Issue 10 / 22 March 2024
This week's DIY electronic goodness... Album Of The Week: Sedibus + Alex Paterson interview, Track Of The Week: John Grant + new release round-up + more, more, more
Moonbuilding Weekly has hit double figures. Whoop. That’s 10 newsletters. In a row. We should celebrate, right? When you launch something like this, there’s a lot of energy goes into the first one. People tend not to know you’re doing it, so there’s a warm glow when it arrives in the world. It seems to go down well and so you have to do it again. And again. And again. What keeps you going is knowing that it’s getting read. Online stats are all well and good, but they’re just a number. It’s the emails and messages on social media that really help, so do say hello if you’re enjoying all this.
Can I just remind you that our spring sale is still on and you can grab a copy of Moonbuilding Issue 4 and CD for £5. We’re giving it away at that price, but we need the shelf space. I’d love to tell you about Issue 5 but I’m not allowed just yet. It’s coming together nicely and I’m really excited about the cover star and the CD. It’s not one you’re going to want to miss that is for sure.
Righto. That’s me done for the week. Happy Friday.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
PS here’s this issue’s playlist… bndcmpr.co/772f15d2
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SEDIBUS ‘SETI’ (Orbscure)
This is as close as we get to The Orb without it actually being The Orb. Oh, right. Yeah, jumped the gun a little. So Sedibus – which means “chair”, something to sit on – is the work of Dr Alex Paterson, chief cook and bottle washer of The Orb, and Andy Falconer, who was a crew member on the good ship ‘Ultraworld’. So these two have form, very decent form at that.
This is the second Sedibus album and follows 2021’s debut outing ‘The Heavens’, which also happened to be the first release on Obscure, a label where Alex can keep releases that aren’t The Orb in one place. Makes good sense. With a name in no way tugging on Eno’s chain, nope, it’s one of those labels you wouldn’t know about unless you know about it, which is the point. It’s supposed to be obscure.
This is release number four, five if you count a label sampler. There’s OSS’ ‘Enter The Kettle’ (Alex and old roadie pal Fil Le Gonidec) and an LP from Chocolate Hills (Alex with Paul Conboy), they’re both good, very good, but it’s Sedibus that really wows. Like I said earlier, as close to the The Orb without actually being The Orb.
‘SETI’ opens with the soothing 11-minute-plus ambient drift of ‘Paradise’, which segues into ‘Purgatory’ and reminds me of The Ministry Of Information office in Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’, where all the workers are watching a western on their tiny screens and every time the boss, Mr Kurtzmann, gets wind and steps out of his office there’s nothing, just a bustling office.
As the album unfurls, you start to understand that the samples come from a world that no longer exists. There’s snips of conversation, from old TV and radio broadcasts, plummy BBC voices drifting in on the ether, crackly radio communication and distance space chatter… “Here is some excellent news that has come in the last hour from GHQ Cairo, it says…”, well, we never discover what it says.
What is it we’re listening to exactly? Well, SETI is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, which is an institute set up in the 1980s and funded by NASA to search for extra terrestrial intelligence. It’s very real, part of the Carl Sagan Centre these days, but its mission is still to explore the possibilities of life in our universe and beyond.
This ‘SETI’ feels like we’re spiralling through space and time, hoovering up all this communication as we head away from our world into the great nothingness. Or the great somethingness. The album splits into three parts – there’s the opening brace of ‘Paradise’/’Purgatory’, the three-part ‘SETI’ and, if you’ve got the CD version, there’s the bonus 12-minute ‘The Armchair Astronaut’.
It is a proper ride, a record that builds like one of Alex’s epic DJ sets. The rhythms at the heart of ‘Purgatory’ are almost fourth world, you can feel the late, great Jon Hassell nearby. The centrepiece is the three-part ‘SETI’, with ‘Part 2’ being the real banger. The pounding beat and the samples are cracking. The track builds quickly and there’s a swirling organ melody that feels like spring itself.
The whole thing culminates with ‘The Armchair Astronaut’ (lesson: when Alex Paterson offers up bonus tracks you’d be wise to track them down), which is glorious. It has such a delicacy of touch, there’s the slightest hint of a beat, a rhythm, like a ticking clock in the distance and like the opener which eases you into the record, it eases you out of the record perfectly.
