Clay Pipe will be at the Groovy Record Fayre

 

Clay Pipe will be at Jonny Trunks Groovy Record Fayre on the 2nd November at The Mildmay Club, London,  N16. Lots of hard to find back stock, as well as new releases, badges etc. Free entry from 10am. Hope to see you there.

The Hardy Tree - All the Hours

 

The Hardy Tree 

All the Hours

Release 6th Sept 2024

Labels copies Sold Out

In stock: Resident

The Hardy Tree, the musical project of Frances Castle, founder of the acclaimed Clay Pipe Music label, is pleased to announce the release of All the Hours as part of the Clay Pipe Mini CD series. This 20-minute composition beautifully captures the passage of a day, from dawn to dusk.

All the Hours was initially composed for a live performance at The Betsey Trotwood pub in London last February. The piece serves as the soundtrack to a slow-moving animation inspired by the cover art of The Hardy Tree’s previous album, Common Grounds. It takes listeners on a journey from night to day and back again, unfolding through delicate looped woodwinds and melodic soundscapes. The music was created using an Elektron Syntakt and an Elektron Digitakt, and the limitations and constraints of the instruments helped define the sound of the music.

Frances will be performing “All the Hours” on September 14th, 2024 at The Lexington on Pentonville Road in London, supporting Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman. There will be CDs for sale at the event. Tickets.

Clay Pipe Music · All The H

ours - Radio Edit

Vinyl Delays

If you preordered the second pressing of David Boulters St Ann's or Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman's Ash Grey And The Gull Glides On there has been a delay in the records reaching us. We now hope to start shipping them in the second week of September. 

If you are attending any of Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman's shows in the next month they will have a small amount of records with them. They are all we have right now.

If you ordered a CD, they will ship in time for release.

 

Andrew Wasylyk | Tommy Perman tour dates. On 12/09 they will be joined by Clay Pipe artists Zyggurat in Birmingham and by The Hardy Tree in London on the 14/09 Tickets: thegullglideson.co.uk
 

Andrew Wasylyk | Tommy Perman 'Ash Grey And The Gull Glides On'

Andrew Wasylyk | Tommy Perman 

'Ash Grey And The Gull Glides On'

LP/CD/DL

Pre-orders now open:

Greedbag - Orange vinyl with print

Bandcamp (and all good record shops) - Orange vinyl

Monorail - Ash grey vinyl with booklet

Assai - Ash grey vinyl with booklet

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‘Ash Grey And The Gull Glides On’ is the new album by Scottish composers Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman. The pair have orbited each others worlds for a number of years through audio-visual collaborations spanning record releases, films and sound installations. Wasylyk’s cinematic compositions have been nominatedfor the Scottish Album of the Year Award and been awarded BBC Radio 6 Music’s Gideon Coe’s Album of the Year. He has collaborated with former National Poet for Scotland, Liz Lochhead, and written soundtracks for Radio 4. Perman’s work as a musician and DJ has taken him across the world, with numerous record releases under his own name and with experimental group/arts collective FOUND, alongside visual works at the Sydney Opera House and National Museum of Scotland.

 ‘Ash Grey And The Gull Glides On’ is the pair’s first collaborative album as a duo. The record is rooted in Perman's ambient-acid-house grooves and multi-textural percussion built from sampling the knocks, clangs and creaks of Wasylyk’s upright piano. These are woven through a palette of drum machines, rolling transcendental piano motifs, fluttering synthesisers, saxophones swells and hymnal choral vocals.

Approaching the meditative ten-song collection, Tommy posted Andrew three envelopes containing ‘Recording Instructions’, ‘Tempo Cards’ and ‘Chord Cards’. Nodding towards the Fluxus instructions of Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit and the environmental cues of Perman and Wasylyk’s collaboration on Sing the Gloaming (‘If it’s wet outside: 100bpm. If it’s dry outside: 70bpm’) the cards inspired exploration and improvisations which were then cut up and collaged.

The spirit of this project channels through ‘Communal Imagination’ as Wasylyk’s trademark airy piano chords float above Perman’s juddering rhythms, conjuring a Balaeric abstraction of Basil Kirchin. The group brass and stuttering echoes of ‘Root Grow Emerge’ are accompanied by field recordings of Tommy’s children playing and reciting cyclical chants. ‘Blessing Of The Banners’ slowly unspools through spiritual cinematic jazz patterns into a hymn of hope, whilst ‘Spec Of Dust Becomes A Beam’ ignites into an expansive, kosmiche four-to-the-floor crescendo.

