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Pangolins > A Few Short Hours
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USRNM > Mspriints
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USRNM > 23
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Bowditch - Quotidian Objects (In A Grindcore Style)
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Bowditch > Yarcade
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Bowditch > Songs For Wyatting
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Bowditch > Ponti Veneziani
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Bowditch > Legowelt Trax Vol 1
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Hybernation > Fragile Times
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Bowditch > Listlessness
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Bowditch > Relentlessness
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Furrows > A Thin Veneer
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Bowditch > Once The German Ocean
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Bowditch > Alchemy 4
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Bowditch > Belongings
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Bowditch > Southend Objectified
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Bowditch > 12 Inch Polycarbonate Disc
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Various Artists > 100616
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Various Artists > BRINK
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Bowditch / Kipps > Proscenium
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Hybernation > Object Studies - Metal
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Hybernation > The Old Waterworks
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Hybernation > Thirty
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Hybernation > E2 & E8
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Pangolins > A Few Short Hours
Pangolins is the duo of Stuart Bowditch and Wil Bolton. Having appeared on RTR under their eponymous projects in 2020 and 2019 respectively, the pair return with an album of saturated drones and analogue imperfections.
Written and recorded by Stuart Bowditch and Wil Bolton during a series of remote but simultaneous one hour sessions during 2019 - 2020.
Mastered by James Edward Armstrong
Photography by Stuart Bowditch
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USRNM > Mspriints
An album of mostly dance floor orientated tracks written between 2012 and 2013 and played out at a variety of festivals gigs throughout that time. Released by Rednetic Recordings and presented on a CD housed in a Digipack, designed by Bruno Lasnier.
Reviews
"sparse enough for the minimalist crew but packs enough punch to appeal to fans of the tougher stuff, too" International DJ Mag
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USRNM > 23
An experiment to create 23 tracks totalling 23 minutes, which was initiated by Alastair Johnson (Alien) on Courier, written over 5 days at Christmas 2018.
Presented in 5"CDr with applied decal housed in a gatefold cover with stenciled acrylic detailing. Included are two text inserts and a unique 'postcard' insert made with 'obligatory sunset' photographs submitted by Courier fans, all made from recycled card stock and hand assembled by Stuart Bowditch. An edition of 23.
Reviews
Bandcloud - 'a big middle finger to list season and any notion of marketability.'
Freq Mag - 'emotive and unsettling and that can be said about the whole thing.'
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Bowditch - Quotidian Objects (In A Grindcore Style)
My contribution to the 20x20 Project brought together my very first musical endeavours and more recent explorations in sound: drumming in grindcore/death metal band Mortis (1991-1995) and a sonic interest in non musical objects (Hybernation/Bowditch releases 2007-2021). It was recorded during lockdown, in small windows of time, in a variety of rooms in the house where I live, using 20 every day objects that mostly belonged to someone else. Song titles reflect the lyrical themes often found in grindcore such as socio-political issues and gore.
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Bowditch > Yarcade
A sound installation commissioned for Yarmonics 2018 a festival of sonic art and new music celebrating the sounds people and places of Great Yarmouth.
A collage made from unprocessed and processed field recordings made inside Yarmouth amusement arcades during 2018.
Thanks to a wide variety of holiday makers and seasonal workers who generously agreed for their leisure activities to be recorded and David Perry the ‘Puppet Man’ from whose performance MIDI data was extracted to trigger Max for Live patches.Photography by Kaavous Clayton
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Bowditch > Songs For Wyatting
The three tracks here are all made from different kinds of silence and utilise MIDI data extracted from Robert Wyatt’s ‘Dondestan’ LP using Ableton’s Convert Melody to MIDI function.
‘Rock Bottom’ takes the click of a stylus on the run out groove of the B-side of Robert Wyatt's LP which was gifted to Stuart by activist and artist Nicola Field. ‘RNID cassette’ is made from tape hiss, found at the end of the intended contents of a Royal National Institute for the Deaf cassette containing different kinds of tinnitus, which Stuart digitised for artist Damien Robinson. ‘Apollo 12’ uses radio silence from communications on the moon landing mission which were made available via the NASA website.
'Songs for Wyatting' takes its inspiration from wyatting, described on urban dictionary as '...the practice of deliberately selecting annoying or extreme music on an mp3 jukebox to cause irritation to others…'
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Bowditch > Ponti Veneziani
Limited edition (10) cassette housed in a Stumptown Printers cover made from recycled card stock. Also Included in each pack are unique artworks by Ruth Philo (10 smaller works cut from larger piece entitled 'Canale'), two text inserts and a Courier sticker, all hand assembled by Stuart Bowditch.
Field recordings made by Stuart Bowditch on 14th may 2019 on six bridges in Venice, Italy whilst taking part in Alive In The Universe, a month long programme of film and installation works during the Venice Biennale.
Image ‘Canale” by Ruth Philo
Thanks to Caroline Wiseman and Eileen Haring Woods.
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Bowditch > Legowelt Trax Vol 1
Each of these tracks has been made using one sample only. Source sounds were taken from a sample pack created by Legowelt (Danny Wolfers) featuring sounds made by the Roland JV2080 rack mounted synthesizer, which is itself built on a sample-based synthesis architecture. All tracks are improvised using the Samplr iPad app and a Meris Ottobit pedal. Mastered by Ed Rome at Slam Door Studios.
Charitable fundraising has been hit very hard by the COVID-19 so as part of #TwoPointSixChallenge we plan to release 26 free download/pay as much as you can afford Ep or albums on our Bandcamp page over the coming weeks. 100% income being donated to charities. All proceeds from this EP go to Unicef in Yemen.
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Hybernation > Fragile Times
Contribution of Hybernation track 'Fragile Times' written in 2012 but unreleased until 2020. Made from three samples: a Mogwai Guitar twang, Björk rolling her R's and the last 10 seconds of Elbow's first album.
ISOLATION AND REJECTION is a multi-volume compilation of rejected sounds, in support of Wigan-based charity The Brick.
From small ideas and a little hope come rejection, loss and disappointment. But we won’t let you down – you are safe here.
ISOLATION AND REJECTION was born out of thinking about what happened to all the tracks that didn’t make it onto those fancy compilations, and is now turning into an ongoing project to collect, collate and promote rejected sounds. This is not an isolation project – it’s a rejection project.All income raised will go to The Brick in Wigan – a fantastic charity on the front line of supporting those most in need, seeking to address the inequalities across our country exacerbated by COVID-19, but there all along.
Review
Aural Aggravation - 'Hybernation’s nine-minute ‘Fragile Times’ is a perfect summary of everything: so fragile and soft as to be barely-present, it’s a mist-like ambient piece that’s impossible to place your hands on it, much less pin it down, and that wisp-like intangibility, that vague ephemerality is the essence of the collective mind right now.'
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Bowditch > Listlessness
Listlessness is the second track in a series exploring sample manipulation using granular synthesis. The original sample comes from the stem of an old unreleased USRNM track from 2008 and is processed using a Max For Live patch in Ableton Live. MIDI data was gathered from the stem using the Convert Melody to MIDI function and used to play back the sample. Other automation was drawn in and edited to suit. GRM Spaces and on board Ableton Effects were also applied.
The ideas have been lingering in my mind for some time but the Covid19 lockdown has afforded me the time and space to work on them, looking inward, looking outward.
The pots of pigment belong to artist Ruth Philo.
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Bowditch > Relentlessness
Restlessness is the first track in a series exploring sample manipulation using granular synthesis. The original sample comes from the stem of an old unreleased USRNM track from 2008 and is processed using a Max For Live patch in Ableton Live. MIDI data was gathered from the stem using the Convert Melody to MIDI function and used to play back the sample. Other automation was drawn in and edited to suit. GRM Spaces and on board Ableton Effects were also applied.
The ideas have been lingering in my mind for some time but the Covid19 lockdown has afforded me the time and space to work on them, looking inward, looking outward.
The pots of pigment belong to artist Ruth Philo.
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Furrows > A Thin Veneer
A 5"CDr with applied decal housed in a cover individually cut by Nick Dawson, with two inserts and artwork, all made from recycled card stock and hand assembled by Stuart Bowditch. Released by Courier.
Improvised and recorded in The Loft, Southend, Essex between August 2017 and December 2018 by Stuart Bowditch and Nick Dawson.Tools used were Moog Sub Phatty, Digitech Freqout, Boss ME70, TC Electronics HOF, MXR Carbon Copy, Red Panda Tensor, Arturia Minibrute, Squier Jazzmaster, iPad mini, Teenage Engineering OP1, Samplr, Animoog, Meris Ottobit, Landscape FM Stereo Field, Maschine, Ableton Live, Marble Run, in utero heartbeat.
Tracklisting
1. Soon We'll Be Outmoded
2. Untethered
3. Once Planted Never Moved
4. Watching It Burn
5. I'mpossible
6. Lag
7. The Disappearance Of The Things We Loved
8. Salve
9. A Thin Veneer of Civilised ModernityReviews
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Bowditch > Once The German Ocean
The first in a series of super limited field recording releases on Courier. Cassette (edition of 10) and download.
Field recordings on this album were made by Stuart Bowditch on five consecutive days (19th - 23rd September 2017) at the same location in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, during a week long residency at Aldeburgh Beach Lookout for the We Are The Weather project with Ruth Philo.Image 'Sea Memory' by Ruth Philo. Each cassette contains a unique segment of the painting. Thanks to Caroline Wiseman and Amanda Houchen.
Tracklisting
1.Tuesday
2.Wednesday
3.Thursday
4.Friday
5.Saturday
6.Everyday
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Bowditch > Alchemy 4
Limited edition of 50 mini CDr's housed in a bespoke arigato pack made from recycled card stock and cut by Nick Dawson. Also included in each pack is a unique 'artwork' made from road cone reflector material, two inserts and a Courier sticker.
Alchemy 4 was created for the exhibition of the same name which took place in the old Cooperative Bank in Colchester, Essex 23rd April and 10th May 2014, curated by Slack Space. The work is made entirely of sounds found in the 30 room building and was installed as a loop playing on an in-car DVD player displaying subtitles describing the sounds heard.
Tracklisting
1. Fire Alarm Bell
2. Cooperative
3. Transaction
4. Waiting
5. OfficesReview
'Alchemy 4 by Bowditch is a series of pieces created for an exhibition in Colchester, Essex. Comprising entirely of sounds found in one particular building, Alchemy 4 is a work that conveys an alienating sense of place. Listen for the way that the sound of fire alarm bells, typically used in an entirely practical purpose, has been turned on its head in an oddly beautiful way' - Norman Records
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Bowditch > Belongings
Limited edition (20) mini CD in a bespoke arigato pack with two inserts, a sticker and a decal on the disc. Released on Courier.
For around a year after Stuart Bowditch moved to London in November of 2008 he worked on a new body of work which came to be released as 'E2 & E8' on Cotton Goods in 2010. During this time a few things were left, stored, kept at the space where he was staying, ambienttv. For a few days he sampled these objects that all belonged to others and made this small collection of tracks.
Ensuing demo submissions were unsuccessful, the files stored on a hard drive and interest in the project buried under a pile of new ideas. However, whilst moving house in 2017 a CD marked 'Belongings' fell out of a pile of discs and the project remembered again. A search among hard drives revealed that although a word doc with the track names remained, no audio or list of objects could be found.
The audio from the CD has been mastered by Ed Rome at Slam Door Studios and presented here with images of belongings found at his current place of residence belonging to Joe and Charlotte. The shelf was made by Jon Kipps.
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Bowditch > Southend Objectified
Pro-duplicated yellow cassette (Edition of 60) with full colour cover and printed labels on Fractal Meat Cuts.
"This collection of tracks comes at a critical and volatile time in both personal and creative aspects of my life. I needed to push things into a new direction as I was unhappy with my previous processes and set up. Reliance on the familiar was taking hold and I needed to get more unpredictability and reactivity into making and performing. So I dropped my old Hybernation alias in favour of my name, found some different tools and got to work on objects and recordings from my home town."
