Thomas Shrubsole - Tape Music / New on Parenthetical Activities

Please see http://parentheticalactivities.blogspot.com/2019/12/thomas-shrubsole-tape-music.html

A new double cassette box set with 48 page art booklet. Limited to 30 stamped and hand-numbered copies.

Available now.

Order by emailing.

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 The Unfolding Map available now

Released today on Wist Rec. Available to purchase here: https://wistrec.com/wist-rec-025/

Sub Loam's The Unfolding Map available to Pre-order direct from Label

The latest release from Sub Loam, The Unfolding Map, is now available for pre-order now from directly the label Wist Rec who will be releasing it on the 25th of September.

It is a triple box set in an edition of 85 copies each packed with an individual section of 3D relief map.

Visit this page for more information and the pre-order details: https://wistrec.com/wist-rec-025/

Sound Clips of forthcoming Sub Loam release The Unfolding Map

The label Wist Rec have put together a peview of some fragments from the forthcoming Sub Loam release entitled The Unfolding Map, have a listen on soundcloud.
This will be available in August.

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.

Sub Loam Bandcamp

There is now a Sub Loam bandcamp page.
Digital editions of many Sub Loam titles will be being uploaded over the coming weeks.
Point your browsers to subloam.bandcamp.com to have a look.

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...

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.

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/

Pre-order 'The Unnoficial Countryside'

A 7 x 3" cdr boxset featuring a new twenty minute Sub Loam decomposition exploring familiar Sub Loam themes through trademark esoteric analogue techniques, approaches to audio-fidelity and texture.

Available for pre-order from Wednesday 24th of September here:

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

Autumn Bears Fruit

Sub Loam's contribution to the Wist Rec box set 'The Unofficial Countryside' can now be previewed here:

https://soundcloud.com/wist-rec/sub-loam-visits-the-unofficial

The release is due to be available to buy in October.

Previous Sub Loam releases including this year's electro-acoustic sonic permaculture in miniature 'A Concise Dictionary of Plants and their Uses' and the extended breath and tape meditation of Ruderal Memory from 2013 can also be previewed on Dissolving Records' soundcloud page here:

https://soundcloud.com/dissolvingrecords

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...

Radio Activity

A track from A Concise Dictionary of Plants and Their Uses was played on the wonderful Sound Projector Radio Show recently. The full show can, and should, be heard here: http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2014/03/28/a-change-of-name/ I would also recommend tuning in each week for a cornucopia of aural delights. Copies of A Concise Dictionary can still be ordered direct from the label, simply drop a mail to dissolving (dot) records (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk