Tag Archives: VeryRecords

New Release on Vince Clarke’s VeryRecords: Alka – Regarding The Auguries

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Album released today via Vince Clarke’s VeryRecords. Watch the video for ‘Faito’ below.

Regarding The Auguries is the portentously-titled fourth album from Philadelphia electronic unit Alka. It is an album that reflects back our myriad concerns about the world; a teeming, restless work surveying global civil unrest, freak earthly phenomena and a sense that order is slowly being dismantled around us. Although it was recorded long before lockdown, its grim outlook makes it a fitting release during the grip of an existential crisis that has impacted us all. 

After being a solo project of Bryan Michael since the early 2000s, for Regarding The Auguries Alka is re-imagined as a unit of Bryan Michael, visual artist Erika Tele and fellow Philadelphia electronic musician Todd Steponick, a line-up familiar from their recent, pre-lockdown shows. 

The eleven tracks on the album were written in what Bryan describes as “slow motion” – he would start an idea; Todd would respond to it; Erika would add her distinctive vocals, which would then be woven through the track like another instrument. A track might then be disassembled, deconstructed and rebuilt, or its atomised components could end up as the basis for another track completely. What emerged from this evolving, morphing, shapeshifting sonic conversation is a body of work that could not have existed without the interplay between the unit’s three members. 

From the outset, Alka wanted to make this an album encompassing human reactions to the times we live in. Fear, dread and unknowable mysteries might dominate its sonic architecture, but here we also find personal emotion and vulnerability on the tender ‘My Heart’, led by a delicate, emotive vocal from Erika, or a sense of being dismayed by an inability to decipher the fact from fiction on ‘Doubt’. 

Here we also can identify with the feeling of life’s certainties unravelling around us on the album’s gradually-evolving opener ‘Fractured Time’. The bold, robust ‘Faito’ deploys a Japanese word used to inspire confidence and encouragement, while ‘Scrapple’ finds Erika’s vocal positioned with shouty insistence on a spiky electro track inspired by the gilets jaunes riots in Paris. 

Throughout the album, we hear melodies that glitch and splinter into strange, unpredictable shapes. We hear sharp edits and off-kilter time signatures, horror movie samples and brief gospel interjections; on the widescreen ‘Earth Crisis’ we hear a chilling sample of unexplained natural atmospherics that sound like the earth foretelling of its impending final moments. 

“An augury is like fortune telling that comes from looking at the patterns of bird flight,” explains Bryan of the album’s title. “Those patterns usually prophecy some sort of doom. I’d come up with the title a long time ago, but when we were working on the album, it seemed to become more and more connected to the world around us. In the end, it feels like it’s become a very timely album.” 

More timely it could not be. Regarding The Auguries is a dark, contemplative electronic album made by three human beings staring fixedly at our suddenly uncertain futures. 

Regarding The Auguries will be released as a limited-edition CD, download and stream through VeryRecords on 9th October 2020. veryrecords.com

Track list:
1. Fractured Time
2. Widthchild
3. Faito
4. Earth Crisis
5. Scrapple
6. Sourcery
7. My Heart
8. Solfège
9. Doubt
10. Dead Like Me
11. King Card
12. Solfège (Fujiya & Miyagi Remix)
13. Faito (Vince Clarke Remix)
14. Fractured Time (DJ Jekyll of Shelter Remix)

Credits 
Bryan Michael – synths, programming, vocoder, worry 
Erika Tele – vocals, werds, projections, fear 
Todd Steponick – synths, programming, treatments, doubt 
Vince Clarke – additional synths and programming on ‘King Card’ 
Elizabeth Joan Kelly – guest vocals on ‘King Card’ 
Starkey – mastering 

Alka biography 
Bryan Michael started operating under the name Alka in 2000, tapping into the local IDM scene that centred around the city’s Broketronica experimental electronic music club night. With Principles Of Suffocation (2007) and A Dog Lost In The Woods (2009), he subtly railed against IDM’s restrictive covenants, offering a brooding, almost foreboding strand of electronic music. 2017’s The Colour Of Terrible Crystal was released through Vince Clarke’s VeryRecords, and found Bryan fusing together moments of broken electro beats and sparkling melodies, supported by stunning visual contributions from artist Erika Tele and sonic interventions from fellow Philadelphia electronic musician Todd Steponick. Alka is now a trio of Bryan, Erika and Todd. 

About VeryRecords 
VeryRecords was founded in Brooklyn by Erasure’s Vince Clarke in 2016. We are a small record label dedicated to releasing very fine electronic music. The label was launched with ‘2 Square’ by Vince Clarke and Paul Hartnoll, which was then followed by releases from Reed & Caroline, Alka and Brook. 

