Distraxi & Soloman Tump - Dartmoor Electronics

 

I am rather excited to have released this split album with DISTRAXI which we have worked on for the past few months.  It began quite organically, following a discussion on her visit to Dartmoor and my recent Palimpsest EP which began to explore the themes of folklore and layers of stories embedded in the landscape.  We soon began to work on tracks that would symbolise the dark horror folklore of Dartmoor through a harsh industrial soundscape. 

>>>> dartmoor electronics <<<<

A few words about the tracks I wrote for this release.  Please check out https://www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk/ for much more information on the places and legends named.

Bowerman's Nasus - named after a rocky outcrop found near Manaton, said to be the petrified body of Bowerman The Hunter who fell prey to the vengeful witch Levera after he disturbed their sabbath ritual.

Vixiana - the tale of a six foot tall witch who lived under Vixen Tor.  Legend said she had green sunken eyes and was skinny as a rake, trapping passers by in her cave carved by the creatures of Hades.  

Kitty Jay - the tale of the orphaned servant girl who fell pregnant to a farmers son near Easdon Tor.  She committed suicide in a barn and her grave was placed at the cross of a parish boundary to avoid shaming any locals.  To this day, fresh flowers are still placed by passing pilgrims to remember her.

The Triangle - A podcast on this area of Dartmoor can be found here by the wonderful "Faery Whisperer", relating to Kitty Jay, Bowerman's Nose and Easdon Tor.  

The album cover is a boundary stone found near Grimspound on Dartmoor.  The glitched background art was a happy accident created in the wonderful MSPaint. 

I was lucky enough to recently visit The Museum of Witchcraft & Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall where I picked up some further reading material on these legends.  Perhaps there will be more words on these soon.

In other news; I locked myself out of my instagram account recently, and unless someone at their end can get me back in somehow, I won't be back there anytime soon.

But, I am still alive. 

The Tump Clump Episode 15 - MIXCLOUDSPESH

The Tump Clump reaches episode 15, and due to the summer siesta for SoundArt Radio, this is a Mixcloud exclusive edition for July / August.  Which also coincides with my 40th birthday so I decided to play a few extra tracks because I do not need to stick to the usual prescribed one hour slot......

Another disclaimer: I only play tracks I own. Either physically, digitally, or gifted to me direct from the artist/label.  If you enjoy the sounds played on this show, please directly support the artists and labels buy purchasing some of their art.

https://www.mixcloud.com/solomantump/the-tump-clump-15-040822/ 

Opening with the monolithic drone of Shiverdust by Lucidet which is taken from the Life Death Chaos Order album, a sprawling 4xCD / digital album of longform dirge and dark dynamics.  A feast of a trip if ever there was one.

Drek 5 by Ekoplekz is next - part of a suite of unreleased tracks that Nick was kind enough to send me a while back.  Check out his new single release which is on 7" lathe - be quick, not many left!

The next couple of tracks come from the compilation album The Quietened Mechanisms which was released by A Year In The Country back in 2018.  I recently revisited my CD copy and released again just how many great tracks there are on the release.  So I have included the offerings by Field Lines Cartographer and Grey Frequency which seem to sit well amongst the opening electronic drones of tonight's show.  I love the way the Grey Frequency track melds into a lush pad with birdsong halfway through.

A track by False Moniker from the Screen Memory tape which was released on Strange Rules in 2020.  Pretty much everything on the label is gold, but it seems to be a bit quiet of late as label owner Cremation Lily is concentrating on touring and releases their own sounds.  

Then I gratuitously played my remix of the Klaus Von Mork track "Little Owl" from the Rental Yields Volume One compilation, out now on Front & Follow.  It is really great to be involved in this digital series, and I thoroughly enjoyed putting this track together.  It's a sort of noisy / squelchy distorted vision of KVM's original session recording and found samples.  Future editions of the compilation will include the Megaheadphoneboy interpretation of my samples, and then the Klaus Von Mork rework of a Megaheadphoneboy track.  There are 20 tracks on this volume, all of excellent quality and touching up the various strands of electronics / experimentals, and sales are raising money for the homeless shelter charity in Manchester, so please support if you are able.  