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Bowditch > 12 Inch Polycarbonate Disc
12" Polycarbonate Disc forms part of Stuart's ongoing investigations into the resonant frequencies of objects. Some works are presented as installations (Resonants 2, UNderstated [both 2013], TAP Gallery Wall, PolyphonicX [both 2015]) where an array of electronics is attached to enable the objects to play the sounds of themselves. Some works have taken this a step further, most notably in collaboration with Jon Kipps (Proscenium [2014], The Outsider, Monument [both 2015] where the sound of a Kipps' sculpture is used as a feed for an improvised live performance. In this new work, the resonant frequency of a blank polycarbonate 12" disc was sampled and used to create a musical composition which was then lathe cut back onto one side of the blank disc.
1. 12" Polycarbonate Disc
2. 12" Polycarbonate Disc (source)
Edition of 10
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Various Artists > 100616
A single track Suki (made from a 6 second sample of a 19 year old deaf cat owned by Jilly and Walter Reid) featured on Home Normal's 100616 compilation accompanying an event at the London Field's Brewery, Hackney.
Between January and June of 2016, Home Normal hosted a series of shows featuring Clem Leek, Anna Rose Carter, The Sly and Unseen, Folk Reels, Directorsound, Stefano Guzzetti with Ensemble, Danny Norbury, Ian Hawgood, Christoph Berg, ISAN, A New Line (Related), Paco Sala, and R Elizabeth. Our final London show before we moved to Warsaw was held on the 10th of June 2016 in what proved to be a beautiful final night in London with our dear friends ASUNA, Stijn Hüwels, Dudal, James Murray, Hybernation.
To help fund the shows and help support the ongoing costs of running a label, artists very kindly created exclusive work for nicely minimal handmade CD(R)’s in very limited edition which we would give away on the night or sell before or after the shows. This has proved to be an invaluable support for the label, and we are thrilled to present the final of three CD(R)’s from our little season of shows.
The limited edition CD(R) comes with handmade hand printed mulberry paper insert and an original vintage large format negative or photograph. This has been made exclusive to Norman Records (UK) and P*Dis (Japan).
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Various Artists > BRINK
Contribution of 2 x 1 minute tracks called Life and Death, made from 6 second sample of Suki, a 19 year old deaf cat owned by Jilly and Walter Reid, released by ATTN Magazine.
Presented on an engraved wooden USB stick containing the lossless version of BRINK: 156 one-minute tracks on the themes of "LIFE" and "DEATH". Housed in paper bag, along with a unique drawing/painting and personal "thank you" note.
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Bowditch / Kipps > Proscenium
A 20+ minute improvised track made from a live feed of Jon Kipps' sculpture 'Proscenium' and presented as a limited edition of 60 tapes all housed in unique hand made sculptures by Kipps.
In May 2014 Kipps had a solo show in the display window spaces of Camden Peoples’ Theatre. The Exhibition’s title ‘Proscenium’ referred to the part of a theatre in front of the stage and as an extension of the exhibition Kipps invited Bowditch to collaborate on a performance inside the theatre space itself.
Using a set up of contact mics and transducers, Bowditch managed to find a sound unique to one of Kipps' sculptures. With no need for speakers, the vibrating sculpture produced an audible note, which Bowditch then used as the sole sound source for a responsive performance. The sculpture was static and centre stage, with Bowditch performing at the side. By accompanying the sculpture with a soundscape they created a deeper, more contemplative relationship between the audience, the artwork and the sound.
The Proscenium cassette (with download code) features a recording of this performance and includes B-side remixes by Gagarin, John Hannon and Wil Bolton.
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Hybernation > Object Studies - Metal
Album of 7 tracks all made from metallic objects presented on 5" CD housed in a selection of 3 different covers with etched and hand printed covers (printed by Lee Sullivan on the Intaglio Press used to create track 2).
