Skydivers Flutter Time And The Hunt For Mr. Ellis

Hello You. There’s intrigue and mystery aplenty at Fog Towers this week, starting with the latest episode of Resonance FM’s FogCast, which opens with ‘Reflections’, the first of two remarkable electroacoustic works by the composer Phil Ellis. These come from two of three tape spools handed to me by the artist Brian Webb, a former colleague and collaborator of Phil’s who dates these to some time around the early 1980s. I’ve digitised the tapes, conducted a little basic restoration and now I’m playing them here as an appeal – in the hope that somebody can help us track Phil down as this may be the first time the work has been heard in 40 years!

You’ll also hear several tracks from Eleven Fugues For Sodium Pentothal, the new solo album by former Stars of the Lid member Adam Wiltzie, plus recent works from Will Gardner and Field Lines Cartographer. The programme closes with a second Phil Ellis piece,’Unquiet’, followed by four extracts from Maryanne Royle’s installation ‘Look at this Land, Look Around You’ at Gallery FRANK, an original Victorian Mill in Littleborough. ‘This work is about where I am and where I’m coming from,’ Maryanne explains, ‘growing up surrounded by the immense abandoned bodies of a deafening and consuming industry turned silent’. Composed using found sound, field recordings and local voices, it’s a sublime listen indeed.

Elsewhere, the mystery and intrigue also spills over into the kind of tawdry cheap melodrama you’ve come to expect on these pages with the thrilling arrival of the new single by The Howling – now accompanied by a decidedly snazzy promo video for your viewing pleasure!

Just when you thought it was safe to back into the Spook House for the Late-Night Monster Show, The Howling return with their latest single. This digital release offers radical new takes on two tracks taken from their recent Wormhole album Incredible Night Creatures of the Midway.

Track A is a video version of ‘The Skydivers’, The Howling’s deadpan exposition on a spectacularly lacklustre movie melodrama, backed by the throbbing of a customised street rod engine. Combining the original studio version of the track with visuals specially prepared with the expert assistance of Executive Producer Lori E. Allen, ‘The Skydivers’ offers all the highs and lows of this moody soap opera in which people either fall in love or throw themselves out of planes.

Track B is a pounding live version of another track taken from The Howling’s ‘Incredible Night Creatures of the Midway’ release. ‘The Picture of A Picture of Dorian Gray’ pays tribute to a 1970s Italian soft-core porn adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s classic novel. Using keywords scraped from the IMDB entry for the movie, The Howling reconstructs Wilde’s narrative as a fragmented sequence of plot points, themes and images. This recording was made in the teeth of severe technical problems at the Horse Hospital in London on 3 November 2023 and turned out to be greatly enhanced by them. This live version also includes a spoken-word introduction not featured on the album.

The Howling have presented work at Iklectik and the British Film Institute; and their track ‘David Gest, Liza Minnelli, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor’ was prominently featured in the Loewe SS24 catwalk show during Paris Fashion Week. They’re still not sure why.

Thank you to everyone who came down to Wow and Flutter in Hastings last week for a live in-store session by The New Obsolescents, especially our completely lovely and awesome hosts Tim and Susan for having us and putting up with our ‘spooky racket’ – all part of an extended run of events to celebrate their ten years in business. Happy Birthday guys! Tim shot this short video taster above and we’re hoping at least some of the material we recorded in the shop will end up surfacing on a second LP at some point. But before then I’m very excited to announce we’re playing Deliaphonic in Coventry on May 2nd!

Finally, thank you so much to Electronic Sound magazine for the fabulous review of the new Howlround LP A Loop Where Time Becomes in their latest issue! Always such a supportive bunch and a total force for good in the universe, I never miss a copy. This month’s main feature is all about the year 1981, a period of which my own memories are understandably hazy, so it’s proving a very handy guide. It also features legendary figures such as Dorothy Moskowitz, Man Parrish and ever-lovable curmudgeon Savage Pencil, so lots of bases covered. Just make sure you don’t drop a copy on your toe…

A Loop Where Time Becomes is out now on limited and delightful purple vinyl and available from the Castles In Space site and all good record shops. Plus some bad ones…

Wow Condition – The New Obsolescents Hit The Coast + Howlround Heads Back To The Boundary

