Forthcoming...

Hello Fax lovers. A slightly late Happy New Year to you! Hope all is well wherever you are and that plenty of Fax music is finding its way on to stereos/computers/iPods or whatever you may use to get those sounds flowing in 2014.

First thing's first: Before I go any further time for a quick look at some of the frankly rather tasty music that is coming out on Psychonavigation Records in the first half of this year. In the last few months we have already had Hush!, a great collaborative effort between Dr. Atmo and Miss Silencio. This record veers towards the more melodic, ethereal side of ambient with soundscapes provided by the ex-Fax man and some nice keyboards from Miss Silencio. I'm really pleased to report that Atmo still has it, big time.

This week a copy of the brand new Steve Stoll album Praxis arrived on my doormat. Interestingly this release is dedicated to the works of three female electronic music legends: Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire and Laurie Spiegel. 

Now I must confess that I'm no gear expert but with what sounds like predominantly analog soundscapes Praxis had me dreaming of wires big time and reminded me of how nice it would be to splash out ridiculous amounts of cash on an old modular synth. If you enjoy experimental electronic music from the very old school (and I do) I'd imagine you're going to really like this one.

Next up we can look forward to Lorenzo Montana's latest album Leema Hactus, which is due out on 10th February in a limited run of 300 CDR copies. Once again, I can't profess to be an electronic music gear expert but from the clips I've heard it sounds as if on this outing Lorenzo has mixed his trademark style with hints of some much older school sounds. Am I right? We shall see. The teasers are sounding great.

Then in April we have Tales Retold, a remix album of work taken from Mick Chillage's Tales from the Igloo album. I believe that Peter Benisch is remixing one of the tracks and Chillage mixed by Benisch is cause enough for excitement, I think! This will be released in a limited run of 300 CDR copies with a special ejector jewelcase and six page booklet.

Speaking of Peter Benisch, Waiting for Snow seems to be one of the most well-loved Fax albums and not without good reason (a review of this one will hopefully be coming to NMLK soon). Curiously, Benisch never followed this up with further Fax albums but in May Psychonavigation will be releasing his latest effort, Broken Chords as a limited edition of 300 CDR copies. Once again this will come in special ejector jewelcase with a six page booklet.

...and last, but definitely not least another electronic music legend: Oliver Lieb's Inside Voices will be with us in June. Anyone in possession of Music to Films or indeed any of Lieb's myriad other releases will know there is cause for serious excitement with this and it will be released in a limited run of 500 CDRs, once again with an ejector jewelcase.

So, that's a quick round-up of all of the ex-Fax artists with releases coming to Psychonavigation in the first half of 2014. Something to look forward to almost every month until summer.

To pre-order any of these releases see here: http://psychonavigation.com/

So, what next for the NMLK blog? Well, as mentioned there is a very big interview almost ready to post. This is currently waiting to be checked over by the interviewee (as I couldn't hear every word on my dictaphone tape) but he's a busy guy, flying here and there all over the world. Hopefully coming soon, though...

I have also already started work on a review of  the epic eight disc Pete Namlook tribute box set Die Welt ist Klang and this will be posted when I've managed to properly take on board many hours of fantastic music.

If you haven't ordered a physical or digital copy of this you can still do so here:

http://www.carpesonum.com/s01.html

...and finally I'm planning to post more reviews for Fax releases. As 2350.org has already done an excellent job of allowing fans to post reviews of Fax releases up to 2008 my plan is to first focus on the releases from this point onwards (with some exceptions)...

So, all of this to look forward to in 2014. Here's hoping for a great one. More soon....

March to the finish line

Hi there. This is just a quick update and an apology if new posts on the blog have seemed a little less frequent over the last few weeks. The reason for this is that for the last five years I have been spending a considerable number of my weekends and holidays working on a book about the legendary musician Manuel Göttsching. My other blog is here: http://manuelgottsching.blogspot.co.uk/ and I also plan to update it with the latest developments soon.

Over the last three weekends I've been proofreading my book before it goes to friends for further checks and a few fresh pairs of eyes. Having spent a very long time putting it together the time has come to finish the job off and to be able to share it with an audience. With this in mind please bear with me if there are little periods when the blog isn't updated as much as it has been. It will continue but I'll be doing a bit of juggling between different projects...

