Many thanks to Ed Pinsent from The Sound Projector for this warm write up of Nuclear Beach:
http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2014/12/14/riddley-walker/
From 6th March 2014 we have a package from Nigel Samways and his Ephre Imprint CDR label. The Nuclear Beach [Split EP] record is a split between Nigel Samways and Vecchi-Teller, and both acts provide their own sound portrait versions of the Nuclear Beach…the post-nuclear holocaust mood (a sensation I’m sure you all recognise) is caught nicely by the cover art, which could almost be an alternative dust jacket for Neville Shute’s On The Beach or a movie poster for The Day The Earth Caught Fire. I mention these to get you in the right frame of mind for the gorgeously restrained and quite English tone of these recordings. I could observe that neither piece is in fact very apocalyptic nor destructive in tone, and the whole album discovers a strange, compelling beauty in these post-atomic ravaged landscapes which it stalks with the measured tread of a Tarkovsky character. Samways does it through layers of instruments and recorded samples, assembling a lush and beautiful fabric. Limpid, watery drones are juxtaposed with synth washes playing strange half-forgotten memories; ghostly percussion clacks away like waves on pebbles. The spare samples of seagull cries are especially evocative, as is the intoning voice of a man which appears to be reciting poetry through the wrong end of a telephone. Samways himself provides some lovely magical-realist descriptions of the instrumentation: “a mutant shellfish drum set, a radioactive cormorant choir conducted by the ghost of John Bunyan, plus The Incredible Melting Baby Jesus Holiday Players.” If you’re keen on the Skaters, this is the record for you, although a comparison point nearer to home might be the ghostly drone music of English player Xela (i.e. John Twells). Now that I think of it, Samways and Xela should team up to make a record together, with added field recordings and production by Ian Watson, but perhaps the world is not yet ready for that. Astonishingly vivid and touching, this is like a dream from which you won’t want to wake up.
Vechi-Teller is Nigel Samways and Dickel Dickel. Their version of Nuclear Beach is quite different, and as soon as you enter the benign maelstrom of bizarre electronic tones you realise you’re treading the sands of a much darker shore. The work here is based on duo improvisations which have presumably been processed and reassembled to form this unsettling fabric of eerie pulsations and repeated motifs, all overlapping and melting into each other with the logic of a dream episode. The multiple layers blend and successfully fit together in ways they should not, and their use of reverb is particularly astringent. The creators describe it as a “visceral detour via the junk yard”, and while you may be disappointed if you’re expecting to hear metallic percussion or mechanical iron thuds, there are some inhuman screeching effects which may have been the result of bowed cymbals (or more likely, bowing the side of a destroyed car). No less beautiful than the flip side, this is a gorgeous intuitively-structured assemblage containing many poignant moments of instrumental music in among the thick gobbets of fogged-up and denatured murk. Given the length of the two pieces, this would have made a perfect vinyl LP. Highly recommended.
