Navel-Gazers #56 is an interview with Agathe Max who is going to talk to us about SHADOWW . My spell-check is already acting up on this one, but thanks to some informative and rather thought-provoking liner notes, I’ve been able to attribute a source for that spare W, intentionally placed here - I think - to denote something called Shadow Work . It’s something maybe very akin to the artistic process where we uncover new elements of expression, normally suppressed at the surface levels of day-to-day communication. The music of ‘SHADOWW’ is certainly that way or so it seems to me, balancing a series of gorgeous beat-less passages which drift by in a floating, tentative sort of way - that is, the odd numbered tracks - against the alternating high-energy even-numbered tracks, which feature some of the most inventive use of rhythm I’ve encountered in some time. It definitely comes across as music which has been conjured up from the subconscious… fortunately, the artist is a mo

Navel-Gazers #55 is an interview with Hardi Kurda who is going to talk to us about Radiola Springs . In the world of music “on the record” there are various elements which may first catch the listener’s attention… sometimes it’s a cover image or a title, sometimes it’s knowing the artist personally or by reputation, or through their other work… occasionally - rarely for me - it’s the music itself which first crosses one’s ears. What drew my attention to ‘Radiola Springs’ was a paragraph of liner notes associated to the release, which describe radios searching for information, the caper of a stolen violin, and the artist having illegally immigrated to Europe from Iraqi Kurdistan. I’m reminded of the motivation behind Navel-Gazers: we often encounter artists through their work - an art object - but art appreciation is about looking behind the object to interrogate the real life context. ‘Radiola Springs’ does indeed convey that paragraph’s stories over four curiously-titled

Navel-Gazers #54 is an interview with Viv Corringham who is going to talk to us about her latest release Soundwalkscapes , on the Flaming Pines label. This album caught my attention immediately for a number of reasons, starting with the title: what’s a Soundwalkscape? I’m sure we’ll get the scoop from Viv - whose website is captioned “singing-walking-listening” - and looking more closely at the titles while making my way through the music, I’m already starting to grasp it. The foundation underneath each track here is a sound-walk through a specific place. They’re not exotic locations - not to me anyway, having grown up on Long Island, and settled in London… likewise one gets the sense that to Viv - another artist who vacillates between the U.S. and U.K. - as well, these settings are incidental. The liner notes explain: “It began with a self-imposed rule: on the first Monday of every month in 2023, wherever I find myself, I will take a walk. I’ll record the walk, the envi

Navel-Gazers #53 is an interview with Bardo Todol a.k.a. Pablo Picco who is going to talk to us about Tape Morditorium . This is an album whose title caught my ear, and it’s nearly getting me spell-checked as well. After verifying that the name is not in fact “tape moratorium” - which, why would it be, from an artist who releases tapes with such staggering frequency? - I’m anticipating a fun discussion. Perusing the Bardo Todol page on Bandcamp one is immersed within a catalogue of colourful artwork and titles… upon closer inspection I also note the prevalence of collaborative albums in the discography, often with artists not located anywhere near Pablo’s home in Córdoba province, Argentina… and in our correspondence thus far, I detect that same international collaborative spirit. As for the music, Bardo Todol is candy to my navel-gazing ears - it’s as though I’ve received an experimental-music advent calendar of syrupy, handheld aural delights, all leading up to this re

Navel-Gazers #52 is an interview with Brian Ruryk who is going to talk to us about Almost Thinking . A relentless 30-track long barrage of sounds, it feels in some ways like even more than 30 tracks, since each of them - many of which are under two minutes long - seem to consist of their own little sub-fragments which are lodged there within, like some kind of musical clown car. It’s certainly a work which plays with my head, as after the first listen I had recalled - erroneously - a sound collage album of almost exclusively electric-guitar noise. It was only upon revisiting ‘Almost Thinking’ that I got any kind of handle on the actual breadth and range of sounds represented here: there are what sound like radio samples, vinyl scratches, junky clatter, incidental noise, tape loops, electronic blips, white noise, traffic sounds… and there are lots of voices - none of them jump out to me as being Brian Ruryk himself but who knows? What I love about ‘Almost Thinking’ is the p

(Introduction): Navel-Gazers #51 is an interview with Robin The Fog a.k.a. Howlround who is going to talk to us about The Ghosts Of Bush . Perhaps the definitive work of audio “hauntology”, it’s an album whose existence seems to have emerged like a great lumbering apparition out of the day-to-day - or let’s say night-to-night - working life of its creator, who was on the graveyard shift as a studio manager for the BBC World Service in the waning hours of its 70-year tenancy at Bush House in Aldwych in 2012. Rendered onto tape using Bush House’s disused reel-to-reels in the mysterious basement studio S6, all the source sounds here - a rich tapestry of spectral crackles, murmurs and creaks - were derived from the building itself, a cavernous old structure built from naturally resonant Portland Stone way back in 1935, a time when the BBC itself was only in its infancy. We’re having this discussion behind the scenes at the British Library where Robin more recently worked as an

Navel-Gazers #50 is an interview with Ellen Zweig who is going to talk to us about Fiction Of The Physical . This collection of experimental spoken word from the 1970s/80s era caught me completely off-guard when I was poking around on the always-intriguing Phantom Limb label. What strikes me immediately about these pieces is their clarity: the clarity of the voices, the arrangements, the textures - and, throughout it all - an indelible clarity of purpose on the part of the artist which is really unlike anything I’ve ever encountered. Perusing the liner notes, the plot thickens: apparently we’re hearing a technique which Ellen calls the “human loop”, where performers repeat a phrase over and over onto tape, culminating in a collage of voice-loops which veers off into a life of its own. As for the instrumentation, it's described using terms such as “fourth world” and “fourth wall” - all I know is by the fourth track it’s as though I’m submerged in some sort of underwat