Spraingksths

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2019-05-21

Label: Exotic Spresm

For Bambos.

Thanks to Irma Vep & Idris Tiger for support and encouragement.

// Contentment at having won without a battle
Zither, field recordings of Trefriw sewage works / Flint castle & sandwich factory. Title of this and following track inspired by the video rental scene from José Saramago’s The Double.

// Disappointment at not having had to battle in order to win
Guitar, tapes, shortwave radio, FM synthesis.

// Domestic interior #1: central heating boiler
Self-explanatory.

// Idles
Field recordings of diesel locomotives at Llangollen (class 26, class 37) / Birmingham New Street station / canal boat going through Chirk tunnel.

// Chwyldro
Field recordings of the Holiday Revolution installation commissioned for the LLAWN01 festival in Llandudno, 2013, featuring modified turntables, disco balls, beach balls and a working model of Rhyl Flats wind farm (plastic pinwheels in a small paddling pool + oscillating desk fan).

// Domestic interior #2: sausages
Edwards of Conwy’s pork & apple. The artist is now vegetarian and no longer endorses this product, but stands by the recording.

// Cofiwch Dryweryn
Field recording of a squeaky gate leading from the A4212 to the western bank of Llyn Celyn, accompanied by wooden toy whistle.
In 1960, a private bill sponsored by Liverpool City Council was brought before Parliament to develop a reservoir in the Tryweryn Valley in order to supply Liverpool and the Wirral with water. The development included the flooding of Capel Celyn, a small village of 67 Welsh-speaking inhabitants. By obtaining authority via an Act of Parliament, Liverpool CC did not require planning consent from the relevant Welsh local authorities, and avoided a planning enquiry at Welsh level at which arguments against the proposal could be expressed. 35 out of 36 Welsh MPs opposed the bill (the other did not vote), but in 1962 it was passed. The village was flooded in 1965.

// Rhan o awdl y cynhaeaf gan Dic Jones
Modified Shepard tones, manipulated vocals. Poem by Dic Jones, performed by Parti Ffermwyr Ieuainc Dolgellau.

// Могутній атом
Field recordings of Chernobyl (pile-driving the foundations of the New Safe Confinement building for Reactor #4, which replaces the temporary sarcophagus built following the 1986 disaster) / Pripyat (rain leaking through the ceiling of the abandoned Golden Key Kindergarten) and Kiev (The Motherland Monument public address system).