Hello You. Very excited to announce the return of The New Obsolescents, the tape loop and turntable trio I share with my two dear chums Chris Weaver and Strictly Kev aka DJ Food. Last seen providing a ‘spooky racket’ at the Levitation Festival in Whitby a couple of years ago (my memory for dates is growing increasingly hazy), for our next trick we’re hitting the coast and heading on down to Hastings on Sunday 7th April for The first in a series of events celebrating ten years of the Hastings record shop Wow And Flutter. This is a live, improvised performance/rehearsal/jam session conducted in-store during which we’re hoping to lay some of the groundwork for our long overdue second album, so if you’re in the area, do come down to cheer us along (and naturally indulge in some digging in the crates). Plus we’ll be displaying some unique test versions of the sleeves for our sold-out-in-five-minutes 2021 debut LP for Castles In Space, The Superceded Sounds Of The New Obsolescents. If you remember the album came in a choice of five sleeve designs hand-printed on the very last available consignment of mirrorboard card stock, so this might be the last time they ever appear in public…

The following week Howlround will return to the ever-dependable Boundary Condition in its new home at East London’s plantroom. It’s the usual fantastically diverse line-up and features star turns from old friends and new, including Blanca Regina & Pierre Bouvier, Dirar Kalash, B E O R H T A, Yamen Mekdad, Billy Pleasant & A’Bear, Gyorgy Ono and Cerpintxt & Ruben.

Or as the press release rather more elegantly puts it, a hybrid of audiovisual live sets & immersive projections; extreme plunderphonics, sonic archaeology, contemporary folk, unequal temperaments, ritual subjects, visceral subterranean chants, freejazz improv, radiophonic interdisciplinary composition, tape disintegration, anti-ambient, and percussive non-music in a post-industrialist glass factory. Are you sold yet? I know I am! Tickets available here.

Finally, just wanted to share this short clip from last month of my Howlround performance at Manifest:IO Berlin with multimedia artist Kunal Singh providing visuals on the most enormous 22m video wall behind me. It was a pleasure collaborating with him and thanks so much to Harshini and the team for inviting me to play. Just a short clip on Kunal’s Instagram for now, but hopefully more will follow in due course. Make sure you give him a follow – and photographer Yu Ling Cheng as well!

Photos: Yu Ling Cheng

A Loop Where Time Becomes – New Howlround LP Unleashes ‘Ferric Wizardry’ From The Archive

OUT NOW: Castles in Space is delighted to have been able to curate an album pulled from Howlround’s unreleased tape archive – and this fabulous promo video created by the great Lori E. Allen to support it:

After twelve years, ten albums and innumerable live shows (including at least one former underground reservoir), the Howlround sound has indeed changed quite a lot, but the basic ethos remains the same as it did back in 2012. All tracks are created by manipulating field recordings dubbed onto analogue tape, with all digital effects and artificial reverb strictly forbidden – a process that has been described by Electronic Sound Magazine as ‘conjur[ing] magic’. Of the twelve tracks here, only one has been physically released on a limited edition and long out of print compilation. A second appeared on a download only release several years ago and a third was created as part of the unreleased soundtrack to a documentary. Everything else on this compilation is seeing the light of day for the first time.

All were created in South London at various periods between 2012 and 2017, five years during which the project evolved from the Radiophonic mournfulness of 2012’s debut album The Ghosts Of Bush (‘The ultimate Hauntological artefact’ – Simon Reynolds), to 2015’s tour with tape legend William Basinski, to 2016’s darker and weirder soundtrack to Steven McInerney’s multiple award-winning film A Creak In Time and on towards what would become the wilder, gnarlier noise of 2019’s The Debatable Lands. This retrospective from the first five years marks the gradual evolution of Howlround from the earliest days conjuring ‘aural ectoplasm’ from nocturnal field recordings of the last days of an underground BBC studio to increasingly spurning of the external world altogether by creating blistering no-input noise and raw analogue feedback.