‘SETI’ is Orbscure’s finest moment yet. You don’t doubt this label will go from strength to strength. And it’s all a best-kept secret, which is just how Alex likes it. Just how we like it. [NM]
‘SETI’ is out now on Orbscure
DR ALEX PATERSON
Alex Paterson is one of a kind, a trailblazer and a true maverick. We live near each other in south-east London and one chilly afternoon we parked up outside a local coffee shop to watch the world go by and have a chat about the new Sedibus record. You join us as talk turns to The Orb’s ‘Moonbuilding 2703 AD’ album, after which all this is named. It’s a shame you can’t hear Alex’s laugh, he has quite the chuckle.
Photo: John Hollingsworth
Interview: Neil Mason
I love that ‘Moonbuilding 2703 AD’ album...
“You need a whack round the head with a big stick.”
Don’t you like it?
“I do like it, it’s just… the last Orb album that I really liked was the final one I did with Thomas, the ‘COW’ album. You can’t get much better with the ambience on that, it’s just pure fucking ambience. Where do you go after that? I haven’t made a pure ambience album since because of it.”
‘SETI’ isn’t pure ambience either is it?
“No. It pulses, it’s got beats...”
What is Sedibus? It’s Latin isn’t it?
“It means ‘chair’, something to sit on. And ‘SETI’ is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. ‘SETI’, settee, it’s almost too obvious. Then you delve down another level and the track ‘SETI’ is in three parts. It’s a three-piece suite…”
Do you make yourself laugh?
“Yeah, it’s the idea. It’s all fall-out from the ‘UFOrb’ album, I wanted to have ‘SETI’ on that, but no one got it, no one was hearing me properly. Whereas with this album it just happened, I put it in the lap of Andy Falconer and he went, ‘Yeah, this is brilliant’.”
We come full circle because Andy is a former member of The Orb collective…
“He wasn’t on ‘UFOrb’, but he was on the first album.”
So is this as close to The Orb as we get without it actually be The Orb?
“I think it’s created a lot of interest in the older generation of Orb fans, they know there’s a connection between me and Andy on the first album – Andy engineered half the album, Slash engineered the other half of it, and there was no other producers involved apart from myself. Should’ve kept it like to be honest, but there you go.”
How did you come to working with Andy again?
“We bumped into each other in Spain at one of Youth’s parties and I forgot how nice he was.”
Was that recently?
“Well, ish. We did a 25th anniversary of ‘Ultraworld’ gig at The Electric in Brixton in 2016 and he came along and played that and we got on really well. He’s really developed his techniques since we first worked together, it all sounds much better than it did 30 years ago. It’s more refined and it shows on what we’ve done in the last two Sedibus albums.”
His thing is bringing real instruments, acoustic instruments, to the party along with lots of processing, right?
“Which is all Andy, or is it? It could be samples, you never know.”
You describe Sedibus as “two old blokes doing tunes”…
“Two old blokes doing tunes, yeah. I don’t want to put ourselves down, but we’re not too young rapscallions who are green behind the ears and ready to take the world on. We’ve tried to take the world on and here we are.”
How did that go?
“Failed miserably! I mean, if it was superstardom we were after then we failed, but it was never about that. Personally, I was after refined electronic ambient music and getting the word out and I think I’ve done well on getting the word out.”
Oh very much mission accomplished
“Yeah and I never had to actually worry about getting a day job.”
When was the last time you did a day job?
“When I was an A&R man at EG.”
That wasn’t really a proper job though, was it?
“Then it was a long time ago. Between leaving school and going to art school. Is that a proper job? I had a job polishing dental instruments in a factory in Croydon, circa 1976.”
So the first Sedibus album was first album on your Orbscure label. How’s that all going?
“Slow and very obscure. We've just had a conversation about how both of us have been unwell. I was unwell last year, which kind of put a dent in my plans. But at the same point, this last Sedibus album was recorded before I was unwell. And I’ve still got another album to put out with Gaudi that I did before I was unwell. There’s an album I’ve done with DF Tram, that’s due out this summer. With Tram there seems to be quite a lot of two-minute tracks, they’re quiet little lullabies and they’re quite sweet. It’s not what you’d expect. The stuff with Gaudi should come out at Christmas, artwork is pretty much done, album's pretty much done.”
