Pour a double-measure of sixties and seventies BBC Radiophonic Workshop experimentation into a collins glass filled with crushed Boards of Canada, churn slowly, add a single measure of Demdike Stare, churn some more then top up with Ekoplekz from a soda syphon and garnish with a wheel of Plone. Draw the curtains, turn on the reel-to-reel projector, sit back in a oiled walnut Eames lounge chair with a pack of strong cigarettes and enjoy.
[Release page] It feels cheap to resort to a mixed reference to other artists in an attention-grabbing effort to quickly sum up the sound that Pye Corner Audio has so neatly perfected, but you can’t afford to pass the shadowy Head Technician’s work by so here goes. Pour a double-measure of sixties and seventies BBC Radiophonic Workshop experimentation into a collins glass filled with crushed Boards of Canada, churn slowly, add a single measure of Demdike Stare, churn some more then top up with Ekoplekz from a soda syphon and garnish with a wheel of Plone. Draw the curtains, turn on the reel-to-reel projector, sit back in a oiled walnut Eames lounge chair with a pack of strong cigarettes and enjoy.
Black Mill Tapes Volumes 1 & 2 contains three different numbered series of generically titled tracks concordant with those created by experimental sound and music workshops of the sixties and seventies with no context for precisely how and on what they would later be used. It’s like discovering a hurriedly labelled cache of old cans full of spools of tape, part of a hitherto lost and incomplete archival library of sonic experiments. The Head Technician has eroded and distressed his sound recordings with a level of finesse you would normally associate with n’th generation copies of genuine work by the true radiophonic pioneers, resulting in a level of authenticity that could easily fool a listener going in dry.
The hauntological influence of the Ghost Box label is present here in the form of the chilling, shocker movie incidental passages of the “Transmission” series but it is rarely taken to extremes. Volume 1 opens up at midnight in a dilapidated, abandoned warehouse with echoing, haunted choral “aahs” and the distant squawk of some unidentified flying creature in “Transmission One: Lonesome Vale,” and “Transmission Three: Briar Lane” (a reference perhaps to the paranormal activity recorded on videotape in a vacant property there) combines icy winds with hypnotically spiralling electronics, a ghost in the machine. The wow and flutter of the beautifully restrained electronic pads in “Transmission Four: Crooked Hill” sound for all the world like background music to a cemetery or crypt location from a particularly atmospheric LucasArts point and click adventure.
The “Themes” tracks are focused on murky atmospherics, any one of which would make for perfect incidental accompaniment to the shadowy Patrick Troughton “monster-era” Doctor Who serials, that constant feeling of unease, of bottled up terror and tension filtered through film-noir shadow and grain. Most notably evocative are the waspish organ tones of “Theme Number Four” that seem to have come straight from the vaults of ‘Geogaddi.’
The “Electronic Rhythm” tracks typically take the form of felted, musty and time-worn 4/4 workouts and are all as melodically delightful as they are memorable. “Number Eight” has a pleasingly motorik, relentless industrial push and pull to it, combined with a stirring, muted two-note alarm chime, “Number Seven” features mad-professor laboratory fx and a lush, mash/smash rhythms replete with tape dropouts and “Number Four” features deranged, tubular arpeggios.
And then there’s the seventies, BoCish pieces with true titles, such as the wavering, hazy ascending analogue keys, tense bass pulse and funky electric guitar riffs of “We Have Visitors.” “Toward Light” is a particular highlight on an album filled with them, the powdery synths, misty pads and soft, thumping drum patterns filtered through heavy film grain dissolving into a howling storm in its final moments. “Dark Door” murmurs with a hauntological spirit, all whirring motors and distant, hollow alarms. It’s a tour-de-force of retro-futurism.
Initially pressed up on one translucent blue and one translucent green vinyl disc—a nice touch that maps each one to the artwork of The Head Technician’s self-released digital editions—a second pressing on grey vinyl is also now available so record-lovers should snap it up while they still can.
Black Mill Tapes Volumes 1 & 2 is delivered with such intelligent understatement and panache that excitement feels like the wrong emotion to associate with its release, but be assured that The Head Technician’s work is not pretentious in any way. Not so much powerfully cinematic as it is hauntingly televisual, this is music that slowly bubbles under, that inexorably works its way under your skin and reveals its layered genius over time.
Black Mill Tapes Volumes 1 & 2 is available on Type. [Release page]
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