It’s been quite a trip. And we’re not done yet. Thank you so much to Neil Mason over at Moonbuilding Magazine for making A Loop Where Time Becomes their Album of the Week! Have a read by clicking below:

If you’re unfamiliar with the work of Howlround, brace yourselves. Robin The Fog, the man behind all this, is a ferric wizard. What he does with tape is little short of astonishing… The amazing thing when you listen to all this is that there are no instruments involved whatsoever. No nothing. It all comes out of the air, be it a field recording he’s buggered about with, or his collection of reel-to-reel recorders capturing the sound of each other. There’s two versions, the vinyl, which delivers 12 tracks and the digital that’ll give you six bonus tracks including the epic 10-minute plus ‘Cradle Spools Version Tk3’ which feels like being hypnotised by bad weather as distance fog horns tell you all about it. Said it before and I’ll say it again, what Robin The Fog does with tape is pure magic.

By weird coincidence, given that this is an archival release and features outtakes left off from Howlround’s debut album The Ghosts Of Bush (albeit reworked a few years later), the week before saw the publishing of an interview with the estimable Navel Gazers blog, originally recorded towards the end of last year, in which I reflected on the gestation of that very album at the behest of host Andrew Ciccone.

Over the course of a couple of hours we talked about Radiophonics, the BBC World Service, the joys of nightshifts, things going wrong in interesting ways (aka my entire career), and – with perhaps a little irony – never listening to or revisiting any work once you’ve finished making it. As mentioned here and repeated in my interview with Moonbuilding above, I’m not generally one for looking back or becoming nostalgic, so perhaps all of this might feel just a touch hypocritical. But in my defence it remains true that I’ve still never gone back and listened to The Ghosts Of Bush, not since that day in 2012 when I approved the test pressings.

Photo by Hannah Brown

Plus it’s a thoroughly timely opportunity to dig out these lovely old photos of the closing days of Bush House by my old mucker Hannah Brown, who these days trades as Kvist and does a beautiful line in screenprints. Make sure you follow her on Instagram too. Can’t believe it’s been almost twelve years!

Photo by Hannah Brown

Thanks very much to Andrew for having me and be sure to subscribe to Navel Gazers for more interviews with fellow geeky audio types. Previous guests include Matmos, Mark Vernon, Beatriz Ferreyra and Kate Carr, so we’re in very good company!

Fundraising Season – Make Your Voice Count

Hello you. It’s Valentines Season once again and time for us all to show our love to some good causes. Here are three that are very close to my heart, and no doubt yours as well. Please consider supporting one or all of them and let’s all do our bit to support grassroots art and culture in these gloomy times.

First off, as regular visitors to this site will be only too aware, our Friends at IKLECTIK lost their venue recently, due to the Old Paradise Yard site being the subject of a greedy land grab by nasty old developers. A small oasis of creativity and wonderment in the heart of London disappeared forever. Or has it?

Isa and Eduard are the lovely people who run IKLECTIK, a truly unique nonprofit creative organisation supporting experimental sound, art and technology. The venue has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support their future, find new premises and plan further invents, details of which can be found here. Please consider supporting this wondrous project so that they can continue their excellent work and return to being the crucial cultural breeding ground that London richly needs right now.

For their part the Castles In Space label have scrambled and are launching a brand new fundraising compilation This Is Not The End. In record time they’ve managed to pull together a fabulous 33 track compilation of new and exclusive music from CiS artists – including the exclusive Howlround track ‘Splattering Penge Version Two’. As label head Colin puts it: ‘I swear, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever been involved in. The quality of the work from everyone involved speaks volumes about the respect in which Isa and Eduard are held from anyone who has ever had an interaction with them or played at their amazing venue’. Order your copy here.

However, time is tight. The crowdfunder closes at the end of this month and it’s an all or nothing deal. If they don’t make the target, all money will be returned and we will have lost something very special. Their future plans include finding a new home and taking the IKLECTIK experience to other venues around the UK. CiS have opened up all tracks on the album so people can listen on the bandcamp, but this album will not be available on streaming platforms. Please give what you can to ensure these excellent people can continue to do their exceptional work – and don’t wait, time is rapidly ticking!

