DOWNLOAD: Lake Radio - Delta

LAKE R▲DIO
Delta
DOWNLOAD

Another excellent EP from this somewhat antagonistic artist who first rose to infamy by exiling himself right out of the Witch House scene, proclaiming himself Witch-House-by-Design and immediately inviting upon himself the wrath of the gatekeepers looming large over the scene in certain areas. There's little occult cryptology at work in this incarnation of 19 year old Illinois based Caden Moore's LAKE R▲DIO, leaving the genre-baiting a distance behind him as he concentrates instead on producing an unhurried but kinetic form of bucolic electronica that I have been posting a lot of recently. The four tracks in this Ep echoes the present-moment, shared-consciousness reminiscence of Vondelpark or Evenings styles of phosphorescent sundown slow-burn electronica, and it's a sound that I haven't been able to get enough of late, especially with the light drawing out further into the night time. Still got clap beats though, ya dig.

LAKE R▲DIO - Planet Earth About To Be Recycled

LAKE R▲DIO
Planet Earth About To Be Recycled

19 year old Caden Moore just released his first full album as LAKE R▲DIO; after two pretty awesome eps the guy is doing alright for someone not yet out of his teens, and with Planet Earth About To Be Recycled he's set himself up as someone to keep your ears pricked on. His sound is based in the witch house domain, but is not restricted to anything in particular at all, much like Balam Acab; there's a lightness and looseness that the more claustrophobic and bleak end of the genre would balk at. That's not to say there's no sinister bent to his work, with distorted, filtered samples from grainy VHS recordings, muffled cassette tapes, and crackly vinyl the music has both a creepy super-8 thriller edginess that's bound together with an analogue warmth from the source material. It's not just the tones that carry the idea of the project either, across these 15 tracks is a huge range of musical twists and electronic references - the Orbital-esque nightdrive pulse and flicker of Taps, the hypnagogic swirl of VHS Memory that builds a mesh of Rephlex acid skittering into it's finale. If there's anythign that kills the mood a little it's that each of the tracks is so short, there isn't quite enough space to really get a feel of the atmospheres for each idea laid out, but it's nothing that repeat listens couldn't remedy, to a point - I'm a big fan of repetition and distance in music and all these tracks could easily add at least two minutes to work out their themes and bring them to more deserving and nuanced conclusions than the time-out portcullis that slams down on them.  Not a complaint that other people would necessarily share, so feel free to strike it from the record if it suits.

Download the album from $1 from his Bandcamp, or for free if you do it track by track from his Last.fm

Here's VCR Operation to whet your appetite:


 

Witch Trial - Witch House Net Label

As far as I can tell Witch Trial is the first dedicated netlabel for the Witch House scene; although most artists operating within the genre have been putting out free stuff, this is the first label to officially put full free releases out for them.  It put it's first release up three weeks ago in LAKE R▲DIO's Blair Ep, followed by H∆UNT3D HOUS3 and GuMMy†Be▲R!

How well received this will be within the community remains to be seen. The high walled Witch House group on Last.FM has already denied these three artists the right for inclusion within the group.  Up until now the two leaders of that group have been acting as gatekeepers into this world, but now it's all out there in the public domain with anyone being able to get into the bands and aspiring artists able to freely mix their own tastes into the signatory sounds of the genre. Cross-pollination is always needed for survival, with anything (just ask Simon Reynolds!).  Of these three GuMMy†Be▲R! are my choice pick; there's something tangibly cankerous and dread about the depths they drag their samples down to and the ghostly airless spaces they leave them hanging in.

The cloaked seclusion of Witch House has been removed, forcibly, and now the light is fully upon it!

http://witchtrial.tumblr.com/