Navel-Gazers #69 is an interview with Hello Spiral a.k.a. Joe Baldwin who is going to talk to us about Where Were We . Not to be confused with Where We Were or We Were Where , it forms part of a loose trilogy on the Hello Spiral Bandcamp , where a decade’s worth of electronic-oriented music seems to be steadily giving way to… something else. I can discern this new direction in the “spiral” discography by the cover images, very incidental-seeming photos that seem to be cut from the same cloth as a rolling chronicle of sounds - emanating out of the artist’s day-to-day life in various ways - which we hear on the recordings. ‘Where Were We’ consists primarily of a single, half-hour long first track from the 2003-2005 period which - we’re informed in the liner notes - was never really meant to be music . Two Sanyo dictaphones have been deployed here on a sonic reconnaissance mission of some kind, within a decidedly small, claustrophobic-sounding domestic space. A certain musi...

Navel-Gazers #68 is an interview with Natasha Barrett who is going to talk to us about Toxic Colour . I’ve got my best headphones on for this one - after reading that its source sounds were recorded on 3D ambisonic microphones, I knew it needed an especially careful listen and only a few minutes in, as the breadth and subtlety of the compositions has begun to unfold, it’s certainly got my undivided attention. There’s a narrative flow to ‘Toxic Colour’, or something like one. Each piece resembles a sequence of aural events whose correlation to reality might be discernible only through some sort of cognitive reverse-engineering. Perhaps it’s analogous to our external reality itself, in terms of correlation to nature…. I’m imagining, given the extent of processing and treatment undertaken here - and in Natasha’s framing of these works as stories “…of human-made dystopias” - that she’s not looking to convey something strictly realistic, let alone natural, with this music. Yet ...

Navel-Gazers #67 is an interview with Dan Burke who is going to talk to us about Ecstatic Crisis . First released on cassette in 1986, it’s one of the earliest releases in a vast discography of music by Illusion Of Safety, Dan’s nom de plume over the decades as he and his cohorts have traversed the field of experimental sound across multiple idioms, as his website recounts. I’m drawn to voices in the mix on ‘Ecstatic Crisis’ which grab hold of my attention, seeming to suggest that this album would very much like to be discussed, that the work warrants some kind of a response. It’s as though I’ve permeated an lllusion Of Safety solar system somewhere in deep space, and among all the planets and satellites of various hues and shapes and sizes at which to marvel, I’ve spotted one with signs of an especially attentive, sentient kind of life, one I just might be able to communicate with. Illusion Of Safety hails from Chicago, and I’ve always appreciated the eclecticism of that...

Navel-Gazers #66 is an interview with Miki Yui who is going to talk to us about small sounds . One thing I can scarcely resist is an album comprised of numerous very short pieces of music. It’s an inviting format, perhaps subconsciously because some part of us imagines - accurately assesses, in many cases - that maybe, we can drop in to sample a track or two and get the flavour without listening to the whole thing! But the impression of this even being the format is somewhat illusory in the case of ‘small sounds’ - none of its tracks is under one minute, in fact one is over seven minutes long. It’s perhaps something about that title - and the brief track titles - which reads back like such a succession of vignettes, and yet simultaneously seems to suggest that we’re very much meant to listen to the whole thing, in sequence. And to my ears, this is where the reward lies for the listener: the enchantment of ‘small sounds’ lies in the contrast between different pieces as the...

Navel-Gazers #65 is an interview with Nicola Woodham who is going to talk to us about Parenthesis . Lurking around music events in London one encounters countless performers who have some sort of presence on Bandcamp or Soundcloud - it’s not always easy to navigate through everything being released and locate the special gems. For some reason when ‘Parenthesis’ was released, it instantly caught my attention. Despite Nicola being a prolific artist with an affinity for all different formats - she performs, she produces tangible media of various kinds, she even invents new technology for artists - I’d never come across any full length albums. ‘Parenthesis’ radiates with a sense of purpose and determination. Its sole sound source is the human voice, and I like the way that those voices - along with that title, explicitly - send me scrambling for context in tried-and-true Navel-Gazers fashion. There are supplementary materials which are integral to the work, starting with the t...

Navel-Gazers #64 is an interview with Francisco López who is going to talk to us about HIMAVANTA . I’m sure that this is the most preparation I’ve ever done for an interview, as we’re going to be discussing a work which is nearly 11 hours long. These recordings, which are all from rainforests in various parts of Thailand, have certainly gotten under my skin over the last few days, as one can imagine. In terms of formulating the right questions it’s an essay of Francisco’s called Sonic Creatures which he mentioned to me - accessible on his website - that’s guiding me in the right direction, towards a line of thinking which is non-intuitive but most illuminating. You may know of a thought experiment where if you repeat a word enough times over, it may seem to lose its usual associations… that’s a peculiar consequence of extended listening, and after 11 hours of ‘HIMAVANTA’ I’m in a similar frame of mind. There’s a rational awareness of course, that these sounds are tethered...

Navel-Gazers #63 is an interview with Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Andy Heck-Boyd who are going to talk to us about Ideas On Tape . Easily my favourite release of 2022, I recall what first caught my attention, it was that title: it seemed to denote something fundamentally vague, non-committal, perhaps unfinished even, and yet - to my ears - simultaneously mythic somehow, or conceivably so and that’s how I’ve come to regard it. If you’ve not heard ‘Ideas On Tape’, prepare to be pleasantly bewildered as its creators conjure 39 minutes of material in a format which drifts between real- and deeply unreal-time, each taking turns muttering into the microphone in ways which are remarkably consistent in terms of a certain offhanded tone of delivery from the two artists but which vary in all other observable aspects. The vocal passages here range from found text to self-referential narratives to totally wordless ghostly wailing. Playback timbre and speed fluctuate wildly. And am...