AUTECHRE! I previously said on The Tump Clump that I wouldn't play any Autechre because if you wanted to listen to them you know where to find them.  But for this special edition of the show (and to kind of commemorate my 40th birthday!) I decided to play Tankraken, lifted from the Versions edition of their 2008 Quaristice album.  It still sounds superbly future, with icy percussion and moody grumbling bass.  I hope the mixcloud algorithm AI doesn't pull my show because I played this.

Then more excellent moody electronics from Helm, with a track called MOLE from the recent Axis album.  

Time to play some noisier stuff... kicking off with GRIMWITH who I recently discovered via the double edged sword of Instagram.  Some great digital / tape noise coming at ya from Leeds.  Check it. 

I dipped back into the Rental Yields album with a track from Kinver Ponds and TarotPlane, with a track called For The Benefit Of The Community.  Lovely brutal repetition and ethereal voices.  Some might say "dismal".

Some may say that quite foolishly I decided to then play RatCornSample by DK.  This beast of a track appeared in my inbox recently and I cackled hard and had to play it.  So there.  VAMPIRES!

Then a bit of crackling noise wall for you, 5 minutes to be exact, courtesy of Gynaeolotry and the Plastic Bag: A HNW tribute to Vomir.  You will also found my Postman Lomu tribute to Vomir on the digital download extension should you really wish to listen to more.  

Black Lead Crucibles is a side project of the mighty Disgusting Cathedral - a long form tense droning beast of dungeon noise.  This meshes nicely into.....

....Hoodrat Messiah and the track Casablanca from the new EP called Gospel. Panic inducing atonal drones! Lovely stuff.  Another artist I discovered via Instagram, and they often put up pictures of their wonderful array of pedals and synths used in the creation of these sounds.  

To finish wish, I play a track by another Tump Clump favourite which is Salac, with their album closing number called Manifesto from Illicit Rituals.  It's a few years now since they interviewed for my now defunct Snare Rush zine, so maybe I should try and entice them back to Intrusive Signals for some more.  Hope to hear some new stuff from them soon! 

That's it for now.

Kitty Jay

From a forthcoming project

Far from where the believers pray

A mound of stone and soil lay.

Pilgrims pass and pay their respect

To the orphan girl who hanged her neck.

From Manaton strike for Bowerman’s Nose

Then over to where the Webburn flows.

Buried and staked where the roads are crossed

A banished soul forever lost.

 

Find fresh flowers at Four Cross Lane

Remembrance of the maidens' pain.

Pregnant and shamed she was cast away

The shallow grave of Kitty Jay.

RENTAL YIELDS: VOLUME ONE

I became involved in the Front & Follow "Rental Yields" remix project in February of this year.  The idea is to be grouped with 2 other artist, and you each supply some samples / tunes / sounds (as "landlord") then re-work the sounds of somebody else in the triplet (as "tenant").  The project highlights the current housing crisis (HIGH RENTAL YIELDS!) and is raising much needed funds for SPIN, a Manchester based support charity.  

I was tasked with stealing and mangling the raw improvised sounds of Klaus Von Mork who currently resides in Gran Canaria, and my track has made it onto Volume One.  London based electronic musician Megaheadphoneboy received a clutch of my field recordings, unused samples and what not to turn into an excellent fidgety rave creation, which will feature in a later volume.  Then finally, Klaus Von Mork has reworked some of Megaheadphoneboy's recordings in order to complete our trio for a future edition. 

An excellent process to be part of, and Justin from Front & Follow has been truly professional and organised throughout.  Which of course you need to be with over 100 artists involved and files being swapped all over the place...

Really great to be on such a diverse lineup, featuring Kieran Mahon (who I saw give an inspirational performance at Dronica Festival in London a few years back), Polypores (who's album Flora remains one of my favourite modular synth creations of beauty and weirdness), The Leaf Library (London drone collective), Kinver Pond (who released the excellent Wellness Regime album alongside Ivy Nostrum) and finishing off with the unimitable Yol. 

And the best thing about these compilations is that there are many new artists I am not too familiar with, and so, let the digging commence......

