Dec23)

'sunken lanes... have been here a long, long time.'

Blanket Topography is an immaculate album. One of those gems you can put on and leave on all day. Comprising 8 tracks of mostly around 10 minutes or more, it gently reveals its geological heart. Bookended with slightly shorter tracks, from the beautiful opener, thalweg, to the shifting reflections of vrtače III, it oozes class, masterly restraint and warmth. 

Ever-evolving, quietly glitchy beats guide you through a crackling landscape of tones, distant hums and growls that never seem to cast you into any dark place, but rather reassuringly hold your hand as you traverse the slopes and shadows. One moment pulling you close and the next stepping back to let your mind wander away into the distance, this album can be your soundtrack to one long lovely escape, telling you, '...it's alright, all life support functions are operative. You may proceed.'

Sunken Lanes is a new project from the mind behind Fencepost and <1, released on the Aural Films label.

(T.Čelet, Dec23)

This is one of those rare albums that surprises and delights in the most unexpected ways and seems to totally defy categorisation. 

It comprises two tracks of about 26 minutes each, depicting characters and parts inspired by Lussier's dark murder mystery novel of the same name.

With beautifully detailed production, the album (whose name translates to English as The Wooden Waltz) opens out from claustrophobic modular electronic soundscapes into vast dark orchestral expanses complete with rumbling timpani and industrial mechanics.  And then suddenly we are plunged into a classic fertive, 'flute and pizzicato' murder mystery drama melody before returning to the disturbing, skittering electronic spaces haunted with disembodied voices. Then out of nowhere comes a frenetic Dance Macabre-style xylophone sequence that made me literally grin with delight!

Incredibly rich, with an abundance of moods and inventive twists, the inescapably narrative feel of the whole album makes for a deeply rewarding hour's listening. 

Masterful electronics, classical scoring and a mischievous wit: you are in safe hands here. Sit back and enjoy the film!

Lauré Lussier is an author and composer from Quebec. 

(T.Čelet, 14th Dec 2023)

From the fabulous Californian label, Broken Bottle Productions, FRACTI is 18 tracks of darkly melodic, rhythmic and foreboding atmospheres that take the wilt sound to an occasionally sweeter, but typically intense place. 

Electronics and processed guitars melt, pulse  and swirl together - there is definitely romance here and something gorgeously old school that makes for extremely seductive listening.

wilt is a rotating cast of anonymous musicians with one common member. 

(T.Čelet, 7th December 2023)