Boomkat on Tape Music by Thomas Shrubsole

https://boomkat.com/products/tape-music

Here is their take on it:

Highly organic, kinetic concrete and reel-time ferric sculptures from Thomas Shrubsole, yielding almost 3 hours of lower case rustles resembling free jazz played by nature.
Working in a richly imaginative realm shared by everyone from Rashad Becker to Anne Guthrie, Ekoplekz to Decimus, ‘Tape Music’ is a significant batch of scrabbly abstraction from one of the North West’s most quietly unassuming and uncompromising operators. Working hands-on with his trusted reel-to-reel, found objects and 2nd-hand instrumentation, Shrubsole enacts a form of intimate animism that gives life to sounds lesser heard. Mixing skin with grit and machine, his improvised interventions coax out a plethora of almost anthropomorphic or bestial tones from things without a heart or brain, and effectively using his own body to better connect with the world around him and bring listeners to a granular, haptic level of musical perception.
Recorded in 2015 and left to mulch in the archive, the results are entirely analog from nose to tail, exploring a bio-organic feedback system that investigates, in his own words, “notions of the prosaic and the exotic, the personal as it pertains to the physically local and the distant, proximate and disembodied, the diaristic and the documentary: Kinetic performative physical improvisational concrete.”

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."

Ov Wires and Connections

"Sub Loam offer[s] clangs and thumps, a series of metallic burps and scrapes that resemble junkyard imrov, a dream collaboration between The Clangers and Pierre Schaeffer. Bursts of interference and helicopter noise, truculent timbres - this rises to the challenge of thinking about space in sonic and radiophonic terms."
-Sukhdev Sahdhu on Sub Loam's contribution to The Unofficial Countryside box set on Wist Rec (from the Wire 371, 2014 Rewind issue)  

I have a couple of copies of this for sale direct, please email to order.

If you are interested in further exploring Sub Loam's hidden terrain of tape manipulation, broken equipment, hedgerows and herbal significance then I also have copies of Ruderal Memory and A Concise Dictionary of Plants and Their Uses available to order.

Drop a mail to sub (dot) loam (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk for any enquiries or orders...

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/

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

Foxy Digitalis reviews The Ley Hunter's Companion

A Nice Solstice Present:

December 21, 2011
By Travis Bird

A bit of an odd duck in the best sense, Sub Loam’s “mini-album” is a two-track, 30-minute meditative synth journey, a CD housed with a dedicated map-like poster in a 7-inch jacket. Containing two classy synth pieces, it’s an album that exalts the peculiar potential of a car trip for reflection, relaxation, and meditation. This in-car reflection always comes with solitude, and Sub Loam recognizes this and gets them out of the way, immersing the listener in the repetitive sequencer bliss of a blurry countryside passing by.

Both of these pieces are heavily indebted to certain aspects of ‘70s space and Kosmische music. “Lines In The Landscape” is a minimally changing arpeggiated sequence anchoring a hovering Kosmische-inspired theme. Although the daydream is broken rather abruptly at the end of the track, we move quickly into the equally mesmerizing “Odyssey.” This is a slightly faster sequence that features a prominent flanger effect and, again, minimal variation, until it slowly floats away.

Although it was released in time for “summer holidays,” the trip is equally comfortable listening in these winter times. Limited to 230 copies, this is a nice little document.

Dissolving Records

8/10

http://www.foxydigitalis.com/foxyd/?p=23056

Thanks!!