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Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Displaying 1 through 10 of 13 total records.
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ARTIST: BASS COMMUNION V MUSLIMGAUZE
TITLE:
LABEL: SOLEILMOON |
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| DESCRIPTION: NOTE: This CD is currently out of stock, but is still available for download from the iTunes Music Store. Click the the iTunes link to go the iTunes Music Store (requires free iTunes software). In 1996 Steven Wilson, the mind behind Bass Communion, wrote to Bryn Jones to express his admiration of
Muslimgauze. Subsequently they met and Steven gave Bryn some of his own music, although he suspected
that it wouldn't appeal to him. It didn't, but as with all the music that Bryn was exposed to, his natural
instinct to rework it into something that did proved irresistable. And so it came to pass that only four days
after their meeting Steven received a parcel containing two and a half hours of reconstructions and
obliterations of his orginal music. The new pieces were distorted, grainy, loop-driven tracks, but Steven felt
they were too close to Bryn's own music to simply release as a remix album. Instead he decided to use them
as the basis for new pieces, and re-edited and overdubbed the tapes, finally returning them to Bryn for
approval. So began a period of collaboration by post. Each time Bryn would provide rhythms and each time
Steven moulded the raw material only to have Bryn obliterate it again!! Finally in early 1997 the battle was
over and an album was complete, but was somehow swept away under the deluge of Bryn's own release
schedule and never issued. Now in the aftermath of Bryn's death these recordings are finally being issued by
Soleilmoon in a limited edition of 600 copies at a special low price. For Muslimgauze fans these recordings are
significant in that they represent one of the only instances of a true two-way collaboration betwen Bryn and
another musician, as opposed to being simply a remix project. For Bass Communion fans the recordings are
an opportunity to hear Steven's ambient textures, sonic fluctuations and low-end bass fused with the hard
edged ethnic rhythms that were Bryn's trademark. NOTE: The actual price of the download depends on how many songs you purchase, and where you live. It is NOT free. The price mentioned here is $0.00 because we do NOT sell the downloads on this site. We are only trying to direct you to the iTunes pages where the album and individual songs are sold. Thank you.
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| ITEM NUMBER: 06484 |
FORMAT: iTunes download |
PRICE: $0.00 |
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ARTIST: BASS COMMUNION VS. MUSLIMGAUZE
TITLE: bcvsmgcd
LABEL: SOLEILMOON RECORDINGS |
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| DESCRIPTION: I only met Bryn Jones once, although we spoke many times on the telephone between 1996-1998. I discovered Muslimgauze through a random purchase of the double CD Blue Mosque, and had been deeply impressed by the originality and intensity of the work. I was used to working in completely different musical genres, but despite this the music suggested an artist with a similarly wide interest in music as myself, drawing as it did on world music, electronica, industrial and ambient. In fact during our first telephone conversation I learned that Bryn did not feel any affinity or have any interest in ANY other music, his agenda being almost entirely political. However I suspect that he was being defensive as he also told me that he had being making his music in almost entire isolation since the beginning, with virtually no interest from the media, any other musicians, or for that matter the listening public. He made music for himself and to express his political beliefs - he did not care that the whole world seemed to ignore him. The very last time I spoke to him in late 1998 I asked him if he had revised this view at all. By that time a limited edition series (the only way his record label could deal with his prolific work rate) had been a big success and his CDs were regularly reviewed/discussed. Many other musicians had asked him to remix their work or to collaborate with them and his music had inspired a fanatical following, particularly on the internet. In short there was incredible respect for him and his work, which had also led to invitations for concert performances all over the world. Yes, he admitted, he was feeling happier with his lot in life. He died a few weeks later.
The meeting took place in his home town of Swinton, Manchester a few weeks after I first contacted him to tell him how much I admired his music. We had arranged that I would drive to near his home and call him from a payphone. We met at a nearby bar and I gave him some CDs of my own work, explaining that I did not really expect he would like them, but that I would be happy if he would listen to them anyway. In return he gave me a cassette of an album that he had just completed. I noted with some amusement that it was titled “For Staalplaat, recorded...” and then the previous day’s date. He had recorded the whole album in a single day, partly explaining how Bryn was able to produce a discography of well over 100 releases in his 15 years as a recording artist.
About four days after my meeting with Bryn I received a parcel containing two digital audio tapes. I was stunned to discover that these tapes contained two and a half hours of Muslimgauze reconstructions of the CDs I had given Bryn only a few days earlier! I had not asked Bryn to do these mixes but he had done them anyway. I later found out he felt compelled to remix anything that he was given in order to “improve it”. Some of the mixes were of NO-MAN and one in particular struck me as being very effective. I played it to my partner in NO-MAN (the singer Tim Bowness) and our record company, both of whom liked it, so we decided to include it on a forthcoming release. Bryn seemed very happy about this and when he was eventually paid for the work and sent copies of the finished CD I again received at least an hour’s worth of new mixes using other tracks from the album. It seemed that if you gave any music to Bryn he would “improve it”.
Some of the other music on the tapes was so far removed from the source material that I suggested to Bryn that I used it as the basis for a collaborative project. I would take his rhythms and build something new out of them with further overdubbing and editing. He liked the idea and several more DAT swaps and a few months later we had completed the Bass Communion v Muslimgauze album, which alas we were unable to secure a release for during Bryn’s lifetime (partly because his extreme work rate meant that there was always a backlog of Muslimgauze releases). The five pieces completed while he was alive were eventually issued in 1999 on Soleilmoon (SOL 89 CD), and later on I completed two additional pieces that had been left uncompleted at the time of Bryn’s death, and these were released as a companion EP in early 2000 (SOL 106 CD). Both releases have been out of print for some time, but I’m happy that the music is available once again on this new Bass Communion versus Muslimgauze complete edition. Steven Wilson (January 2000, revised March 2006)
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| ITEM NUMBER: 07908 |
FORMAT: CD |
PRICE: $14.99 |
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ARTIST: CONTINUUM (Fear Falls Burning and Bass Communion)
TITLE: Continuum Vol. 1
LABEL: SOLEILMOON RECORDINGS |
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| DESCRIPTION: Multi-talented and eclectic musician Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree, Bass Communion, Blackfield) and internationally renowned experimental artist vidnaObmana have joined together to bring you Continuum: A multi-layered synonym for their collective ambition and vision, motivated by their immense passion for a wide-range of musical styles. In the coming years Continuum will produce a series of limited edition albums for Soleilmoon Recordings. Each CD will be presented in a beautiful oversized digipack with breathtaking design and artwork by Lasse Hoile. The first release, naturally titled “Volume 1”, encapsulates both artist's love for desolate, minimal music, and features three 20 minute pieces of richly melancholic textural music. It’s a CD that will be appreciated by fans of microscopic ambient music, and the start of a project that will unleash Continuum's willful vision of music that transcends the barriers of genre and style. Only 1000 copies have been manufactured.
Before launching their Continuum project both artists had already released music with Soleilmoon. Steven Wilson worked collaboratively with Bryn Jones of Muslimgauze in a series of remixes of each other’s work, the result of which was an album and an EP, both simply titled “Bass Communion v. Muslimgauze”, issued shortly after Jones died in 1999. VidnaObmana likewise worked with other artists to produce music for Soleilmoon, first with Asmus Tietchens on “Motives for Recycling” in 1999 and more recently with Frans de Waard (Beequeen, Goem, Shifts) and Tietchens on “The Shifts Recyclings” in 2002. Both albums used material from previously released recordings as a source or starting point, hence the “Recycling” in the titles.
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| ITEM NUMBER: 06312 |
FORMAT: CD |
PRICE: $14.99 |
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ARTIST: BASS COMMUNION
TITLE: II/III
LABEL: BETA LACTAM RING |
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| DESCRIPTION: First edition of 1200 copies packaged in a full color Japanese style gatefold case. Starship trooper, go sailing on by...cuz Bass Communion will squelch you into a throbbing mass of well-armed gristle . “II” and “III” were conceived as separate and autonomous satellites of BC’s galactic empire, but rather reeking of Castor & Pollux, they have been umbilicalled together. “II’s” earliest days go back to the mid to late 90’s, from which it enjoyed a couple of releases through small labels. “II” steps through the door hissing with deep space halitosis. Quietly eclipsed by slow, subtly melodic breaths of solar wind, “II” finds its ellipses crossing long, glowering belts of ambience and majestic rings of thick, bass-heavy electro-pulses. Miniature terrestrials appear as stringed acoustics and other Earth-bound instrumentation peeks up through the crackling electronic mists. Hardly a truer music of the spheres, but then there is still the brother to contend with. “III” began its days at the same time as its kin, originally as leftover pieces, tv music, and failed experiments recorded between 1995-99 from the first 2 BC albums and then briefly released as a made-to-order CDR. “III’s” lustmord for global communication moans out in a series of lonely alien drones. As its orb’s orbitals draw circles near the light-hemorrhaged Cygnus X-1, devastating dub destruction launches this little craft well beyond the infinite, clothed in the flesh of gods. Don’t worry the good ship lands safely, but is, much like the listener, forever altered. |
| ITEM NUMBER: 10010 |
FORMAT: 2 x CD |
PRICE: $17.99 |
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ARTIST: BASS COMMUNION
TITLE: Loss
LABEL: SOLEILMOON RECORDINGS |
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| DESCRIPTION: The new Bass Communion album Loss is not about the violent moment of loss, but its aftermath. The crushing melancholia, the endless questions of “what if?” and “why?”, as well as the concepts of regret, missed opportunity, or a feeling or moment in time that can never be recaptured. But even in the midst of this gloomy scene, hope and light are born, for loss is never total. Memory lingers, a residue of evidence is left behind, and life goes on.
Steven Wilson, the man behind Bass Communion, says “For me, the album is an extension of the previous release, Ghosts on Magnetic Tape, which relates to Electronic Voice Phenomena, or the idea that the dead can still communicate with the living world through recorded media. In order to try to capture this feeling I wanted the music to leave a spectral, ghostly impression, and to have an organic decaying quality, like something trying to break through from another world. To this end my musical sources were mainly 78 rpm records, a vibraphone and an upright piano. No synths or electronics were used, only organic sources or instrumentation that has been around for at least the last century.”
Although best known for his rock band Porcupine Tree and his production and mixing work for artists as diverse as Opeth and Yoko Ono, Steven Wilson sees Bass Communion as his personal labor of love. In Bass Communion we hear not only the music nearest to his heart, but the music closest to what he himself listens to: “In freeing myself from thinking in terms of melody or rhythm, and focusing purely on the texture and inherent qualities of pure sound, I believe the music achieves a purity of intent and spirit, as a means to express some of my innermost feelings, such as loss, at a much deeper level.”
Following a limited edition vinyl release in January, Loss is being issued in unlimited digital glory, as a two disc set consisting of a high resolution 5.1 surround sound DVD-Audio disc and a standard stereo CD. The DVD-Audio disc is compatible with all DVD players, but will sound best in a player with DVD-A capabilities. And the CD of course can be played pretty much everywhere else.
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| ITEM NUMBER: 07909 |
FORMAT: DVDA + CD |
PRICE: $16.99 |
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ARTIST: BASS COMMUNION
TITLE: Loss T-Shirt
LABEL: SOLEILMOON RECORDINGS |
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| DESCRIPTION: 100% cotton Hanes ‘Beefy T’ shirt, dark brown, with the quietly evocative cover art from the “Loss” DVDA+CD package printed on the chest. An antique border printed in metallic gold frames the image, and the names “Bass Communion” and “Loss” are printed directly below. Available in Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large and Extra-Extra Large. 100 shirts have been printed for this first run. |
| ITEM NUMBER: 08158 |
FORMAT: T-Shirt Extra Large |
PRICE: $7.99 |
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ARTIST: BASS COMMUNION
TITLE: Loss T-Shirt
LABEL: SOLEILMOON RECORDINGS |
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| DESCRIPTION: 100% cotton Hanes ‘Beefy T’ shirt, dark brown, with the quietly evocative cover art from the “Loss” DVDA+CD package printed on the chest. An antique border printed in metallic gold frames the image, and the names “Bass Communion” and “Loss” are printed directly below. Available in Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large and Extra-Extra Large. 100 shirts have been printed for this first run. |
| ITEM NUMBER: 08157 |
FORMAT: T-Shirt Large |
PRICE: $9.99 |
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Displaying 1 through 10 of 13 total records.
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