Live samples of birdsong and street noise lighten the mood, allowing the human aspect to enter the constructs of reinforced concrete. Through the grating and jagged distortion comes glimmers of hope, interwoven in the metal cabling is some brighter and between the fabricated aural girders is a haunting potential for something more.
The tape cassette is a medium on the rise. Niche sounds are returning to the magnetic strip and finding new audiences. Experimental electronics have made the cassette their residence of choice, labels like Further Records for example. A new tape imprint has been established by Paul Mitchell (aka Meschi) with a lens on darkened Ambience and dreamed out Drone. From London comes Elephant Recording, but its first port of call is back to the home ground of Glasgow for some experimental intrigue.
Aleks Jurczyk is a modular synthesizer addict with a penchant for the post industrial. Jurczyk, responsible for The Guild of Calamatious Intent club night in Glasgow, delivers an abstract vision of the skyline of Scotland’s largest city: Brutal Britain.
In the post war period Glasgow was the European town to adopt the modernist model, triumphing the international style for its simplicity, and functionality. The council fired up tower blocks across the city with glee. Ornate tenements of red stone were replaced by gargantuan grey behemoths, parks were knifed through by motorways and communities divided by crash barriers and tarmacadam. Emma Shannon’s photographs of disenfranchised tower blocks, desiccated estates and distanced habitations were the inspiration for Jurczyk, the Rubadub man painting in analogue to accompany Shannon’s stark images. Two tracks dominate the cassette. Thirty minutes of music is broken into Brutal Britain Movement One and Brutal Britain Movement Two. The claustrophobia and incestuous decay Glasgow’s minimalistic modernist architecture is captured by Jurczyk, alongside the sinister aspect of ashen fingers plunging themselves into leaden skies. Live samples of birdsong and street noise lighten the mood, allowing the human aspect to enter the constructs of reinforced concrete. Through the grating and jagged distortion comes glimmers of hope, interwoven in the metal cabling is some brighter and between the fabricated aural girders is a haunting potential for something more.
I worked in the towers of Glasgow for two years, the Kingsway Flats near Yoker. Amongst the grit, the rubbish laden stairwells, the pock marked and graffiti clad walls, embedded in the deterioration and the decline there were the inhabitants, there was the community and there was a sense that this skyward street worked. Brutal Britain lends itself to this crumbling positivity, as Glasgow does in many ways. Techno has been the sound of Glasgow, its electronic expression to describe its condition. This Glaswegian uses a different palette to describe this city, and does so with the sensitivity of both artist and proud resident.
Brutal Britain is available on Elephant. [Release page]
