new release

News from the Conning Tower: coming attractions

Hello you. How’s things? It’s all a bit weird at the moment, isn’t it. One of the benefits of operating from a submarine is that isolation is all part of the gig. So as far as new releases go, it’s full-steam ahead. But without the steam, obvs.

Two new releases that have snuck under the radar, both featuring the Welsh anarchist alchemist Alan Morse Davies. First up is his partnership with Anthony Morrow to form Non-Fatal Injuries, as explained thusly…

“Inspired by the world’s largest ever release of balloons, Balloonfest ’86 and the collateral damage it caused, we decided to work together.

Multiple horses suffered non-fatal injuries.

We settled on suitable synth and organ ambience then added samples from a 1948 BBC debate on the existence of God.”

Available only from Bandcamp as digital download or CD.

 

Second out of the traps is Alan partnering with Gregory Nieuwsma with their Reichian masterwork Dreams of Steve. Two very different but compelling dreams for all your iterative minimalist needs.

Alan and Gregory have made this album free to you; again it is available only on Bandcamp.

 

We have a big stack of new releases to bring you over the next couple of months. There’s a second album from Cloud Diameter, cheekily entitled Cloud Diameter 2. There’s a new album from Xqui, a new album from Iyari, a follow up to the acclaimed Spirits of Afrodubism by Cousin Silas & the Glove of Bones and much, much more.

Stay home, stay safe, buy a cassette player.

‘Happiness’, from Incentive

Our first release of 2020 is an imprint of Incentive’s brilliant Happiness album on cassette. It’s urgent, dense, claustrophobic, playful, ominous, melodic, and visceral. It’s instrumental, but certainly not ambient.

James (Incentive) says:

Happiness is an an album comprised of inspired and emotional compositions and production — a deep, complex sonic journey that amalgamates deep mechanical grooves and dark textures with hints of bright melody. This is a work of catharsis and self-medication; the auditory tapestry of this album was inspired by the junction of childhood trauma, depression, and anxiety about the future.

Take a listen here: https://submarinebroadcastingco.bandcamp.com/album/happiness

News from the Conning Tower: FROM

This week sees the release of the debut single from the newest addition to our roster, FROM. She Stands is taken from their forthcoming album A Memory of Tomorrow which is scheduled for September.

FROM is the long distance (New York via Brussels) collaboration between experimental electronic producer Michel Mazza and singer-songwriter Piero Delux. They describe their project as an experiment in finding balance between pop hooks and experimental arrangements. The end result is a unique form of dreamy, lush, melodic music that just doesn’t sound like anyone else. We think that if you like Sigur Rós, Toydrum or Talk Talk you’re really going to love A Memory of Tomorrow.

You can see an excerpt from the video for She Stands above. The single is released on 8th September on all major digital platforms, and will be available as a free download from our Bandcamp page.

News from the Conning Tower: Modwump

Sound the ‘important news’ klaxon! This week sees the release of the debut album by Modwump. Entitled Animal Bitrate, it’s pretty different to anything we’ve released before. It’s noisy, beaty, cheeky, dancey, glitchy, provocative and impossible to ignore.

Modwump are Sheffield-based duo/trio Craig, Tim and Frankie, risen from the foundry ashes of wonk-prog outfit Mangabros. They forge their twisted monstrous sound from dismantled modular synths, rewired electronic toys and junkyard percussion, fed through a crooked mile of guitar pedals and FX. They’ve dropped the vocals and narrative this time round to have much more fun with sonic exploration. Here, at last, is dance music for chronic wallflowers who daren’t dance.

 

Bandcamp cover

A review of Animal Bitrate from Doncopolitan blog will give you a flavour of the album:

“Modwump’s debut album ‘Animal Bitrate’ has retro leanings, it is constructed to be experienced in two gulps (like in the good old days, for cassette and future vinyl incarnation). It gives rise to a new definition for the term “steampunk”. It is a primitive, primal sound, of primary colours, outlandish feverish dance moves, scavenged from broken circuitry, discarded junk percussion and modular fractured otherness. It has a brutal absurdity, teetering on the insane, and – above all – it has the ability to amuse us. MODWUMP’s first outing is pure unadulterated FUN.”

The album is available as a digital download and a limited edition cassette. Each cassette will come with a souvenir wooden hex-section winding device, so you can relive the excitement of spooling in loops of cassette tape, just like when your mixtape got eaten by the car stereo. Happy days.