In other news over the weekend I've really been enjoying Autumn of Communion 2, a superb record that probably betters Autumn of Communion's magnificent first effort but don't take my word for it. At time of posting the record is currently streaming in full here: http://anodizesound.bandcamp.com/album/autumn-of-communion-summer-2013

Lorenzo Montana's Eilatix has also arrived and I've been enjoying this a great deal as well. If you liked Black Ivy this is really going to float your boat, as stylistically the two records have a lot in common.

http://psychonavigation.com/post/40721969237/psy066-lorenzo-montana-eilatix-the-new-album

I'm heartened to see that Ear/Rational, Psychonavigation and Anodize are between them now releasing music by many former Fax artists and I'm really looking forward to hearing the (ever expanding) Pete Namlook tribute album, or should I say box set.

In other news I was just out in the backyard and the marigolds that I'm growing as a tribute to Pete have started to come through. Photos will hopefully follow soon. Don't forget that if you decide to grow marigolds or any other plants as a tribute to Pete send your photos and I'll put them up here on the blog.

As regards interviews for the blog I am promised a couple of exciting exclusives but it isn't so easy to get the answers to my questions, as the musicians are currently busy touring the world. At some point I'm sure that this will come together. I have another interview in the pipeline but this will be via telephone, as the musician I've had contact with is incredibly busy. I will need to record our conversation and then transcribe afterwards, which will take a little time. Should be very interesting, though.

So, please do bear with me. The blog will still be updated with new content whenever I can find the time and get the opportunity. Speak soon...

Charles Uzzell-Edwards interviewed

Q: You’re from an artistic background. Can you describe your early years and the influences that may have encouraged you to gravitate towards art and music?

A: Wow this is going to be a LONG…interview… My dad was the biggest influence on me and still is. He is a painter www.johnuzzelledwards.co.uk and he dragged me kicking and screaming into galleries and museums from about six months up until the present day. We moved to Rome in ’68 because he won an arts fellowship and the art education carried on in that vein from then until now.

Q: Am I right in thinking that you moved to San Francisco in 1990? Why did you choose San Francisco and what influences do you think the place had on your life?

A: Yeah I broke free of Thatcher’s vice-like grip on the UK and left to go skateboarding in San Francisco. I stayed there for 10 years, it’s that kind of place…I got into graffiti and street art out there, and got well into electronic music - those two things are the two main focuses on my life. I also was a sperm donor out there so I have about 12 kids on the West Coast. I hope to meet them some time it would be cool.

Q: When did you first become aware of Fax Records? …and this may or may not be a separate question: How did you first have contact with Pete Namlook?

A: When I was out in San Francisco I started LOVING The Orb and thought: man! More people need to hear this music so I started doing chill out rooms and I became aware of Fax from looking for music to play out. The local SF record stores had started to stock them but I needed MORE. So I got in touch with Pete (Namlook) and invited him out to San Francisco. He loved it out there. I guess it was a lot different from Germany and we became friends. He also hooked up with Jonah Sharp and did some music with him, and came and played at a weekly chill out club I was running with my DJ buddy Darkhorse. At that time there was a massive explosion of club culture and electronic music out there. We had a fun time, for sure.

Q: The two Create albums were recorded in San Francisco and the A New Consciousness albums in Frankfurt. What are your memories of recording in both cities? What was recording with Pete like and can you remember your working methods when you were in the studio together?

A: When I think of recording with Pete in San Francisco I think of putting contact mikes on windows and using the sound to make a drum, recording a crazy-ish guy on Haight Street or recording a beat underwater in the bath, trying to replicate what it sounds like to listen to music underwater. Most of the equipment I brought to it was stuff I found in pawn shops in the Mission District in SF, old school Alpha Sentauri music computers from actual old schools, defective drum machines and sequencers that I only half understood how to use and Pete brought a James Bond style music case with keyboards and doo-dads. In Frankfurt we used a big Briar Theremin, a kind of Jean Michel Jarre light beam instrument, lots of Oberheims and some pretty hi-tech things to make the sounds, having a break at a certain time every day.

