STONE TAPE THEORY - FUSSY PUSSY

Released December 2011
TOR17

A REPORT TO THE ACADEMY (STARDATE 8000.75.4312.9 - EARTH SPECIFIC 31.12.11)
THIS REPORT IS RELAYED IN 3 DATA STREAMS, DESIGNATED FOR SPECIFIED PERSONNEL AND CLASSIFIED FUNCTIONS:

1 FACTUAL: Stone Tape Theory is Alastair Popple. Though he has been an integral part of the Treehouse Orchestra from the very beginning – his fingerprints are all over every one of our releases to date - "Volume 1: Fussy Pussy" is Alastair’s first solo release and what a strange and wonderful thing it is. What it exactly is, however, is less easy to express. It isn’t an album in the conventional sense, that’s for sure though, at nearly 35 minutes, it is of album length. It is perhaps best to simply consider it as a single extended piece of music in parts, or movements. The titles of said parts are helpfully provided on the record’s sleeve, as follows:

[i)Peir ii) Cat Traffic iii) It’s Only Skin Creep iv) Ineffective Mass v) Fussy Pussy]

Guessing where one section segues into another is part of the fun. There is much fun to be had. And much beauty. And bewilderment. And cosmic wonder.
Why don’t you just listen?

2 SENSUAL: The sleeping machine awakes with throbs, hums and bleeps (BBC Radiophonic atmospherics), a steady pulse warming all circuits until the engine finally kicks in (trance-like drumbeat and relative static/drone/flow).
The conscience of the vessel is fully powered now (a psychedelic organ, promising a saucerful of secrets) – a hybrid of Terran and Alien technology (50s sci-fi theremin, Earth vs Flying Saucers). The ship is ready to leave Earth’s orbit.
It heads off steadily (early Beta band acoustic guitar chug, sometimes lost in a cosmic fug) and the beat of the great machine – a choir at its heart - as it heads out deeper into space.

Music of the spheres accompanied by the spirit of adventure & the burning lamp of human curiosity (blissed-out country slide, fuzz bass and crashing guitar). Dark matter and uncertain destinations (guitar wig-out) leaving us at the edge of the known universe (spaced electronica and ethereal violin, fading to pure energy/soul/consciousness).
However, no matter how far we venture out into the vastness of space and whatever we might find and face there, we must always take our human element with us – the achievements, fears, concerns (petty and profound), insecurities, paranoia, passions and peculiarities amassed over centuries and not easily left behind (12 inch extended mix of previously unreleased "Great Escape" period Blur track). Maybe we were never meant to leave them behind. To be continued...

3 METAPHYSICAL: This is how it feels, if I try to walk,
sometimes when I breathe, always when I talk. Better not to talk. This is how it reads, down in black and white. Written in the paper, on tv tonight - the future’s not too bright.
And the cat goes to sleep (but she never has the same dream). And the cat goes to sleep. Again.
Horizontally - grounded as can be - vertically challenged, making little sense (in the present tense).
Spinning little ball - hello one and all! - read it in the paper, every rise and fall (the writing’s on the wall).
And the cat goes to sleep, though she not getting any younger. Yes, the cat goes to sleep again.
[I turn the light on once more - and off again, just be sure the world doesn’t end (that I won’t lose a friend). Men did/did not land the moon. Aliens do/don’t walk among us. The noise it makes is reassuring and sound and true. It’ll until the next time the universe shakes.]
Mass communication. Hands across the sea. Nation speaks to nation, but no-one talks to me. No-one talks to me. Fortunes ebb and flow, good times come and go. Watch it on the telly, if you want to know (though you know you don’t know).
And the cat goes to sleep, though I’m not sure who she belongs to. And the cat goes to sleep. Again.