You’re certainly making up for lost time… anything else?
“I’m talking to Jono Podmore actually, about a German band, a three-piece. I’ve already been put off by the idea of working with three people.”
You’ve told me before that running a label is quite straightforward so long as there’s not too many people in each band... how many how is maximum?
“Two really is maximum.”
I like how under the radar the label is. I’ve got a friend who is a massive Orb fan, he wasn’t aware you had a label so I gave him the gift of Orbscure and he was like, ‘Wow’.
“That’s actually how I prefer it, as I keep saying to people, it’s in the name.”
Stuff comes out when it comes out. if you can’t do it, you can’t do it.
“Well, I’m busy. All this month is touring. Apart from one week in the middle when I’m going to go down and work with System 7. Steve and Miquette have asked me to contribute to some new music.”
That sounds worth getting excited about?
“Yeah, definitely.”
How old is Hillage now?
“I’ll ask him. I’m fucking old so he must be really old, bless him.”
Do you enjoy collaborating?
“More than you’d think.”
What happens if you do it on your own?
“I’d become like Brian Eno and have lots of other people coming in as guest artists. And I don’t really want to be like ‘Alex Paterson and guests’ or I’d have done that on the first album. It’s why I called it The Orb and it became a collective.”
Alex Paterson presents...
“Dr Paterson presents more like, darling. You see, I was always the roadie, and I always wanted to be part of the band.”
You used to get up and do a turn on tour with Killing Joke, singing Pistols covers didn’t you?
“I could’ve quite easily become a Johnny Rotten vocal soundalike, but that would’ve been the end of me, because that would have been tainted with that punk brush. And then it would have been, ‘You can’t possibly do ambient music, who the fuck are you? You’re singing Pistols songs’.”
We could put quite a band together for you. Steve Hillage on guitar…
“Big Paul Ferguson on drums that’s for sure, Hillage on guitar and Youth on bass, there you have it.”
You up front... The Alex Paterson Band
“NO!”
Let’s talk about the samples on the new album? They’re very, what’s the word? Nostalgic?
“Yeah. It’s like taking very early radio commentary, but it’s snipped off before it becomes a sentence. It’s just little bits, ‘Tell me about the institute…’, ‘There will be a cover up…’.”
Where do they where does it all come from? Out of your little magic box?
“Out of my little box and out of Andy’s little box. He’s got a very, very nice studio down in Portugal. I want to do a third album with Andy and Violetta Vicci, using her violins or violas to become giant frequencies that we can turn into a rhythm. There was a bloke in Australia who was sampling, I don’t know what they’re called...”
Digeridoos?
“No… you know those electrical towers that all the power goes from tower to tower?”
Pylons?
“Pylons! He was recording bass sounds out of pylons, which is worth reinvestigating especially with Sedibus.”
Sedibus. How are you pronouncing that. Said-e-bus? Seed-e-bus? Sid-e-bus?
“My brother decided to have a band once called Window after The Doors, it was really quite amusing, I was only about eight or nine years old. Where do you go with names? What do they conjure up? Sedibus has done that thing where people can’t pronounce it for a start…”
It’s Latin, innit?
“… and then they find out that it actually means chair, so the bonus track on ‘SETI’ is called ‘Armchair Astronaut’, which is both things, two things that point to the same thing.”
Oh that’s good. I think this is the best thing Orbscure has put out. Do you?
“I’m getting some great reviews, I mean, I got the the owner of Cooking Vinyl came down to see us in Exeter and I made him listen to the support act, which was me, and I made him tell me what he thought. Sedibus blew him away.”
You supported The Orb as Sedibus?
“In between Violetta playing as well. This is a man who is supposed to be looking after himself. It was the day of the release, it just seemed like it was stupid not to do something, create a little buzz – we were playing to a sold-out audience so…”
A lot of those people are there for ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’, then they hear Sedibus and go, “Hang on a minute…”
“Good, but the next Sedibus album will be with Andy and Michael [Rendall] hopefully together, and we’ll then make the next Orb album on top of that.”
