Navel-Gazers #58 is an interview with Hildegard Westerkamp who is going to talk to us about Transformations . In the Navel-Gazers-sphere there are certain artists whose names come up again and again. Hildegard is one of those artists, and it’s usually on the topic of sound walks, an approach which she has pioneered since way back in the 70s. In my case it was upon encountering this collection ’Transformations’ that I really became fixated upon her work. What I love about these compositions is that while Hildegard is not shy about processing and reconstituting source recordings, there’s always something tethering it all to experiential reality in a way which seems distinctly alive . And that’s a topic we touched upon leading up to this interview, when we were deciding between an email chain or a spoken conversation. At the outset, it was something either of us could have gone either way on, but when Hildegard described the spoken format as seeming more “alive”, I knew that

Navel-Gazers #57 is an interview with Mike Holland a.k.a. Kinver Pond who is going to talk to us about “Moonrise Over Legends Gym”. I’m a sucker for titles, and this one is instantly ringing in my ear-for-the-absurd: what a grand, magisterial turn of phrase to describe something so banal. So it is in the sound-world of Kinver Pond, where the artist can be heard mumbling inexplicable snippets of text amidst an elaborate medley of field recordings which - one suspects - were taken close to home. Its text-rich visual world too, glimpsed in collage-art inserts which accompany the physical Chocolate Monk release, seems cut from the same cloth. Mike entered my orbit courtesy of Navel-Gazers alumnus Paul Margree , and their backgrounds strike me as similar in having arrived at this kind of activity from a sort of non-music, maybe more literary perspective, which seems to bring something quite fresh and different to the table. Mike is also local, and I’m pleased to say this is th

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