Format is everything and Eyeless are very aware of that. In a digital age when so much is available for free download presentation is everything with a physical release. The EP comes on two three inch mini CD's, split into seperate packages, the cover art, expressive monochrome hand produced ink work inverted for each side, light and dark, front and back, birth and destruction. Each CD is a single twelve minute track of improv structured drone textures and guitar. The packaging supplements the music as a piece of simple but clever conceptual art in itself, a dichotmy of primal opposites each acting as front and back respectively. This is what I love about Eyeless Records, the care and attention that goes into releasing each recording.
"Birth"
Vile Swarm are a real experience of sonic craftmenship. The music supplements the presentation perfectly, "Birth" is a delicate tense piece of experimental ambience. Like floating through the ether on your first THC experience, photons of light gently bursting against your soft skin like an analogue bath of bubbles while something paranoid and monstrous and heavy lurks in the dark over the threshold, just out of sight. "Birth" really builds the sonic tension, the pressure builds until something wants to explode but doesn't.
David K Frampton - Vile Swarm live at Pixadelica Vol 6. Photo by Brendan Meachen
"Destruction"
"Destruction" starts with the purest rock guitar strumming ever. Maybe I'm just geeky but one single chord blasts from your speakers and drones satisfyingly slowly into your ears like sonic gloop. Dying gods wail into the infinity of the cosmos, the wind from their breath collapsing stars and crushing entire civilisations as the planets that orbit them spiral into destruction. The accelerating entropy of a sick and diseased universe drenched in feedback and unsettling atmospheres. Like the dark gates of Hell have been thrown open by the sheer pressure of the barely contained tortured sonics within. During "Destruction" something explodes.
Lee Riley - Vile Swarm live at Pixadelica Vol 6. Photo by Brendan Meachen
Vile Swarm
Vile Swarm are David K Frampton and Lee Riley, two brave men exploring the dark labyrinthine soundscapes of our vandalised collective unconscious and recording and manipulating it to their own sense of dramatic tension. There's a real sense of narrative and poetry to the noise, unlike a lot of the static noise that often passes for drone experimentalism. They describe themselves as "improvised Drone, Doom and Psychedelic jams. Both subtle and vicious at the same time", which is a perfect description of the terrifying energy of their live performance and this beautiful double EP. If you've not downloaded the free supplement that accompanies this recording and you have an open mind all kinds of music, then do so now. It's not like anything you've ever heard before. If you happen to like it, then buy this EP and support the artists (grab a copy of the Foetus 502 album and the Finger Pistols album while you can too). Hell, buy it anyway and show your support for artists doing what they love to do. You won't regret it.
Eyeless Records
Eyeless Records is an independent record label run by David K Frampton. It features releases from a variety of artists, from glitch electro pop to drone noise to some of the sweetest folk music we've ever heard. http://www.eyelessrecords.com
We had some problems with the website last week, not that many people noticed. We're in the process of building something new in the background. Now that we're startingto have some success with the gigs we're setting our sights on other things, in particular ways we can enable a wider range of artists to create for an audience. Pixadelica is all about sharing, and sharing on the web in a way that's open and connects people takes infrastructure. Infrastructure means scribbling lots in notebooks and building something new. Websites can be delicate things, they break easily. They also fix easily. Last weekend was spent naked doing a silly dance at sunrise, whooping wildly hoping the right God would hear me. Smearing sigils in the carpet with old fag ash and throwing a cursed chicken bone at the screen. Pixadelica.org started working again. The rain last weekend wasn't my fault though. Honest.
If this website breaks, or it's a bit quiet, don't panic. We're busy in the basement plotting and building.
Thanks
Pixadelica Vol. 6 was an organisational nightmare, but a lot of people stepped in and put a lot of effort into making it a highly enjoyable night. Many thanks to you all for your hard work and continued support, even if you just turned up for a pint with friends. We raised an amazing £287.85 on the night for Haiti, the first time we've actually made any kind of money from a gig after paying for everything. The money has long since been contributed to Haiti via the good souls at Oxfam Music Shop. Thank you all. What to a few of us seemed a chaotic night apparently turned out very well, we'll have some kind of review in some form or another soon.
Pixadelica Volume 7
Pixadelica returns to the Facebar Saturday 20th February.
Extreme weather, commuter nightmares, abandoned cars, and late trains. Smokers standing outside the pub throwing snow balls at each other. It must be the global celebration of the biggest act of cultural vandalism ever orchestrated by ancient institutions. Christmas.
Free Zines
About a month ago Pixadelica Vol 5 happened at the Facebar. Four amazing unique bands played a very eclectic line up for what was an incredible night. There's a review with photos here if you haven't already seen it. As usual we presented a free printed copy of our latest zine to the first people who turned up. Issue 4 of Pixadelica was a 36 page beast, presenting art, fiction, and writing from a variety of contributors. We also published several photo's from the What The Butler Saw, the four day arts and music festival we helped curate alongside Moondogs Art Cafe. Demand for the zine is always strong, and unfortunately being purely self-funded we can't afford to print enough to give to everyone. However, all our zines are available to download for free as a PDF (see menu on the right) and Issue 4 is no exception.
This issue features part 2 of Reading Noir by Nick Mann, serialised contemporary noir fiction set locally in Reading. Articles on music by Ryan O'Donoghue and whiskey soaked meditations on creativity by Brendan Meachen. Fast fiction from Tom Mullen. A comic strip by Flee Lees and a range of amazing art from Gregory Baker, Kim Burley, Dan Cooper, and many more. Pixadelica Issue 4 has been our most ambitious zine to date.
Pixadelica is published under a creative commons license, which means you can do what you like with it once you've downloaded it. Email a copy to your friends, stick it in an image editing program like GIMP and remix it to your hearts content. Print it and cut it up and turn it into a collage with whatever other materials you have to hand. Stick it on your own website for download. Photocopy it at the office ten times and leave copies on lying around on the train. Anything goes, all we ask for is that the original work is credited to the original artist who created it. Pixadelica is a submission based zine, and we get a wide variety of quality submissions from some highly creative local people. Click on the awesome cover art created by resident genius mark maker Flee Lees for your free PDF.
Thanks to all who contributed to Pixadelica Issue 4, the feedback we get for the zine has been very strong and it's no surprise considering the quality of the submissions.
Music - More Freebies!
Rage Against The Machine top the Christmas charts with an ancient socio political rock anthem and shatter the dull conformist dreams of that cynical slime that somehow evolved enough brain cells to crawl out of X-Factor and make a record. Sony laugh all the way to the bank because it's Christmas and everyone still thinks the top 40 matters somehow in this age of remixing, creative commons, and freely available tools for creating and sharing media. Fuck you I won't do what you tell me. Meanwhile there are people on the underground circuit quietly making sonic experiments amazing music.
Bleeding Heart Narrative have a new album out called Lung Mangled Bear, and a full compilation of remixes, edits, mutations, and experimental treatments has been released into the wild as a free download. Grab yourself a copy, it a features a remix by Lee Riley who those of you who attended will remember performed a breathtaking improvised drone set as Euhedral at What The Butler Saw.
If you haven't seen it already one of my favourite net labels HighPoint LowLife are giving away a full brand new release from Depakote for free during December. You've got about a week left to get a copy of this, one of the best new experimental hip hop albums I've heard all year. Fans of Flying Lotus and Prefuse73 will love it. The history of hip hop told via remixed samples on a mixtape, pre-21st century narratives re-told via bass-heavy head-nodding beats and funk and soul samples. As a bonus there's also a hip-hop mix from HighPoint LowLife featuring some heavy sampling from the best cop TV show made in recent times The Wire. Get yourself some Smart Ass Prawns.
Creative Commons and Free Culture
A lot of that content is released under a creative commons, particularly HighPoint LowLife who actively encourage sharing and uploading of anything on their website. Rage Against The Machine getting Christmas no. one may be a small victory against mechanised production lines like X-Factor. In the long term however the introduction of Peter Mandelson's Digital Britain bill crushing independent media distribution and paving the way for more corporate media ownership and control and Simon Cowell's ever cynical attitude to music as business first creativity open copyright systems like creative commons are going to become increasingly important for independent media. There's a wealth of amazing material out there and artists are increasingly releasing it openly and for free, encouraging cultural development through remixing and reinterpretation, which is at the heart of the Bleeding Heart Narrative album and of course, hip hop. We live in positive culturally healthy times, but that culture, as well as our civil liberties, are under threat.
Finally on that note happy holidays and all the best for the new year from all at Pixadelica!
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 23 December 2009 20:02 )
This was a gig that shouldn't have happened. Two bands pulled out after initial efforts at promotion (it happens) and we were making bookings right up until a week before the gig. I was speaking to two artists on the phone finalising arrangements right up to the day before. Thankfully we seem to always pick decent friendly civilised human beings to come and play for us. We printed our most ambitious zine yet, 36 pages of contributed art and writing, thoughts and ideas printed the night before and folded and stapled that very day. Then there was the torrential rain, a small group of us soaked and grumbling in the Facebar, bittersweet atmosphere of excitement and anxiety heavy in the air.
Pixadelica Vol. 5 was the easiest and most enjoyable gig we've ever done. Did the usual walk into the bar past 8pm to see what was going on, surprised as always to see people old and new walk in to see the bands and hear the music happen.
We couldn't do this without the support of our friends, the amazing Doubledotdash?! who make it all look so effortless and easy to bring amazing music to Reading. Matt the Facebar's sound guy who happily meets any challenge we throw at him and the nicest sound technie we've worked with. All the bands who express an interest and have played a gig with us. All the new people we've met and friends we've made. This was the last gig of 2009 for us, and it's been an absolutely amazing year. Cheers!
Skyline Dossier
Freaked out chemical good times for the 21st Century anti-love post rave generation. Rock geetar, keyboards, bass, and drums soaked in feedback and good tunes. Like someone dug up the corpse of Frank Zappa sellotaped forks to his hand and then stuck them in household electrical sockets just for a laff while listening to early Queens of The Stone Age. It's good to see a band have so much fun on stage.
