Four Hands and :Zoviet*France: rekindle the reverie, lifting cliffs of sound from empty beaches and taking the listener into the world of the ambient. Nostalgic in some respects, a breath of fresh air in others.
[Release page] Electronic labels often follow a certain style. It might be Techno, maybe Electro, could be House or even Synth Wave (to name but a few.) Newcastle’s Signals doesn’t follow a solitary line. With five releases down the imprint looked at House, Synth Pop and even Afrobeat. Not to sit on its laurels, Signals enters the Summer with a new release and new genre. :Zoviet*France: and Four Hands share twelve inches of clear vinyl for something untested in Mammoth Mountain.
The 12” is a North Eastern affair. Four Hands open with the Mammoth Mountain Mix of “Sea of Love.” The track is a take on a piece from Manchester experimentalist Caro Snatch. Beatless submersion is the performance. Delicate samples, sweet strings and soulful keys coalesce. From this convention pours deep and emotive sounds, slow embers of ambience softly burning to warm the listener. The strings call up memories Digitonal or Lexaunculpt; but Four Hands use the sounds in a much more gentle manner, dabbing with double basses and violas. Newcastle dwellers :Zoviet*France: arrive for a dub interpretation of Four Hands’ “November 2011, North Northumberland”. The track is a reduced, demo style remake of “Sea of Love.” Real life sounds, footfalls and homely noise, invade the dusty rumblings. These clangs and bumps produce a subtle substrata, allowing the natural to enter. The flip is dedicated to the epic :Zoviet*France: version of “Mountain of Mammon”. Concentric circles of sound radiate. The listener is drawn into the drone, aural arcs reaching ever outward. Cerebral and heady in the close.
My own copy of this record has had an interesting journey. Collected in Newcastle, brought north to Glasgow and then mislaid on a train for a plane to Ireland. But, after some confused calls to train stations—“…a what? An LP ‘ya mean Ken?!”—it was tracked down. And, I’m happy about that. Signals have taken a leap with this record. So much music today is club orientated, with functionality being more important than form. The men from the Toon are reversing this policy, as Arne Weinberg did with his Valanx LP. Four Hands and :Zoviet*France: rekindle the reverie, lifting cliffs of sound from empty beaches and taking the listener into the world of the ambient. Nostalgic in some respects, a breath of fresh air in others. A beautiful project, thanks Signals (and Scotrail.)
Mammoth Mountain is available on Signals. [Release page]
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/1873115″ width=”100%” height=”300″ params=”auto_play=false&show_artwork=false&color=000000″ iframe=”true” /]