“Shaping up as a label to keep a serious ear on.” – Electronic Sound 

(c) 2020 VeryRecords. Press release text by Mat Smith for VeryRecords – press@veryrecords.com

New Release on Vince Clarke’s VeryRecords: Brook – Built You For Thought

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VERYRECORDS is pleased to announce the release of Built You For Thought, the debut album by UK electronic duo BROOK. The album will be released on 20th September 2019.

Built You For Thought, the debut album by new electronic duo Brook, combines the captivating vocals of Beth Brooks with a delicate, sensitive electronic palette from Howard Rider.

The ten highly personal songs on the album are delivered with an arresting power and a towering emotional resonance. Beth, a seasoned soul and blues vocalist from the UK’s Midlands possesses a technique unlike any other, capable of switching from quiet introspection to blistering urgency, sometimes within the same song. It’s an effect that can lead the listener to mistakenly think they are hearing a choir of many voices instead of just one.

“I was profoundly deaf until I was about four and I had to endure loads of operations,” explains Beth. “From then on, I started to try and replicate certain sounds and the way people sang, and I think that’s where all those different voices come from.”

The temptation would be for Howard’s music to follow Beth’s lead. After encouraging his brother to sell his Renault 5 to buy a drum machine when he was fifteen, Howard was weaned on a diet of dance music. Having previously released upbeat electronic music loaded with melodies, it would have been all too easy for Howard to put Beth’s vocal in a loud, similarly-intense setting. Instead, the music here is a conscious exercise in self-restraint: reflective passages and quietly turbulent, stirring juxtapositions, occasionally coalescing into sequences and arrangements laden with tension and robust rhythms, or nodding to the eclecticism of modern classical composition.

The album’s diaristic lyrics deals finds Beth in the role of observer, ruminating nostalgically on her time living in Australia (lead track ‘Diamond Days’), trying to fathom a loved one’s incomprehensible anger and mood swings (‘Rage’) and contemplating what the world would have turned out like if only Adam had bitten the apple instead of Eve (‘Applaud’).

Elsewhere, the muted electro pulse of the album’s title track finds Beth wondering why so many old buildings are ignored in favour of derivative modernity, while the standout ‘Prince’ places Brook on the sound system of a New York nightclub in the years before house music took over, its lyrics shining a bitter torch on the fairytale notion of waiting for one special person to arrive in your life.

Built You For Thought is the product of two years of work. The tracks began with Beth recording alone with an acoustic guitar before Howard began wrapping her vocals in layers of intricate synths and textures to create the ten fragile pieces here. “While we were making the record, someone said to me that we should keep it simple,” says Howard. “If this had been a solo project I’d have probably made this all sound a lot crazier, but gradually I began to realize he was correct. What we needed was a lot of space for Beth to be the central focus of these songs.”

The result is a suite of songs that are deliberately and delicately understated, presented in such a way as to put Beth’s many voices and her individual outlook on life, society and relationships at the very heart of each song; songs that cannot help but leave a mark on you and which will stay with you long after Built You For Thought has finished.

Built You For Thought will be released as a download, stream and CD.

Track listing

1. Ewes
2. Prince
3. Damage
4. Everglades
5. Trying To Forget You
6. Built You For Thought
7. Diamond Days
8. Rage
9. Wasn’t Meant To Be
10. Applaud

About VeryRecords

VeryRecords was founded in Brooklyn by Erasure’s Vince Clarke in 2016.

veryrecords.com

Press release (c) 2019 Mat Smith for VeryRecords

Video: Alka – Live, PhilaMOCA – March 10 2019

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2019-03-13 18.17.23

VeryRecords group Alka – Bryan Michael, Erika Tele and Todd Steponick – performed at Philadelphia’s PhilaMOCA on Sunday, supporting Summer Heart and Brother Tiger.

During their set they teased a glimpse of a brilliant new Alka track, ‘Fractured Time’, alongside the stand-out ‘Melancholy Lasts’ and a Japanese version of ‘Truncate’ from from 2017’s The Colour Of Terrible Crystal.

Watch three songs from their set below in crazy 360 video.

Video track list:
1. Melancholy Lasts (fragment)
2. Truncate (Japanese Version)
3. Fractured Time

(c) 2019 Mat Smith / Documentary

Today: Alka – Combinations In Electronic Sound via Mixlr

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Alka

VeryRecords artist Alka‘s Bryan Michael will be spinning an eclectic set of electronic tracks at 1500 EST / 2000 GMT today (7 December 2018) as part of DJ Steve Brown’s Combinations In Electronic Sound broadcast on Mixlr.

