[Cotton Goods 001 ep] Pawn - A Hum Of The Library CDr 2010

Pawn - A Hum Of The Library
Label: Cotton Goods
Catalog#: 001 ep
Format: CDr, EP, Limited Edition
Country: UK
Released: Apr 2010
Genre: Electronic
Style: Ambient
Notes: First release in Cotton Goods 'Lending Library' series. Packaged in hand-made and stamped card envelope with inner wallet. The outer envelope is sealed with gumstrip. On purchase sealed outer envelopes were stickered with recipient's address and mailed out like that.
Edition of 100

Tracklist:
1 Entrance - Stairs
2 The Book That Is Never Read
3 The Creak Of The Chair
4 Quiet Room
5 Ventilation Fans

*STRICTLY LIMITED TO 100 INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED COPIES FOR THE WORLD* And so a brand new Cotton Goods outing comes our way, and this time its an EP length set from Tokyo-based artist Hideki Umezawa under his Pawn guise.  Previously Umezawa has released music under the Dynamophone and Symbolic Interaction labels and this new release makes for a great match.  Pawn's music is incredibly tender and melodic, grounding itself in the faintest residue of acoustic instruments on opener 'Entrance - Stairs'.  Umezawa processes a gently tuneful ambience from piano and room sounds, fashioning an outstandingly immersive and roomy production in so doing.  Second track, 'The Book That Is Never Read' strips away much of the electronic presence, allowing distant piano keys to get tangled up in Danny Norbury's cello.  Norbury's guest spot on this track proves to be a real highlight, lending a beautifully lugubrious lead melody.  After the rainy location recordings of 'The Creak Of The Chair', Umezawa revisits the spatial noises and processed piano submersion of his opening track via 'Quiet Room', leading up to the nine-minute finale that makes up nearly half of the disc's duration.  'Ventilation Fans' grounds itself in the sonorities of the air conditioning system referenced by the title but manages to transform itself from a potentially hum-drum field recording exercise into an overtly harmonious drone piece that duets with faint piano reverberations and the ear-pleasing babble of digital ephemera.  As ever with Cotton Goods releases, this won't last long..

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[Cotton Goods 003 EP] Scissors And Sellotape – Scissors And Sellotape EP CDr 2009

Scissors And Sellotape – Scissors And Sellotape EP
Label: Cotton Goods
Catalog#: 003 EP
Format: CDr, Mini, EP, Limited Edition
Country: UK
Released: Dec 2009
Genre: Electronic
Style: Glitch, Experimental, Ambient

Limited to 100 copies.
Handmade packaging with hardback book covers inside a card envelope pressed with the Cotton Goods logo.
Each case is unique and individually numbered.

Tracklist
1 Untitled 1:49
2 Untitled 3:10
3 Untitled 1:40
4 Untitled 2:55
5 Untitled 2:11
6 Untitled 3:58
7 Untitled 2:03
8 Untitled 2:31

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*LIMITED TO 100 INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED AND HAND-PACKAGED COPIES FOR THE WORLD* The latest Cotton Goods release arrives in typically mysterious and anonymous looking fashion, revealing only a catalogue number and the words "Scissors And Sellotape", which sounds suitably like a summary of how the release was put together - both in terms of its packaging and the music itself, which is typically delicate and homespun; a bit like a school arts and crafts project. Actually, Scissors And Sellotape is the artist name, and it's the latest alias of John McCaffrey, aka Part Timer, whose work has previously appeared on Moteer, Mobeer, Flau and various self-releases. Here the beautiful music draws on sounds from gamelan-style metallophone percussion, location recordings, tape noise and haunting instrumental fragments, all cut into shape and stuck back together in new song-shaped forms. Divided into eight 'Chapters' over twenty minutes, these collages are cradled in hiss and glitch-like pops and crackles where the cuts are made. The unbuffed edges only enhance the earthy texture, and this approach reaches the height of its powers and effectiveness by 'Chapter 4', whose downtrodden piano and clicking, pattering beats make for a sublime combination, very much in the vein of the Remote Viewer's most enduring works. The emphasis on drum patterns and melodic progression becomes all the stronger during the wonderful 'Chapter 6' and 'Chapter 7', but the slightly more abstract, textural tracks that surround them really underline the sense of sonic dislocation and archive-trawling from which these compositions originated. Lovely and enigmatic as ever, this latest bespoke Cotton Goods release comes in the usual print run of 100 copies, so no snoozing...

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[Cotton Goods 002 lp] Sub Loam - Earthern Circle (Album) CDr 2010

Sub Loam - Earthern Circle
Label: Cotton Goods
Catalog#: 002 lp
Format: CDr, Album, Limited Edition
Country: UK
Released: 02 Sep 2010
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental, Ambient

Notes: Fourth release in Cotton Goods 'Lending Library' series.

Packaged in hand-made and stamped green card envelope with inner wallet. The outer envelope is sealed with gumstrip. On purchase sealed outer envelopes were stickered with recipient's address and mailed out like that.

Outer envelope contains inner printed wallet with title, catalogue info and picture. Inner wallet contains folded green card with 'lending library' library card, cd and two folded paper inserts with maps and track titles.

Tracklist
1 Lady's Bedstraw - Thistles Rising On Close-Cropped Ground - Rank Undergrowth - In A Summer Landscape
2 The Heat Of The Day Escaping Out Towards The Late Evening Sky, A High Blue Haze Over The Drifting Hills, The Soil Of A Path Underfoot, Cracked A Little, Brushed By Dry Grasses, Walking Back Across Moors In The Ancient Light

It's always worth mentioning the packaging of these editions, and Earthern Circle is no exception. Housed within the by-now customary arrangement of multi-layered envelopes, this album also arrives with a little more textual information than tends to be the case for Cotton Goods releases. In addition to some fairly abstract liner notes you'll find two maps printed up on luxurious paper stock - one for each track. This goes someway towards setting up a relationship between the music and notions of a rural landscape, and its history. The aged, implicitly otherworldly feel of the project and its presentation conspires to transmit a bit of a Children Of The Stones vibe, which is most certainly a welcome thing. The first of the disc's two lengthy pieces corresponds to the 'Northern Sheet', taking the form of a curious, very vintage sounding multi-instrumental excavation that features wiry, discordant guitar musings, untamed analogue oscillations and a scratchy old production style that perfectly distills the evocative mustiness at the heart of Sub Loam's sound. Clocking in at just under half-an-hour, 'Northern Sheet' begins with some detuned, Derek Bailey inspired six-string digressions, with occasional bouts of padded synthesizer chords joining in. As the piece develops the electronics come closer to the forefront of the mix, with slowly modulating oscillator arcs sounding almost as if they were a natural phenomenon - perhaps mimicking bird calls or whistling winds. Moving on to the 'Southern Sheet', there seems to be more of a dissolved feel presiding over the composition, as if the guitar and synthesizer passages have been corroded away by interference and tangled radio waves. Perhaps a little more ambient and textural in character, this second piece (itself a healthy quarter-hour in length) further emphasises Earthern Circle's undercurrent of rural mysticism, leaving you with an album at least partly characterised by a strange, haunted sensation.

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[Cotton Goods 001] E And I - An Inch Of Air (Album) CD Limited Edition 2010

E And I - An Inch Of Air
Label: Cotton Goods
Catalog#: LP001
Format: CDr, Album, Limited Edition
Box Set
Country: UK
Released: Sep 2010
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental, Ambient


Credits: Mastered By [Uncredited] - Miles*
Written-By - Humble Bee, The , Whisperer
Notes: First release in the Cotton Goods 'Reference Library' series.
Limited edition of 100 copies.
Each cd is housed inside a paper info pouch which is stuck to a modified hardback book cover. This then sits inside a handmade box, lined with rough grained tissue paper and a pull cord made from tape reel.
E thanks: a(v), a(l), d, tz, e(l), a(m).
I thanks: The a's and of course e.
©&℗ Cotton Goods 2010.


Tracklist:
1 Tiniest Smile 1:50
2 The Incredible Softness 6:13
3 An Inch Of Air 6:59
4 Fingers Of April 1:06
5 Known Things 2:46
6 Timeless And Time 5:05
7 Balloonman 6:11
8 November Sunset 3:39
9 A Perhaps Song 4:38
10 A Stranded Star 8:20
11 Flight In The Blue 7:35
12 In The Last Light 4:04

*Strictly limited to 100 individually packaged copies for the world, each cd comes inside a customised outer box and includes a modified hardback book cover holding each disc* Reference Library is a new series of releases from Cotton Goods, taking the bespoke packaging to even further heights of loveliness. We should really stress how gorgeous these look - the CD is attached to a hardback cover inside handmade boxes lined with rough grained tissue paper and attached info sleeve - a bespoke, genuine labour of love worthy of the delicate sounds within. 'An Inch Of Air' is a collaboration between The Humble Bee aka Craig Tattersall ov The Boats and The Remote Viewer, and Whisperer aka Emmanuel Witzhum, a respected Viola player and member of the Parisian Ensemble Intercontemporain. Together they've crafted a suite of gorgeous burred neo-classical strings and submerged electronics with the most endearingly shy and introverted manners. In just under an hour they conjure 12 tracks of intimately blissed, yet lonely and bleak moods, perpetually shifting focus under changing atmospheric weather systems to feel at the mercy of some unknown, overarching presence. From the Paavoharju-like small-sound blur of 'Tiniest Smile' to the ferric eroded drone topography of 'The Incredible Softness', into the anachronistic meld of folk strings and majestic miniature electronic symphony of 'Timelessness And Time', and the pastoral cadence of 'A Stranded Star', we're left heart in mouth and completely at their will. Beautiful material - no snoozing with this one.


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[Cotton Goods 01 lp] Hybernation - E2 & E8 CDr (Album) 2010

Hybernation - E2 & E8
Label: Cotton Goods
Catalog#: 001 lp
Format: CDr, Album, Limited Edition
Country: UK
Released: 23 Jul 2010
Genre: Electronic, Non-Music
Style: Field Recording, Ambient

Credits: Photography - Stuart Bowditch and Damien Robinson
Written By, Recorded By - Stuart Bowditch

Notes: Third release in Cotton Goods 'Lending Library' series. Packaged in hand-made and stamped card envelope with inner wallet. The outer envelope is sealed with gumstrip. On purchase sealed outer envelopes were stickered with recipient's address and mailed out like that.

front flap of inner wallet contains'lending library' library card with limitation info.

Fold-out printed map insert pasted into inner wallet. Map insert also contains track details and credits. For each track there is a corresponding location on the map where sounds were sourced from, given by a grid-reference, along with a photo of each location.

''All songs written and recorded by
Stuart Bowditch
Cars borrowed from Indigo Luksch
Photography by Stuart Bowditch
and Damien Robinson''
Edition of 100

Tracklist:
E2
1 Lock 7
2 Columbia Road
3 Haggerston Park
4 E2
E8
5 Cars On The 7th Floor
6 Washing Machine Vs Dishwasher
7 A London Field
8 A Forgotten Patch

The first full-length on Cotton Goods' Lending Library offshoot, this album arrives in the label's customarily handmade packaging, housing eight compositions by Stuart Bowditch, aka Hybernation.  This British composer/producer draws much of his work from the continual flow of sounds surrounding everyday life, and E2 and E8 finds him interacting with sound recordings of unfolding auditory happenings - weaving his own musical narrative into the fabric of these events/environments.  Sounding like a duet with a slightly rainy, blustery day, opener 'Lock 7' seems to fade in with footsteps sploshing around in shallow puddles while quietly pensive synth melodies begin establish themselves in the foreground.  It's often hard to pin down exactly what you're listening to, but you might make out more tramping around during 'Cars On The 7th Floor', as Bowditch apparently documents the sound made by roaming about in squelchy rubber boots before outlaying a more tuneful setting with high register keyboard motifs.  Occasionally Bowditch sheds the location recordings in favour of more purely musical compositions, leading to the predominantly synth-based motions of 'Columbia Road' and the ambient electric piano routines of 'E2'.  Although there's the odd moment of gently bucolic soundscaping (as best put to use on the pastoral, open air loveliness of 'Haggerston Park'), Bowditch also manages to coax the rough beauty out of household appliances during 'Washing Machine Vs. Dishwasher', which offsets the surprisingly rowdy, motorised venom of the titular devices with some ear-pleasing drones.  Once again, Cotton Goods showcases the wares of a new artist that somehow slots perfectly into the label's uniquely approachable brand of experimental music. Limited to just 100 copies - don't miss out.

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[Cotton Goods 002 LP] Tape Loop Orchestra - 1953 Culture Festival (Album) CD 2009

Tape Loop Orchestra - 1953 Culture Festival
Label: Cotton Goods
Catalog#: 002 LP
Format: CDr, Album, Limited Edition
Country: UK
Released: 16 Jul 2009
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental, Ambient

Credits: Producer [Uncredited] - Andrew Hargreaves

Notes: Each CD packaged in handmade case made of hardback book covers inside a card wallet pressed with the Cotton Goods logo.

Each case unique and individually numbered. Limited to 100 copies.

