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.

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

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."

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/

Supplement to the Portable Archive: Sub Loam - Excavated Relics

 Supplement to the Portable Archive

Additional Items Received 2019

Two recently rediscovered examples of Anomalous Loam dating from c. 2009 - 2010 excavated and displayed on professional, high quality, real-time duplicated cassettes in a clear cassette case with printed j-card and cardboard outer slipcase.

Outliers from the early trilogy of Cotton Goods/Dissolving releases Ohr, 2 and Earthern Circle (2009 - 2010, as documented on The Portable Archive and digitally), these two tracks, around ten minutes each, are thematically and musically related whilst standing at a remove from the circle of those original releases. Four-track murk, hiss and delay, fragmentary percussives, guitar strings as contour lines and twisting stems, burgeoning organic clouds, analogue electronics, observation and contemplation.

The connections with the spiked rural wanderings of Earthern Circle, the heavy soil dubs of 2 and the radiant moods of Ohr are clear whilst also travelling outwards from those zones towards the territory where these two other, previously unreleased, distinct artefacts were discovered.

Two Archaic Remnants, excavated from magnetic tape 2018.

Released October 19, 2019

All instruments, music, recording, production, artwork etc. Sub Loam (Thomas Shrubsole) 

C22. 45 Copies only. 

Available to order directly.

Email Sub Loam or Dissolving Records

Thomas Shrubsole - Themes and Variations (Parenthetical Activities)

Please note, new album and new label, coming later this month.

https://soundcloud.com/parentheticalactivities/thomas-shrubsole-themes-and-variations-album-preview

Related Release

T Shrubsole & C Tattersall, 

Collaboration between Thomas Shrubsole (Dissolving Records, Sub Loam, Jesus on Mars, Dissolving Orchestra etc.) and Craig Tattersall (Other Ideas, Cotton Goods, The Humble Bee, The Boats, The Remote Viewer, Dissolving Orchestra etc.)

new cassette out on Other Ideas.

Copies available at Boomkat, Other Ideas and through Dissolving. Email For availability.

 http://boomkat.com/cassettes/1081172-t-shrubsole-c-tattershall-untitled

 http://ourotherideas.tumblr.com/post/93894610334/otr-c-002-thomas-shrubsole-craig-tattersall

Dissolving back catalogue items also available.

SUB LOAM - A CONCISE DICTIONARY OF PLANTS AND THEIR USES - OUT NOW

New Release January 2014

Sub Loam - A Concise Dictionary of Plants and Their Uses

Sub Loam returns with a new release for 2014, a limited art edition 3" CDr containing three herbal vignettes dedicated to the soil, the sun and the foliate filaments linking them. Composed and played by Sub Loam using organic, acoustic and electro-mechanical instruments and means, composted direct to 4-track tape.

Three chlorocentric worlds in miniature.

 This edition is packed in folded paper sleeve of one of 5 designs printed both sides with unique artwork by Sub Loam. Each copy also contains a hand-numbered art print suitable for framing also designed by the artist. Hand-numbered edition of 40.

 Sub Loam - A Concise Dictionary of Plants and Their Uses (Henge 010)

Released: 10/01/14

Tracklisting: 

1 - 7.21

2 - 4.43

3 - 3.32

https://soundcloud.com/dissolvingrecords/sub-loam-a-concise-dictionary

 Copies are £13 each, P&P in the UK is £1.50, Europe £3.50, Americas £4.70, R.O.W. £5.00

 Email dissolving (dot) records (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk to order or to add yourself to the mailing list

Dissolving Records Mailing List

To receive first news of new releases and the opportunity to buy them before they reach the shops remember that you can join the Dissolving mailing list by emailing dissolving (dot) records (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk with 'Mailing List' as the subject.
From time to time there may be mailing list exclusive releases and news as well. I do not share addresses with anyone else or mail gratuitously, you will only ever receive the occasional short mail alerting you to new releases on Dissolving and other related items such as special editions only available direct from the label.
If that sounds good to you then send a quick mail to join up.
You can also (almost) always - unless they've sold out - buy releases direct from the label by mailing the dissolving email address.
New Sub Loam due soon, keep your eyes on the list and on here.

New Sub Loam for November - Available Soon

Sub Loam

A Concise Dictionary of Plants and Their Uses

(Henge 010)

3 new tracks, limited edition.

Available later this month,

Check here soon for more details.

Ruderal Memory now out @ Boomkat.com

Sub Loam's limited edition Ruderal Memory album is now available from Boomkat:

http://boomkat.com/cds/700917-sub-loam-ruderal-memory

" Ghostly, longform electro-acoustic invocation from Sub Loam, the character also known as Thomas Shrubsole and Jesus On Mars. Via soprano saxophone fed through multi-cassette, twin-reel-to-reel set up, 'Ruderal Memory' manifests 45 minutes of seancé-like atmosphere with patiently unfolding arrangement informed by yoga breathing techniques and conducted from an anti-anthropocentric stance in key with Sub Loam's themes of elemental interplay and chlorophyllic consciousness. Aesthetically we're reminded of Robin The Fog's spectral experiments on 'The Ghosts Of Bush' or the quivering microtones yielded in William Basinski's 'Disintegration Loops', yet as with all of Shrubsole's output, there's a deeply individual spirit at work, following his own quiet path to personal enlightenment. "