A sense of warmth, openness and curiosity floods through ‘Ash Grey And The Gull Glides On’. A document of forward-thinking artistic union from a pair at the height of their imaginations, perched over the Tay estuary.

“So leave us as you found us, walk with us or around us, you might find nothing to see here, but come tomorrow we’ll still be here,” warmly warns Aidan Moffat (Arab Strap) over ascending chords on the album’s closing track ‘Be the Hammer’: a mantra of quiet defiance from idiosyncratic composers in full flight. Liminal, illuminating ideas landing where melody meets rhythm: ‘Ash Grey And The Gull Glides On’ is a place where community, love and goodness prevail.

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The orange vinyl is available directly from Clay Pipe through Greedbag & Bandcamp and also from all good record shops. If you order through Greedbag you will get a free print by Frances Castle. There are enamel badges and our usual CD/LP/Badge bundle through both Greedbag and Bandcamp. CDs available across the board.

Monorail in Glasgow and Assai in Dundee have limited signed 'Ash Grey' editions that each come with a different booklet of Tommy Permans artwork. Monorail's book showcases stills from the videos Tommy has done for this project, and Assai's displays his graphics for the tour posters.

All vinyl copies come with a Bandcamp download code in the sleeve.

 

 

 

 

 

Video's by Tommy Perman

 

 

David Boulter - St Ann's

 

 

David Boulter - St Ann's

LP/CD/DL + Enamel badge

500 hand numbered purple vinyl copies

SOLD OUT

Release 7th June 2024

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Clay Pipe is pleased to welcome back the Tinderstick’s keyboard player David Boulter to the label.

Since his Yarmouth LP in 2020, and the spoken word-based Lovers Walk the following year, Boulter has concentrated on his soundtrack work. He has produced scores for documentary maker Volkan Üce’s Displaced – and Tinnitus, a visually striking film by Brazilian director Gregorio Graziosi. He has also released a series of lathe-cuts featuring his soundtrack work, and the Factory Mini CD and Twelve Bells for Libuše flexi-disc single on Clay Pipe.

St Ann’s, is a tribute to the council estate, on the edge of Nottingham city centre that defined Boulter’s formative years:

“I was born in the old St Ann’s. Famously documented in the late 60s as some of the poorest social housing in England. Crumbling, cramped, and full of damp. We had a shared toilet in the backyard and no bathroom, some of the houses were without hot water, it was freezing cold in winter. Everything seemed black and white.”

By the late 1960s, St. Ann's, like many other city centre areas, had become run down and was earmarked by the council for slum clearance. 340 acres were bulldozed and 30,000 people including David's family were compulsorily uprooted. In 1970 the Victorian streets were replaced with a Radburn-style estate. 

 “We moved to the new St Ann’s when I was six. There were two indoor toilets! A bathroom with a shiny white ceramic bath that you could fill whenever you wanted. Central heating, and a small garden at the front and back of the house. We had our own shed, and a cherry blossom tree just over the fence. Everything came into colour.”

Subtle use of guitar, double bass, vibraphone, tenor recorder and field recordings conjure up the old streets of cobble and slate, damp brickwork and grey skies, juxtaposing the newer post-1960s world of pebble dash and green grass, fresh air and a brighter future.

“After we moved to the new house, I still went to the old Victorian school, until it was demolished about a year later. It was very strange to walk to school through all the old houses and streets while they were being torn apart.”

This is a record full of personal memories, but it also tells the tale of Britain’s inner cities and their renewal in the 60s and 70s.

“At the end of 2022, my Mum could no longer live alone in our house. I spent Christmas packing belongings and emptying it, what to keep, what not to keep? The emotions and memories were intense. There was still the same carpet on the stairs that my Dad had put down when we’d moved in. 

I’d already started to make some music that I knew had something to do with Nottingham, and the streets I’d spent my childhood wandering. When I arrived back home in Prague, the feelings poured into the music.

