"Multifarious Visions from the Sonic Margins"

Tuesday 24 November 2020

Thomas Shrubsole & Craig Tattersall's 2014 untitled cassette reissued on Local Studies

Thomas Shrubsole & Craig Tattersall's out of print 2014 collaborative cassette has been reissued as an expanded digital release on Local Studies.

See here for details and to purchase: 



Tuesday 17 March 2020

Tape Music by Thomas Shrubsole on Parenthetical Activities available digitally from Bandcamp

Thomas Shrubsole's Tape Music box set, released earlier this year in a limited Art Edition on Dissolving sub-label Parenthetical Activities, is now available to purchase in digital format from the Parenthetical Activities bandcamp page.



Sunday 16 February 2020

New Dissolving Records, Thomas Shrubsole, Sub Loam online shop

Dissolving Records online shop

Long time supporters and new customers alike are advised that as well as the usual channels (see below) there is now a Dissolving Records online shop for those who prefer that option.

Orders are as ever also more than welcome direct via email or by ordering through discogs or bandcamp, for those releases available there.

Monday 20 January 2020

Thomas Shrubsole - Tape Music @ Boomkat

Tape Music is now available from Boomkat.com

Here is their take on it:

"Highly organic, kinetic concrete and reel-time ferric sculptures from Thomas Shrubsole, yielding almost 3 hours of lower case rustles resembling free jazz played by nature.
Working in a richly imaginative realm shared by everyone from Rashad Becker to Anne Guthrie, Ekoplekz to Decimus, ‘Tape Music’ is a significant batch of scrabbly abstraction from one of the North West’s most quietly unassuming and uncompromising operators. Working hands-on with his trusted reel-to-reel, found objects and 2nd-hand instrumentation, Shrubsole enacts a form of intimate animism that gives life to sounds lesser heard. Mixing skin with grit and machine, his improvised interventions coax out a plethora of almost anthropomorphic or bestial tones from things without a heart or brain, and effectively using his own body to better connect with the world around him and bring listeners to a granular, haptic level of musical perception.
Recorded in 2015 and left to mulch in the archive, the results are entirely analog from nose to tail, exploring a bio-organic feedback system that investigates, in his own words, “notions of the prosaic and the exotic, the personal as it pertains to the physically local and the distant, proximate and disembodied, the diaristic and the documentary: Kinetic performative physical improvisational concrete.” "

Copies are also available direct by emailing dissolving or through dissolving on discogs.

Tuesday 3 December 2019

Vital Weekly review of Sub Loam - Excavated Relics

Thanks to Frans de Waard for reviewing Sub Loam's Excavated Relics cassette:

'Back in 2016, Thomas Shrubsole released 'The Portable archive' under his Sub Loam name (see Vital Weekly 1051), which was culled from material he already recorded in 2009 and 2010. It is something I enjoyed very much, as Sub Loam is something along the lines of lo-fi electronics, drones, ambience, and field recordings. Now there is a tape with "two recently rediscovered examples" from the same period, which Sub Loam feels they should be heard out there as well, and, sure, why not? This is something that could have also been surely been on the original release. On the first side, there is 'Soil Surface', a slow rhythm piece. Or perhaps something that is on a loop device but slowed down quite a bit. In sync we have a mild synth sound burping away. It is a very moody piece and almost a dub-like one at that; all bass but no dance riddim. This is a particularly great piece by Sub Loam. The B-side contains 'Stone Fragment', in which the guitar plays quite a big role, strummed in a really odd way, and set against a set of misty electronic backing, with an odd flanging effect on the strings. It seems like he's playing the guitar with a stick, creating odd timbres. Buried in the background there is a bit of percussion. It is a totally different kind of piece and a most enjoyable one at that as well. I sure can believe that if you found this after ten years you would want to release it.' (FdW)

Review from Vital Weekly issue number 1208

Buy a copy by emailing direct or from Boomkat

Wednesday 13 November 2019

Sub Loam - Excavated Relics Cassette Now Available from Boomkat

Limited copies of Excavated Relics are now available from Boomkat (link below)

https://boomkat.com/products/excavated-relics


Here's what they have to say about it:

"Gauzy, low-key, organically textured dub and wizened folk explorations from Thomas Shrubsole, reviving his Sub Loam alias with two ‘Excavated Relics’ from the archive circa 2009-2010.

The A-side’s Soil Surface’ speaks to Shrubsole’s signature grasp of slow-moving sonic murk with nearly 10 minutes of endearingly weary dub chords perfused with acidic percolations that appear to mimic a sped-up (but still very slow) time-lapse image of soil dynamics, while the other side’s 11 minute piece ’Stone Fragment’ catches him picking out coruscating guitar strings and against peripheral percussion and distant vocal drones in a style murkily resonating with the mystic appeal of Zoviet France. Both are assuredly swaddled in layers of ferric tape hiss. Both humbly worth your time."

Sunday 3 November 2019

Forthcoming on Parenthetical Activities: Thomas Shrubsole - Tape Music

Coming soon on Dissolving sub-label Parenthetical Activities, a special limited edition Double Cassette/Art Box Set containing two and a half hours of music and a 48-page full-colour art booklet alongside postcards and inserts.


Available Soon.

https://soundcloud.com/parentheticalactivities

http://parentheticalactivities.blogspot.com/