Your guide to the best albums released this week. It really is that simple.
Andy Bell has released two new versions of ‘Cherry Cola’ from his solo LP The View From Halfway Down – a stripped-back acoustic version and a remix by Martin Jenkins aka Pye Corner Audio
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Ecstatic will release a vinyl edition of the limited tape from the man otherwise known as Pye Corner Audio.
The Black Mill Tapes first emerged in 2010, starting a series that introduced listeners to the world of Pye Corner Audio, with The Head Technician’s flair for otherworldly sounds hooking listeners throughout the next four years. Although the initial recordings were self-released in digital format, they were later issued on both cassette and vinyl, with Further Records responsible for the former service and a double LP edition was released on Type in 2012. Now, the Massachusetts-based Type again perform an excellent civic duty in releasing the Black Mill Tapes Vol. 3 & 4 on double vinyl, not least because the fourth volume is filled with all new Pye Corner Audio material.
The experimental producer will release the third and fourth volumes in the series later this month.
Oli Warwick speaks to Martin Jenkins, whose celebrated canon of work as Pye Corner Audio is soon to blessed by an album under the name The House In The Woods.
Martin Jenkins, best known as Pye Corner Audio, unveils the new project on forthcoming album Bucolica.
Listen to the producer’s contribution to a forthcoming compilation from Manchester based label Front & Follow.
Pye Corner Audio will return with a new album entitled Sleep Games, which is due out next month on the Ghost Box imprint.
Ostensibly the work of a mysterious producer called the Head Technician, it would be easy to lump in Black Mill Tapes with the myriad of nu goth/industrial releases in circulation at the moment. Seen on a superficial level, it certainly ticks some of the main boxes. Fascination with the bleakness of life in northern England? Check. Produced by a shadowy studio bod? Yes. Concessions to the sombre synths and sampling of tortured voices so beloved of 80s act Throbbing Gristle? Present and correct. Compositions like “Transmission One: Lonesome Vale” only serve to reinforce such perceptions, with its ghostly vocals, clanging foundry beats and raw chord changes. But it would be a mistake to assume that this is yet another session in navel-gazing by serious men in black.