Canonbury – ‘The Knock Of The Shoe’ Cassette [Exotic Pylon]

Exotic Pylon as a label has got to be one of the best curated collections of music out there. No idea how Johnny Mugwump does it but he’s constantly turning out the best in experimental music on an assortment of formats. Here’s one release on the label that I’ve been rinsing even more than usual.

Canonbury is better known as Joseph Stannard, a familiar name to Wire fans as a top-notch writer, more recently getting acclaim for the stunning The Outer Church compilation spawned from his Brighton club night of the same name. Released on cassette and via download comes nine of his original tracks originally recorded between 2006-2007, and seven remixes from a stellar lineup of electronic producers.

Exsiting in that rough-cut space of jilted drone and Oram-esque instrumentals, the originals are equally unnerving as they are beautiful. The notes do mention that the tracks were released with “some adjustment in 2012”, raising the debate for revisiting old ideas that a lot of artists are always so reluctant to do (looking at you Chairman Kato).

Stannard’s managed to elevate to make whole-sounding music. Often experimental and drone electronics focus too much on the minimal aspect, not capturing the ever important Drexciyan instrumental vibes of completed music that’s been worked on until it’s baked all the way through (to use a cooking – not stoner – metaphor).

Once you get over being lost in this melted world of restlessness you move on to what’s probably the best series of remixes we’ve seen in time. Anna Meredith, Hacker Farm, House In The Woods, Kemper Norton, Old Apparatus, Ship Canal and Black Mountain transmitter to be exact. The ‘Hacker Farm Hash Mix‘, Kemper Norton and Old Apparatus smash these reversionings out of the park, and that’s saying something as all the artists reworking tracks deliver to the high-level you’d expect. Simply brilliant.

Big ups Canonbury and all Exotic Pylon crew involved. And here’s a tip; new Kemper Norton release announced today, coming to us in December via the label. Anyway there’s only 100 cassettes of Canonbury’s The Knock Of The Shoe made and this is a release you want in physical form. Head over here to get one: http://exoticpylonrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-knock-of-the-shoe

Press release that I don’t fully understand below.

via Exotic Pylon

You walk into the pounding din of a tent that hums with fresh rain and mud. There’s something behind you coiling in from the moors, by some feat of electronic alchemy the beat passes through but it’s trying to intone something that’s unclear.

You’re transported to a room where antiquated hardware blips and chords illuminate out of a cloud of dry ice. Hurtled back into the centre of the room, a corroded piano string sings a lyrical, lyricless air, accompanied by a small chorus of vaporous synths. A portent voice calls from the centre of the room, there is an emergency. A revolving loop addresses the room like a siren. The siren transports you to a concrete clearing awash with artificial noise, there’s something shuffling just out of earshot. Unidentified objects swim around and above. The siren becomes an ominous drone, the sound of slow moving metal on barricading fences encloses the clearing.

A wind whistles through the cement and warbled waves of muffled radio announcements and jingle fragments reach you in an attempt to communicate a warning. Unseen souls hack at the surrounding walls as the chant of an FM signal pursues any available mode of message. Finally, something is delivered through a clipped Morse code, but left truncated, encrypted and undeciphered.
Amanda Feery (amandafeery.com)