The Portable Archive now available from Boomkat

Please note The Portable Archive has now sold out from Boomkat, the remaining few copies are available to order directly by emailing sub (dot) loam (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk

https://boomkat.com/products/the-portable-archive

The Portable Archive reissues three volumes of Thomas Shrubsole’s humbly absorbing ambient studies/contemplations on soil dynamics, which were recorded as Sub Loam and originally released on the cult Cotton Goods label between 2009-2010, and are now teamed with an equivalent amount of unreleased pieces made over the same period. Big Recommendation if you followed the Cotton Goods label, or if you're into the ambient side of works by Move D, Jan Jelinek, To Rococo Rot etc.
First and foremost it’s lovely to be immersed back into the project, whose naturally textured and decaying structures emerged as quietly as they dissolved back at the turn of this decade, finding good company amidst the rustle and hum of Cotton Goods and, in a way, could be said to preempt the focus of FIS’ research in similar, if noisier, rugged terrain on his From Patterns to Details album.
No mistake, though; Sub Loam’s music is endearingly tactile and better defined by its textured, nuanced fidelity: Shrubsole handles his material like an environmental researcher or botanist making sketches on his rambles, offering poetic observations on the interactions of organic matter with “ditches, hedgerows, alleys, pavements and hill tops” modelled with an electro-acoustic palette and tape loops that quietly represent his subject’s subterranean root systems and intuitive sprawl in a series of concentric spirals and microtonal whorls.
Within his chloro-centric weltanschauung, Sub Loam divines the music of “rhythmic footfall, creeping rootstock, vaporous billows, transformational marginalia” in an esoteric yet tangible way that should sweetly resonate with anyone who appreciates the ebb and flow or warp and weft of nature on the smaller scales, as well as its larger form landscapes, and who can appreciate the same within the parameters of ambient music.
A beautiful package.

The Portable Archive - Limited Art Edition Box Set - Available to order

 

  SUB LOAM - THE PORTABLE ARCHIVE

Ohr, 2 and Earthern Circle Reissue + Bonus Material 3 x Cassette Art Edition Box Set

Available to Pre-order now, ships 21st September

Limited to 99 hand-numbered copies

 Each set comprises:

• 3x hand labelled music cassettes each wrapped in a different double sided A4 print. The cassettes contain almost 3 and a half hours of music, including full reissues of the albums Ohr, 2 and Earthern Circle and 80 minutes of previously unheard sketches and subsidiary material.
• 2 x A4 Art prints on recycled papers.
• 1 x double sided A5 Art print on recycled paper.
• 1 x double sided sheet of texts, including contemporaneous and newly written poems and texts and credits.
• 1 x 20 page card-covered saddle-stitched A5 book 'The Portable Archive - A Concrete Guide' including drawings, collages, archive photographs, subterrannean mythologies.
• Download code for high quality digital copy.
• All enclosed in an A5 kraft board presentation box secured with a printed belly band.

All prints are Riso-printed using soya-based ink.

All imagery, design, text, music etc. by Sub Loam and exclusive to this release.

Sub Loam presents an archaeological companion to the long-out of print debut trilogy of Cotton Goods and Dissolving releases. Originally released between summer 2009 and early autumn 2010 and sold out almost immediately this cycle of cassette based long-form soil-structures has now been compiled along with additional musical sketches and routes and packed into a hand-made box set complete with art prints, poems, texts and a 20 page concrete guidebook. 

 

From the paths and hedgerows, home-brewed radiophonic technique, bedroom visions knitted together with ruderal rudiments. From cassette loop foundations, technological mishaps, analogue concrete 4-track compost. Performed and mixed in live takes. Organically expanded syntheses, allusive and elusive, present and intimate.

Real-time two-track improvised dubwise mixdown: accidents and gentle spiraling, thoughtforms, inspiration and tracing of unfolding topographies as tape unspools past record heads versioned.

Holistic loop cycles, connected to physical processes and interface. Oscillation, breath, ebb and flow of voltage and time perception; rising, falling, stretching outwards. Echoes; Landscape; Vegetation.

Excavated and exhibited long form ambi-tonal poems, detourned old technologies, micro and macro focus, altered perspectives, an obscure world of leaves and oxide re-revealed. Heady visions of the ancient past and utopian futures flowering in the foliate present. An archaic botanical artefact.

The Portable Archive presents subtle but potent chlorocentric imaginational stimuli for listeners new to the recordings as well as those who have been following Sub Loam's output since these first flickering, green-toned landscape explorations and exploratory ambiences.

 "rhythmic footfall, creeping rootstock, vaporous billows, transformational marginalia."

Available to pre-order now, ships Autumn Equinox.

 The Portable Archive box set costs £25.00 per copy.

Postage & Packing is £3.80 in the UK, £6.00 in Europe, £8.25 for US, JP etc. and £9.00 for AUS and NZ tracked options are also available on request.

Direct orders and enquiries to: sub (dot) loam (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk 

The Portable Archive - an audio preview

The Portable Archive will be available to order in the next couple of weeks, in the meantime please enjoy this brief preview of its musical contents via the sub loam soundcloud.

A little info from the soundcloud page:

Preview of the Sub Loam box set 'The Portable Archive', a reissue of the long out of print first trilogy of Sub Loam albums: Ohr, 2 and Earthern Circle, originally released on cult label Cotton Goods and the artist's own imprint, Dissolving Records. The release is a triple cassette, includes bonus material, sketches and outtakes recorded around the same time as the albums. The box also includes art prints, a 20 page book, poems, sketches, writings and artwork by Sub Loam as well as a download code for a digital copy of the album.

The box set will be available to buy in September and will be limited to 99 copies.
To join a mailing list to be informed when it is available to pre-order please email sub (dot) loam (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk

More details forthcoming in the next week or two...