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.
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.
Homegoing
(Hand-Held Recordings - HHR03) CD $12.00
J. Anthony, G. Darden, and R. Donne (Labradford, Spokane, ex-Aix Em Klemm) journey through simmering electronic, wide-screen vistas to seismic, swelling and undulating soundscapes. From the shifting sands-like textures of “Yoke” (replete with deeply moving, melancholic cello sifting through the ether) and “Streaming Wisdom” to the ever-so-slightly somber tones of “Dead Bird,” Homegoing is a wondrously thought-provoking, uplifting aural adventure. A technicolor travelogue of things possibly lost, possibly not. Available previously as a free digital download with Swedish Child seven-inch, (Flingco Sound System 2010), Hand-Held’s first-time-on-CD reissue has two unreleased bonus tracks, including a Pan American remix. Edition of 500. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2013
17 Years In Ektachrome
(Hand-Held Recordings - HH004) CD $14.00
Fossil Aerosol Mining Project’s soft, fluorocarbon textures are perfect backdrops for mellifluous overlays of travelogue-style field recordings. The album has a distinctly archaeological perspective, utilizing what seem to be decayed quarter-inch analogue tapes that were processed and looped many years ago. The resulting layers of found sources and environmental recordings have been fragmented, slightly decomposed, and pulled away from their original contexts. 17 Years is the perfect soundtrack for vast open plains, abandoned industrial complexes, and forgotten small towns washed in the shadows of a bygone age. The group regularly contributes to Zoviet France’s widely subscribed Duck in a Tree weekly podcast of all things electronic and/or analogue,