Tracklist
1 Reel One 0:15
2 Yasujiro Ozu 4:31
3 Late Spring 4:31
4 Early Summer 2:36
5 Tokyo Twilight 3:09
6 Reel One End 3:13
7 Reel Change 0:32
8 Reel Two 0:26
9 Setsu Ko Hara 2:55
10 The End Of Summer 2:38
11 Late Autumn 4:34
12 Tokyo Stars 3:47
13 Reel Two End 3:38
14 Tails Out 0:33

LIMITED TO 100 INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED AND HAND-PACKAGED COPIES FOR THE WORLD...! On my desk there sits a pile of records waiting to be written about for these pages. Today, amongst the vinyl, CD jewel cases and digipaks is a rather fetching old book whose innards have been scooped out only to be replaced by a compact disc and a Cotton Goods hand-numbered, embossed identification card. You can't help but wonder where all these reclaimed books are coming from, though we should probably give Craig Tattersall and co. the benefit of the doubt that the public libraries of Lancashire have not been ransacked in the production of this lovely object. As is the case with all the Cotton Goods editions there's a real resonance between the homely mysteriousness of the music itself and its presentation. That's especially true here: the warming hiss sculptures and faded melodies are as inviting and elusive as the pageless books that house them. This is also just about the only release in living memory that might be said to smell the way it sounds - explicitly redolent of an amiable fustiness. This album comes from Andrew Hargreaves of The Boats, here recording as the Tape Loop Orchestra, fashioning music from muffled analog tones, scratchy, semi-pulverised recordings and above all the rich, static crackle of tape noise. You can hear traces of both electronic and 'real' instruments running through these compositions, yet it's the residue left by the magnetic reels that capture those sounds that provides the main focus of the music, presenting harmonious passages in a jerky, crumbling state that becomes the most seductive and tactile element of the album. The saturated, scratchy hues of 'Early Summer' sound like the sort of musical antiquities Boards Of Canada, and more recently Bibio have channelled, while the haunting likes of 'Yasujiro Ozu' and 'Late Autumn' could pass as lost, analogue Vladislav Delay recordings, taking on a shadowy dub-style quality that fits so beautifully with the loop-based structure of the album. 1953 Culture Festival is a must-have for followers of Cotton Goods, The Boats and analog electronic ambience more generally, but as ever, there are only 100 copies in existence, so you best be quick.

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[Cotton Goods 001 SP, 002 SP, 003 SP] Sub Loam - Ohr CDr 2009

Sub Loam - Ohr
Label: Cotton Goods, Cotton Goods, Cotton Goods
Catalog#: 001 SP, 002 SP, 003 SP
Format: 3 x CDr, Mini, Single
Box Set
Country: UK
Released: 18 Jun 2009
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental, Ambient

Box Set containing three singles by Sub Loam. One track per CDr. Each CDr has a seperate catalogue number though they were released in this Box Set format only. Each CDr in a seperate hand made envelope fashioned from pages of old books. The whole thing packaged in a cardboard microfilm case, with a string tied archive strip around it.

Tracklist:
CD1 Ohr Part 1 Nettle Mix
CD2 Ohr Part 2 Overgrown Path
CD3 Ohr Part 3 Stones, Sunlight, Morning

When writing about releases on Craig Tattersall's lovingly handcrafted Cotton Goods label it's always a temptation to start going on about the packaging first, and this new triple disc set from the mysterious Sub Loam proves to be especially alluring in that department. You'll find the three 3" CDs collectively housed inside a sturdy microfilm box, with each one therein individually slotted into envelopes made from old books, embossed with the Cotton Goods Ltd stamp. And of course everything's hand-numbered, with just 100 copies in circulation. It's a lovely and outlandishly elaborate item, so let's hope we find that the music has been similarly laboured over once we've prized it from its housing. The first disc in the Ohr triptych ('Nettle Mix') initiates us into a world of flickering delays and tape reel manipulations - a billowing soundscape littered with analogue recording artifacts, Radiophonic effects sweeps and overloaded space echo. The vintage feel is perfectly in tune with the recovered, antique feel to the presentation, and it's carried over onto the next disc (titled 'Overgrown Path') which features fragments of grainy chords and hiss-saturated background noises. Once again, the piece is characterised by the warm repercussions of vintage echo - carving thunderclap sound effects into the background - but there's a more prominent, Basinski-esque melodic element here too. The final disc ('Stones, Sunlight, Morning') is inevitably suggestive of that great buzzword du jour, 'hauntology', offering shadows and reverberations of something that once was, rather than anything tangible. These evolving, ambient echo loops eventually give way to more discernible constituents, and the sound of the elements consumes the final few minutes: gusts of wind and watery field recordings draw the disc to a close, leaving you with the same sense of mystery and puzzlement you probably had when you entered into all this. The discs played in sequence make for a beautiful, tape-spun sound cycle, but as an alternative serving suggestion, you could probably fashion yourself a rather wonderful Zaireeka-style multichannel listening experience by rigging the discs to all play simultaneously. However you choose to digest it, Ohr is clearly a very special release in all departments, act fast if you want one as these babies just never last very long...

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