Demdike Stare

MLZ + Finders Keepers + witchy witchy + Mika Vainio + Turkish/Indian/Iranian/African/West Indian film soundtrack + hauntology + Dubplates & Mastering = ?

http://static.boomkat.com/images/254067/333.jpg

From FACT:

Manchester's always impressive Modern Love label is taking a leap into the occult with the release of Symbiosis, the debut album by Demdike Stare.

Demdike Stare is the witchy alter ego of Sean Canty and Miles 'MLZ' Whittaker. Canty is one of the rainy city's best-known record collectors, obsessed with "everything from obscure Nordic Doom to Antolyan funk", and works behind-the-scenes at Andy Votel's Finders Keepers, while Miles is a Modern Love stalwart, having released several records on the label both solo as MLZ and as one half of Pendle Coven.

Miles' Pendle Coven project was named after Pendle Hill in north-east Lancashire, an area beloved of ghost-hunters and famed for its witch trials of 1612, when ten suspected witches were executed. Demdike Stare take their name from the most famous of the ten - Elizabeth Southern, better known as Demdike.

Symbiosis finds Whittaker and Canty stalking similar sonic terrain to Pendle Coven, somewhere between drone and dub-techno, natural and industrial, arcane and futuristic. The recordings absorb the duo's shared interest in Iranian, Turkish and West Indian library records - listening to the Middle Eastern textures on 'Tripped Dervish' and 'Haxan Dub' it's hard not to think of Shackleton, while 'Regressor', 'Extwistle Hall' and 'Nothing But The Night' are firmly in the hauntological tradition of Ghost Box and Mordant Music. Also strongly evident is Demdike Stare's interest in the spatial quality of sound, and it's no surprise that they give props to Mika Vainio in the press release accompanying the album.

Symbiosis will be released on September 21 as a CD and split across two 12"s, each mastered at D+M Berlin and limited to 300 copies. The cover art is by Andy Votel.

this is so dope

it didn't really add up for me. or maybe i just heard other slightly similar things this year that impressed me a lot more than this. so it suffered by comparison.

but i should probably listen again cuz i only played it once.

i'm curious, what did you hear that you thought was similar?

other sample-based stuff. mood music, basically. maybe even that nurse with wound thing i got this year. (surveillance lounge). but especially the Kreng album on the miasmah label. that album kinda blew me away. and other stuff too that i will look up when i'm at work tomorrow. and even the necro deathmort album, to me, had more compelling samples and beats. and doom! i wish more people could hear that album. one of my faves of the year. but mostly these things felt like a whole piece of work. the demdike stuff just sounded pieced together to me. from a cool record collection. which is cool. and, again, i need to listen to it again.

that's funny you say that because me and a friend got super stonedidated last night and listened to demdike stare and then NWW right after

will look into kreng for sure

"haxan" slays

very interesting review of their two new vinyl-only albums in this month's Wire. Can't wait to hear them!

http://www.factmag.com/2010/05/21/fact-mix-151-demdike-stare/

two new EPs are freaking dope

off the new one it sounds like "eurydice" samples the first track off porter ricks' "biokinetics" album and "mathilda's dream" samples the last track off monolake's "hongkong" album

yes, really enjoying these! too bad the first one is already out of print. there were a couple of copies at amoeba sf, though, the last time I checked

these guys are really killer

"osmosis" is incredible!

new podcast : http://soundcloud.com/unsound/up-13-demdike-stares-unsounded-podcast

brutal

Is it just me or is this stuff of the brit-equivalent of illbient? I like it, but a lot of this sounds like it could be at home on Crooklyn Dub Consortium Vol whatever (a series I really like, but I don't exactly hear getting rep'd left and right.)

i disagree with two things

1) illbient as unexamined slur

2) illbient as monolithic style

3) demdike stare as illbient anyway

Fantastic.

you say illbient
i say hauntology
let's call the whole thing off

the only thing wrong with illbient is "illbient"

true that

Is it just me or is this stuff of the brit-equivalent of illbient? I like it, but a lot of this sounds like it could be at home on Crooklyn Dub Consortium Vol whatever (a series I really like, but I don't exactly hear getting rep'd left and right.)

I was just talking about this with a friend. Over the last couple years I've heard a bunch of stuff in the dubstep/hyperdub realm that totally reminds me of the Crooklyn Dub Consortium/Wordsound nexus, especially those Spectre records. Even some of this, uh, "witch house" stuff sounds vaguely like stuff off the Subterranean Hitz compilations.

Thought we should start a thread for these dudes specifically, as the deserved ILX0R praise for this band has thus far been relegated to the insufferable, excruciatingly unreadable Salem thread.

I really dig Symbiosis but I like the Forest of Evil 12" even more. Ghost Box meets Porter Ricks - what's not to love??

I'm a little confused about the discography - I guess there were two 12"s released this year? And one is out of print? Or something? What else do I need to hear?

Discuss! And anyone who uses the terms 'witch house' or 'rape gaze' will be shot on sight.

haha, i kind of like these guys being the alternative to rapewitch

Liberation Through Hearing is the second EP.

theyre both out of print iirc

if you like the idea of ghost box meets porter ricks you'll love the new 12", liberating through hearing, as it literally samples porter ricks and monolake's earliest CR recordings

whoops liberation through hearing

i keep wanting to do a breakdown of how this is different from illbient

1) "illbient" = marketing scheme for loosely affiliated group of artists. demdike stare is not really clearly affiliated with the hauntology crew, at least not in the way that say, mordant music and ghost box are.

2) illbient artists were largely not successful outside of illbient. these guys are successful in straightforward dance (as MLZ) and also the reissue game (as finders keepers). illbient more of a spoiler scene, like dubstep, mainly just dudes who were not successful at making hip hop or trip hop.

3) illbient didn't really combine anything novel - nobody's really hit on the combination of "ghost box meets porter ricks" yet, but there isn't a whole lot of room between a lot of illbient and a lot of trip hop other than "oh hey isn't this spooky sounding", whereas there's musical techniques in demdike stare that you wouldn't hear on anybody else's records right now.

not surprisingly, the one illbient artist almost always worth fucking with is 4E, who also recorded other music as khan / can oral / khan + walker / bizz OD, etc etc

Not surprisingly you have no idea what you are talking about.

you're seriously understating the experimental, exploratory, artmusic fringes of illbient, moonship. in combining musique concrete and abstract sound with hip hop, in delivering a hip hop that could be rhythmically fractured, and could play meta games with philosophy and art theory, i think illbient did combine familiar things in distinctly novel ways.

nor am i convinced by the idea that there are musical techniques on display in demdike that are unusual in a way that outstrips what you were hearing on on early records by spooky, et al.

anyway, love the two EPs demdike stare have released this year, and last years CD was ace, too. bummed that i didn't snag those first two EPs when i had a chance, though.

"forest of evil (dawn)" ffs

not surprisingly, my nuts are once again on your mom's chin

good one

not surprising, you continue to demonstrate that in addition to knowing jack shit about the subject at hand you also have the social skills of a teenage boy

This is the Salem thread all over again.

ILM sucks.

illbient more of a spoiler scene, like dubstep, mainly just dudes who were not successful at making hip hop or trip hop.

so dubstep producers are dudes who were not successful at...techno?

lol, is this what these threads are usually like?

Is moonship already lobbying to get me banned from the thread?

haha no, I was reading this because of the positive mentions of Demdike Stare on the Salem thread and now I see what deej was complaining about (although really I can think of about a bazillion different rhetorical styles that are better to emulate than this)

oh please, when have i ever lobbied to get you kicked off a thread lobbed my man juice down your mom's throat?

^^^ things I don't expect to read when I open a Demdike Stare thread.

When did you turn into a budget Dane Cook???

you're seriously understating the experimental, exploratory, artmusic fringes of illbient, moonship. in combining musique concrete and abstract sound with hip hop, in delivering a hip hop that could be rhythmically fractured, and could play meta games with philosophy and art theory, i think illbient did combine familiar things in distinctly novel ways.

Contenderizer, you're not... seriously... making this argument are you??

insert joke about your budget mom here

xp: I really want to know what "rhythmically fractured" means because I kind of don't see anything in that description that couldn't be covered by, well, regular old hip-hop.