Tune in later at mixlr.com/touched_music/

Alka’s The Colour Of Terrible Crystal is available from the VeryRecords store / Spotify / everywhere.

(c) 2018 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for VeryRecords

News: Akiko Yano feat. Reed & Caroline – When We’re In Space (Speedstar Records, 2018)

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Continuing the themes of their Hello Science album from earlier this year, VeryRecords artists Reed & Caroline have collaborated with Japanese pop singer Akiko Yano on a new track, ‘When We’re In Space’. The track is taken from Akiko’s latest album Futari Bocchi De Ikou, which was released by Speedstar Records in Japan today.

“Akiko and I are neighbours,” says Reed about the origins of the song. “Whenever we ride the elevator together we talk about music, space and Kraftwerk. She came to the very first Reed & Caroline show at a little club in NYC – our first fan!

“Earlier this year she asked if we could collaborate on this project. She played a beautiful melody and I asked what the song should be about. She said, ‘The International Space Station!’ All of the music – except for Akiko’s piano – was created using the Buchla synthesizer.”

Piano and vocals: Akiko Yano
Additional vocals: Caroline Schutz
Buchla: Reed Hays
Music composed by Akiko Yano. Lyrics written by Reed Hays.

Futari Bocchi De Ikou is available to buy from amazon.jp here.

(c) 2018 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for Reed & Caroline and VeryRecords

Electronic Sound Issue 45

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The ‘bundle’ edition of Electronic Sound 45 has already sold out, which means that if you didn’t buy it already, you’ve missed out on the opportunity to hear the exclusive Vince Clarke remix of ‘Magic Fly’ by Space that formed the A-side of the accompanying 7″ single. And believe me, that’s a pity – it ranks among Mr Clarke’s finest remixes and you’ll now probably never get to hear it. The B-side was the wonderful and moving ‘Before’ by Vince’s VeryRecords signing Reed & Caroline, marking the duo’s first time on a vinyl record.

For this issue I interviewed Didier Marouani, the classically-schooled musician behind the mysterious space helmet-wearing Space, marking one of those privileged opportunities that this magazine often gives me to write a story that hasn’t really ever been told before. My mum was dead proud too, because she bought ‘Magic Fly’ when it first came out in 1977 (I was a mere year old), and I think she believes that this had a major influence on my later interest in electronic music – and she’s probably right.

Elsewhere, for this issue I wrote reviews of albums by Julia Kent & Jean DL, Ghostly signings Helios, the marvellous Dutch group Go March, and Welsh non-pop artists HMS Morris. I also got the chance to review two absolutely stonking records – a jazz opus by Bugge Wesseltoft & Prins Thomas, and O.Y. In Hi-Fi by Optiganally Yours, fast becoming the record I’ve played more than any this year. The record was constructed principally from the original master tapes of sounds that would be used in Mattel’s Optigan, meaning it was made with sounds from the Optigan but in a high resolution form that the Optigan itself could never deliver.

And linking that back around to the 7″ you sadly can’t listen to – Pea Hicks from Optiganally Yours is the custodian of the only equipment in existence to manufacture optical discs for the Vako Orchestron, the zany professional version of the Optigan which Reed Hays used on Reed & Caroline’s Hello Science, turning Caroline Schutz’s vocal into lo-fi textural loops.

The non-bundle version of issue 45 is available at www.electronicsound.co.uk

(c) 2018 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for Electronic Sound

Reed & Caroline – Before (Aylesbury High School Chamber Choir performance, 27 June 2018)

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The Aylesbury High School Chamber Choir performed ‘Before’ by Reed & Caroline at their Music, Muses and Movement concert on Wednesday 27 June. The performance was the culmination of almost three months of planning and rehearsal by the choir.

When working on the promotional support for Reed & Caroline’s second VeryRecords album Hello Science, Reed Hays, Caroline Schutz, Vince Clarke and I kept coming back to the notion that ‘Before’ sounded a lot like a hymn because of its philosophical and spiritual quality. Caroline in particular said that performing that piece reminded her of the Christian hymns she sang at school, despite growing up Jewish. That got us thinking about asking a choir to perform the song, so I asked the music teacher at the girls’ high school in Aylesbury as to whether they’d be willing to support the promotion of Hello Science with a performance of the song, and they graciously consented.

‘Before’ is already a beautiful, moving, poignant piece of music. In the hands of the Aylesbury High School Chamber Choir the song takes on an entirely new level of poignancy, something which has reduced more than one of us who worked on this record to tears.

You can watch this very special, unique performance of ‘Before’ at the VeryRecords YouTube channel here.

Reed, Caroline, Vince and I are all incredibly grateful to Ms Raven, the Aylesbury High School Chamber Choir and the school’s headteacher Mr Rosen for giving us the loan of the choir for this wonderful performance.

Credits:
Arranged and conducted by Olivia Raven
Filming by Mat Smith and Seren Smith
Video editing by Vince Clarke
Sound mixing by Reed Hays
Performed at the Aylesbury High School Music, Muses and Movement evening performance, 27 June 2018

Hello Science can be ordered from the VeryRecords website.

(c) 2018 VeryRecords

VeryRecords: Reed & Caroline – Hello Science Interview (2018)

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Ahead of the release of Hello Science, I caught up with Caroline Schutz and Reed Hays to talk about identity crises, science (duh, obviously) and dealing with demands for royalties from daughters. The interview was published today on the VeryRecords website here.

Hello Science is available to purchase at the VeryRecords website, or from the merchandise stall if you happen to be Stateside and watching Erasure on tour

(c) 2018 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for VeryRecords

Electronic Sound Issue 43

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Issue 43 of Electronic Sound is now available, and this month’s magazine & 7″ bundle includes exclusive tracks from the Radiophonic Workshop, the beneficiaries of a major in-depth feature this month.

For this issue I wrote a short introduction to the music of Ratgrave, whose jazz / hip-hop / electro / funk debut I mentioned in The Electricity Club interview, and who I expect I’m going to be banging on about for several months to come. Their self-titled album is released at the end of this month and it is a wild, untameable beast of a fusion record. I also interviewed Norwich’s Let’s Eat Grandma for this issue about their second album, which sees childhood friends Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton taking their curiously idiosyncratic music in a squarely electronic pop direction, complete with analogue synths and production nous from Faris Badwan and SOPHIE. We also had a god natter about the merits of rich tea biscuits.

In the review section I covered Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase‘s mesmerising Drums & Drones collection, three discs of processed percussion inspired by time spent at La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s Dream House; a hard-hitting gem of an album by 1i2c which I described as ‘therapeutic music for anxious robots’; the new album from 4AD’s Gang Gang Dance; another brilliant collaboration tape on the Front & Follow label by Jodie Lowther and ARC Soundtracks; the brilliant second album by Geniuser, one half of which is Mick Allen from The Models, Rema-Rema, MASS and The Wolfgang Press.

Finally, I reviewed albums by two projects by current members of Wire – Colin Newman and Malka Spigel‘s second Immersion album since they reactivated the band in the last couple of years, and the third album from Wire guitarist Matthew Simms as Slows. Simms is a highly inventive musical polymath, as comfortable with a guitar in his hand as he is using analogue synths, found sound or pretty much anything he can lay his hands on. A Great Big Smile From Venus consists of two long tracks covering an incredible breadth of ideas, continually moving out in directions that are both unexpected and yet entirely expected when you’re familiar with Simms’s vision.

The review section also features Ben Murphy’s fantastically detailed review of the new Reed & Caroline album, Hello Science, released earlier this month on Vince Clarke‘s VeryRecords.

The magazine and 7″ bundle is available exclusively from the Electronic Sound website here.

(c) 2018 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence for Electronic Sound

The Electricity Club: Documentary Evidence Interview (2018)

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Those familiar with the story of how this blog came about – Erasure fan; found a copy of Mute‘s Documentary Evidence 4 inside my 12″ of said band’s ‘Chorus’; began collecting the Mute back catalogue; decided to write about it – will find an extended version of that story over at The Electricity Club website in an interview they did with me earlier this month.

I found this amusing, and slightly ironic: way back in 2003, when I started this here blog, I got in touch with Chris Bohn, then editor of The Wire and best known as NME journo Biba Kopf, to see if he’d be open to an interview. Kopf, for me, was synonymous with the Documentary Evidence pamphlet, as he’d written the Mute history that accompanied the catalogue listings at the back, and I couldn’t even estimate the number of times I’d read, re-read and digested those words. His response was along the lines of ‘Er… why?’ and so I shelved that as a bad, and slightly foolish idea. When The Electricity Club asked me to answer some questions, I could suddenly see Kopf’s point, and also my own naïveté.

In any event, I accepted, and the interview is now online here. Head over there and you can read about why Mute matters to me so much, musings on how much I love Taylor Swift (unashamedly), what it’s like to work for Vince Clarke, why I believe people have got it wrong about modern day Depeche Mode, and what electronic music I’m currently listening to.

I wrote most of my answers on a flight to Newquay to visit my father, who gets a mention in the interview. I only realised recently how important my dad is in the story of how I came to fall in love with electronic music… but that’s a story you’ll get to read another day.

(c) 2018 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence