VARIOUS ARTISTS
Physic Or Surgery
HPLL058
Highpoint Lowlife 2011
28 Tracks. 138mins42secs

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The statement is brutal: HPLL058 Physic Or Surgery – The Final Release. In these days where music has become a commodity with often very little value, the demise of a record label, especially one with such an excellent track record as that of Highpoint Lowlife, is a severe blow. Over a period of ten years, the label spearheaded by Thorsten Sideb0ard has consistently found itself at the forefront of contemporary underground electronic music in its many forms, and occasionally beyond, and provided a steady home or temporary shelter for artists as diverse as Fisk Industries, Erstlaub, Si-Cut.db, Bovaflux, , Marshall Watson, 10-20, Dalglish, Like A Stuntman and the Marcia Blaine School For Girls umbrella of projects, including The Village Orchestra and Production Unit.

As Sideb0ard is turning his attention to writing and drawing comics (Physic Or Surgery is also the title of a comic available to download from the HPLL website), he has compiled an impressive twenty-eight track mastodon compilation which isn’t quite a simple retrospective trying to cram ten years in just over two hours but which instead offers a wealth of previously unreleased material from a big slice of the label’s entire roster. Expectedly, the result is incredibly varied, bringing together lush ambient textures, oppressive atmospherics, dense abstract experimentations, elegant techno, hip-hop-infused grooves, urban flavours or playful electro under one banner.

Picking up highlights is here pretty pointless, so wide is the scope of this compilation, yet some undeniably deserve particular mentions, if only because they crystalize, in their own way, HPPL’s overall visionary approach. Depakote, with the psychedelic Casnoc Is Dead, and Fisk Industries with the more urgent Death Is The Final Step, adopt hip-hop-infused grooves to very different effects, while Gravious’s Ghostly Steps and Spatial’s Checks Out are fueled with pulsating dubsteb flavours, the former wrapped in lush soundscapes, the latter presented in much more minimal form. Beats are present on a majority of the pieces collected here, and come in all shades and forms, but techno seems to dominate at least part of the selection, from the fluid (Marshall Watson’s Liquid Solid) and dubbey (randomNumber’s K Revisited, Twerk’s Have 10, Need 20) to the motorik (10-20’s Bloomback, Marcia Blaine’s Loopy Dobber), and dreamy (TVO’s I’m Everything That Never Happened To You). Erik XVI carves a rather magnificent techno/electro hybrid with When Particles Collide, while Hot City’s No Matter What I Do is a fun and playful soul-infused piece which is not without recalling some of Nightmares On Wax’s early experiments.

When the mood settles for cooler tones, the harvest is as rich, from Bovaflux’s rather sumptuous Temazapam or Pausal’s peaceful and luxurious Afar to Erstlaub’s droney Team Handed We Go, Into The Night, while Friends Of The Jitney’s haunting Leafcutter John remix of Good Mourning recalls the bleak atmospheres of This Mortal Coil’s Filigree And Shadow. On a different level, the claustrophobic textures and heavy groove of Dalglish’s Mordsun and Sideb0ard’s Grind seem to find an unlikely echo in the greasy electro of Kenny Crunk’s Baxter Bad Yin and the deconstructed abstraction of Calika’s Diagonal B.

In the space of ten years and just under sixty releases, Highpoint Lowlife has been one of the most consistent imprints around, and its demise is likely to be felt for some time, yet Thorsten Sideb0ard leaves behind him an substantial catalogue and this last blast of life, which should be appreciated with absolutely no moderation. Farewell Highpoint Lowlife, and thank you for the music.

4.8/5

Highpoint Lowlife
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CALIKA
Blood Embrace
AB031
Audiobulb Records 2010
11 Tracks. 48mins48secs

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Brighton-based Simon Kealoha is back on Audiobulb with his fourth full length slice of refined electro-acoustic in five year, his first album since Seedling Mother (Audiobulb, 2007), following the two EPs released last year, Crooked, once again on Audiobulb, and Slack Jaw on Highpoint Lowlife. Ever since he first appeared, in 2005, with his debut album, Small Talk Kills Me, Kealoha has been refining his sound, bringing together acoustic and electronic elements into complex and fragile formations. Beside working on his own project, Kealoha has also collaborated with Seefeel mastermind Mark Clifford on the excellent Running Taper, an album published on Clifford’s Polyfusia Records in 2005, and on a second opus which came close to be released two years later but appears to have been victim of the demise of the label.

Announced as a more stripped down and bare record, Blood Embrace remains a pretty intricate and organic collection, at times surprisingly light and airy, at others radical and dense. Predominant in his work, the guitar, acoustic in most cases, takes here a variety of roles, from simple textural counterpoint to main focal feature, placed as a discreet melodic filigree amidst strong electronic currents or used as a substantial component in the structure of a piece. While this is not the only acoustic instrument to find its way in this record, it is found in abundance throughout, from the gentle broken pop of Kodachrome or the shimmering Headset and Poor Low Lencher to the sombre undertones of Lug or Fuckin Cretinous. This changes on the piano-led In The Dark, a piece in two half, the first showing a resolutely autumnal, at times almost funeral, tone, while the second reveals a brighter mood as the course of the melody is greatly altered by the introduction of a drum beat, but things become much darker again as layers of mournful organ build up on the emotional aspect of If Ever There Was A Time.