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Official release date is Friday 26th July. Until then you can here selected tracks here:

News from the Conning Tower: Cousin Silas and Iyari

Two new releases this week, hand-crafted by artisans and curated just for you by our very own Captain Bob. First up is the new album from stalwart of the ambient scene, Cousin Silas. A Night in Centralia is an album of sombre, sobre pieces on different themes. Similar in tone to our previous Silas release Radio Galaxies this is firmly in dark ambient territory. Of course, as you would expect from Cousin Silas, it’s still utterly accessible and the musicianship is second to none.

Also out this week is our first release from Iyari, a guitar-based project from Josep Mateo in Catalonia. Ephire is an album of solo guitar + looper improvisations. It’s serene in places, building up to frenetic in others but full of atmospheric and lyrical music. We spoke to Josep to ask how he would describe his music and we agreed it was somewhere between post-rock and post-folk.

Currently Ephire is download only, we hope to be releasing it on CD in the very near future.

New Release: GOATS ‘Far Out’

We’ve been publicising the new GOATS album for a couple of months now, so we’re absolutely delighted to announce its general release.

Far Out is GOATS’ second album, with a change of personnel and a change of direction. The core members Alan Morse Davies and Declan Owen remain and are augmented by Jorge Mario Zuleta on visuals, plus a number of guest musicians. Musically, there is the experimental feel from the first album, but much, much more: the album comprises a single 38 minute track containing elements of psychedelia, folk, Tuvan throat singing, all interwoven and drifting in and out of focus.

A psychedelic drone folk ambient noise radio station, not perfectly tuned, so that there is another psychedelic drone folk ambient noise radio station playing simultaneously. Requires repeated listening.
— Aeons And Monuments

GoatsCover BandcampWe’ve been really encouraged by the reception this album has received already, with radio play on A Duck in a Tree (resonance.fm), Chunky’s Choice Cuts (dapper.fm), In Memory of John Peel, Wonky Planet Wireless Show  and The Institute of Spectra-Sonic Sound, amongst others, and positive reviews in a number of blogs, including Houdini Mansions, Mystic Tape Deck, and Yeah I Know It Sucks.

We’re leading with a cassette format, available only from our Bandcamp store. Far Out is also available as a download from Bandcamp, iTunes and Amazon.

 

It feels like your using your personal super power of flight and sailing along above the earth hearing many disparate sounds and occasionally dipping in on different places around the globe for a closer listen.
— Albert E. Trapezoid

You can listen to and purchase Far Out here:

 
Do give it a spin.

But that’s not all. To accompany Far Out Jorge Mario Zuleta has also produced a full length video, entitled How to Cook a Queen. As befits a sister-piece to Far Out, it’s another psychedelic trip, surreal, spellbinding, disturbing and intriguing in equal measure. You can watch How to Cook a Queen here:

 

News from the Conning Tower: Menhir and leaving richmond

Our final two releases of the year will be released in December; both are new artists to the Submarine Broadcasting Company, with contrasting styles but both represent the highest quality of music possible.

First out the blocks are Spanish project Menhir, with their beautiful and startling Sound Track, part of their multimedia project, Desert Series.  The album is inspired by the Sahara desert and the saharawi refugee camps. The music forms the original soundtrack of the documentary “My First Life”, by the Mexican filmmaker Carlos Hernández. The film describes the birth and first days of a child in the camps. This collaboration led to the creation of the video-art Desierto (see excerpt below), which won 2nd prize at CNP Partners Proyector Festival (2018), and a photo series, which together make Desert Series.

The music is a unique blend of analogue synths, voices and electric guitars, mixed with medieval cellos and sandstorms. You can hear Lepsir, the opening track from the album below:

 

Also in December is the brilliant new single Moon Health from leaving richmond. We discussed with Jordan from leaving richmond about the pitfalls of the many micro-genres of electronic music (vaporwave, synthwave, mallsoft, glo-fi, dreamwave etc. etc.) and came to the conclusion that “electronic” would cover it, although I reckoned there were some nice retro touches, and Jordan likes the “chill out” tag. The best plan is to listen to it and decide for yourself. You can hear the lead track Moon Health today, but you’ll have to wait until the release date before you can hear its companion piece Wanderlust.

