Cargo Records

Apsomeophone

Apsomeophone is candlesnuffer’s second CD release, following on from the self-titled meisterwerk on Dr. Jim’s in 2001.

The title is taken from the name of one of French musique concret pioneer Pierre Henry’s studios – Apsome – and it’s fitting, as Apsomeophone is, in a sense, a tribute to the groundbreaking works of the great ‘concret musicians of yore and indeed a series of irreverent odes to contemporary classical composers of many stripes. But – and that’s a big but – before you start thinking this is some kind of chin-stroking slab of “serious” music custom-designed for the arts-grant/wine-&-cheese circuit, let it be known that this is Mr. Dave Brown at the helm.

Apsomeophone brings together the worlds of “composition” and rock, a meeting point of low- and high-art, a collision of the electric and the acoustic (and the occasional electro-acoustic).

In it ye shall find moments of Derek Baileyesque guitar destruction, looped guitar twangs, repetitive, percussive chimes, drones, Japanese film samples, doom-laden power chords and out-of-nowhere noises leaping and disappearing in a moment’s notice - all cut and spliced with a masterly precision.

Play it loud and the effect is awesome. The point? If this was released in ’68 with a Wergo label stamped on its LP sleeve, you’d probably skip a few meals to grab it, bragging to your socially-challenged collector friends of your score for the next fortnight.

Track Listing

1. Were Holes Mended?

2. Satan Wash

3. Forged Baggage 1

4. Bad Sake Laugh

5. Money's Dark Night

6. Forged Baggage 2

7. Voices of the Air Shaft 2

8. Travel Over Books Roughly