LIMITED MAIL ORDER ONLY RELEASE OF 100 OF THE NEW STYLUS ALBUM

‘Remixing: The Last Seaweed Collecting Hut At Freshwater West’

The new STYLUS CD album ‘Last Night Before The Colour’ is a collaboration with West Country artist NATHAN SWENSON is now available by Mail-Order

You can purchase the album by paying £10 by Paypal to the Paypal Account sales@talbot.force9.co.uk or alternatively sending a £10 cheque made payable to Ochre Records and send it to PO Box 155, Cheltenham, Glos, GL51 0YS.....

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This is Dafydd’s tenth Stylus album and the third release on his STYLUS RECORDING COMPANY label.  Please read on to find out more about Nathan Swenson.Dafydd takes up the story: ....

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I was introduced to the work of Nathan Swenson by my label manager. He suggested and came up with the idea that I write some music whilst studying this one piece of art. I agreed. What do I see in the painting. It evokes feelings to me of desolation and isolation. It has been an intriguing and challenging project. I have never met Nathan Swenson. There is no need to. I think all I have to say to him is here, in the music.....

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Stylus has had nine other albums released to date. Four of them have appeared on the Ochre Records label, ‘The Last Seaweed Collecting Hut At Freshwater West’, ‘Skomargraph’, ‘Archif:01’ and ‘Exposition’ (an album of Stylus recordings re-mixed by Experimental Audio Research (Spaceman 3’s Sonic Boom). Whilst ‘Mynydd Preseli’ was released on Mar//ino Records, ‘Pedwar’ on Fourth Dimension and ‘Eisteddfod’ on Irrational Arts. The most recent ‘Listen, Time Passes’ (2006) and ‘N.T.B’ (2008) were both realeased on Dafydd’s own Stylus Recording Company label.....

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The first three STYLUS albums formed part of a Pembrokeshire influenced trilogy. The albums influences take in the last remaining seaweed collecting hut at Freshwater West, Skomer Island and the Preseli Mountains.....

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The album ‘Mynydd Presli’ gained a rave review from Stewart Lee in The Sunday Times who ended, ‘Morgan’s music demands to be heard’. The Stylus debut album ‘The Last Seaweed Collecting Hut At Freshwater West’ was likened by the same reviewer to 1997’s ‘Dutch Harbor’ release by the Boxhead Ensemble. Whilst Edwin Pouncey in The Wire likened it to that of Lamonte Young stating the music was ‘moving and empathetic’. All albums received healthy airplay on John Peel’s BBC Radio One Show.....
The last album ‘Listen, Time Passes’ also released on the SRC, was released in December 2006. Tom Ridge in The Wire stated about the ‘Wooden Milk’ trilogy of tracks that ‘the sounds are alternately affecting and strangely menacing, with the original narration preying to a series of viral sonic disturbances. It sounds torn between being an affectionate nod to Morgan's own heritage and a playful deconstruction of it’. The Fold stated “For all it's downplayed nature, this is one of the best Stylus releases to date”.....

The last STYLUS album released last year in 2008‘N T B’ was written and inspired by the Newport Transporter Bridge which was completed in 1906 and is one of only eight transporter bridges left standing in the world today. The album features recordings of crossings made by Dafydd which formed the backing tracks.....

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The music of STYLUS has in many reviews been likened to that created by POPUL VUH who provided many a soundtrack to the films of WERNER HERZOG. Dafydd agrees that Florian Fricke has been an influence in the writing and recording for Stylus.....

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NATHAN SWENSON....

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Nathan Swenson studied in Stroud and is now based in Gloucester. He has exhibited locally for a number of years but it wasn’t until his first critically acclaimed month long ‘solo’ exhibition at Gloucester Guildhall in 2008 that brought Nathan to attention and to the forefront as one of the South West’s most exciting new art discoveries. For Nathan art is a language. With a bit of time he believes that everyone can begin to understand it and can be affected by its content and he wants his audience to become involved with his work. Expressing his ideas about the human condition and the emotions through painting, sculpture, installation and poems, his images exist in semi-abstract ambiguity. If the viewer is willing to look closely more information is revealed. The works aims right at the heart, telling us not to be afraid to feel.....

Influenced by artists as diverse as Robert Rauschenberg and Diego Velázquez his techniques and selection of medium can be very random, allocated to current state of mind behaviour.....