'Stuart has been recording and sampling objects since the start of his Hybernation project in 1999, after becoming tired of familiar electronic sounds, plug-ins and presets. Early tracks, such as on Snow Cover (Rednetic Recordings) and Interduvet Yarns (both released in 2007) used objects to create beats and rhythms, that as a drummer, Stuart could not recreate using just four limbs. As he delved further exploring the resonant tones of objects, these increasingly became melodic and textural components. This can first be heard on tracks from 'E2 & E8' (Cotton Goods, 2010) where Stuart combined them with location-based recordings, and on 'Thirty' (FBox Records, 2012) a recording of a live performance using 30 donated objects.
Object Studies takes this a step further by using just one object to create each track. Sounds produced by objects are usually a by-product of their usage, so by concentrating and reducing them down to a resonant form tiny characteristics can be discovered. Stuart uses these to form a musical, harmonic response, turning the sound into something more purposeful and accessible. In this first collection, all of the sounds are made from metallic objects or components: Bridge 20 over the Lee Navigation, an Intaglio Press 'played' by Lee Sullivan, and earing belonging to Lucia H Chung, a Ring Bolt found at Landguard Fort, Cymbals player by Year 5 pupils at Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School (Westcliff-on-Sea), a harmonic of G played on a mandolin by Ed Rome, and wind blowing over a Shoebury Railing.'
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Hybernation > The Old Waterworks
5 tracks made from found objects presented on a limited edition (100) mini CD attached to a numbered postcard.
'Each song is made solely from the sounds of one object. The objects were found and recorded in the studios of artists based at TAP in Southend late one night when no one was there. The cover photograph was taken on a 1950's Linhoff Technika MkIII 5x4 medium format plate camera.'
1. Fluorescent Tube
2. Sankey's Stove
3. Watkins' Lamp
4. Apps' Mannequin
5. Frampton's Mug
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Hybernation > Thirty
A thirty minute track made from thirty donated objects in 30 days and performed live at Recluse @ The Flea Pit, Hackney on 5th December 2009. Presented on a 5" CD which is housed in a folded poster designed by James English and released on FBox Recordings.
'Thirty is a collaborative and experimental sound work, between artist Stuart Bowditch (Hybernation) and the Recluse Experimental event.
Recluse is a monthly event dedicated to divergent live performers who traverse the musical tightropes between the analogue and the digital, the past and the present. Specialising in showcasing performers too idiosyncratic to fit into any one genre, Recluse events offer performers and the audience with an open-minded event characterised by stylistic variation and live vitality.
The three organisers of Recluse, Katie English, James English, and Alex Monk, each chose 10 random objects, some musical, some non-musical, and took them to the Recluse event on 5th November 2009. Stuart then had 30 days to create a 30 minute sound piece using only these objects, which he performed at the next scheduled event on 5th December. Both events took place at the Flea Pit on Columbia Road, East London.
Thirty donated objects:
Tesco's carrier bag, small paper bag, shaker, wooden flute/recorder, piece of meccano, rubber band, pencil, walkman, cassette of the Pixies and case, scissors, lightbulb, small tray, spoon, woodblock, toy car, broken handle, clock mechanism, spool, piece of wood, cardboard roll, tuning fork, candle, hand drum, bolt, ruler, Jews harp, shell, bell, plastic roller.'
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Hybernation > E2 & E8
8 track album inspired by field recordings made in the E2 & E8 postcode of East London in 2008/9, released by Cotton Goods and presented on a 5" CDr housed in a bespoke hand assembled cover made from recycled materials and featuring a fold out map of the area text and images relating to the body of work. Edition of 100.
Tracklisting
1. Lock 7
2. Columbia Road
3. Haggerston Park
4. E2
5. Cars on the 7th Floor
6. A London Field
7. Washing Machine vs Dishwasher
8. A Forgotten PatchCircle Mix
'The premise of the Circle Mix is to end up where you began, so I take you on a journey around the E2 & E8 postcodes of East London, taking in all the locations where I made the field recordings which inspired the tracks on the new album.
In walking the route (70 minutes) you also pass the houses of several other musicians that live in the neighbourhood, so some of their work has also been incorporated into the mix.
Many thanks to all involved: Craig at Cotton Goods, ambient.space, Home Normal, Second Language, FBox Records, Paul at the Flea Pit, Katie, Mark, Antony, Ollie and Ben at Arctic Circle.'