So now I'm assuming that what illbient "did" was read a Divine Styler press release.

haha exactly

Contenderizer, you're not... seriously... making this argument are you??

well, yeah. but i'm not claiming to be any kind of expert and am perfectly willing to be set straight. sure, you can point to something like spiral walls containing autumns of light as a precedent, but that album was and still is a massive outlier. there's almost nothing in the world like it. it didn't proceed from anything going on in hip hop at the time, or kick off any significant mainstream following.

when i say rhythmically fractured, i mean aggressively arythmic, broken. shit you can't dance or even nod to. and i think illbient's (perhaps forced) relationship to academic art theory & music was novel in american hip hop. though, again, i'm perfectly happy to be schooled...

love spiral walls, btw

... so what exactly are you talking about here, because the most prominent name that pops up on Wikipedia when I look up "illbient" is DJ Spooky, and I know you can't be talking about him unless you just can't dance

also: Sub Dub, DJ Olive, Boards of Canada

illbient was like well after dj shadow, though. everyone was already well steeped in all sorts of fractured atmospheric hip hop beats when "galactic funk@ happened, and from there it only got worse.

i am in large part talking about spooky. i liked spooky, though haven't listened to him in ages. some of his shit is danceable ("galactic funk" ffs) and some is just chunks of noise - sometimes abstract, sometimes concrete, sometimes splintered beats.

kind of want someone to call me on the explicit art theory/music concrete connections

Can someone post an audio sample of what contenderizer is talking about here that was new and novel and not actually stuff that people had been doing for like 10+ years in the hip-hop, ambient and industrial worlds before DJ Spooky came along?

my main point being that i don't see DdS doing anything incredibly radical relative to what the c.96 illbient players were doing. not that illbient WAS so incredibly radical (kinda was, kinda wasn't, as has been pointed out), rather that demdike are playing around on the fringes of established scenes/sounds in a similar way.

no, I'm totally in "yelling at you about a point completely irrelevant to your argument" mode, don't try to derail me

the simple act of crossing the streams between hip hop, ambient and industrial was itself somewhat novel, especially as it was framed in specifically hip hop (and artmusic) context. it's one thing for an industrial producer to borrow hip hop beats and ambient noise and present it as industrial music, quite another for a hip hop dj to do the same thing. context is everything.

quite another for a hip hop dj to do the same thing... and in the process to explicitly frame his hip hop production as a 20th century artistic and critical practice on par with musique concrete and academic deconstruction.

there has to be a way to just fucking post in threads without making them go all pear-shaped

ILM: Where Everything Is A Fight For Some Reason

there has to be a way to just fucking post in threads without making them go all pear-shaped

― naked human hands and a foam rubber head (contenderizer)

Yes, make everyone use their real names.

quite another for a hip hop dj ... to explicitly frame his hip hop production as a 20th century artistic and critical practice on par with musique concrete and academic deconstruction

so wait, now you get a prize for being pretentious?

btw the way guys, my posts on this forum are a 21st century critical practice on par with slavoj zizek

so wait, now you get a prize for being pretentious?

wtf dude? spooky is pretentious as shit. i'm just talking about what he did, and he made a big deal about it. are you developing a hilarious internet style?

http://www.modern-love.co.uk/releases/voices-of-dust

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick

Demdike Stare: Tryptych, 3xCD compilation of all LPs released in 2010 + extra unreleased material, out 24 Jan '11 on Modern Love

Yeah, was just coming here to post this. Good for folks like me who missed out on thiose limited 12"s

Artist: Demdike Stare
Album: Tryptych
Release Date: January 24
Label: Modern Love

Tracklist:

Disco One - Forest of Evil
01 Forest of Evil (Dusk)
02 Forest of Evil (Dawn)
03 Quiet Sky (Bonus Track)

Disc Two - Liberation Through Hearing
01 Caged in Stammheim
02 Eurydice
03 Regolith
04 The Stars Are Moving
05 Bardo Thodol
06 Matilda's Dream
07 Nothing But the Night 2 (Bonus Track)
08 Library of Solomon Book 1 (Bonus Track)
09 Library of Solomon Book 2 (Bonus Track)

Disc Three - Voices of Dust
01 Black Sun
02 Hashshashin Chant
03 Repository of Light
04 Of Decay & Shadows
05 Rain & Shame
06 Desert Ascetic
07 Viento de Levante
08 Leptonic Matter
09 A Tale of Sand
10 Filtered Through Prejudice (Bonus Track)
11 Past Is Past (Bonus Track)

Notes: This 3xCD set compiles the dubby techno outfit's three 2010 releases and adds 40 minutes of previously unreleased material.

the lock grooves on the 'liberation through hearing' lp are strangely appropriate, scratchy vinyl sound until you get up and flip the record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bL1I7XSqZQ

http://www.gifbin.com/982973

http://www.gifbin.com/bin/052009/1242802986_arnoldsmokingpot.gif

anyway, mixed grr at the wealth of bonus on that CD set. i mean, i'm psyched for more DS, but the vinyl buyer feels a wee bit cheezed, pressured to buy again what i already own.

Yeah feels very mean. It would be nice if they would at least issued some sort of download credits for vinyl buyers.

Not that I bought the vinyl myself lol, but yeah I would feel gypped buying this SUPER LIMITED MUST BUY thing only to find that a CD boxed set with bonuses was in the offing.

eh, kind of have to expect that, tbh.

six tracks in 40 min, though! figure "quiet sky" is probably like 20m on its own.

This looks like something I should already have got, I think I was dissuaded by the title.

if curious, check out "forest of evil" (either version) and "repository of light"

Triptych has leaked. It's less overwhelming than I expected (not in regards to quality, but quantity). I also expected "quiet sky" to be 20 odd minutes, but it is just a three minute cool down track. All up there is another 40 odd minutes scattered throughout.

Do you mean the bonus tracks leaked? Isn't the rest of this released material?

Sorry, no the entire three cd set has leaked.

So yes it's mostly already released material. I was referring to quantity of new material to take in.

"All up there is another 40 odd minutes scattered throughout."

That's another whole EP so that doesn't seem too bad. Kinda surprised the only Forest of Evil extra is so short though yeah.

Oh yeah, only in the context of a triple CD could that be considered less than expected.

all 3 discs streaming at npr http://www.npr.org/2011/01/24/133050064/first-listen-demdike-stare-tryptych

annie marter (CitygrlFarmhand) wrote:
They're no Salem, but they're pretty interesting. good tip NPR
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 5:33:51 PM

Oh good lord.

Andy did you review this for the AMG? (I was going to ask for that but I saw it had already been claimed.)

Yeah.

The package is nice but it doesn't fit with anything else and the discs easily slide out.

I know, kinda ridiculous! Admit it looks nice though.

Dammit I want this thing.

Nick, are you aware they're playing Brighton on the 10th? I can't go as I'm away, but I'm sure it'll be awesome.

Hmm...probably going to pick this up. I just have the Osmosis mix CD which is pretty cool.

Wow, thanks for the tip Emily! Why am I so good at missing these things?

Also just spotted theyre in london 18th feb with raime and john roberts

http://www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?216126

Goddamn. Loved the Raime I've heard, loved the John Roberts too but his aesthetic seems to be a whole different thing.

ok lol @ ilm

Triptych seems to have hit the shops today - just ordered it from Honest Jon's.

http://www.self-titledmag.com/home/2011/01/28/needle-exchange-053-an-exclusive-mix-by-demdike-stare/

The non-EP tracks on this are bloody great, I can't believe this band.

Have this on order, but keeps getting delayed :(

It's worth the having, for sure.

Been digging one of these guys' tune - some dark middle-eastern percussive thing (lol - prob 80% of their stuff, right?) so wondering whether I should go straight for the 3 CD set or start with their first one - any major difference between releases?

Something about the three disk set's overwhelming length makes it more effective than picking and choosing. Symbiosis has lot of good stuff, but the whole of Tryptic feels like it might end up considered a classic.

I dunno. I loved everything I heard, feverishly anticipated the 3xCD thing - and still have not listened to it all the way through. It is overwhelming, but not n a good way, IMO. Maybe I just have ADD or something, but I much prefer the (relatively) short bursts of the Forest Of Evil 12" etc

Isolate "Liberation Through Hearing", it stands heads and shoulders above.

Has anyone heard Applehead de Applehead yet? Is it any good?

Yeah, Liberation Through Hearing is their peak thusfar, but for me in gains something swamped with the other stuff.

I dunno. I loved everything I heard, feverishly anticipated the 3xCD thing - and still have not listened to it all the way through. It is overwhelming, but not n a good way, IMO. Maybe I just have ADD or something, but I much prefer the (relatively) short bursts of the Forest Of Evil 12" etc

kinda my experience, i love these guys but find it best taken in shorter bursts. i have the first album on order... still working my way thru Tryptych. btw Ned's reviews of the three Tryptych fragments are up on AMG, all worth a read. yes, there are NIN comparisons- it wouldn't be a Ned Raggett review without a NIN reference, would it? ;)

New mix for xlr8r is up to the usual standards: http://www.xlr8r.com/podcast/2011/05/demdike-stare

01 Demdike Stare "Intro Loop"
02 Layale Bourg El Hamam "Belly Dance Nights" (EMI Lebanon)
03 Malcolm Clarke "The Unseeing Eye" (BBC)
04 Ray Tracing "Hold (Monster Music)" (Irdial)
05 Desmond Briscoe "Voices sequence taken from Listen, Move, and Dance Vol. 3" (Columbia)
06 Jackson Heights "Since I Last Saw You" (Charisma)
07 Anthony Manning "Islets in Pink Propylene" (Irdial)
08 Drug Free America "Candy Revisited" (Blind Eye)
09 Charlie Mariano "Traditional South Indian" (Freedom)
10 Move D "Tribute To Mr Fingers" (Source)
11 Autechre "P.I.O.B. Mix 2" (What's That Noise?)
12 Iron Office "S/T" (Metronome)
13 Jurriaan Andriessen "Hardware Software" (Park)
14 Bobby Beausoleil "The Lucifer Rising Suite" (The Ajna Offensive)
15 Demdike Stare "Outro Loop"

Oh, it should be noted that Boomkat did a re-press re-package of the Triptych EPs, on vinyl, 400 copies.

yup, looks gorgeous. did you get one?

out o f stock already wth

I missed the boat. Already have my favourite (Liberation Through Hearing) though

I have two of those on vinyl and the three CD set, so... I somehow held back on buying the pack

i got the last two lps but the ocd record collector in me is dying for forest of evil

Demdike Invisible Jukebox in this month's Wire.

The Triptych vinyl didn't have the CD bonus material iirc? Big artwork must look great though.

just got an email from a distro about the 3LP ( :

What distro? Please! I'll order after you! :-)

weird forest

i got my other demdike stare lps from experimedia so i'd bet that they'll get a few copies in too

Thanking you!

That Anthony Manning 12" is the jammmmm, stoked to see them drop that into the mix

yeah, was unfamiliar with manning but immediately started poking around for info after listening to the mix

Aquarius has the Demdike 3x LP if anyone still needs it

hey guys I'm a dumbass and order things direct from boomkat sometimes despite being in the US

what US mailorder distro should I order from? their stuff takes a while to show up on the few I know of.

I'm the same kinda dumbass. Those email updates are so tempting though. Ditto Volcanic Tongue

forced exposure mh

I swear FE doesn't get half the limited edition crap, though :/

This recent XLR8R mix is my favorite. That Anthony Manning track is amazing!

all of the released anthony manning works except the liquid quartz EP and the concision remixes can be DL'ed here:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=irdial%20manning

thanks!

people upthread mentioned the samples on tryptych. anyone know what songs were sampled, and on what demdike stare tracks they appear?

really loving this album now.

4.0 out of 5 stars Perplexed album data, February 22, 2011
By Beverly E. Coleman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Tryptych (Audio CD)
I heard this innovative and exciting Sound masterpiece on NPR and did something that I rarely do...bought it. I am using it as a sound treatment for my patients and meditation because it takes people where they have never been before and also shocks or transposes people into a new consciousness. However, when they ask me who it is and the writer's name...I have forgotten and it is not anywhere on the jacket. In fact, NOTHING is on the jacket except the sames of the various sound presentations. This is an irritating and bizarre omission because it precludes their purchasing the album and/or following this artist.

My new writing hero.

people upthread mentioned the samples on tryptych. anyone know what songs were sampled, and on what demdike stare tracks they appear?

the only one I know is that Caged in Stammheim samples part of Stockhausen's "Kontakte"

this part --

The most famous moment, at the very center of the work, is a potent illustration of these connections: a high, bright, slowly wavering pitch descends in several waves, becoming louder as it gradually acquires a snarling timbre, and finally passes below the point where it can be heard any longer as a pitch. As it crosses this threshold, it becomes evident that the sound consists of a succession of pulses, which continue to slow until they become a steady beat. With increasing reverberation, the individual pulses become transformed into tones once again (Clarke 1998, 225).