So an Orb album with Andy as well?
“Well, if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it properly. We kind of pushed ourselves off the pedestal from ‘UFOrb’ into ‘Pomme Frittes’. We shot ourselves in the foot deliberately because we were fed up with being popular and that’s that punk attitude again.”
It’s never never been better though. ‘Ultraworld’ and ‘UFOrb’ are both great, obviously, but The Orb is a whole different thing now
“‘Pomme Frittes’ is an amazing album, and this is where we came in talking about ‘COW’…”
And ‘Moonbuilding’… with you there’s always all this stuff to discover
“Well, there you go.”
For more, see theorb.com
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JOHN GRANT ‘It’s A Bitch’ (Bella Union)
Celebrate good times, come on. A new John Grant album is incoming. ‘The Art Of The Lie’ is due to land on 14 June. Which seems like ages, but will be on us before we know it. John Grant likens the musical flavours on the new record to “the sumptuous Vangelis soundtrack for ‘Blade Runner’ or the Carpenters if John Carpenter were also a member”. Big talk, but there’s a track called ‘Mother And Son’ which is exactly that.
He always works with interesting producers, last time out, on ‘Boy From Michigan’, it was Cate Le Bon, on ‘Love Is Magic’ it was Benge, here it’s Ivor Guest who’s worked with Grace Jones and Brigette Fontaine, “two very big artists for me,” says Grant. This first track lifted from the album is Grant as his funky bestest.
“It was a blast making this track,” he says, “which is just about having fun with words, synths and dope rhythms and bass lines. Plus, people get to ponder what a ‘hesher’ is. I loved going to the arcade in the 80s and watching smokin’-hot heshers hold court while playing ‘Tempest’, ‘Stargate’, ‘Robotron’ and ‘Asteroids’, and while also blasting Iron Maiden and Rush on their Walkmans.”
Yeah.
Got an upcoming release? We’re all ears. Find us at moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
SPACESHIP ‘Structures’ (WIAIWYA)
For some reason, releases seem to congregate around certain dates, 22 March being one such date. So MUCH stuff out today. And so much good stuff, as always. I’m a big fan of Spaceship, Mark Williamson has been consistently excellent for longer than I care to remember. He’s one of the original DIY artists I started to notice and write about all those years ago. This is the third part of his Calderdale trilogy. It follows 2019’s ‘Outcrops’ and 2022’s ‘Ravines’, you can see from the titles what’s going on here. The series looks at the geological history of the Upper Calder Valley. ‘Structures’ is all about the geology that shaped the area, a “socialgeological journal of sorts,” says Mark. The album was recorded in various locations (see titles for details) with a bunch of guest musicians – Dan Bridgewood-Hill (violin), Sophie Cooper (trombone) and Sam Mcloughlin on harmonium. Mark says they “gamely lugged their instruments to the remote locations”. The album itself is four long tracks, each over 10 minutes, which you can luxuriate in, while the digital version comes with three bonus tracks. Lots to like here. There’s also a special edition that comes with a rather nice looking tote bag.
GOOD STUFF #2
TRANSIENT VISITOR ‘TV3’ (Subexotic)
A Subexotic double bill coming up. You know how a few weeks ago our Album Of The Week was The Home Current’s ‘Tales From The Leisure Lounge’? And you know how in the interview with Martin Jensen he said, “I don’t have any future solo releases in the pipeline, so this will be the last THC release for the foreseeable future”. You remember that? Carefully chosen words, because here he is as Transient Visitor, a collaborative project with Alex Cargill of The Central Office Of Information. Cheeky sod. Anyway, music from Martin is always welcome as far as I’m concerned. Transient Visitor is a retro dancey affair, mixing up electro, techno, hip hop and, he says, “early 90s trance influences”. The Good Stuff this week seems to be all about completing trilogies. Anyway, here ‘TV3’ gets a bit more “swampy and moist” by giving the tracks a dubby workout. Very nice it all is too.