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Nathan states: Music and Art for me has always had a close relationship. The music and sounds have influenced the artists’ painting or sculpture. I have created works of Art listening to music. I began to think why a role reversal couldn’t occur; where the Art stimulates the music. The collaboration on Art and music on this album details this relationship of influence and control. Evidentially as Art does, the music twists and turns from its basis and roots but that birth and creation resembles the on going altitude of strength and wealth – NATHAN SWENSON

STYLUS'LISTEN'NEWSLETTER NUMBER 2

www.myspace.com/stylusdafyddmorgan

E-mail; src@talbot.force9.co.uk

Welcome to the second Stylus 'Listen' newsletter.

NEW ALBUM NOW AVAILABLE!

The new CD album from STYLUS is now available and is once again a limited mail-order only release. The album, titled 'N T B', is the ninth album from STYLUS who is Welsh experimental artist Dafydd Morgan

'N T B' is the second release on the SRC (Stylus Recording Company) label and is the follow up to the 'Listen, Time Passes' album which came out in December 2006. 'N T B' has been two years in the making and four of the tracks are written and inspired by the Newport Transporter Bridge which was completed in 1906 and is one of only eight transporter bridges left standing in the world today.

"Well I made two return crossings on the bridge and ended up with four recordings. Each of these provide the backing to the four tracks 'Arnodin (NTB 1)', 'Ferdinand's Flying Ferry (NTB 2)', 'The Sea Ditch (NTB 3)' and 'Suspended Over The Usk (NTB 4)'. It was great fun to work with these backings and each time it was amazing how you could approach each track from a different perspective! " - Dafydd

Other tracks include the twenty-four minute 'Croth' which takes you on an epic journey and features a washing-machine like backing provided by his daughter whilst in the womb! "It's not music made for the baby whilst in the womb (which Eno did on 'Neroli')but by the baby actually in the womb. The sound was recorded onto mini-disc in the Doctor's surgery when the Doctor placed an interesting microphone onto the tummy! Once I had the sound it was easy to loop onto the sampler and use as the backing track to 'Croth'!" – Dafydd.

Dafydd is currently working on a project with a West Country artist, providing soundscapes to a painting. A collaboration that will see the light of day hopefully later this year on the SRC. Also a project is underway for a release next year commemorating ten years since the first Stylus album release in 1999, 'The Last Seaweed Collecting Hut At Freshwater West'.

ALBUMS FOR SALE:

The new album 'N T B'(Catalogue Number SRC002) is limited to 100 and you can purchase now (see HOW TO PAY at bottom of sheet). Price £10 includes postage & packing. We also have a small stock of the previous Stylus album 'Listen, Time Passes' (Catalogue Number SRC001).

You can order all of the other Stylus CD's from Ochre Mail-Order except for the Mynydd Preseli CD Marino Apr 2002) which is currently out of stock. We hope to have more copies in shortly.

1) The Last Seaweed Collecting Hut at Freshwater West (Ochre Oct 1999) /
2) Skomargraph (Ochre Nov 2000) / 3) Pedwar (Fourth Dimension June 2002) /

4) Archif:01 Ochre Oct 2002) / 5) Exposition – Stylus re-mixed by Experimental Audio Research' (Ochre Oct 2003) / 6) Eisteddfod' (Irrational Arts Dec 2004)

7) 'Listen, Time Passes' (SRC Dec 2006)

The new Stylus album 'N.T.B' has been completed and the release is set for July / August. It will once again be released on my own Stylus Recording Company label.

Below is an excerpt of an interview that I recently did for a French journalist Georges Beaucourt which basically gives you the jist of what 'N.T.B' is about.

Diolch. Dafydd. 04/2008.

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Georges Beaucourt : So tell us about your new recordings? Have you got a follow-up album yet to 'Listen, Time Passes' which came out in December 2006.

Dafydd Morgan: Yes the new album is now completed. It's called 'N.T.B'. I began working on the album way back in 2006 and has been two years in the making. 'N.T.B' stands for Newport Transporter Bridge. Back in  January 2006 I recorded the crossings of the Transporter Bridge whilst on the Gondola as it made its two return trips across the River Usk.

GB: So how do these recordings appear on the album? And tells us more about the Newport Transporter Bridge.

DM: OK. Well firstly a brief history! The bridge has been the focal point on the landscape of Newport for now over one hundred years. The Transporter Bridge was completed and officially opened in September 1906. The bridge was designed by the great French bridge designer Ferdinand Arnodin who had already built a similar bridge in Rouen. His 'Aerial Ferry' was built to provide a safe crossing across the River Usk to enable development on the east bank of the river. Arnodin worked in conjunction with Newport Borough Engineer Robert H. Haynes. There are only eight surviving transporter bridges left in the World.  It's always been there! I guess it's easy to take some landmarks for granted. My mum recalls stories of how she would climb to the top of the bridge when she worked in Newport in the early 1950s with her friends in their lunch time and eat their sandwiches whilst dangling their legs over the side! The bridge provides the inspiration for this album and you only have to go on it to see how easy it is to get inspired! It's awesome!