Elsehwhere, the excellent Brachliegen Tapes have unveiled their latest release REQUEST STOP, a 16 track compilation loosely based around the theme of bus travel and its related infrastructure – and featuring another exclusive Howlround track ‘196 is a Joke’, one of our heaviest works for quite some time. All proceeds will be donated to the Autonomous Winter Shelter, a housing network and mutual aid initiative who aim to provide a safe and warm space for people to stay, create, and take care of themselves and others within a community environment. AWS were violently evicted from their home in June 2023 and it is our hope that the money raised through this fundraiser compilation can contribute to the collective’s future activities and solidarity fund in the face of the on-going brutality of austerity and the cost of living crisis in the UK. Direct contributions can be made to the solidarity fund to help AWS sort out basic items like toiletries, sleeping bags, mattresses and other items needed urgently by clicking here.

REQUEST STOP features a mixture of Brachliegen alumni and a number of new arrivals. Contributions to the comp range from audio documentary and sound collage to pounding rhythmic industrial noise and anarcho bus punk live from the depot. Blistering tapework, electro-acoustic experimental folk, warped techno, minimalist compositions, field recordings, deconstructed grimescapes, heavy electronics and demented psychojazz all conspire in solidarity against the dereliction of social care.

Finally, the greatest radio station in the world is holding its annual month-long fundraiser to raise crucial funds and continue its remarkable programme non-profit, ad-free independent broadcasting, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. Every day of the year their two extraordinary stations – Resonance FM and Resonance EXTRA – each broadcast 24 hours of original programming, entirely free of commercial influence. Their pioneering, award-winning and ever-evolving schedule of extraordinary broadcasts covers all kinds of topics. Not just music – from ambient to zydeco, grime to improv, folk to feedback – but literature, fine art, theatre, film, video-games, field recordings, climate change, social justice, finance, international development, civil rights, technology, radio-art, and so much more.

Resonance is not just a radio station. It’s by turns a lifeline, a toolkit, a toy, and a utopia. It’s supports and empowers a community of emerging broadcasters, artists, musicians, writers and thinkers from the fringes – and that includes me, because this months marks exactly TWENTY YEARS since I started volunteering as a callow youth back in 2004!

It’s a passionately engaged community of listeners as well. Here’s the kind of thing just a few of them had to say about the station:

“The vibes, the energy, the songs, the insight, the metal chimes, the hosting. It’s so perfect and powerful.” – “We need you more than ever.” – “Many thanks for the music during these trying times.” – “A voice of sanity in the gale of the world!” – “Thank you for sending antidepressants down the radio waves every weekend.” –  “It’s wonderful to see this kind of excitement!” – “You just don’t get this in the dross of most other radio.” – “I love Resonance because it gives artists space to be creative and be themselves  in a crazy time like this!” – “A truly unique outlet.”

New premises in Southwark – but it’s not cheap!

But unfortunately these things don’t come cheap. Despite the station winning the GOLD award for ‘Publisher or Network of the Year’ at the 2023 Audio Production Awards for the second year running, financing such radical and uncommercial broadcasting does not come cheap and if they cannot raise further funds before Easter 2024 Resonance’s future will become deeply uncertain. Happily there’s lots we can all do to help, including making a donation, becoming a regular donor or supporting the various fundraising events taking place over the next few weeks.

You could also donate your voice – and this is perhaps the quickest and easiest way to make a big difference. Resonance has been commissioned by technology company Logitech to record the voices of up to 900 unique individual speakers by 31 March 2024. The company is commissioning anonymised recordings of speech with no background noise for the purposes of machine learning – to help it to tell the difference between “pure” recordings of different kinds of human speech with no background noise, and human speech with background noise. It’s machine learning, essentially.

Supplying Logitech with this anonymous audio – in addition to their normal activity – offers Resonance the opportunity to significantly increase its income and – to the extent that they can recruit volunteers – the chance to move forward rapidly with their plans for 2024. That is why they’re asking all volunteers, programme makers and listeners to book a slot as soon as possible to visit the new HQ and record a 15 minute speech session in our soundproof room with the help of an engineer (example video here). With a maximum target of 900 sessions before 31 March, Resonance really needs your help – and that of your families, friends, colleagues, listeners and networks to ensure that we’re making the most of this opportunity. So do please consider booking a slot and encouraging others to book one too. Resonance needs you!

