Hello. Yes, not dead. Been busy.

Unless you have managed to avoid our social media onslaught, you will be aware of our latest big album, a collaboration between elegantly wasted guru and all-purpose troubador t.r. hand and anarcho-syndicalist sommelier and multimedia artist Glove of Bones. Entitled Nerja Sound it’s a brilliant postcard from southern Spain, experimental but very accessible, genre-defying but melodic. As well as the unholy duumvirate of Messrs Hand and Bones, it features a number of acclaimed guest musicians including Cousin Silas, Glauber K. de Souza and Jaime Munarriz.

Check out the album here:

Our other recent release was from newcomers to SBC, Antonella Eye Porcelluzzi and Simone Santarsiero, with a stark and sombre audio poem, A Love Song. It’s a maxi-single containing two mixes, the original Nico-esque version and the more radio-friendly Melodic Mix. 

Listen to A Love Song here:

We have a number of delights in store over the next few months. Lots of work to do, i’s to dot, t’s to cross, dreams to shatter, but two that we think we can safely share are the debut album from Modwump, working title Animal Bitrate, and the second album from the ever-wonderful GOATS: Far Out.

(Spoiler alert: We’ve heard Far Out and it’s proper drop-dead brilliant. GOATS spit on your ‘difficult second album’ lore)

More on both of these releases soon.

Two new releases to tell you about. First up and out now is the the beautiful new album from Wilfried Hanrath, Glow.

Glow limited edition digipak. Rather lovely.

Available in a beautiful limited edition digipak, Glow is an album of captivating and mesmerising music. The music comprises improvisations based on, and re-workings of, the music of Matt Getchell (Matt and Wilfried release music collectively as The Hauchzart Ensemble). Alongside Wilfried, guest artists include Cousin Silas, Walloff Domberg, ./noise and Leonel Cardoso.

In places experimental, sometimes ambient, but always melodic and accessible, Wilfried’s music defies traditional genre classification. Listen to an excerpt here:

Fresh! New! Exciting! Available to pre-order now is the new album from Manipulant. Sundries & Souvenir is a retrospective of the last three years of Manipulant music, including some new mixes and brand new songs. We wanted to push the boat out for this release, so we’ve tried ensure a format for everyone. So that means:

• Vinyl
• Cassette
• CD
• Digital download

And… [drum roll]

• 8-track cartridge

Yes, we went there. Yes, we are hipsterer than thou. Get over it.

What’s the last 8-track you bought?

You can hear some tracks from the album or pre-order the format of your choice at the SBC Bandcamp store.

Today sees the release of the uncompromising new album from Hypercube and UNIC6, Binary Planet. It’s a fiercely experimental album, fusing hard glitch electronics and organic, jazz-infused acoustic instruments. Binary Planet is available today as digital download or CD from Bandcamp, with other digital platforms following next week.

Hello you. Happy new year. Enjoy the break? Yeah, not bad. Quite quiet, actually. Mostly family, you know…

Right, so just a quickie to update you all before we go on our spring/summer hiatus/sabbatical/furlough. It looks like there will be three releases before we hibernate: a brilliant new album from Wilfried Hanrath, a career retrospective from Manipulant and first out the blocks will be the superb hard-electronic/acoustic collab from Hypercube and UNIC6, entitled Binary Planet:

We’re aiming for a 19th January release for Binary Planet, to be available on all major digital platforms, plus CD via Bandcamp.

More on this and the other new releases soon.

Hi, Submariner-in-Chief Rob speaking. I just wanted to send a seasonal message and update you on news for next year.

So, what a year! It was, I suppose, SBC’s first full year as “a thing” (we first released stuff in 2017 but I think it was this year that earnt our spurs, carved our niche, twisted our sobriety…?)

We did a lot of stuff, we did a lot right; we did a few things wrong too, but I look on those as part of the learning process and we live to fight another day. Lots of achievements, both artistic and technical:

• Our first cassette release
• A release nominated for the Schallwelle Music Awards
• Three releases available as hardback book/CD packages
• Our first play on BBC 6 Music
• Our first review in “proper” music magazines
• True multimedia, with a series of original paintings in our merch shop
• Launched a monthly playlist, Submerged.
• A new drop-ship CD manufacturer, enabling release of CDs where it would have been cost-prohibitive previously
• Experiments with new streaming services, Choon and MusiCoin

We’ve also raised a shedload of cash for charities (you may recall the initial reason for us existing at all was the One String Inspiration project, which raised money for Syria Relief). Since then we have raised many hundreds of pounds for:

• Depaul International
• Medecins Sans Frontieres 
• The Shaw Mind Foundation
• Make The World Better
• The Petar Radovanović Children’s Home, Užice, Serbia

A huge thank you to all the artists who donated their time and talents to the projects that made this possible.

So with the Christmas season approaching, I think we’ve deserved a rest, so you’ll see the activity and social media posts start dwindle now until the New Year. Regardless of your religious persuasion, I’d like to think we’d all want some peace, and maybe even muster up goodwill to all men. And if you are really stuck for Christmas gift ideas, who doesn’t love a Bandcamp download?

2019 on the Submarine

So… one of the big lessons that 2018 taught me was not to bite off more than I can chew. A number of artists have approached us regarding potential releases and we’ve had to turn them away, because next year is going to see a change to the rate of releases from the Submarine Broadcasting Company. The reasons are manifold, but the main two are that I’m just not getting time to work on any Beltism material and that Simply Will Not Do! Also, I’m finding it difficult to find time to properly promote a release before the next one is upon me, so something has got to give.

To give you an idea of when things might happen, we have four releases on the slate for January and February: these include a stunning new album from Wilfried Hanrath and a new retrospective from Manipulant, plus other stuff that’s still top secret. But after February, the intention is to slow it right down, with perhaps only another six releases until 2020. Who knows, maybe by April I will be bored out of my mind and be desperate to release more material? But that’s the current plan.

A note to our existing and prospective artists: don’t be afraid to get in touch about anything you would like to release through SBC, but note that we will be making some changes to the way we work. Probably the most material of these changes is that we will be imposing a lead time, so we will need lots of notice prior to release, but there will be some other changes which we’ll discuss at the time.