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THE DEAD WEST - VOLUME III

Released December 2011
TOR16


Well, I certainly didn't expect this. The previous EP is a refreshing blast of sonic revelry that clears out the cobwebs but The Dead West's third album is one of those proper albums that blokes talk about in excited whispers, sat at their regular table in the pub. There's the initial glee at trumping their peers with something new, something exciting and then the struggle to articulate what the new and exciting elements actually are. So, what do we get? Well, there's dusty, widescreen epics, haunted, cracked ballads, fuzzed-up folk, psychedelic romps... it sounds like it shouldn't work but it does because the songs are so good, and where other bands might self-consciously hold themselves back, The Dead West don't – they are gloriously over-ambitious and, this is the best part, match their aims with the execution on Volume III. There are breath-taking shifts within songs, moments of pure atmosphere, and most importantly rather than three individuals (whose solo work is elsewhere on this site), it sounds like a proper band.

It seems a shame to give too many secrets away in this review; part of the joy is the first time discovery and then, listening to a second, third and twelfth time, thinking 'I can't believe they did that'. The sinister Lanegan blues that opens “Cointelpro” would be adequate for most bands; they would decide to take the piece up-river into the troubling, nightmarish territory that The Dead West go. There are no shackles here; no manager demanding ten percent of nothin', no record label fat cat skimming the cream off the top, no one to tell them they can't do it. They want to do it, they can do it and by jiminy it's a damn good job they make of it. I've known The Dead West for a long time, we've shared the odd bottle of wine and recording session; heck, we've even been the inarticulate blokes in the pub, and I didn't suspect they were capable of this. Download this, and then take all your other records to the charity shops; you won't be needing them anymore. - Review by Jeremy Bye

Download here :

http://www.mediafire.com/?7z9d95au9ayo3hj

And with that last post, dear reader, we have caught up with the Treehouse Orchestra. From now on all posts containing releases will be posted as they are completed. - Ste.

THE NIGHTOWL SINGS - BY THE LIGHT OF THE FALLEN MOON

Released November 2011
TOR15

Months in production, the third Nightowl Sings release started out as a death obsessed 5 track E.P. to a 20 track strung out odyssey to the 9 track album we have here. Compiled from dozens of songs recorded in the latter half of 2011 the album starts with the slight red herring of ‘Green Eyes’. The melodic organ intro is the only time this release harkens back to the pretty song or folk music of previous records. The remainder goes straight for the scuzz guitar jugular. Songs like ‘Tall Dark Pines’ and ‘Loner Stoner Drones’ tease the listener in with near traditional structure (albeit lo-fi, oddly mixed tradition) before making the curious curse themselves as they end up lost in outros designed to spook and sadden. Spookier still is the album’s closer ‘Bright Yellow Sun’. Some plans have failed, the singer turns to his love to make it alright but from what? ‘Let Me Sleep (In your Flower Bed)’ at first may sound like the slightest song here but it conceals the blueprint for this release and, perhaps, this artist’s manifesto. Dissonant noise combined with playful melody. ‘O My Soul’ may stomp along knee deep in reverb drenched distortion but it’s the chorus melody you remember. What feels like the album’s most hard hitting moment is ‘In My Heart (The Snow Is Falling)’. Here, a broken heart feels like the apocalypse as the singer lets his pain pour out and flood the world, guitar noise burning cities, drums levelling man’s concrete folly. Heavy shit. - Ste.

Download here :

http://www.mediafire.com/?gi1bsacrzxmfcd5

THE DEAD WEST - ALCHEMISTS AND LOST SWEETHEARTS

Released October 2011
TOR14

A lost boy in a pink suit walks down the middle of a lonely highway, the road stretching back into the horizon and a past he can’t always remember but then again can’t completely forget, as hard as he might try. A female aviator, smiling with the crowd and her aircraft behind her, then posing for an official portait, formal but movie queen glamorous, and once more in her plane, up in the clouds, never to come home again. A French film star smells a flower, lost in thought, the perfume as fleeting as her too-short life. Three delinquents, dancing in a café – an epiphany before it all falls apart – they’ll either end up dead or doomed to conventionality. A peyote prophet of the Beat underground glowers from a mural on a wall in Mexico during the Day of the Dead, one minute lost in another dimension and the other staring steely-eyed at the camera, holding a gun and waiting for the next game to begin. And all these moments hidden in the pages of comic books and arcane tomes filled with alchemical symbols and the faces of women who have died or otherwise gone missing – sucked into another dimension – with only dog-eared snapshots, scratched reels of celluloid and worn shellac discs to remind us they were ever really here.
These are the images on the cover of "Alchemists and Lost Sweethearts" – a 20 minute EP that is the second release by The Dead West. This picture gallery is an introduction and set of clues to the world that you will find in the music - visual representations of the anecdotes, reports, confessions, come-ons and love letters running through the tracks of the record. There is alchemy and lost love, as well as debauchery, loneliness, paranoia, abandon, broken promises, narcolepsy and maybe (just maybe) a kind of transcendence, even if it is just getting lost in the clouds or on the road somewhere.
Oh, but did I forget to say that these are also pop songs? Eight of them. Some ragged, some lovelorn, one or two demented, a couple lost in space, maybe a few lying in the gutter but all of them looking up at the stars. A mini jukebox – there’s one of them on the cover too. We hope you’ll want to keep popping a coin into the slot. - David.

Download here :

http://www.mediafire.com/?db2wm6d2cf0asoa

WHIRLAWAY - I KNEW IT WAS FUCKED E.P.

Released August 2011
TOR13

This E.P. was recorded in summer 2010, Shane played, Marc engineered and I was there to hang out. I provided Shane with smokes and poured the wine. I spent most of the evening outside, listening to the trains. It was one of the sunniest weeks Northern England had seen in a while. Every now and again Marc would join me as he left Shane to work out a chord progression or something. “To Thee”, “An Ocean Refuses” and “Dice and Bones” all sound like everybody has left the room, even the player. Circular guitar picking with touches of experimentalism and whispered vocals. This isn’t polite folk. It sounds like ghosts. As the evening went on things got hazier. We all picked up instruments and I got to play drums on the thundering improvised fuzz-fuck of “Skin factory”. In addition to the songs recorded at this session is a track Shane, Alastair and I attempted unsuccessfully to record several times a couple of years back. The sessions lay forgotten until Alastair took another look and managed to salvage this version. His determination and hard work paid off. The track is an ethereal, sombre hymn to loss called “Shudder”. Listening to this record now is like opening a trap door into the earth, a place removed from time and space. Close the door and the sunshine stays outside. - Ste.

Download here :

http://www.mediafire.com/?rogo3xg7bwjryye

HILLS! WEREWOLVES! RUN! - HILLS! WEREWOLVES! RUN! 2

Released May 2011
TOR12

As flames rose up in Cairo and the euro crashed in the land of Greek gods, Hills! Werewolves! Run!  (Marc Gillen, Stephen Benson) recorded their second album. Opening track ‘Heat death of the universe’ is a colossal dirge of repetitive crashing guitars and tribal drums, melody and rhythms sift slowly through its pockets of light, like Les Rallizes Denudes floating in space. Then comes ‘Alexandra’ bristling with melody, stop start rhythms, fuzz bass, and lost radio waves giving an aura of restless yearning and existential threat. ‘All aboard’ is a sombre and stately love letter to artists and political dissidents through the ages, as violin and folk guitar warble sweetly in hope of safer shores and esoteric encounters. ’Rhino’ is an eastern flavoured instrumental at the albums centre providing calming waves of shimmering guitar and off kilter percussion in the midst of stormy surroundings. At the albums close comes the trilogy ‘We fight, we breathe, we fall’ a fifteen minute call to arms, mixing the introspection of Low’s ‘Sunflower’ with the juttering rage of blast first period sonic youth, smoke and tattered flags billow from its schizoid guitars and drums. This ecstatic fury gives way to layered drones and soaring flute, allowing us to stand still for a moment in clearing light as the world keeps running ever faster to nowhere. - Marc

Download Here :

http://www.mediafire.com/?v8ywrknqa25j4a8

CAT OF TOMORROW - SONIC MANGA

Released March 2011
TOR11

Cat of Tomorrow is David Thompson and "Sonic Manga" is his first attempt to explore what music a futuristic feline might make when left to his own devices. The spirit of early 80’s electro pop pervades this 9 track E.P. as does the influence of Joe Meek, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Serge Gainsbourg and Brian Eno. There are tributes to Marvel Comics, Brigitte Bardot, Delia Derbyshire, Krautrock and Francoise Doleac (if you don’t know who she is, shame on you and go ask your dad). It could as easily have been called "More Songs About Space Travel, French Film Stars and Roman Catholic Guilt" but the official title sums up the main aim of the record – to create a weird and wonderful comic book for your ears, aided perfectly by Hobo-Pup’s superb cover art. - David

Download Here  :

http://www.mediafire.com/?964r7qxr6e44lsp

WE ARE THE WOODEN HOUSES - THE BALLAD OF PETER J. AND OTHER SONGS

Released January 2011
TOR10

A gentle acoustic strum breaks through the silence, a call for honesty and understanding in the midst of a relationship's dying embers or its bright new flame, which we can't be sure, hope and doubt pull us one way, then the other. Ambiguity, beauty, and space create a world set apart at the beginning of the third We are the Wooden Houses album the 'Ballad of Peter J and Other Songs'. As we meander through the albums eight songs this world is maintained and nurtured, as we join characters cast adrift, whether it be the '13th Apostle' looking for "A new town or new day", or the protagonist in 'Zaire's Sister' running from "The Warsaw Pact on his tail". These are songs moving away from controlling shadows and searching for some meaning in the physical and spiritual world. What that meaning is we don't know. Musically, the DNA of the first two Wooden Houses releases can be felt strongly, plucked strings, hypnotic drones, moments of quiet alchemy, yet added to this are traditional song structures closer to folk and country, sung with gentle grace. In 'Ludmilla (feel so sad)' the line "Floating right above your heart, and I feel so sad" is devastating, as we are reminded of the loneliness of space and our internal struggles with the world that holds us from it. In 'Don't look Now/Lost Cosmonaut' the album's final track, our characters are finally cut adrift in twelve minutes of soft piano, violin, lapping water, industrial interference, samples, and drone, the structure of  their old world is gone now, they are floating in the great cosmos with 'Ludmilla' hoping to find somewhere new. - Marc

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http://www.mediafire.com/?pcor7h5hb50bb4q

THE NIGHTOWL SINGS - DREAM LOGIC TRUCKSTOP JAMS

Released November 2010
TOR09

The Nightowl Sings (Marc Gillen) second TOR release arrived in November 2010. The opening quiet/loud dynamic of ‘Black Tambourine’ sets the scene in a world where Guided By Voices are always number one and Kurt Cobain married Tobi Vail and retired to chop wood and release spray painted DIY cassettes in Nebraska. Stephen Benson and David Thompson provide additional chops to many of the albums songs, giving the record a ‘band in a room’ feel as opposed to the tense singular claustrophobia of the ‘Ghosts’ E.P. ‘Eyes illuminated’ is a lo-fi scuzzfest that shouts out to lost hero Dan Tracey, as it dances in deep woods with strangers. ‘Sunset At Smurf's Castle’ tugs at memories of childhood hideaways, friendly ghosts and looking out to sea as its nine minutes bursts with high octane choruses and intense smouldering codas. ‘Mary George’ murmurs tales of incest and lust, its haunted vocal wrapped up in banjo and sparse percussion. ‘My Head in Lists’ is a fuzz pop classic, as James Brown fights it out with The Fall and gets his arse kicked. The album’s closer ‘Slow Movers/To You’ is a hazy instrumental of lolloping drums and samples which unfurls into a lovelorn poem to that girl you love. - Marc.

Download Here :

http://www.mediafire.com/?hhj47iaf5xb88lx