>>> You can pre-order / purchase / stream Volume One HERE <<<

Tracklist

1.Robbie Elizee vs Kieran Mahon–Sister States

2.Bone Music vs Audio Obscura–Seize The Means Of Control Voltage

3.Polypores vs Crisp Packet Jackets–Trance Goblins

4.Kat Bryan vs Cahn Ingold Prelog–Paladin

5.Dogs vs Shadows vs Moray Newlands–The Soft Cushion Broke the Shadows Fall

6.Kuma vs The Leaf Library–A Guillotine For My Landlord

7.Spaceship vs Heavy Cloud–On What Were Once These Streets Before

8.Mute Branches vs wesellboxes–Witching Residence at the Box Factory

9.Salford Electronics vs Camp of Wolves–Shards

10.Distant Animals vs The Revenant Sea–Yields

11.Elizabeth Joan Kelly vs The Burning Trestle-Portabella House By-The-Sea (After The Burning Trestle)

12.Soloman Tump vs Klaus Von Mork–Little Owl (Stolen Pellet Mix 2)

13.Silver Tears vs Quartersized–And I Stumble Around

14.Kinver Pond vs tarotplane–For The Benefit Of The Community1\

5.Selfish Limbs vs The Kendall Mintcake–Surrender

16.Bit Cloudy vs Runningonair–Theoretical Conspiracy

17.bleepeater vs The Incidental Crack–Heroin Friend

18.Wodwo vs Shit Creek–Cetaphil Effaclar

19.Yellow6 vs David Wallraf–The World Can Be As Sad As It Seems

20.yol vs Concrete/Field–Rental Yields

Gritonometry EP

I have been working on a couple of tracks inspired by the presence of interesting bugs.  One of the ideas made it to the "Small Sounds" compilation previously blogged about but I managed to flesh out a couple that I ended up fairly happy with.

And so with a couple of other bits I have been working on, I decided to put this out as a digital only EP with "Pay what you want" enabled - please just ask if you want a free download code because I can easily generate some.

Cover image: woodworm "writing" from felled Oak tree.

So aside from the little bugs I have been looking at... I suffer from pretty bad hay fever. Some days it is completely crippling and I just want to hide inside under the duvet while I cry, sneeze and generally dehydrate into a withered husk. It is so dependant on the weather. I liken it to turning a tap on and off. Occasionally it gets left running at the worst time.  Today however... it is ok and I just have a mild fuzzy headache. 

Gritonometry is a concept I came up with whilst languishing in allergy induced hibernation recently. The sun was shining! But my eyes and nose were streaming with snotulus and I wept in the shower.. A complete bastardization of the fleeting visit of high summer we experience in the UK. The track is fairly simple, dense, and noisy. It does not do much. I was feeling pretty down when I wrote it.

The Black Ash Slug can be found on Dartmoor, it is the largest land slug in the world.  They are pretty rare and are only found in ancient woodlands, of which there are sadly dwindling examples of in the UK.  There are a couple up on Dartmoor where these slugs like to hang out.  

Rare "selfie" of me, even rarer because it was taken 

OUTSIDE in JUNE during DAYTIME

The Broad Bodied Chaser is a type of dragonfly that occasionally visits our pond. The one I saw looked like a huge hornet with menacing black and white stripes, until it landed and I figured out what it was. These two tracks have a strong percussive element and are swamped in bass and static. They are the most dynamic of the tracks I present here but I believe still retain the Tump sound.

The closing track Intrusive Signals is named after my zine project of the same name. The original piano was supplied by Arachnopus who I have worked with a few times now (she did the amazing video earlier this year for my set on Wonder Valley Experimental 14, as well as providing some excellent intrusive artwork for my zine). I took her original improvised piano recording (with some very light trimming) and added a large amount of filth. I loved making this and she supplied some great material to work with. Thank you!

1. Gritonometry 04:23

2. Black Ash Slug 05:36

3. Broad Bodied Chaser 05:52

4. Intrusive Signals 06:40

Note on mastering:

I find that the hayfever also effects my hearing - I am generally blocked. Bass sounds can hurt as they whistle through my ears, everything is muffled and dense. These recordings are probably heavily saturated with that sort of sound. A document to this moment in time through my senses.  Best listened to loud on some big speakers.  If the sun is shining outside, maybe shut the curtains and snort some ground black pepper to try and replicate my situation (actually, dont do that).

All tracks recorded April - June 2022. 

releases July 1, 2022

STUMP010

Piano on "Intrusive Signals" by Arachnopus.

All field recordings from Dartmoor by Soloman Tump

All other sounds by Soloman Tump and my machines.