GOOD STUFF #2(a)
ENOFA ‘The House By The Sea’ (Subexotic)
Previous Enofa releases from Leicestershire’s Imogen Hayley Baker have what has been described as an ambient house sound. It’s quality gear, and here she strips back that sound with a “starker, colder approach”. The opener ‘Losseil Ryday’ with its repeating post-punk bass guitar riff and the clanking and grinding of the field recordings does indeed feel chilly. A selection of Baker family photos adorn the artwork, and they include the “house by the sea” itself. There’s a story here for sure and Hayley invites you to commune “with a jumble of half-forgotten, hazy recollections of times and places past”. Favourite track is ‘Bluebells’ with its hazy post-rave stabs and bright tinkles. It’s an intriguing listen and a cracking record, this.
GOOD STUFF #3
JLIN ‘Akoma’ (Planet Mu)
Jlin’s new album is a real showstopper. Planet Mu, which has been plying its trade for nearly 30 years, remains such a progressive label, which is no mean feat these days. This is a fifth LP for Indiana’s Jerrilynn Patton on the label and her loyalty speaks volumes for what Mike Paradinas is doing with Mu. With profile like hers, Jlin could’ve gone anywhere. Thankfully, Mu is still winning. ‘Akoma’ is a stunner. The special guests alone – Bjork (singing and playing flute!), The Kronos Quartet and Philip Glass – are pretty insane. The album is fully of skronky beats, dense rhythms and complex classical constructions, but the magic is that it remains a hugely enjoyable listen. I mean, it’s not dinner party stuff, but I’ve had it one a lot this week and it really is very beautiful while still pushing at those boundaries.
GOOD STUFF #4
MUERAN HUMANOS ‘Reemplazante’ (Sterbt Menschen)
I wrote about this album in some other magazine what seems like ages ago. Great to see it finally being released. I love Mueran Humanos (a Latin American Chris & Cosey is how my pal Claire beautifully describes them). This is their fourth album and it’s also the debut release on their own Sterbt Menschen label. Everyone comes over to the DIY side eventually. “All the labels we worked with folded,” the band’s Tomas Nochteff told me. “We realised we can do the same work they did, plus we were getting a lot of syncs offers for movies and TV shows, with our own label we don’t have to give half of that money to other people.” Will they be releasing stuff by other people? No, he says, too much work to do it properly. Fair enough. I mean it is. Anyway, there’s a real post-punk tow to this. You can hear the ghosts in a number of the tracks, PiL in opener ‘Desastre Personal’, and early Joy Division in several tracks, which is always very welcome. I like that people wear influences like that so boldly. This is cracking stuff.
GOOD STUFF #5
BERNARD GRANCHER ‘Therapeutic Self-Hypnosis Programs Vol.1’
The brilliant Bernard Grancher makes his first long-playing appearance for a while. Might be wrong, but the last time we saw an album from him was ‘Noires Sont Les Galaxies’ on Woodford Halse in 2022. There’s been a ton of singles/EPs, his seven-volume series of EPs last summer via his Bandcamp page were really excellent. Anyway, here he is with a self-released 11-track cassette, which is how his radiophonic-y work is best enjoyed. He says the album is “designed to help you with different pathologies” and suggests you “make yourself comfortable, choose the program that interests you, press PLAY and relax to benefit effectively from the virtues of each section”. It is stressed that “this tape should NOT be played in a moving vehicle”. Righto.
GOOD STUFF ROUND UP
The latest release from quiet details has hit the shelves. I swear the time between their releases is getting shorter and shorter. This month’s offering is Slow Reels’ ‘Everyday Exotic’. Slow Reels are Ian Hawgood from the iconic Home Normal along with James Murray who runs the Slowcraft label. Ian has featured on th label before as Observatories along with Craig “Humble Bee” Tattersall. It’s getting like a Mastermind specialist subject this. Anyway, ‘Everyday Exotic’ is, as usual, high-quality gear. Really appreciating the look of the quiet details Bandcamp page at the moment. With so many releases and the artwork being thematically similar it makes for quite a sight. Wonder what they’ve got coming out next week?
quietdetails.bandcamp.com
Former Moonbuilding Track Of Week people Not Me But Us see their ‘Two’ album released by Sonic Cathedral today. Italian duo of Bruno Bavota and Fabrizio Somma make this heady brew of new classical and edge of the dancefloor stuff. Bavota is the classical/piano side of things, while Somma, who also works as plunderphonic outfit K-Conjog, is the electronics. Together they make these huge, slow-moving washes of rich sound that can break out into Hopkins-esque trancey floorfillers. Last week Sonic Cathedral unveiled a fab dronegaze T-shirt along with the announcement of the new Dawn Chorus And The Infallible Sea album. How about trancegaze for this lot?
