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.

Aloha. A brief update about two releases we’ve just made available for pre-order. As ever, we’re fashionably late to the party, announcing our first two cassette releases.

First up, we’re delighted to welcome Cousin Silas back to the Submarine Broadcasting Company imprint, on this occasion in tandem with our resident multimedia artist The Glove of Bones. The album is Spirits of Afrodubism, and it’s a glorious combination of Silas’ melodic and lyrical guitars, ambient synth pads, cut-ups and aural collages, found sounds and African iconography, all fused with a dub treatment that fans of King Tubby or Bill Laswell will love.

Artist’s impression of a cassette.

We’re positioning this primarily as a cassette release, but it will also be available as a digital download from our Bandcamp store.

Yes, yes, we know. You wait thirty years for a cassette release and then two come along together. Tres amusant. Our other forthcoming attraction is the new single/EP/maxi-single (that’s still a thing, right?) from Whettman Chelmets.

Alas… The Sun is Shining and You are Still Alive is a tryptych of nostalgia and reinvention. The lead track, The Sun is Shining is gorgeous slice of fuzz-drenched shoegazery that invokes the memory of the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine et al, with nods to the big production techniques of yesteryear.

Whettman says:

Track two takes on acoustic treatments and blends them with 4/4 kick drums, reverberated guitars and chimes that weave to a grandiose apex with nods to the The Tornados’s “Telstar” and other larger-than-life sounds. Track three slows it all down to a glacial pace and unfolds guitar textures over the course of nine minutes, moving from a dreamy yearning to crushing waves of feedback and noise.

Alas… The Sun is Shining and You are Still Alive is available on CD, rubine red cassette (!) and digital download.

We are offering the digital download at the laughably paltry price of £1 (one pound) for a limited period only, so come get some.

So that was July then. But here at Submarine Broadcasting Spires we’ve had no time for the World Cup, Love Island or lounging about in hammocks sipping banana daiquiris, no sirree Clive. No, we’re committed to the making of music, sweet music, and we have served up a summer smorgasbord of aural treats.

We’ve had a fantastic new single from Manipulant, ‘What Good Are The Stars?’. It’s a sweet, down-tempo, romantic number which was been picking up some airplay on the internet radio circuit. There’s also a version with an alternative vocal take by Jennifer Doll which takes the song in a different direction altogether. But if all this is too melodic and accessible for you, don’t worry; we have an album of remixes, re-purposings and re-imaginings coming out in August that will tread the path less travelled.

July also saw our first release from Ippu Mitsui who we have on loan until the end of the season from our friends at Bearsuit Records. Ippu’s delivered a brilliant four-song EP called ‘Shift Down’ and as the title suggests it contains some mellower numbers than on last year’s ‘L + R’. Ippu’s music doesn’t fit any genre easily – he describes himself simply as an electronic musician – and this EP encompasses a number of styles, but if you like your electronic music melodic, with elements of synthwave, synthpop, DnB and everything between, do check it out.

Our final release of July is the third and – as is the convention with trilogies – final part of Martin Neuhold & Friends’ Dialogue series. The music of Dialogue started life as solo improvisations recorded by Martin as part of February Album Writing Month (FAWM); these were then added to, remixed and generally re-jigged by a number of leading ambient and experimental musicians. Artists on this album include Cousin Silas, Volker Lankow, Randy Pytel, Norbert Kutz, Gareth Farmer, Guy Mauseth, Colin Powell, Wilfried Hanrath, Allen Pitts, Siegfried Grundmann amongst others.

All three volumes are available as download or CD, and all proceeds go to Médecins Sans Frontières.

We have lots of new releases slated for August and September, and in order to free up some space for new stock we are attempting to clear some of our existing inventory, so do check the Bandcamp store for reductions on CDs from Manipulant, Crayon Angels, the Klang and Post:Soc compilations and more. We’ve also reduced the price of some downloads – even though these don’t occupy any physical space – just because we’re nice.