While this confrontation of the organic and artificial is a pretty permanent fixture, Kealoha occasionally switches to more purely electronic or highly processed sounds. This is the case with the rather superb Melcher, with its heady groove and rich sonic backdrop, and later on with the title track, which resonates with seismic percussive noises placed over lightly abrasive sound waves, or on the lighter hip-hop flavoured Palace Pier. These are in no way exempt of acoustic elements, but they are either buried under layers of grainy electronic sounds, only to emerge occasionally, at times for just a brief moment, at others in the dying section of a track, or processed beyond recognition.

While not a major departure from previous Calika releases, Blood Embrace denotes a move toward slightly darker territories for Simon Kealoha, but far from rendering his music heavier, it seems to inject a new lease of energy in his approach. He manipulates his sound sources and integrates the various strands of his sound with great dexterity throughout to create his most consistent and confident work yet.

4.6/5

Calika | Calika (MySpace) | Audiobulb Records
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CALIKA
Crooked
AB024
Audiobulb Records 2009
05 Tracks. 22mins04secs
Format: Digital

CALIKA
Slack Jaw
HPLL043
Highpoint Lowlife 2009
05 Tracks 20mins32secs
Format: Digital

Crooked
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Slack Jaw
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Clearly willing to spread his music to the cream of British electronic imprints, Brighton-based Calika has, in recent weeks, returned to both Sheffield’s Audiobulb and London’s Highpoint Lowlife, offering each label five tracks of fine electronic music compiled on two EPs. Simon Kealoha, the brain behind Calika, has, in the past, released two albums on Audiobulb, worked with Benbecula and contributed one track to Highpoint Lowlife’s excellent Analog For Architecture compilation, published in 2006. Beside his solo activities, he has also worked with Seefeel’s Mark Clifford, with whom he has recorded two albums worth of material, the first, Running Tapper, released through Clifford’s Polyfusia imprint, the second yet to materialise.

With these two digital-only releases, coming ahead of  Kealoha’s fourth full length, currently being recorded, Calika exhibits two different sides of his musical landscapes. While Crooked makes extensive use of a wide acoustic palette, processed and arranged into relatively atmospheric compositions, Slack Jaw appears rawer, more electric, and driven by heavier grooves.

Twisted and occasionally moody, especially on the title track, Crooked is as fresh and invigorating as the last Calika album. Constantly changing pace, from the subdued allure of the title track and the twisted funk of Mega Mega to the wonky mock post-rock of I Still Dream Of You, the elegant acoustic textures of Reminders and the ambient form of A Serpentine Tale, Kealoha embarks here on a short, yet plentiful, journey, determined to cram as much as the mind can deal with in the twenty two minutes of this EP. This is no pretentious game play though. Each track has a clear focus and a well defined outline and is fuelled by particularly effective soundscapes. Kealoha processes his acoustic textures with great care, rarely leaving them untouched, choosing instead to give them a grittier feel or a sharper edge, before incorporating them in the fabric of his compositions to create a warm and organic collection.

This process also defines much of Slack Jaw, but the sources are either much more concentrated or vastly different. Indeed, this EP, while retaining some of the atmospheric aspect of Crooked, appears more angular and bad-tempered. Occasionally sounding like the live recordings of a band which would have been finely sliced and recomposed, the tracks collected here denote a darker, nastier, edgier sound. Gone are the tasteful sonic textures and delicate melodies. Here Kealoha deploys complex structures, propelled by faltering breakbeats and intricate melodic patterns. Oscar and Gioconda are especially gritty and moody, while Crome Yellow feeds on a sleeker groove and shows a slightly more approachable side, and closing piece To Hold You relieves the pressure a tad by displaying a more cheerful personality.

With these two distinct EPs, Simon Kealoha consolidates his solo work by applying similar techniques to create radically different records. While it is difficult to know which direction will inform his next record, both Crooked and Slack Jaw prove mighty fine releases in their own right, and, while they do not exactly complete each other, are equally as worthy of attention.

Crooked: 4.5/5 Slack Jaw: 4.4/5

Calika | Calika (MySpace) | Audiobulb Records | Highpoint Lowlife

Crooked
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Slack Jaw
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VARIOUS ARTISTS
2 | Favourite Places
AB026
Audiobulb Records 2009
10 Tracks. 56mins30secs

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The concept is pretty simple: take a number of contemporary musicians with a taste for moods and atmospheres, task them with recording sounds from their favourite places in the world and use them in a composition. This is exactly what David Newman, head of Audiobulb, did two years ago, and the result was compiled in the first instalment of Favourite Places, with contributions from Biosphere, Taylor Deupree, Claudio, Leafcutter John and John Kannenberg amongst others. The second volume in the collection brings together musicians from the UK (Michael Santos, Icarus, Autistici, Calika), Australia (Lawrence English), Belgium (Yannick Franck), Japan (Sawako), USA (Jeremy Bible, He Can Jog) and Canada (Michael Trommer), giving them each a chance to introduce their very own favourite place. The booklet accompanying this CD contains photographs and a description of these spots, providing concrete complements to the recordings.

The locations selected vary greatly here, ranging from the South Downs between London and Brighton (in two instances), a derelict concrete factory in Ohio, a forest near Brisbane, to a suburban Belgian town, a public walkway in North London, a bedroom in Brooklyn, or the Peak District National Park near Sheffield, yet, perhaps due to the very nature of the project and of the artists involved, there are great sonic consistency throughout the record. Apart for He Can Jog’s Erik Schoster who uses his bed as his source location, the other nine artists use outdoors settings as the starting point for their respective contributions, feeding sounds ranging from wind sweeping though landscapes or birdsongs to running water, rain or distant traffic noises into densely atmospheric collages where music often occurs as an impressionist counterpoint.

This especially the case on Lawrence English’s opening Quiet Planigale, which originally seems to catalogue all sorts of birdsongs but eventually gives way to a sombre drone over which lighter fragments of hazy melody take shape, or on Michael Santos’s Perfect Pitch, where field recordings, collected along Parkland Walk, between Finsbury Park and Highgate, occupy solely the first segment of the track, before outstretched chimes come in, arranged as to evoke light playing through branches and leaves. Autistici’s Winter Heather, Frozen Breath works on a similar concept, David Newman originally focusing on a walk through the vast spaces of the Peak District National Park before bringing in gently shimmering sounds to convey an element of the wide open space serving as inspiration for the track. It is also the format adopted by Michael Trommer on his portrayal of Toronto’s underground pedestrian network for TD Path 6. To complement the urban setting of the opening two and a half minute, Trommer distils a haunting and dense series of soundscapes in the remaining section of the track, crystallising the transient aspect of the paths network and its anonymity in a surprisingly vivid way.

Icarus take the concept into a different direction by intricately linking the sounds recorded on the South Downs (football commentaries on a portable radio, human voices, insects, car noises) and the music they extract from them, articulating these two phases against each other. This is also partially the case with He Can Jog’s extremely clever Woodbine Entwist, although producing a radically different result. Here, the bed, and by extension the bedroom, is integrant part of the song, not so much through the sounds used as through the low-fi approach to the colourful electronically-tainted folk that develops from the experiment, a reminder that the music was recorded in his own living space.

Like its predecessor, this second volume of Favourite Places collects sounds and impressions, and reflects the choices made by the various contributors. Frequently characteristic of their usual work, these tracks are like open windows into the inspiration of musicians, giving an interesting, if often highly unusual and personal, insight into their intimate spaces.

4.4/5

Audiobulb Records
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CALIKA
The Bright Spot
BEN518
Benbecula Records 2006
09 Tracks. 47mins50secs

The excellent Benbecula imprint, home of Christ., Prhizzm and Reverbaphon to name but a few, has been putting out some rather interesting ultra-limited CDRs in its Mineral Series. Now in its second batch of releases, the Mineral Series came out of a desire from the label to get back to its roots and publish homemade records.

Joining the ranks is Calika’s Simon Kealoha, who was recently spotted on Audiobulb with his excellent debut album, Small Talk Kills Me, and alongside former Seefeel mastermind Mark Clifford on Running Taper (Polyfusia). The Bright Spot continues where Small Talk Kills Me left off, as Kealoha combines acoustic and electric instrumentation with sharp electronic treatment, yet this new offering also sees the man exploring a wider musical scope. Clearly digging into his love of jazz and hip-hop, Kealoha shows here a more direct approach to both sonic and melodic structures and engages in more accessible, yet equally genre-bending, experiments.

The opening track, Enriched By Sea Minerals, is a fine example of how the Calika sound is exposed on here in its raw form. Here, Simon Kealoha begins by applying a thin layer of electronics before injecting processed live drums and softening the blow with an acoustic guitar, creating very compartmented atmospheric sections within which he develops micro-melodies. Sometimes I Feel Like I’m Not Quite Here is very similar in concept, with elements of folk finding their way through the assemblage of found sounds, statics and glitches before the whole thing eventually collapses as a muffled piano traces a captivating melody over a lingering sonic haze in the background.

On You Little Brute and Max And Louie, Kealoha opts for more accessible templates, first by crafting a slightly psychedelic melody and applying some heavy hue to it, then by switching to a rather infectious pop/folk tune wrapped up around delicate guitar arabesques, earthy hip-hop infused beat and gentle glitches.

Elsewhere, Kealoha explores vaporous ambient formations, applies delicate processed found sounds and develops wonderfully evocative melodies to build on the overall atmospheric nature of this album. Compositions such as Four Dummies, with its slow-morphing tones stretching over its nine minutes, the quirky Of Places With 6 Floors or the aerial Salt Mists all offer a different facet to Calika, yet remain so close to Kealoha’s core sound that it never affects the gentle flow of the album as a whole. The Bright Spot is a superb follow up to Calika’s debut and a welcome addition to Benbecula’s Mineral Series.

Calika | Benbecula | Audiobulb