I grew up in St Ann’s and lived around the area until I left for London when I was 25. This LP is a celebration of a community, streets that still hold a special place in my heart. I will always be from St Ann’s and St Ann’s will always be a part of me.“

 

 

A 'Corporation Oaks' enamel badge will be available to buy, and included with the CD/LP bundle.

Andrew Wasylyk | Tommy Perman. Communal Imagination.

 

 Download: Bandcamp | Boomkat | Qobuz Stream:  Apple Music | Spotify |  YouTube

 

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'Communal Imagination’ is the new single by Scottish composers Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman. The pair have orbited each other's worlds for a number of years through audio-visual collaborations spanning record releases, films and sound installations. With their first collaborative album as a duo expected later in the year on Clay Pipe Music, the spirit of the project channels through on ‘Communal Imagination’. Wasylyk’s trademark searching piano chords float above Perman’s distinct juddering rhythms, conjuring a Balaeric abstraction of Basil Kirchin. Elsewhere, saxophones and choral vocals climb above fluttering Juno synths in a
unifying chorus.

UK Tour, 2024

Tickets on sale 10am, Friday 19 April:
www.thegullglideson.co.uk

04 Aug - Fringe By The Sea, North Berwick
29 Aug - Playhouse, Montrose
06 Sept - The Glad Cafe, Glasgow
07 Sept - Chaplaincy Centre, Dundee
08 Sept - The Blue Lamp, Aberdeen
10 Sept - Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds
11 Sept - Gullivers, Manchester
12 Sept - Hare & Hounds, Birmingham
13 Sept - The Crofter's Rights, Bristol
14 Sept - The Lexington, London
15 Sept - Real Magic Books, Wendover
17 Sept - The Cumberland Arms, Newcastle
18 Sept - Kazimiere Stockroom, Liverpool
19 Sept - Ilkley Vaults, Ilkley, West Yorkshire
20 Sept - Summerhall, Edinburgh 

    

Video by Tommy Perman

Garden Gate - Magic Lantern

 

 

 CDs and digital from BANDCAMP or GREEDBAG 

Still some Vinyl at: HHV

 Bandcamp download code in LP sleeve

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Vinyl copies with a limited holographic sticker are still available for vistors to the Clay Pipe studio shop London E3 2JQ. Drop me a line first if you are planning a vist.

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Clay Pipe is pleased to introduce Garden Gate, the musical project of North Country, New York-based artist Timmi Meskers. 

After her time with Brown Recluse, a bittersweet psych-pop sextet, and White Candles, a Radiophonic Workshop-inspired electronic duo, Meskers merged the qualities of both groups into a new project and the first Garden Gate single, Houses, appeared in 2016 on Good Behavior Records. Following this, came a clutch of acclaimed releases on labels such as Sunstone and Library of the Occult, notably The Dark Harvest LP (which received a 5-star review in Shindig) and the sought-after 2021 LP, Blood Mansion, an original score for a conceptual horror film.

Magic Lantern is a collection of melancholy yet hopeful neoclassical library pieces with analogue electronic elements that originally soundtracked Audible Originals’ Strange Company audiobook. 

Here, Timmi explains how the project came about:

“The first glimmer of Magic Lantern flickered over the kitchen sink, if memory serves. I was cleaning up with a dear friend, author Roan Parrish, and we were discussing how we could collaborate creatively. Our first idea was that she would share prose to inspire my themes, and inversely, I would share a few original themes to inspire her writing. Before we knew it, what started as a handful of stories and songs, damp with soap suds, ended up becoming a fully scored audiobook anthology for Audible Originals called Strange Company.

As a long-time fan of soundtracks and library music, I was thrilled by the opportunity to see just how much emotion I could compress into the brief connecting links that would augment a furtive kiss, a painful psychic vision, or a breeze across the bones of a scorched landscape.

Midway through the recording process, my long-term relationship broke down, and Roan let me set up a field studio in her home. I found myself grasping at any beauty I could find in the hope that it would spill into the music. Several themes from an unrealised Garden Gate album about the life of Dion Fortune also found their way in (notably, the title track), and the score became a bit more personal than initially charted. In the doomed outsiders of Roan’s gorgeously creeping prose, it was hard not to see aspects of my own life, and I found catharsis and healing in the creation of the music that soundtracked her characters' lives.” 

Timmi Meskers 2024