Really thrilled with the design of the new digital KOMU store now and just to celebrate this, we’ve got the digital pre-orders up for The Whalers Collective. The CD pre-orders will be up in about a month, with release not due until mid-April right now.

The Whalers Collective is:

Gareth Davis - bass and contrabass clarinet 

Ian Hawgood - gamelan, double bass, tape manipulation, reels, mixing

Félicia Atkinson - ukelele, vocals 

Ryo Nakata - guitar 

Rie Mitsutake - vocals 

Wonderfully mastered by the very talented John Twells at Type, and featuring beautiful artwork by Buna, we are really thrilled to finally have this long overdue album ready for release soon. It has been a few years since Gareth and I came together to start this project, with the initial outtakes appearing on our ridiculously quick sell-out 10” on Champion Version back at the end of 2011, ‘Night Shots’.

Please check out the newly designed Bandcamp site here: http://komu.bandcamp.com/

Just a quick bit of awesome news:

Ben and I have finally confirmed that we will be releasing the first album in our ten part series under Wraith vs Wrath in the next month on KOMU! We had planned to release on Home Normal, but we decided that given how we’d like to do this super-limited and on the sly, KOMU was a better fit :) Currently being mastered by the might James Plotkin, ‘Kex-Lux’ will be out in about a month in an edition of just 250 plus digital. More to follow :)

I’m thrilled to announce that a few projects are almost ready for release in the first half of 2013:

First of all The Whalers Collective (myself, Gareth Davis, Felicia Atkinson, Rie Mitsutake and Ryo Nakata) debut ‘Nantucket’, will be out in the next few months and is completely finished. The whole album was pre-mastered on reels and then finalised by John Twells. With amazing cover art by our mate Buna, we can’t wait.

Next up, the debut from Ghosts In The Alleys (Of Your Heart), titled ‘During The Minority’ has just been completed and is currently being expertly mastered by James Plotkin. Ghosts In The Alleys is a duo of Brian Green and myself (Ian Hawgood), and is a thunderous wall of noise, distortion and beautiful organic instruments and arrangements. Brian is a master at creating beautiful pieces from tonally minimal instruments. From singing bowl to various bowed objects, we’ve mixed this all in with my array of stomp boxes, tape loops, violin and rather noisy guitar to create something rather unearthly and bold. Please see the art below featuring photography by Brian and the beautiful model Sierra Cashion.

Next up, James has also just finished mastering the debut from Lantscap (Ian Hawgood + Warren Kroll (Forrest)). Warren and I have known each other for a number of years now, and the album has taken a serious amount of time to complete and finalise. We are thrilled with the album which incorporates a lot of guitar, keyboard, vocals and laden with stomp box heaven (as is our wont). This will be out on one of my favourite labels ever…Infraction, on vinyl at some point this year. 

Finally, Christopher Hipgrave and I started a project around the time he released ‘Day’ on Home Normal. A couple of years after this was rolling we invited my dear friend Jason Corder (offthesky) along to join the group. About a year after that we then invited Ben Chatwin (Talvihorros), Antony Harrison (Konntinent), Rie Mitsutake (Miko) and Erik Schoster (He Can Jog) along for the ride…and Tiny Isles was finally formed. The debut ‘The Long Seasoned Sleep’ is a genuinely breathtaking album of vibraphone, synths, noisy noise, beats, beautiful vocals (when Rie sings…dodgy vocals when I sing!) and pads. It has taken a serious amount of time as with all projects to fine-tune and is currently being mastered by Taylor Deupree.

On one last note for now, I have received a lot of emails about the new Black Elk album, ‘Anchor’. The truth is I got itchy hands and ears, and just felt the album wasn’t quite ready from my end. I brought it right back and it has now be overhauled and is being reworked and reformed by Tim and I, with the aim being to release this in November of this year. Whilst our debut ‘Sparks’ garnered a great deal of wonderful attention at the end of year press review thingys, ‘Anchor’ is more of a complete vision now and is a record (whilst not yet finished) which will personally be a high-point in our musical journeys. Thank you.

p.s. There will be an update on Wolven (the Wolfskin reworking I made with Aaron Martin and feat. bvdub (an entire second disc!), Dag Rosenquist, Spheruleus, y0t0, Pillowdiver, Hakobune), Rion (w/ Ryo Nakata) and Wraith vs Wrath (w/ Ben Jones) as soon as I know. Thanks.

Reviews don’t get too much better than this…incredibly humbled that Are The Hills Going To March Off named The Shattered Light as their album of 2012: 

‘Packaged as six tracks but more accurately one long, morphing composition, Ian Hawgood’s The Shattered Light is the kind of ambient that makes all conventional music look like it hasn’t set its priorities straight. This is an album that (forgive what sounds like a godforsaken hyperbole) stirs deep parts of the soul that are only touched by the likes of Tarkovsky, Bergman, bits of Bresson and maybe some Antony & the Johnsons. Enough romanticizing though: Hawgood layers extensive, glacier-sized stretches of organ and guitar drone, crackling waves of white noise, and distant, ghostly snatches of melody to form a piece of music that peaks, crests, contorts, wavers in the wind, and lounges like a heavy arctic landscape of sound. Basically, it’s the classic ingredients of ambient combined with impeccable artistry and shaped into a mounting narrative that climaxes on the transcendent title track before self-destructing into a thin, gravelly fade-out, the preceding drones of the album recontextualized as a bit-crushed minefield. I’ve returned to this sublime arcing accomplishment multiple times now, and it’s never failed to transport my mind somewhere else.’

http://arethehillsgoingtomarchoff.blogspot.jp/2013/01/my-favorite-albums-of-2012.html