soniccathedral.bandcamp.com
Brighton-based Preston Parris, the artist formerly known as Preston.Outatime, is releasing a new album as Armatures. ‘Limitation’ comes with a pastiche press release that I liked a lot. “I try to make music when I have time, but I don’t always have time,” says Preston. “This album was specifically written during the times when I did have time, and not the times when I didn’t have any. You’re not hearing any of the tracks I wrote at those other times, you can’t, they don’t exist because I was doing something else.” While it might be a bit daft, I think there’s something in that. Musically, it’s in the wonky dancefloor section of your local record shop. I’ve had the Morse code beats and shuddering chords of ‘Bonds’ on heavy rotation. I don’t know why he’s working under other names, Preston Parris is quite pop starry don’t you think?
armaturesmusic.bandcamp.com
Always keen on hearing electronic music coming out of Finland, not so much because of Jimi Tenor, I’m thinking more Pepe Deluxe, and lo, Aves are a Helsinki-based three-piece who make very accessible electronic pop. “Retro futurism inhabits the world of Aves, which can be heard throughout the band’s lush catalogue of songs that fuse analog elements with a futuristic point of view,” say their people. New album, ‘Transformations’ (Kieku), is well worth ear time if you’re in that retro-futurism sort of mood. Reminds me a bit of someone like Roosevelt, who I’m a big fan of. Warning: there is lots of singing on this one.
linktr.ee/aves__music
Echaskech serve up ‘Novacene (OST)’ (VLSI), which has had a decent airing round Moonbuilding Towers this week. It’s the soundtrack to an imaginary film based on James Lovelock’s book ‘Novacene’, which is one of those titles that there really should be a film based on. It’s non-fiction, but sounds like sci-fi. He talks about a world where total climate breakdown has shifted the dial from an era defined by humankind to the Novacene, where hyper intelligent cyborgs are the solution to Earth’s survival. The soundtrack is every bit as chilling as that sounds.
echaskech.bandcamp.com
One more for this week. Honestly, I could sit here all day doing this and still not tick off everything on my list. I’ve already moved a large handful of releases over to next week… which is Easter! Do you people never stop releasing music? Anyway, this is a really interesting one to finish with. Past Inside The Present imprint Fallen Moon released Adnata Ensemble’s ‘Oku’ last week, but I didn’t have room (#familiartale). The ensemble are four double bass players – Scott Colberg, Ari Folman-Cohen, Michael Isvara Montgomery and Ran Livneh – who got together during the pandemic to support each other and celebrate the bass. Four double basses! Really enjoying this, it sounds so warm and rich. Would love to see this live, imagine the rumble.
fallenmoonrecordings.bandcamp.com
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RICH AND STRANGE
Don’t let his unassuming air persuade you otherwise, Richard Norris is a proper countercultural legend. Over the years I’ve interviewed him about all sorts of adventures. Most recently we spoke about his early years at the Bam Caruso label and the advent of their Strange Things Are Happening magazine, which is one of my favourite publications ever. It’s also an apt title for his excellent new memoir.
There’s so many great tales it’s hard to know where to start. Fortunately, we get to take a ride through the whole lot in ‘Strange Things Are Happening’ (White Rabbit). Part 1 is the early years, the very early years. It starts in 1969 with a four-year-old Richard Norris living on a Girl Guide campsite a mile down a dirt track. He writes so evocatively about growing up in the 70s, about his love of ‘Top Of The Pops’, his growing interest in music and a burgeoning love of reading and writing that sees him appointed editor when his class at school decide to make a magazine. There’s his first band (Innocent Vicars), his first fanzine (99%) and that first job at Bam Caruso, which he describes as like being at psychedelic university. It’s also when things really start hotting up.
“I felt that I’d missed out on a subcultural happening that I can call my own,” he writes. “I was a bit too young for punk, way too young for psychedelia. I am now 22 and wondering whether we’ll ever see this kind of international subcultural sea change again.”
