Frans de Waard on Excavated Relics

SUB LOAM - EXCAVATED RELICS

Back in 2016, Thomas Shrubsole released 'The Portable archive' under his Sub Loam name (see Vital Weekly 1051), which was culled from material he already recorded in 2009 and 2010. It is something I enjoyed very much, as Sub Loam is something along the lines of lo-fi electronics, drones, ambience, and field recordings. Now there is a tape with "two recently rediscovered examples" from the same period, which Sub Loam feels they should be heard out there as well, and, sure, why not? This is something that could have also been surely been on the original release. On the first side, there is 'Soil Surface', a slow rhythm piece. Or perhaps something that is on a loop device but slowed down quite a bit. In sync we have a mild synth sound burping away. It is a very moody piece and almost a dub-like one at that; all bass but no dance riddim. This is a particularly great piece by Sub Loam. The B-side contains 'Stone Fragment', in which the guitar plays quite a big role, strummed in a really odd way, and set against a set of misty electronic backing, with an odd flanging effect on the strings. It seems like he's playing the guitar with a stick, creating odd timbres. Buried in the background there is a bit of percussion. It is a totally different kind of piece and a most enjoyable one at that as well. I sure can believe that if you found this after ten years you would want to release it. (FdW)

Review from Vital Weekly issue number 1208

Buy a copy by emailing direct or from Boomkat

Excavated Relics available now from Boomkat

Limited copies of Excavated Relics are available now from Boomkat

Here's their write-up:

"Gauzy, low-key, organically textured dub and wizened folk explorations from Thomas Shrubsole, reviving his Sub Loam alias with two ‘Excavated Relics’ from the archive circa 2009-2010.

The A-side’s Soil Surface’ speaks to Shrubsole’s signature grasp of slow-moving sonic murk with nearly 10 minutes of endearingly weary dub chords perfused with acidic percolations that appear to mimic a sped-up (but still very slow) time-lapse image of soil dynamics, while the other side’s 11 minute piece ’Stone Fragment’ catches him picking out coruscating guitar strings and against peripheral percussion and distant vocal droens in a style murkily resonating with the mystic appeal of Zoviet France. Both are assuredly swaddled in layers of ferric tape hiss. Both humbly worth your time."

New Release: Supplement to the Portable Archive - Sub Loam - Excavated Relics

 Supplement to the Portable Archive

Additional Items Received 2019

Two recently rediscovered examples of Anomalous Loam dating from c. 2009 - 2010 excavated and displayed on professional, high quality, real-time duplicated cassettes in a clear cassette case with printed j-card and cardboard outer slipcase.

Outliers from the early trilogy of Cotton Goods/Dissolving releases Ohr, 2 and Earthern Circle (2009 - 2010, as documented on The Portable Archive and digitally), these two tracks, around ten minutes each, are thematically and musically related whilst standing at a remove from the circle of those original releases. Four-track murk, hiss and delay, fragmentary percussives, guitar strings as contour lines and twisting stems, burgeoning organic clouds, analogue electronics, observation and contemplation.

The connections with the spiked rural wanderings of Earthern Circle, the heavy soil dubs of 2 and the radiant moods of Ohr are clear whilst also travelling outwards from those zones towards the territory where these two other, previously unreleased, distinct artefacts were discovered.

Two Archaic Remnants, excavated from magnetic tape 2018.

Released October 19, 2019

All instruments, music, recording, production, artwork etc. Sub Loam (Thomas Shrubsole) 

C22. 45 Copies only. 

Available to order directly.

Email Sub Loam or Dissolving Records 

Thomas Shrubsole - Themes and Variations (Parenthetical Activities)

Please note, a new album as Thomas Shrubsole on a new imprint. Coming later this month...

https://soundcloud.com/parentheticalactivities/thomas-shrubsole-themes-and-variations-album-previewl

New Sub Loam release for 2017

Following last Autumn's retropsective 'The Portable Archive', released on Dissolving Records, which compiled Sub Loam's earliest releases for the label and for Cotton Goods, a new Sub Loam release of specially comissioned material newly composed and recorded during spring and completed just before midsummer is due in the not too distant future on Ireland's Wist Rec. This is the second time Sub Loam has recorded for Wist, having previously appeared on the multi-artist box-set release 'The Unofficial Coutryside', a digital version of the track from this release is available at the Sub Loam Bandcamp. Check back here or at the Wist website for further announcements.

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...

The Portable Archive - Sub Loam Re-issues

Sub Loam's first three releases Ohr, 2 and Earthern Circle, originally released on Cotton Goods and Dissolving, will be re-released soon as part of a retrospective set entitled The Portable Archive. Long unavailable these three re-issues will be be bundled with a further two full albums recorded during the same time period (2009 - 10) but never released before. For fans old and new of Sub Loam's herbal-toned landscape exploration and exploratory ambience this should provide an extensive sonic topography from familiar places half-remembered and hitherto unknown areas off the beaten track.

More details to come.

Keep your ears to the ground.