I also remember going out recording in the Frankfurt Cathedral with a really nice stereo mic and revelling in what it sounded like back in the studio. This was the kind of vibe of both collaborations for me. I remember also hanging with him in his studio in Traban Trarbach on the Mosel. He was quite committed to growing the perfect beetroot. Which kind of relates to the quest for the perfect beat. I remember bumping into Bill Laswell or Richie Hawtin out there. It was really good fun.

Q: Your Octopus albums seem to be a mixture of found sounds or environmental recordings with electronics, some dub influences and lots of titles revealing rather a quirky sense of humour. They offer quite an immersive experience. What do you remember about putting each of them together?

A: It was an environmental music vibe. Once I had walked back from a party and heard paper in the street or the sound of birds flying past and I realised that EVERYTHING was music. This was the main Octopus vibe. I liked wiring my lowrider bicycle up with a DAT recorder and a stereo mike and just recording a ride through the Golden Gate Park, weaving around a fountain… that was just awesome…

Both the studios I recorded in were kind of octopus like in configuration, there was a main computer and then it led out to about eight arms…keyboards, drum machines, sound boxes, DAT players. One was in San Francisco and one was out in a forest over the Golden Gate Bridge in the hills of Marin. That was a really idyllic place to work. The two studios really created the feel of the music. In the city I had to create a lot of white noise first to blank out the sound of the city BEFORE I could make music, and in the natural environment I could just make one sound and just let it hang for a while, while a squirrel walked by and popped his furry nose in to see what I was up to. One night I left my record box out in the lane outside my apartment and the next morning it was still there. Imagine that EVER happening in the city. It would be gone Daddy-O in SF.

Q: What was recording with Tetsu Inoue for the Audio album like? How would you say it differed from working with Pete?

A: Tetsu is an amazing artist. Working with him was a blast. It was different because he was more computer-based. He’d put the architectural plan of a modern train station into a computer program and PLAY the building…stuff like that which is kind of mind blowing. I think I used to be an old Japanese man in a past life and so I know it when I say he is MEGA Japanese in his temperament and I really liked that. He is just a brilliant dude. He IS his music.

Q: I read somewhere that Pete Namlook saw San Francisco as something of a spiritual home. Do you think that’s accurate? If that is true what do you think he loved about it?

A: I think after hanging out in Frankfurt where the grumpy neighbours would leave rude notes on his door saying things like 'your music is bad music etc.' the contact with groovy San Francisco was quite marked. We also spent a lot of time going out to the countryside and visiting beaches and looking at nature. Northern California is a paradise…and a playground. In SF electronic music was really going off big time…I know it was too in Germany but it was the kind of heady psychedelic freedom of the West Coast that was a perfect place to listen to his music. People loved it. I know that from experience playing it to ravers. Drop the opening moments of Dreamfish into the mix with a bit of spoken word from Terrence McKenna and a bit of Terry Riley? BLAMMO!

Q: Do you have a favourite Fax album or albums?

A: Dreamfish…an amazingly inspired collaboration and Shades or Orion. What’s always a buzz is hearing the collaboration albums and seeing what it comes out sounding like…

Q: When did your interest in graffiti art start?

A: I saw TWIST (Twist is Barry McGee, a San Francisco painter and graffiti artist – ed.)

Q: Can you tell us about your art and musical projects under the Pure Evil banner, please?

A: I run the PURE EVIL GALLERY and I make art under the name PURE EVIL. It’s a lot of fun…its all here…. http://www.pureevilclothing.com/ It’s a dictatorship not a democracy and I like that. I can do whatever the heck I like which is brilliant. I have been very successful and I have also been very lucky. Like being in San Francisco in the ‘90s, landing back in London in the ‘00s was very good timing. Right place, right time and all that.

Q: You have a new album, A New Dawn, coming out on the Psychonavigation label in late July. Android, the track I’ve heard fizzes with energy. Is that a fair reflection of what we can expect from the whole record?

A: Yeah it is. I have been able to put a lot of time and hours on eBay building up an amazing assortment of musical instruments. I have been getting to grips with the guitar, and ‘tuning’ things, and drumming and there’s no computer in the studio, which is not really the done thing for electronic music these days, but I want to have a unique sound. Inspired by Pink Floyd, and CAN and NEU with a bit of LIARS and STEVE REICH thrown in.

Q: And finally how would you pay tribute in words to the great Pete Namlook?