Toddlers
One of the best bands in Reading this year, but then what do you expect from the mutant infant offspring of Hunting The Shy and Tilehurst Children's Arkestra. Super heavy pop tantrums and unsupervised high octane drum and bass gymnastics. They'll play where they like and you're gonna love it.
Perhaps Contraption
Surrealist other dimensional narratives from London art collective. Weirdo avant garde waltzes punctuated by improv dialog and fiction. Grand david lynch nightmare theatrics. Lady in the Radiator and Oompa Loompa discordant waltzes. More art performance and probability mechanics than just a gig and deceptively phenomenal musical talent. They were tight both as actors and musicians, only I can't be sure if they were actually acting.
The Bellows
It's rare I ever see people react to live music in Reading, let alone dance. Dancing is exactly what happened when The Bellows came on and played some of the most amazing gothic swamp blues tunes you'll ever hear. Too large and loud to fit on a stage. Darkly comic narratives to large acoustic sounds. They have an album out soon and it'll be the best record you ever buy next year, trust me.
Pixadelica volume 5 was an amazing gig, against all odds. Thanks to all involved and all who came. We'll be making Issue 4 of our zine available for download soon, so if you missed the gig but wanted a copy, you'll get one.
Pixadelica Volume Six
We'll return January 2010, meanwhile the zine will appear as a free download on this website soon. Those of you who missed the limited print edition may get another chance to get a hold of a copy soon, watch this space. If you can't wait for the next Pixadelica then fear not.
Doubledotdash!? -Xmas Bash 2009!
Christmas comes early thanks to Doubledotdash!? bringing the best of the underground to Reading on 18th December at South Street Arts Centre. If you haven't already seen them this is a great chance to see Toddlers as well as destroyer cephalopods, psychedelic noise jams, and Santa himself.
When I first got involved with What The Butler Saw, I was asked to book bands for three nights and that the focus was on "experimental" music. I wasn't sure what experimental meant, or how much freedom I had with bands I would book. A lot of the bands who play Pixadelica could be described as experimental, we certainly a host a very diverse range of music which is important in this age of X-Factor and boring by the numbers indie rock. There's a whole load of genre defying mind bending music being made out there which most a lot of people will never hear, much of it just down the road from where you might be now.
In the end I decided "experimental" meant the diverse kinds of music most people don't listen to at home or on an iPod or whatever. So I booked a variety of acts from static soundscape artist Ebbs and Flows (hi Rob), to drone poet Euhedral (hi Lee) to smooth jazz rock fusion flex Tilehurst Children's Arkestra. I honestly didn't think it would work, allowing people to plug DIY sound making junk heaps into a PA and make loud noises down a local pub. All the bands and musicians who took part all turned out to be highly creative talented geniuses and everyone loved it. Everyone who played was friendly and really easy to work with as well, The Ressoance Association did their own soundcheck and adjusted the PA themselves so I could just sit and watch them craft beautiful electronic soundscapes using a couple of guitars and a complicated set up of blinking lights and antenna that I imagine wouldn't look out of place in the BBC's radiophonic workshop at Maidavale.
Music
Ebbs and Flows laid out his board of gadgetry and sonic machinery and crafted an oscillating static soundscape of beautiful ethereal noise tunes layered over drum and bass beats. Drums and Static. The sound of an infinite variety of 21st century data devices filtered and purified to convey the delicate human emotion beneath it all.
Euhedral closed all the doors and transported the entire room to a post-apocalyptic doom landscape. Layered textures and beautiful noise structures, barely heard human wails floating on a nuclear wind. A stunning sound experience.
The Quatermass Xperiment are everything a rock band should be without even touching guitars. They're the sound of Peter Mandelson's technological copyright nightmares, thundering drums accompanying circuit bending noise and counter-culture stolen film samples, all orchestrated from two desks littered with keyboards, broken laptops, and abused toys.
The Resonnance Association courtesy of Mrs Vee recordings, if you were there you would have taken home a sampler of their latest album Clarity in Darkness and you know how wonderful it is. Critically acclaimed atmospheric electronics, guitar solos, heavy drones and pulsing rhythms that collide into epic, panoramic soundworlds, beautiful to listen to live. Download their EP for free, and while you at it I understand new album Clarity in Darkness is available for pre-order just in time for Xmas.
Tilehurst Children's Arkestra are one of the best bands I've seen or heard in Reading. These post rock jazz legends played a phenomenal set, pounding drum rhythms like tuned pneumatic drills powered them through forty minutes of high energy seventies lounge cop show music. Pure good tunes.
Sly and the Family Drone surpassed their previous gig at Pixadelica vol 4, filling almost the entire room with the biggest drum kit I've ever seen. Relentless free style drums, drone noise, wooping vocals, and pure audio chaos for over an hour. Sly and the Family Drone are not just a band but a unique art event. There's a recording on their myspace, close your eyes and make-believe you're there and don't blame me if they make you feel dirty for enjoying it.
There were also unscheduled improv character performances from C. J. Chandler.
I know these have been long awaited, so have some photo's under the read more link below. Like all material on this site they're released under a creative commons, so don't bother asking and just help yourself. All we ask for is a link back to this site.