He needed have worried. He was 22 in 1987 and he’d just turned up at Beck Road in Hackney, Psychic TV HQ, to interview Genesis P Orridge for Strange Things. It turned out to be quite a day, with Gen asking “Have you ever heard of acid house?”. The making of the seminal ‘Jack The Tab’ album (when he would meet Dave Ball his cohort in the hit machine that was The Grid) sets Richard on a life-changing path. He very much gets his “subcultural sea change”.
Richard Norris is one of us, his world is one you will recognise instantly. If you’re enjoying what Moonbuilding does, ‘Strange Things Are Happening’ is an utterly essential read. Actually, if you don’t enjoy what Moonbuilding does what the heck are you doing reading this far down? Be off with you. Don’t forget your coat. And close the door on your way out.
White Rabbit / Moonbuilding Bookshop
UNDER STARTER’S (CH)ORDERS
Look at this little fella will you. What is it? Well, it is a “pocketable, high-powered, chord-based synthesiser”. Had my eye on this for a bit, right back to it being developed through the prototype stages. It plays chords with one button and sounds lovely. It has a built-in synth engine and comes with a sampler and a bunch of effects (delay, reverb, tremolo, glide and more). There’s a tiny little screen for showing information like football scores (no, not really, although that would be good) and there’s also a MIDI output and USB-C for charging and data transfer.
Interestingly, the interface it uses is based the Nashville Number System, which I had to look up, obviously. It’s a simple numbering system developed in the late 1950s for a band called The Jordanaires. It allowed chord changes to be communicated with numbers instead of often complex musical notation.
It’s £161 (love that random pricing), but the first run looks to be completely sold out, unsurprisingly. You can sign up over at hichord.shop so you’re the first to know when fresh stock lands. This is going to be a popular little bugger, no doubt.
SISTER ACTS
This is such a great find. And it just goes to show how much brilliant thinking and fine work there is out there, just waiting. Marine Eyes, the solo ambient project of LA-based Cynthia Bernard, has been doing a monthly ‘Women Of Ambient’ mix since International Women’s Day in March 2021. That’s three years! “The series has morphed a bit over the years,” says Cynthia. These days it’s a rolling playlist on Spotify totaling close to 500 tracks, a monthly pick on BNDCMPR, as well as a full mix via Soundcloud. She’s also just joined the Substack cool kids club by launching her own newsletter called Cloud Collecting. Featuring short interviews on creativity with “women and gender expansive artists” it looks very promising. We’re big fans of Marine Eyes here at Moonbuilding and her musical output is well worth checking out. There’s a new album ‘To Belong’ incoming next month on Past Inside The Present. You’ll hear about it here when it lands.
marineeyes.bandcamp.com
cloudcollecting.substack.com
soundcloud.com/marineeyes
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MOONBUILDING ISSUE 4, WAS £10 NOW £5 (+P&P). GRAB YOURS WHILE STOCKS LAST … MOONBUILDING.BANDCAMP.COM
The current issue of MOONBUILDING is full to the gills with the good stuff. On the cover, star-in-the-making Maria Uzor, we profile label-of-the-moment quiet details, there’s an incredible interview with Captain Star creator Steven Appleby, and Ghost Box’s Jim Jupp gets busy with our There’s A First Time For Everything questions.
We review a big pile of releases from labels including Castles In Space, Woodford Halse, Persistence Of Sound, Assai, Ahora, DiN, Werra Foxma, Ghost Box and many more. There’s a column from The Orb’s Alex Paterson and the world-famous Captain Star cartoon strip.
This issue’s CD is ‘The Moonbuilding Miscellany – Volume One’, which is put together by CiS supremo Colin Morrison. It’s a belter featuring tracks from the likes of Lo Five, Lone Bison, Twilight Sequence, Ojn, NCHX and more.
Moonbuilding Weekly is a Castles In Space publication.
Copyright © 2024 Moonbuilding
great issue - thanks for the mention 💛🙏💚
Hello! Happy Friday. Hope you're enjoying the new issue. Very pleased with this one. It's always a good day when Alex Paterson is around. I'm here all morning if anyone fancies a chat...