(from wikipedia)

Has anyone picked up the new stuff yet? I'm still trying to get my head around forking over for the vinyl, but I'm pretty close to caving.

Oh, and dmr, upthread Vahid spotted two old Chain Reaction samples, which are pretty clearly presented if you're familiar with the original tracks:

off the new one it sounds like "eurydice" samples the first track off porter ricks' "biokinetics" album and "mathilda's dream" samples the last track off monolake's "hongkong" album

I caved. It's ok, although I have only listened through the first two pieces of vinyl, and only a couple times. I guess there are some lock grooves or hidden sections I need to check out, though. The packaging is really, really nice though.

OK, I stretched my chances and missed pt. 4 of the Elemental vinyl at most online stores. Anyone know of one that might possibly have it in, still?

same here. bought #1 and #2 in the gatefold and when i checked again #3 and #4 had been released a couple of days before and they were gone already. two empty pockets in the gatefold :((((

http://www.weirdforest.com/store/distro/index.html#demdike-4

also big ups to experimedia.net for offering first dibs on #3 & #4 on those who ordered the gatefold

How's the music on these?

same here. bought #1 and #2 in the gatefold and when i checked again #3 and #4 had been released a couple of days before and they were gone already. two empty pockets in the gatefold :((((

I purposefully ended up not buying the box because I was afraid of that happening. I like my vinyl, but I just cannot be that obsessive all the time about being on top of new releases. This was a dick move on their part, I think.

FWIW, I think the music itself has been on something of a sharp decline from the start, or at least since Forest of Evil, but I also totally concede that may just be me getting tired of their schtick. Serious Stereolab syndrome here - they're never as good as the first time you hear 'em.

I did just pick up that Slant Azymuth thing earlier today; it's still in its shrinkwrap, but I'll listen to it soon. I don't know, I got a little tired of the stuff from Triptych after a while, but pulled the LPs out recently after quite some time not hearing them and they hit pretty damn hard.

The lengths to which some groups go to preserve limited-ness and mystique, though, often just makes me laugh / irks me. I work for a decently well-known importer of small-estate French and Italian wines, and I've been going through so much mental hell the past week trying to fairly allocate the stupidly limited quantities of some of our imminently arriving ultra-in-demand red Burgundies. These things are limited because they come from tiny and definable plots of land; they are finite agricultural resources. Records are different, and while I understand small labels not having the means (or foolishness) to do enormous pressings, situations like this one with the Demdike vinyl just feel so forced and unnecessary.

See also: Uncle Acid

Seriously; in that instance it's the secondary market that's raking in all of the cash some people are stupid enough to pay... So both the artists and the averagely financially endowed (or, perhaps averagely mentally stable w/r/t/ spending) consumers lose out!

Very much otm.

I'm just going to hold off for the 3xcd reissue of this Demdlike Stare. Not as pretty to look at, but good enough.

oh ho but didnt you hear - this one is going to have different versions on the cd

gree hee hee

oh well

also big ups to experimedia.net for offering first dibs on #3 & #4 on those who ordered the gatefold

I purposefully ended up not buying the box because I was afraid of that happening. I like my vinyl, but I just cannot be that obsessive all the time about being on top of new releases. This was a dick move on their part, I think.

manufactured scarcity is a great move for building interest, but a lousy one for maintaining it

Going to have all four of the vinyl releases fairly shortly. Look forward to staring at them and feeling all cultish shortly.

I want to like this band so much and it just never sticks :(

It's funny, I seldom can listen to any particular full release and stay interested but if one track pops up while shuffling, or I actually listen to one side of a record, it hits me.

Yeah, my best experiences with this band have been when I've kinda been blindsided by a track that pops up on shuffle.

It's kind of a "two guys chopping up bits of other records" thing for the most part, anyway.

