False Positives
(Hand-Held Recordings - HHR02) CD + DVDr $11.50
Dark and brooding or mellifluously uplifting (take your pick), the third full-length album from Hiroshima-based, ex-pat Scotsman Paul Thomsen Kirk carries on from Unconfirmed Reports the recurrent, underlying theme of urban and cultural alienation in a media-saturated Japanese metropolitan environment. Whether skimming the surface or trawling the dank underbelly, Kirk examines the daily minutiae of life in a large, concrete-and-glass-and-steel Japanese city, in all its garish hues and faded glories. Accessing all areas, and dispelling some Japanese urban myths along the way, False Positives is a thoroughly enticing, mesmeric, 360-degree adventure. Limited edition DVDr contains six videos.
Short Fuse
(Alt.Vinyl - AV071) LP + CD $24.00
Paul Thomsen Kirk’s fifth full-length album navigates the last of the concrete, glass and steel of the large urban cityscapes of Japan and enters the de-populated rural villages and barren rice fields. Sound-tracked by pounding rhythms; disembodied electronics; roughly hewn, effected samples; whirling dervish dance-marathons; concussive percussion; and twisted snippets of lost conversations, the album is akin to listening to a multi-waveband radio tuned into post-Fukushima short wave transmissions replete with static-laden, disembodied newscasters lamenting forgotten faces and life-lines to the gone forever, the extinguished firmament of normality. CD contains entire album plus three non-vinyl bonus tracks. With inserts. 180-gram, colored vinyl. Edition of 250
Unconfirmed Reports
(Hand-Held Recordings - HHR001) CD + DVDr $12.00
The second full-length release from Hiroshima-based Scots musician, filmmaker, and photographer Paul Kirk (ex-Twisted Nerve, ex-Bigshot) is an in-depth, electronic-based, audio/visual travelogue of late autumn through to early spring. Dark, brooding, occasionally menacing, deeply seductive, Unconfirmed Reports carries on the urban alienation and social exclusion first heard on Akatombo’s Trace Elements, released by Colin Newman’s Swim label. By skimming the surface and trawling the dank underbelly, Kirk presents the daily minutiae of life in a large Japanese city in all its garish hues and faded glories. Mix engineered by Makoto Kubota (Les Rallizes Denudes). The DVDr contains three films with music from the album. Hand-numbered edition in oversized printed envelope, containing two photographic art-prints, two random newspaper cuttings.