A Year in Space

The very fine 'A Year in the Country' blog has kindly written a few words about The British Space Group.

For those of you who haven't been following his wanderings / wonderings then you're missing a real treat particularly if you're a fan of the type of stuff I talk about over on my Wyrd Britain blog.

'If you should be an appreciator of contemporary Radiophonic-esque, explorative electronica with echoes of many of the above points of reference, from the work of Mr Nigel Kneale onwards and outwards, then a wander around the strange orbits of his work could well prove rewarding.'

http://ayearinthecountry.co.uk/week-752-eyes-turned-skywards-streaks-sky-futures-almost-reverberations-ether/

Phantasms 3

8 months on from my accident things are finally starting to get back to normal and I'm now able to walk again albeit with the occasional help of a stick which makes me feel very dapper.

Firstly though we are happy to bring you the third and final part of my Phantasms project - incidentally now attributed to The British Space Group.  I released the first Phantasms EP in September 2010 with the second in April 2011 so there's been quite a wait for this one.  I hope you enjoy it.

You can hear the third part in the player below and parts one and two are available here and here.

As with the other parts this has been made available digitally but within a fortnight we will be issuing all three parts on one CD under the umbrella name, 'The Phantasmagoria'.  We will, of course, announce it here and on the Facebook page when it's ready but here's a sneaky peek of the sleeve just to tantalise.

Finally, I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support and kindness over the last 8 months.  It really was hugely appreciated.

Peace
Ian

Relative Dimensions

Recently added to the Bandcamp page is a new 2 track EP called 'Relative Dimensions'.

The first track, Black Light, is a dubbish frug with extra added synthy swoops for extra cosmicity with samples from everyone's favourite Beryl Reid starring zombie biker movie 'Psychomania' and from one of my favourite videos on YouTube.

The second, Grasshoppers, is a twitchy little drum 'n' lounge tune with some sexy sax to get you all in the mood for love or for lunch, it's your choice.

It can be yours for the magnificent sum of 1 British pound.

Hope you enjoy.

Strange Orbits

Back in 2006, under my old 'Psychic Space Invasion' name, I released an album called 'Pendulum' (click the name to hear / buy it).  It was made over the course of a weekend in the back room of my flat whilst watching the snow fall on Swansea.  It was made using layers of short loops I'd made from various sources that I overlaid and overlapped.

A couple of months later I started working on more loop pieces which when finished - with one exception that appeared on a very small run compilation on the Anima Mal Nata label - sat on the hard-drive of my computer whilst I got distracted by other things.  And there it remained.

Until today.

Today I was playing around with the logo I'd made for The British Space Group - that one up there ^
and realised that it seemed to fit with the long neglected album so here it is; seeing the light for the first time in 8 years is my 'new' loop album, 'Strange Orbits'.

It's a lot more intensely psychedelic experience than 'Eyes Turned Skyward' but after spending the last 8 weeks pretty much trapped indoors thanks to having split my tibia in half that's pretty much how I feel.

This one is going to be digital only (unless I change my mind) and for those of you wondering about them, lots of my tunes start off their lives with nonsense words for titles just in the case of 'Pendulum' and now 'Strange Orbits' the titles stay that way.

Hope you enjoy.

Ian

Under An Animated Sky

I'm still laid up with my right leg in plaster from toe to hip after the surgery to pin and repair my very broken tibia (I fell down the stairs) and now that the morphine has run out I'm getting increasingly bored of the view from my living room so I've been pottering with stuff.

So I've made a video for my 'Under Another Sky' track off the XPYLON charity compilation (see previous post).  The footage is from an old film called 'Our Mr. Sun' - https://archive.org/details/our_mr_sun - from which I edited a few of the animated segments.

I hope you enjoy it and if you do then please consider chucking some cash at the XPYLON compilation.  You can grab the album for £7 or individual tracks for a bargain £1 each.

Peace
Ian

[xpylon] charity compilation

One of my British Space Group tunes is featured on this new compilation released this Thursday in aid of the charity Mind; any and all support you can give would be hugely appreciated.

The title references the fabulous Exotic Pylon label and radio show which connects all the participants - in my case, the radio show.

Press release:
Once upon a time there was a radio show, then there was a series of live gigs and events. Eventually, there was a record label. They were all called Exotic Pylon. There was one man who was the creator, curator and driving force behind all these things: a man called jonny mugwump. A whirlpool of creativity and enthusiasm, jonny is as close to a raging Darwinian force of nature as you could ever meet.In its record label state, Exotic Pylon produced a series of releases that were completely unique from each other. There was no through - line of sound. No label aesthetic. The one thing they all had in common was that they had nothing in common. From torch songs to folk, from electronica to spoken word. All human life was on the label (assuming the human life was slightly lop-sided and walked with a limp). The one thing that united everyone on Exotic Pylon was a sense of comradeship. We were all proud to have been involved in some way or another. We were all members of the same invisible college. Almost without exception we all kept in contact with each other once the label had died. It may have disappeared but its spirit has remained.

Here we present XPYLON, a compilation of ex-Pyloneers. Each track is brand new and exclusive to the release. There are supergroups, individuals and collaborations, all of which evoke the heady days of the once great Exotic Pylon.

Reviews Turned Skyward #3

With thanks to Paul at Honest Music For Dishonest Times for the words.

[extract]
"By the looks of the strong design of its sleeve, this disc could be an examination of all those sci-fi, weird (or wyrd) 1970s schools programmes on tv, or their soundtracks, and indeed the first track Remote Viewing is built around a recording of a man talking about déja vous in the kind of officious home-counties accent that tallies with my own recollection of Schools & Colleges programming of that time.  Those expecting a Ghost Box–style, hauntological, period pop will be disappointed though; the music on Eyes Turned Skyward is actually contemporary-sounding drone ambient.  As always, the production is clear and glassy, like peering at the reflection of misty landscapes through the panes of an open window at dawn."

album available digitall from the link below or on disc from www.quietworld.co.uk