This Slant Azymuth record (Demdike dudes + Andy Votel) is pretty outstanding upon first listen. It's a bit less pieced-together feeling than the Demdike stuff, a bit more rhythmically vital, less drifty, more harmonically diverse, more composed-feeling. Definitely recommended to people who like Demdike... I bought my copy at Other Music in NYC yesterday; they probably printed like 150 copies, knowing their M.O.

+1 on the frustration with this band - some interesting stuff here and there but not sure when would be the right time/context to listen to them

Zero frustration with this band, just lots of love and frequent plays. I listen to "Liberation through hearing" about 10x more than any other release gho

i'm with owen p on "liberation through hearing" as the high point ... best time/context would be on a cold spooky night, when you're in the house by yourself and in the mood to freak yourself out.

if you don't appreciate freaking yourself out on cold spooky nights this is not the band for you!

yeah liberation thru hearing is definitely my favorite

THE STARS ARE MOVING MAAAN

if you don't appreciate freaking yourself out on cold spooky nights this is not the band for you!

this might be otm - i guess i used to be up for cold spooky nights til I moved in with my s.o. and became old and broing :-/

I definitely prefer this stuff on speakers rather than in headphones. I've listened to it at high volumes in the dark, but also at lower volumes while I'm working (I work quite often from home)--seems to work both ways pretty well for me. The musique concrete-ness of it still sounds cool even if your not fully immersing yourself in the EVIL vibes.

I don't know if most of their stuff codes as evil, just kind of dark and ambiguously spooky.

I was listening to one of the Regis retrospective discs this morning, though, and I think it started with a Jim Jones sample!

That Amazon review up the thread for Tryptych is still one of my favorite things written about them.

The test pressing 12"s from this year are pretty great imo.

jesus they are

i don't usually walk with the headphones in but the other week i was at a loose end and decided to take the train to burnley. went the whole hog and read aickman on the way. walked up to the moors from burnley train station with a mixed up playlist of these, passing the actual ruins of EXTWISTLE HALL. that was good.

scariest part was walking through burnley with an ipad right guys.

Last time I was in Burnley I parked opposite this slice of realness http://goo.gl/maps/bd1rH

The Eulogy/Dysology split on #003 really is something.

anyone catch them in LA last night?

The test pressing 12"s from this year are pretty great imo.

Totally agree. Just came across the full series of these 12" and they are amazing.

#4 just arrived and it is just as great as 1-3.

I only realised the other day that I've been listening to Eulogy at the wrong speed for months. It's their fault ffs.

would love to see a digital compilation of the testpressings

I think that was the most boring Wire cover feature I've ever read.

Been digesting a load of Demdike mixes lately. Some superbly diverse selections all cohesively mixed. Would single out the Osmosis, FACT and xlr8r sessions in particular.

http://somuchnoisetobeheard.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/demdike-stare-collected-mixes-podcasts.html?m=1

the empirical research tape is really nice

I keep trying to shazam tracks off it, lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcVjeyDPvuo

No thoughts on Wonderland here?

I prefer droney Demdike like Liberation EP, kind of disliked the Testpressing series when it was coming out but think this album is great on first couple listens

I like as always how their production m.o. is "a good idea presented simply"

Yeah I really like it. I was initially disappointed to read they'd moved away from the droney side of things but this LP is great.

picked up the 3cd edition today, so have a lot of soak up,
but 'elogy' from the testpressings is fantastic.
i much prefer this to the drone stuff to be honest.

the 3cd edition is the one to get, fantastic to have the testpressings collected. "eulogy" is great, yes. each time after i play "dyslogy" in my car i feel i have to secure all nuts and bolts

yeah, proper double whammy those two, love them.

cant wait to get this on the home stereo over the weekend.

blimey. "past majesty" is borderline earl brutus/pre new

proper stereo listening : does not disappoint.

Revisiting the testpressings, "Fail" is absolutely immense.

disc 3 - track 1 ?
that got listed as 'Fall' when I ripped the cd.
or, is this a different track ?

Should be Fail, I think:

https://www.discogs.com/Demdike-Stare-Testpressing-004/release/5183044

https://www.discogs.com/Demdike-Stare-Wonderland/release/9435052

brilliant, it is the same track.
so, to answer your point : yup, it sounds fantastic.

Can't wait to see them here in a couple of weeks. A chance I never thought I'd get!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY4k4d9iRVk

enjoying myself