A: I was so GUTTED when I heard he died. I figured we would have so many more conversations together in our long lives…it’s unbelievable that he is not around anymore. He was a musical pioneer and he gave himself to so many people throughout his music and his collaborations. I learned SO MUCH from him as did so many people. Now he has gone to the big gig in the sky and I hope to jam with him again up in the clouds. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed and his electronic energy is going to live on forever in the form of the amazing music he made and the energy he has created between people…LEGEND.

I have done a piece in memory of him, which will be coming out on a compilation soon. I hope it’s a suitable tribute. It’s called KUHLMANN.

Massive thanks to C.U.E. for patiently answering my questions! To check out some of the latest Pure Evil music please follow this link:  http://pureevilgallery.virb.com/music

Lorenzo Montanà interviewed

Q: Can you tell us about your pre-Fax musical projects, please?

A: I started to play music in the early ‘90s, with some rock bands but I've always been interested in electronic music. I released my first album in 1996:  Isolazionistic w.o.r.l.d. and it was a DIY production, so only 50 copies. Then I started to work as producer in some studios for different projects and different sounds from chill out and ethnic to electro and industrial music.

Q: Can you remember where and when you first heard music on the Fax label?

A: Of course, The first time was on a radio radio station. The show was from 2am to 4am only ambient music, every night during the week. I always went to sleep with my headphones on. Then I discovered some Fax albums in few independent record stores in my town.

Q: Which Fax albums are your personal favourites?

A: Hard to say.  I’m a big fan of Fax, so here are some of my favourites:

Namlook - Silence (all of the series), Spyra - Invisible Fields, Jochem Paap – Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598 II, Pete Namlook & Geir Jenssen - Fires of Ork II, Air - Air (I -V), Dreamfish – Dreamfish 1 & 2, Gate Zero – Tides, Namlook XXVI - Pearl IV, Mick Chillage – FAXology, Peter Benisch - Waiting For Snow.

Q: How did you first make contact with Pete Namlook and at what point did he suggest releasing your debut solo album?

A: The first contact was in 2007 when I worked as producer for Tying Tiffany's album Brain for Breakfast. She was looking for an ambient track to complete the album, so we made State of Mind. Then we tried to contact Pete to ask about a collaboration and he enthusiastically said yes! Then I started to share some ambient tracks and finally we get a track list for Black Ivy together.

Q: Black Ivy seemed to blend some of the traditional Fax sounds (specifically those evoking nature) with some fairly radical new directions. The music is full of very crisp, contemporary sounding rhythms and also sounds fairly tightly focused. Do you have any particular musical influences that you feel helped to shape your sound or is this simply an approach that you found worked for you?

A: Black Ivy was born from what I feel like in my past years. There are many influences in my sound that come from what I listened during my music research. The Fax sound is obviously one of those. I was also fascinated by the sound of Stephan Micus (ECM), Autechre, Wally Badarou, Omicron and some releases of Silent Records and Kk but I'm very open and I listen and like all kinds of music.

Q: We have a sort of song on the album with Erasing You, which is not something one tends to hear on Fax albums. How did that collaboration come together?

A: I met Chelonis R. Jones during the producion of 4Gotten Floor's album. He listened to the instrumental of Erasing You and he tried to sing on it. Well, I was in love from the first time I listened to his voice. The sound was incredible; something like an experiment between the ambient/Idm sound and a real song! Pete was very opened too and he wanted this track as the opener for Black Ivy. There is also the version of Erasing You from the 4Gotten Album - less IDM and more electro.

Q: Looking at many of the titles it seems as if walks through a forest or woodlands influenced the music. Would that be true?

A: Yes, true. I feel a lot the woodland and forest universe in my music. I find something mysterious and magic in some lifeforms and I like to describe them with the music.

Q: …and your second solo album, Serpe was influenced by a religious ritual involving snakes? All of the tracks seem to be named after types of snakes. Could you explain a little about this concept, please?

A: Well, it came from when I saw some videos of La festa dei serpari. It's a kind of weird religious ritual from a small mountain village in Italy. For La festa dei serpari snakes are collected and wrapped around statues of St. Dominic in the hopes of being cured of various ailments. Afterwards the snakes are returned to their natural habitat. I like the side of music that lives off certain moments as a soundtrack and this story caught my attention.