Happy New Year – And The Closing Of Another Sonic Chapter

To mark the closing of Old Paradise Yard and the end of Iklectik’s current ‘sonic chapter’, the venue have commissioned a number of friends and supporting organisations to curate a series of final events to see their current home (a former Buddhist monastery and Lambeth’s oldest surviving school building) out in style. Howlround are delighted to be back with regular collaborators Psyché Tropes and Pascal Savy, recreating our audiovisual performance from last summer’s BONE x IKLECTIK festival in Barcelona – and we’ve managed to put together a pretty amazing supporting line up too, including fellow Barcelona stalwart Dali De Saint Paul and the ever-brilliant Kate Carr, plus lots more. Tickets are available here, so do come along and help us see the old place off in style!

Of course our event is just one of several ‘takeovers’ from some of the venue’s many friends and supporters, occurring over the space of ten days and culminating in a huge closing party on Saturday 20th. After that Iklectik enters a new phase which of course will chiefly consist of finding a new home. They’ll be needing all of our support in this new chapter and you can keep up to date with the latest developments and find out how you can help by visiting iklectik.org/saveiklectik. For now, it will be a sad farewell to Old Paradise yard – which looks set to be torn down and replaced with more shiny office blocks/luxury apartments that nobody actually needs/can afford (even though the powers that be don’t actually have planning permission yet!) – but hopefully paradise can be born again, somewhere new. For now let’s just celebrate the great times we’ve had together and look forward to the future. See you there!

Speaking of which, last month’s Noisemas has become another highlight of the Howlround social calendar and this year was no exception, albeit made all the more poignant by the fact that this will be the last one to be held in Old Paradise Yard. This year’s party was better than ever and a testament to this fabulous venue as a meeting ground for so many brilliant artists.

Howlround were honoured to finish the marathon twelve hour back-to-back session with another dose of pure sonic chaos and a duet with Hinvern Liminal (on vacuum cleaner once again!), with the usual eye-popping visual delights provided by Egle Saka. Our performance – in all its noisy ragged splendour – was documented in this incredible 360° video shot by James Alec Hardy. This allows the viewer to adjust their viewpoint in realtime while watching, allowing them to focus on the stage, spiral around the room or indeed just stare at the ceiling, which I’m told is the best way to appreciate the full Howlround effect!

Meanwhile up north, Winter Solstice Soundscapes at Carlisle’s Vinyl Cafe is another highlight of the Howlround year, despite the Network Rail and Avanti West Coast doing their very best to sabotage things! I ended up bundling my suitcase of gear through the door a whopping four hours behind schedule and had to set up and soundcheck in a record-breaking eight minutes! Thank heavens everyone else on the team was as patient and professional as ever!

As a result there wasn’t much time to document the proceedings, but here’s a phone video by the ever-redoubtable Stephanie Sharp of my slightly chaotic ode to the risible machinations of the British Transport Network, with help from a small but enthusiastic ensemble. I fully hope to be seeing all of them again in 2024 for more of the same.

Speaking of which, may I wish a belated Happy New Year to you all and thanks for all of your support over the past twelve months. 2024 might not be getting off to the best start with the closing of such a beloved venue, but I’m confident that better things will come our way. There are plans for a new Howlround LP for one thing and some fresh Howling material in the works, so I’ll hopefully be opening some new sonic chapters of my own before too long. Plus I’m always on the look out for interesting new projects and sonic sensations, so do get in touch if you’d like to propose a live show, an interesting collaboration or indeed have any intriguing sonic submissions for my Resonance FM show FogCast, which returns to the airwaves on Wednesday 9th Jan at 23:00GMT. Strap on your ear goggles and I’ll see you there!

Old Paradise Lost? – Songs Of Extinction And Invention

By now I’m sure many of you will have heard about the plight facing Iklectik and their Old Paradise Yard neighbours as they fall foul of a ‘punishment eviction’ by landowners The GSST Foundation, a particularly cretinous version of The Forces of Darkness who in a fit of pique are forcing the entire yard to pack up and leave before the end of the year despite not yet having full permission to put their redevelopment plans for the site into action (spoiler alert: buldozing Lambeth’s oldest school building to build more luxury apartments, quelle surprise). It’s nasty, vindictive and leaves a sour taste in the mouth – not to mention a number of charities, arts organisations and small businesses with nowhere to go, just before Christmas.

Online petitions and a campaign to highlight the huge importance of Iklectik and their neighbours to London’s cultural cache have predictably fallen on indifferent ears – as a friend of mine recently commented ‘London is a city that does not care about the places that make it great’, a sentiment that rings truer every year as more and more small venues and grassroot spaces get cleaved aside to make way for more gleaming blocks of dreary, empty Turbocapitalist investment. Most likely it was ever thus, but speaking as someone who has recently had to vacate two separate South London studio spaces, it does seem to be reaching terminal velocity in the current climate.

On a more positive note, To Have And To Hold is a benefit concert put together by Touch and featuring sets from Howlround, Simon Fisher Turner, Jennifer Lucy Alan and Mark Van Hoen, with all profits going directly to support this most fabulous venue as they face down these challenging times, so please do come down, make a donation and show your support. Tickets can be purchased here and further information about the plight of Old Paradise Yard can be found at savewaterlooparadise.com. Who knows, if we all pull together and make lots of noise, we just might just get a Christmas miracle?

Speaking of ‘The Current Climate’ I shall be returning to Iklectik a week later to perform a Howlround set as part of SPECIES PIRACY, an ‘Anthropocene concert of resurrected species, robot ventriloquists and other ushers of the uncanny’ put together by artist, composer and al-round genius Dr. Amy Cutler. This world premier event will be consist of a live cinema / video synthesis work in response to de-extinction science by Amy and myself with James Holcombe (aka Erewhon) alongside live performances and experimental sets by Sarah Angliss, Murmur Ensemble / Matt Lewis, and Ojon / Jim Hobbs plus a discussion panel with scientists and filmmakers. I can’t reveal too much at this juncture, but for my own part I shall be attempting to recreate the sounds of long dead avian and insect specimens using nothing but magnetic tape, a microphone and – as you can imagine – quite a staggering amount of artistic license. Can’t wait!

In other news, last week marked not only Delia Derbyshire Day, but also the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of Dr. Who and the recent surfacing of one of the most important bodies of work in her archive – The Inventions For Radio, a series of longform radio pieces created in the 1960s with the writer Barry Bermange, that are now finally available in full remastered form as part of a lavish (and let’s face it, rather pricey) 6LP box set.

In celebration of these milestones, the latest episode of Resonance FM’s FogCast features one of these inventions Amor Dei in its near entirety, almost certainly the first time it has been broadcast on UK radio in half a century. This is about as far out as Delia’s work (and indeed The Radiophonic Workshop in general) ever got and it’s an incredible testament to the BBC that the Third Programme was broadcasting such forward-thinking works all the way back in 1964! The show also includes an extended extract from Delia’s equally magnificent soundtrack to Circle Of Light, an experimental film from 1972 exploring the remarkable photographic works of Pamela Bone (itself finally released to huge acclaim on Trunk Records in 2016). Huge thanks to Delia Derbyshire Day lynchpin Caro C and also Mark Ayres for their help in putting it together. Sadly not available as a podcast, so if you missed it you’d better start digging down the back of the sofa for that spare £200 you could have sworn you left somewhere…

Alongside the usual flurry of events, workshops, performances and the creation of new artworks supervised by Caro and the ever redoubtable Delia Derbyshire Day team, I must give a shout out to Green Croft Arts for putting on the superb ‘TRAILBLAZER’ weekend at The Sill in Northumberland in celebration of both Delia’s legacy and her time living and working in the area. A personal highlight was Sunday’s tape loop workshop, where I finally convinced my 6 year old niece to lend a hand in the creation of a spooky racket. She ended up needing slightly more convincing than I had anticipated. Kids these days, am I right?!!

Howling With High Couture

Hello You. Time for another breathless update from these pages, starting with news of a couple of live shows taking place in London this November. On Thursday 2nd I’ll be unveiling a new audio-visual live work with Psyche-Tropes’ Merkaba Macabre as part of ‘Butoh Experiments’ at Iklectik, an evening of performances hosted by the 2023 Rebellious Bodies International Butoh Dance Festival. Also live on the night will be Pascal Savy and Ben Jeans Houghton. Details and tickets here.