News from the Conning Tower: t.r. hand and Glauber K. de Souza

Ah, autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitlessness. Our release for the tail end of September is ‘Suburban Solitude’ from our resident mystic t.r. hand in collaboration with Glauber K. de Souza of the Amao Quartet.

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The album contains the field recordings and sound collages you’ve come to expect from t.r hand, but taken in new directions with electro-acoustic instrumentation from Glauber K.S.

It’s a meditative and subtle work, one that demands to be listened to at length; a soundscape that needs to envelop you and move you.

We’re delighted that this work has already picked up a positive reception; most of the tracks are too long to be radio-friendly but this album will reward the listener that seeks it out.

As with the previous t.r. hand album, we’re delighted to offer this album in both digital and physical editions. Suburban Solitude is available from our merch store as a deluxe book/CD package, designed by the radical design collective Glove of Bones. As you can see, it’s a beautiful thing.

 

In other news, we have some groovy stuff still to come this year. A very special album by Hans Castrup, new work from Leaving Richmond and Whettman Chelmets and the sophomore album from GOATS. Come get some!

News from the Conning Tower: t.r. hand

Everyone here at the Conning Tower was winding down, lowering the periscope, ready for the traditional English August of drizzle and traffic jams, when a most remarkable thing happened… a new EP from the reclusive guru of mind-training, self help/abuse and prison tattoos, t.r. hand, landed on the desk.

There’s a super-size serving of concept in the EP ‘The Checking’, and in addition to t.r’s trademark washes, sound collages, chops/screws and deep atmospherics, there are spoken vocal readings/recitals from Bonnie J. Currie which give the tracks a whole new focus and impetus. Once again t.r has coerced the Glove of Bones into producing the cover/track art and it is glorious.

05 Junk Devotion

After checking that the restraining order was still in place,  and that our A&R man’s tetanus jabs were up to date, we set out to get an interview with t.r. hand in a disused warehouse. This is what happened:

SBC: Can you give some explanation of the ideas behind this work and its points of reference?
TRH: Have you been watching One Punch Man on Netflix? It’s like that. If you get an idea, the last thing you should do is grab it and choke the air out of it. Tickle it, ask it questions. Listen, don’t talk.

SBC: There is a running theme in the work, a narrative. How did that come about?
TRH: From a broad suggestion. I didn’t choose it, other than signposting its huge source. I didn’t know the performer, nothing other than ‘some words’ was suggested.

SBC: Did the narrative alter the project?
TRH: Yes.

SBC: Can you explain?
TRH: No. Well, almost no. The grip on the idea wasn’t ever so tight that it couldn’t transform. Everything is transformation. A stick of charcoal in your fingers and a piece of paper. Both ask for transformation. When I received the narrative recordings they changed the project. Pretty much completely. The original project is probably flipping and flapping around somewhere waiting for an oxygen intake. Is that the natural selection of ideas? No idea. The critical thing though is I’d imagined some scattergun / sound bite content. That’s what I was geared up to work with. Bonnie’s work though was so full of understanding of the subject and passionate in it’s presentation, the original idea seemed trivial and it would have been wrong to strip it from it’s context and use little bits from here and there for effect or imposed meaning. I ‘get’ the source but of all the many words in books, this set are the most inviting for the imposition of personal meaning.

SBC: For any readers out there, what is the source?
TRH: They are from the Red Book by Carl Jung. Look it up, it’s not easily summarised. Go with the flow. Pretty sure civilization will come back to it after the apocalypse.

SBC: That isn’t very positive for a self proclaimed Guru?
TRH: Truth hurts, which probably explains the current global collision.

SBC: In your somewhat small public scope, you do use the hashtag #guru. Do you have any reason or explanation of this?
TRH: There’s an underlying, no, overriding sarcasm in that question isn’t there? The ‘Self Help’ industry is on the ascent, most of it is lunacy. It’s all very tribal. So, I’m happy to hit up on a level playing field. I’m pretty much in the peace and love wing, anarchic, left leaning libertarian sect. It’s niche but I’m sure there’s an audience. Albeit briefly.

SBC: Thank you.
TRH: Can I go now?

01 Whispering Knights

We are presenting The Checking as a digital download, or as a super-deluxe hardback book/CD package, including 24 pages of Glove of Bones’ designs. Both formats are available from the Bandcamp page.