Plants Projected

'A Concise Dictionary of Plants and Their Uses' as reviewed by Stuart Marshall in The Sound Projector :

"Again and again I return to this intriguing mini CD from Sub Loam (i.e. saxophonist and SP reviewer Thomas Shrubsole), as if it would yield to me its mysteries, but alas! Swiftly am I ensnared and borne upon its pulsating airways, yet just as swiftly it’s over! Where fled those rogue minutes? In this wise, concise designates more than botanical taxonomy, though both here are central concerns: manifest in the splicing of Shrubsole’s pithy breath work and the bloom and swirl of spectral electronic backdrops. Most distinct is this in the first of the three untitled pieces: multiple rows of delicate, trowel-headed honks slowly summoning wispy, electroacoustic spirits, while at the same time suggesting an attitude of horticultural preparation that inspires me to chop carrots in concert. Tracks two and tree are (even) giddier: a tiny sax twittering like butterfly wings caught in swerving currents of pure colour; and finally a slow kaleidoscopic reimagining of all that has preceded. It’s an unearthing of unearthly sensations that could well uproot your mental stability. 39 further copies of the CDR are in existence, all of which are accompanied by a hand-numbered A4-sized abstract print by the artist."

You can read the original review on TSP website here:  http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2014/09/24/natural-kingdoms/

Forthcoming/New Shoots

Sub Loam branches out to pastures new. Keep a lookout in the coming months for this new project on Wist Rec based on Richard Mabey's book 'The Unofficial Countryside'.

Further info:

http://wistrec.com/the-unofficial-countryside/

http://wistrec.com/

Previous Sub Loam releases can be ordered

Here

Here

and

Here

Some old stuff currently out of print can be listened to Here

Maybe one day it will resurface in physical form again...

New Release - A Concise Dictionary of Plants and Their Uses

I am pleased to announce the latest Sub Loam, an art edition with a limited print on Dissolving. Green tones for ruderal forays. More info here: http://dissolvingrecords.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/sub-loam-concise-dictionary-of-plants.html and here: https://soundcloud.com/dissolvingrecords/sub-loam-a-concise-dictionary 40 copies only, order at dissolving (dot) records (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk Thanks

Sub Loam new release out in November

Sub Loam A Concise Dictionary of Plants and Their Uses 3 Tracks Limited Edition Out November on Dissolving More soon...

Ruderal Memory now available from Boomkat

Recommended this week: http://boomkat.com/cds/700917-sub-loam-ruderal-memory "Ghostly, longform electro-acoustic invocation from Sub Loam, the character also known as Thomas Shrubsole and Jesus On Mars. Via soprano saxophone fed through multi-cassette, twin-reel-to-reel set up, 'Ruderal Memory' manifests 45 minutes of seancé-like atmosphere with patiently unfolding arrangement informed by yoga breathing techniques and conducted from an anti-anthropocentric stance in key with Sub Loam's themes of elemental interplay and chlorophyllic consciousness. Aesthetically we're reminded of Robin The Fog's spectral experiments on 'The Ghosts Of Bush' or the quivering microtones yielded in William Basinski's 'Disintegration Loops', yet as with all of Shrubsole's output, there's a deeply individual spirit at work, following his own quiet path to personal enlightenment."

Ruderal Memory reviewed in Vital Weekly

SUB LOAM - RUDERAL MEMORY (CDR by Dissolving Records) Quite an obscure release here, but it's apparently released for the Vernal Quinox, which happened here without noticing it. Behind Sub Loam we find Thomas Shrubbsole, and if I am not wrong it has been a while since I last heard his music; his '2' was reviewed in Vital Weekly 732. At the very foundation of this work there is the soprano saxophone playing, along with a 'multi-cassette, twin reel-to-reel set up' to do some further manipulation. With a reel-to-reel you can easily slow down things, going from 19cm/per second to 4,5cm/per second, and perhaps that's something that Shrubbsole does here, but in a clever way. He slows down his sounds but not all of them and not all the way. Just a few, and keeps other running at regular speed. His saxophone playing reminds me occasionally more of a trumpet actually. While the whole thing sounds at times a bit crude - which may be because it is recorded live in one take - it also has a fine orchestral feel to it. Glissandi appear out of nowhere, together with a low rumble of slowed down tapes and throughout it's perhaps heavy but also in a way zen like like. Somewhere in the middle of you would find drones and improvised music, all with a classical touch, certainly in the last ten minutes. Dense meditation music, and perhaps not that spring like yet, more like a farewell for the winter season. Raw and intense, but never noise based. Very nice! (FdW) From Vital Weekly 876, April 2nd 2013 http://www.vitalweekly.net/876.html

Sub Loam - Ruderal Memory (Henge 008) - Available now!

I am very pleased to announce that the new Sub Loam album Ruderal Memory is now available to order now from Dissolving. Limited to 50 Copies only with a unique art insert in each copy. Read more HERE
Enjoy!

New Sub Loam Soon...

It's been a while, but with the first stirrings of spring comes the news that a new Sub Loam release is on its way. To be released on Dissolving around the end of March, keep a look out for more news here and on the Dissolving blog...

The Ley Hunter's Companion

Sub Loam's current release, The Ley Hunter's Companion (on Dissolving Records) has just been reviewed in this month's textura magazine. Those of you who enjoyed Earthern Circle, or indeed 2 and Ohr, may well enjoy this one, too.

It's available at the moment from Ultima Thule (on the racks with a couple of key influences, if you look hard enough... :) ), Fluid Radio's retail arm Stashed Goods, Boomkat, Phonica, Bleep and Norman's.