Pye Corner Audio - The Black Mill Tapes Volumes 1 & 2

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  • While artist after artist in dance music has reanimated vintage club sounds in the last few years, a small band of likeminded noisemakers have taken a different approach to summoning a bygone era. Where 707s and 303s waddle around zombie-like in the new music bin, artists like Ekoplekz, Demdike Stare and Andy Stott make a tantalizingly new racket that's possessed by some vague and creepy past. Into the séance now steps Pye Corner Audio, another radiophonically-addled Briton looking to lower the temperature of your parlor a solid 20 degrees. Credited to an anonymous "Head Technician" (though if you've ever bought anything from PCA's Bandcamp page, PayPal has likely outed the Ghost Box-related culprit for you), the output of this "transcription service"—captured on three "Black Mill Tapes" issued over the same number of years—conjures a similarly eerie aura from tape hiss and analog groan. Yet Pye Corner Audio isn't merely "the next Ekoplekz," or worse, a sign that audio-spiritualism is running on empty. Though fans of any of the above are likely to open their hearts (or, better yet, third eyes) to PCA, their music reaches this world through a portal all its own. Type's new compilation of the first two Black Mill Tapes, spread across four visceral sides, takes the Head Technician's singular aesthetic out of the shadows. The Black Mill Tapes Volumes 1&2 does plenty to show off PCA's analog warmth, but where this music truly departs from that of its peers is in its compositional approachability: ambient washes and sinewaves abound, but the Head Technician has an apparent knack for beats and melodies that stick with you, pairing his obvious early electronic music obsession with a fondness for the sleaze of the decade or three that came after. Tracks like "Electronic Rhythm Number Three" and "We Have Visitors," slinky head-nodders with basslines stretching toward sunrise, wouldn't sound entirely out of place on Beats In Space. "Recrypt" and "Toward Light," two late-collection highlights, even out-AIR AIR, with lovingly cheesed-up synth melodies and makeout-friendly tempos. But even if it's not as self-serious or scary as its more famous brethren, the net effect is chilly: oscillators attempt underhanded hypnosis on "Transmission Four: Crooked Hill," a vortex of ghosts whooshes out from "Building Twelve, Room One," and all that stands between you and doom on "A Dark Door" is a too-thin layer of static. Still, the only real warning that should accompany a Pye Corner Audio release is that it's profoundly addictive—a creaky cabin in the woods you'll want to become a permanent resident of.
  • Tracklist
      CD 1 01. Transmission One: Lonesome Vale 02. We Have Visitors 03. Folk Festival 04. Electronic Rhythm Number Three 05. A Dark Door 06. Theme Number Four 07. Electronic Rhythm Number Eight 08. Building Twelve, Room One 09. Theme Number Nine 10. Transmission Three: Briar Lane CD 2 01. Mirror Sequence 02. Electronic Rhythm Number Seven 03. Transmission Four: Crooked Hill 04. Electronic Rhythm Number Four 05. Through the King's Wood 06. Recrypt 07. Theme Number Six 08. Toward Light 09. Sine Times Nine 10. Ecneuqes Rorrim
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