TALVIHORROS / DAMIAN VALLES
Monuments And Ruins
TEXTURA003
Textura 2012
03 Tracks. 48mins18secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD

Delivering on average one album every couple of years has allowed Textura to be extremely selective in their choices. Following on from the excellent Kubla Khan collection (2008), which collected a handful of songs by The Retail Sector, Ryan Francesconi, Alexander Turnquist and orchestramaxfieldparrish, inspired by the nineteenth century poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Kubla Khan, Or A Vision In A Dream. A Fragment, and the equally delightful, if somewhat sparse, album by Canadian duo Mains De Givre, Esther Marie (2010), Textura got in touch with London-based experimental guitarist Ben Chatwin, who records as Talvihorros, and Canadian ambient and drone artist Damian Valles, and asked them whether they would consider collaborating on a split release. The result is almost fifty minutes of atmospheric experimentation split almost equally between Chatwin’s two part piece From Within A Hollow Body and Valles’s Hollow Earth Theory.

Whist the two evolve in slightly different spheres, their respective sound worlds have much in common and complement each other rather splendidly here. Continue Reading »

TALVIHORROS
Descent Into Delta
Hb32
Hibernate Recordings 2011
05 Tracks. 38mins20secs

London-based experimental guitarist Ben Chatwin first appeared two years ago when his debut album as Talvihorros, Some Ambulance, was one of the very last releases from Scottish imprint Benbecula. But, as the label folded, Chatwin soon found a new home with Hibernate Recordings, who published the excellent Music In Four Movements last year. Just over a year on, Chatwin is back with his latest offering, Descent Into Delta. Unlike previous records, which were essentially the fruit of studio-based experimentations, the five tracks from this new record began life as live improvisations. The original recordings have since been submitted to intense editing, processing and recomposing to eventually form the core of this opus. Continue Reading »

TALVIHORROS
Music In Four Movements
HB13
Hibernate Recordings 2010
04 Tracks. 42mins28secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

Behind the rather enigmatic Talvihorros moniker is Ben Chatwin, a London-based experimental guitarist and musician whose debut album, Some Ambulance, was released on Benbecula last year. Chatwin uses a vast array of acoustic and electric guitars, vintage electronic equipment and percussions to develop extremely effective atmospheric soundscapes. Chatwin’s debut album presented relatively short pieces which acted as impressionist textural snapshots. With his latest opus, Chatwin takes a very different approach as he focuses on much longer and more complex pieces, expanding on the work he did for the extremely limited cassette-only mini-album Let Us Be Thankful We Have Commerce, which he published on My Dance The Skull earlier in the year. Continue Reading »