Craig Tattersall

apropos territory I - territory mapping

Genre: ELECTRONIC

2 x Cassette Box

Boomkat Product Review:

Cult smallsound organiser/de-composer Craig Tattersall (The Humble Bee) does durational rhythmic noise and textured, crepuscular scapes on a remarkable deviation from expectations on his umbrella publishing imprint.

Messing with what we know of Craig’s work to date, he pushes far out into previously unexplored terrain with his most weather-beaten and enigmatically atonal, even noisy, works here. In some regards this new phase mirrors the latter stages of The Caretaker’s Alzheimers emulations, but also aspects of the sore beauty found in Fennesz works, Richard Skelton’s goretex ambient and the most concentrated Kevin Drumm meditations. On a more psychic level, it can be heard as a deep topographic reading or reflection of his native moorland in the Lancashire peaks, and the waterways they give rise to, as implied by the record’s title.

As the 4th release on his umbrella publishing, the 80 minutes here keep the label perfectly unpredictable after various turns of mulched field recordings with Chrystal Cherniwchan, and the gonzo lab experiments of ‘music for screens, turntables and contacts’ with Steve Oliver in 2022. It depicts Tattersall guided by a solo wanderlust under a claggy, inclement atmosphere that subtly comes to alternate as the piece proceeds uphill and across seemingly barren uplands that teem with life. As ever with Tattersall’s work there’s a poetic play of paradoxes in its make-up, with palapably pastoral tropes verging on milled, mechanical elements as it unfolds across long sides of tape flutter accreting incidental keys and bird calls, surges of oblique nose reflecting wet roadside noise and snapshots of obsolete machinery played like aeolian instruments.

One to get properly lost inside.

2 x Cassette Box (4)

Signed and individually numbered edition of 50 copies, includes two tapes, 2 x books containing 16 prints and companion notebook of ideas plus a download of the album dropped to your account.

Play All 2 x Cassette Box (4)