a r t i s t : Last Of The Real Hardmen
t i t l e : Another Country
d a t e : 2006
l a b e l : Unlabel (un52006/34)
g e n r e : Instrumental Rock
r l s. d a t e : Mar/2007
t r a c k s : 02
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 55,8 MB
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Welcome to unlabel series52! This is number 34, released on
August 21st, 2006.
Artist Info:
Last Of The Real Hardmen - I recorded this last year. I
thought it up a long while before that, when I was working as
an office temp for Powergen. It was at a point in my life
where I really could have done with a challenging job that
took my mind off things rather than the one I had which
allowed me 8 hours a day to drink coffee and dwell. I found as
I sat there and stared out of the window to waste the working
day, that all kinds of weird snapshot memories would pop into
my head seemingly triggered by nothing and it was starting to
get on my nerves because I couldn't work out why. It's
suprising what your brain dredges up, especially when you're
bored or you're under an amount of stress or similar extreme
circumstances. It's like your brain patterns become
increasingly fragmented. You are aware of this, but you donüft
have any more say over the matter than you do over the brain
patterns of the person sitting next to you on the bus. Your
thought process is fractured and concentration becomes
impossible. No decisions can easily be reached without many U
turns, undecisions and redecisions. What is concrete on
Thursday at 10am is unbelievable by lunchtime. It's said that
people feel more creative in this period. I wonder whether
it's maybe because there is a feeling that amongst all this
garbled information hitting your brain there may well be some
sense in there. But it moves so quickly you can't catch it. I
was trying to think of a way of measuring these thoughts to
see if they meant anything. To see if there was some sort of
pattern to them. If you recorded all the insane street-talkers
in the world for five minutes at the same time, could you
match up their conversations? Is the guy in the car park in
Bristol talking bullshit or talking to the woman screaming at
passers-by in Rio De Janiero? Are seemingly random impulsive
thoughts connected somehow? I had this idea where I would
record a series of basic tones and then go back and overdub my
first impulsive reaction to them and just keep layering these
until I was out of tracks on my 4 track recorder. The trick
was to only ever listen to the original tone and never listen
back to what I had recorded over it already. If you think of
the original tone as a constant to compare things to and all
the things added to it as representing these seemingly random
thoughts then I wanted to see if, when I switched all the
tracks on at once, it'd be this huge cacophony or whether
there would be moments of harmony and triumph formed from the
mess. I suspected mess. I just put all the instruments I had
access to in a room and then recorded 3 songs. So you end up
with these really long, broken-up songs that largely sound
like a mess but have occasional moments of clarity and
surprise. I found I liked listening to them more and more.
Maybe because it doesn't feel like I made them. 2 of the songs
are here and the 3rd is on Low Point Recordings - www.low-
point.com. They are really long though. Sorry. Maybe listen to
them when you cook or something. Or in the bath. Conclusions?
Don't stare out of the window all day at work or you'll get
the sack.
The series52 Concept:
While chatting on the phone back in September 2005 the two
people who run Unlabel decided to do this...
During 2006 Unlabel is releasing a series of 52 CD albums -
one every week of the year, all by people who aren't connected
with us (i.e. none of our regular artists), to include all
genres that we cover from the usual guitar based music -
acoustic and alt. country to post-rock / math-rock, hardcore
and beyond, piano, electronica / idm through to ambient,
glitch, microsound, gabber, industrial / noise, soundscapes
and anything else that takes our fancy, each in a strictly
limited edition of just 100 copies.
We decided to do something slightly different - instead of
focusing on local artists, as has been traditional with
Unlabel, we opened this project up to submissions from all
over the world. It is entirely separate from the usual
catalogue of releases and will run as a new offshoot of the
unlabel family.
The idea is to release work by unknown artists who may not
otherwise be recognised at all alongside a handful of
carefully selected guests, including a few names which may be
familiar due to their other releases elsewhere. We receive
quite a few demos these days from all over the world and it
will be good to work with some of these people and to document
music (albeit in a small way) that may not otherwise be
noticed at all...
Each 'album' in this project includes at least 8 tracks OR at
least 30 minutes of material and obviously quality control is
being kept to a high standard.
All releases are packaged in distinctive matching artwork with
the musical artists' own image on the front and two images
from Unlabel on the back - including one of a landscape
photographed every week over the 12 months of 2006 and all
pictures are professionally printed on high gloss photo paper.
Each sleeve is hand numbered and every CD includes a diary
page insert for the relevant week of the year, which can be
filled in and returned to Unlabel to win a unique prize. There
are also inserts from the artists and Unlabel making each one
of these fine discs a collector's item.
http://www.unlabel.net/series52.htm
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01-I Bought The Shoes That Just Walked Out On Me [21:35]
02-Little Things I Should Have Said And Done, I Just [20:48]
Never Took The Time. But You Are Always On My Mind
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42:23 min