The very next day, Ken Hollings and I will roll out The Howling once more for MEMOREX: Bonfire of the BASF, an evening of ‘Misremembering’ at The Horse Hospital, hosted by Travis Elborough. Further delights come courtesy of a performance by dear old chum Kemper Norton, plus Ruth Bayer and Caroline Wise in conversation.

Two of my very favourite venues, both a hugely important part of London’s historic and cultural landscape and of course both under threat from nasty greedmonger developers as a result. Almost inevitable these days, isn’t it? But it does mean that both venues welcome custom and support more than ever, plus you can join the campaign to save Iklectik and its Old Paradise Yard home here.

Elsewhere, I was chuffed indeed to be the guest on a recent episode of the Audio.Com Podcast, where I chatted with host Ilia Rogatchevski about Howlround, my work as a sound archivist, the wonderful world of Radiophonics and that dirty word ‘obsolete’, while also playing random blasts from the back catalogue. Have a listen and then head straight to the latest episode which features the superb ‘Krautfolk Collective’ Staraya Derevyna.   

Also check out my new Audio.com Profile page, which contains among other things, the Howling’s recent smash hit single ‘David Gest, Liza Minelli, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor’ and a raw live demo recorded in one take with members of the crowd at last month’s ‘Dark Tales And Strange Sounds’ event at Copped Hall. Might just upload some more work in progress in the coming weeks there as well, as I’m currently awaiting the green light to move into a new studio space. Fingers crossed!

Speaking of smash hits, one outcome I had not anticipated in my own personal game of ‘outrageous fortune bingo’ was to have the aforementioned Howling smash hit single featured as part of the soundtrack to the catwalk show for fashion giant LOEWE’s Spring and Summer 2024 Collection. And yet here we are – Ken and I knee deep in the glamorous world of high couture, and it feels good and right. Never again will anyone dare to cast aspersions on my sartorial elegance! Might celebrate by investing in a pixelated hoodie:

And finally please cast your ears over ‘Ivy’, the rather splendid recent single by Benjamin Yellowitz. Can you hear just the faintest trace of tape machine echo in the background? It comes courtesy of Daphne, my semi-faithful UHER6000, who enjoyed a trip out Benjamin’s studio sometime last year. At the time the song was little more than an accapella and a clicktrack, so it’s amazing to hear how it’s blossomed in the interim. Bodes well for a future album!  

See You Next Tuesday – The Incredible Night Creatures Of Vox Interruptus

You are hereby invited to a very special event taking place at Iklectik on Tuesday 19th September, where Ken Hollings and I will reunite as The Howling and celebrate the (un)official launch of our brand new album Incredible Night Creatures of the Midway with some brand new live material as part of this star-studded collective. See you there?

drøne, English Touring Opera and IKLECTIK present: Vox Interruptus

19 September 2023 | Doors: 7:30pm – Start: 8:00pm

Tickets: £10 adv / £12 otd – link here.

An evening of voice versus noise. Operatic soprano from Julia Marika alongside drøne (their UK premier), The Howling (Ken Hollings and Robin the Fog) talk trash over tape loops and distortions and Dale Cornish delivers south London keening in all its joy, horror and sadness. JTM is the overseas special guest – the mystery voice (What’s My Line for the 21st Century?) in this eclectic lineup.

Incredible Night Creatures of the Midway is the long-awaited sophomore album by THE HOWLING, that beguiling collision of text, tape and trash from the tangled minds of Ken Hollings + Howlround officially released 29th September on The Tapeworm’s sister label Wormhole. The album’s lead single, “veritable trash aesthetics checklist” and our first ever recording together: ‘David Gest, Liza Minelli, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor’ is out already, and comes as a free download when you preorder the album. Copies of the CD will also be available to purhase on the night – weeks in advance of its arrival in the shops!

The Howling is a collaborative project started by writer Ken Hollings and sound artist Howlround devoted exclusively to their shared love of text, audiotape and Trash Aesthetics. An intense collision of spoken word and analogue tape effects, The Howling provide the missing link between John Cage and Suicide. Their debut album All Hail Mega Force, released by The Tapeworm in 2022, was hailed by The Wire as a ‘mesmeric disorientation.’