Q: At what stage did Pete Namlook suggest collaborating for what became the Labyrinth series?

A: After Black Ivy he ask to me for a collaboration via e-mail. It was a real big honour for me!

Q: How did you tend to work on the Labyrinth records? Did you work in the studio together on these projects or bounce ideas backward and forwards online? Did you ever visit his home studio and if so what was it like?

A: Both. We shared the tracks via e-mail and I went to his studio two times to work on Labyrinth. His studio was totally awesome, with a stunning collection of analog synths that I had never seen in my life. It's based in the middle of the forest. The landscape and the atmosphere was incredible!

The funny thing was during Labyrinth 3 he asked me to come to my studio to work only with Virtual Intruments. He was intrigued by the way that I had to find sounds and compose the line for Labyrinth. I laughed and said, you're kidding, right?

Q: Is there a concept (and/or) inspiration behind the Labyrinth albums? Did the title Labyrinth come from anywhere inparticular?

A: The Labyrinth was inspired by a radio show I listened in the ‘90s, called Il Labirinto, created by DJ Steeve. The show mixed ambient tracks with sentences taken from science and marketing books. It was conceptualised as a labyrinth, where all of the tracks were a path and at the end a voice said: “At the end of the labyrinth, the universal dimension of your mind.”

Q: Five Labyrinth albums in fairly quick succession. That’s a big body of work and I think many Fax fans would probably agree that the fifth record is just as good as the first. Yourself and Pete must have been passing material backwards and forwards fairly constantly for a period of time?

A: Yes we worked hard! I found in Pete a very good musical feeling. We both worked fast and we never lost the direction during that time.

Q: Listening to the Labyrinth material it sounds as if you prepared many of the rhythms and the textures of the tracks and Pete then added to this. Would that be an accurate assessment or is this an over simplification of things?

A: Talking in general I mainly worked on the rhythms and bass line and Pete on the textures and synth leads.

Q: What are your memories of working with Pete and what do you feel that you learnt from him?

A: I have wonderful memories. First of all his peace of mind, his calm. In his studio there was often confusion, but he was very tidy in his mind. I remember he tuned analog synthesisers with guitar tuners, which I had never seen before. I didn't know that he was an amazing jazz guitarist and it really surprised me. I felt like a child abreast an absolute legend of music and I did always have questions about his way of working. I'll remember these moments forever.

Q: I think we’ve all been shocked by Pete’s untimely passing but he has undoubtedly left an amazing legacy. Can you pay tribute to the great man: his personality, his music and his label?

A: I can say that I met someone really amazing, with a great human side. A true musician who did not care about the success or media attention and a friend who has left us a vast musical heritage.

Q: Your new album, Eilatix is coming out on the Psychonavigation label in May. Could you tell us about this, please? Is there a concept to the album or a theme running through the tracks?

A: It's my first release on Psychonavigation Records and I've very excited, I enjoyed some of their releases like Lackluster, Mick Chillage and Gel-Sol. The main theme of  Eilatix is still the world of nature and life forms of an island. It can be considered a continuation of Black Ivy.

Q: What can we expect from the music?

A: There are different things than I have done so far; new structures and sounds. But my brand is the same: a touch of IDM with the rhythmic and melodic bass line.

Q: Do you have any musical projects in the pipeline for the future?

A: Well, I'm working on new projects, an album of T.T.L. (Through the Lens) with Tying Tiffany, where we compose the music for cinema and movie trailers, like The Hunger Games, Coriolanus and Battleship. I have also started to work on a new ambient album; totally different from my style.

Before our interview concludes Lorenzo says...

I would like to add a little curiosity that no-one knows. I made this video because Pete during the last period had started to produce honey and it was probably one of the best I have ever tasted, so I did this video as a personal memory to him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXIspgr5jgM

Super-mega thanks to Lorenzo for patiently answering my questions and also to Keith Downey of Psychonavigation Records for kindly allowing me to use promotional images and the artwork from Lorenzo's forthcoming release, Eilatix.

Eilatix will be released in May 2013 as a limited edition of 300 copies and is available to pre-order here:

http://psychonavigation.com/post/40721969237/psy066-lorenzo-montana-eilatix-special

For more information about Lorenzo's T.T.L. project see also here:

http://www.zerokilledmusic.com/#T-T-L