One year later, and with some blistering live performances at Iklectik, The Horse Hospital and the British Film Institute under their belts, The Howling are back with a second album inspired by their passion for Trash Cinema. ‘Contents Warning’ pays tribute to the quantities of sex, horror and violence to be found in the genre as a whole, while ‘David Gest, Liza Minnelli, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor’ is a veritable Trash Aesthetics checklist.

Each of the remaining three tracks is devoted to a specific movie dear to The Howling’s hearts: The Skydivers is a deadpan exposition of a spectacularly lacklustre 1960s soap opera set on a California airfield, backed by the throbbing of a customised street rod engine; while ‘The Picture of A Picture of Dorian Gray’ is a pounding response to a 1970s Italian soft-core porn adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s classic novel. Finally, The Howling are joined by Beth Arzy of Jetstream Pony and composer/performer Ela Orleans for ‘Miss Frost Miss Leslie Miss Frost’, an exacting dismemberment of Miss Leslie’s Dolls, a creepy Florida-based slasher flick rumoured to have been produced with money smuggled out of Castro’s Cuba. We dare you to play it in the dark!

The whole package has been magnificently mastered by Steven McInerney with beautiful cover artwork by the great Stefan Fähler and design by Don Wyrm, so it’s really quite a team effort. Plus copy comes with a PDF download zine of the lyricas, so everyone can sing along!

Ken Hollings + Howlround = The Howling: ‘The First Name In Excitement!’

Darker And Stranger! The Tape Loops Return To Copped Hall

As the evenings draw in, and the nights grow colder, and following four successful sell-out performances of Dark Tales & Strange Sounds at Copped Hall, the team moves on to a yet darker new production. This time, we’re making use of much more of the Mansion, with performances happening in the Saloon, the State Hall, the Housekeeper’s Room, the Parlour and – of course! – the Cellars.

Featuring: Robin the Fog / Howlround, Gary Stewart / Dubmorphology, Julia Stallard, Sinister Masterplan, Dushume, Avsluta, Kate Carr, Mhairi Vari +++

This will not be a static evening. The audience will be free to move from room to room at will, choosing which performances to attend. This promenade-style event will occupy a variety of spaces in the Mansion. Storytelling will happen in the Saloon on the First Floor and in the Parlour on the Ground Floor. Other performances will take place in the cellars and other rooms.

Up for consideration are a chilling Edgar Allan Poe story, the grim tale of the Tolpuddle Martyrs and their farm at nearby Chipping Ongar, the exchange of the Two Graces on St Kitts, soundscapes of 18th Century life, and much more. You might even meet Lady Henrietta and the Housekeeper in person! Some of the performances will be based on original 18th Century documents from the extensive Copped Hall collection held by the Essex Record Office.

Returning for the show will be Sinister Masterplan (Laura Sampson, storyteller, and Sam Enthoven, Thereminist), actor Julia Stallard, and sound artist Gary Stewart with his extraordinary modular synthesiser. We’ll also have some fixed Sound Installations: Mhairi Vari promises ‘the trilogy of three and the power of whatever’ in the cellars; Robin the Fog / Howlround will reprise the Ruled by Darkness tape loops in the State Hall; Experimental noise and sound artist Dushume will provide new experimental noises and sounds; In the kitchen, deep in the cellars, Avsluta (Lucie Štěpánková) and Kate Carr will be creating new soundscapes based on found Copped Hall objects. The Bar will be open serving drinks, and a roaring log fire will warm you in the ground floor Servants’ Hall.

Tickets £20 – book online at: coppedhallevents.ticketsource.co.uk
Access to the Mansion is via the white gates in Crown Hill, Upshire Road (PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB THE LODGE RESIDENTS!) For Satnavs use CM16 5HR / What3Words: stow.crab.record


FOGFEST II Tickets Now On Sale!

One year after 2022’s dazzling sold out spectacle, I’m bringing FOGFEST back to Iklectik for another eye-popping, ear-bending evening crammed full of delights from yet more pushers of the audio-visual envelope. This year we’re bringing you the exclusive debut of what might be the world’s first ever modified turntablism soundclash, while welcoming in very special guests from the US and Barcelona. Expect a fullblown sensory evisceration – and definitely expect a party!