GB: ……..and the recordings?

DM: Well I made two return crossings on the bridge and ended up with four recordings. Each of these provide the backing to the four tracks 'Arnodin (NTB 1)', 'Ferdinand's Flying Ferry (NTB 2)', 'The Sea Ditch (NTB 3)' and 'Suspended Over The Usk (NTB 4)'. It was great fun to work with these backings and each time it was amazing how you could approach each track from a different perspective!

GB: I guess two of the titled tracks are self-explanatory being connected to Ferdinand Arnodin as I suppose is 'Suspended Over the Usk' but how did you come about the title 'The Sea Ditch'?

DM: Well 'The Sea Ditch'! When you get onto the Bridge's Gondola on the town side by the little Information Centre you are on the edge of Pill. Pill, is loosely translated as Sea Ditch, belonging to Gwyllum (a 12th century rascal and pirate). Pill provides the pulse and impetus which gave Newport its prominence as a seafaring and industrial centre. Incidentally 'Suspended Over The Usk' got it's title as on a visit across the Bridge in late 2007 which I made with K-188 the Bridge slowly came to halt and stopped half way across the Usk. We were there, suspended! Then a group of men began scattering ashes over the side and once the small ceremony ended the bridge started up again! I bet there's not many folk who can say they were on the Gondola when it had stopped half way! Apparently the deceased had been brought up in Newport and had moved to Sydney. The other half of the ashes had apparently been thrown off the Sydney Harbour Bridge!

GB: Who is K-188?

DM: He is a musician who did a stunning remix of 'Coracle' on my last album and is currently working on re-mixes of 'N.T.B'. He took the photographs of the Bridge on the trip we made when I made the original recordings and they will appear on the sleeve.

GB: So only part of the album is about the Newport Transporter Bridge?

DM: Correct!  The other three tracks feature at some point my daughter during the first 13 months of her life.  In fact the last track 'The Not So Secret, Secret track' has only been recorded, collated, re-arranged and mixed by myself. She plays all the instruments. On the tracks 'Dwr' and 'Croth' is a washing machine like noise that runs throughout.  This noise is a recording of her in the Womb about two and a half months before she was born!

GB: One of the tracks 'Croth' is 25 minutes long?

DM: Yes! That has this washing machine like sound running as a backing track throughout!  It has some great Moog sounds floating about as well as lots of samples coming in and out, panning from side to side! Very Brainticket at times! As for the last track on the album, 'The Not So Secret, Secret track' I think it's fascinating how someone can discover and play certain instruments at such an early stage in their life! It has to be relevant! Is it listenable or un-listenable? I'm sure we'd all love to have recordings like this of us playing when we were this young. If we did, this is what it would of probably sounded like. So this is what the music would of sounded if I'd played it when I was one year old except on this album it is my daughter playing it for me!

GB: So you have not made music for the baby whilst in womb but music by the baby in the womb! I hope I make sense? How did you get those sounds?

DM: Absoultely. Before she was born she listened to Brian Eno's 'Neroli' for practically a good few months! Now she goes to sleep to Brian Eno's collaboration with Harold Budd 'A Plateaux Of Mirror'!! To get the sounds. Well, when my wife was in the Doctor's surgery for a check up they have this device when put to the tummy you can listen to the sound of the baby in the womb!. So I made her take the mini-disc down and record. Then looped it up on the sampler!

GB: Well from what you have played to me it sounds fascinating and intriguing.  When do we expect to see the album out on official release?

DM: Hopefully in late summer. It just needs to be mastered, artwork finalised and manufactured. So within a couple of months.

GB: Future plans? Any projects on the go in the foreseeable future?

DM: Yes, I have already recorded three tracks for the next Stylus release. It's a collaboration with a West Country artist. I draw inspiration from this one specific painting and how I see it – musically! I've yet to meet the artist. It's quite a challenging project! He conjured up the idea in conversation with the person who looks after the running of and the business end of my label. Also once that is finished I will begin on a special musical project for release  next year which celebrates 10 years since the first Stylus album release 'The Last Seaweed Collecting Hut At Freshwater West', so watch the space on my space!!

http://thefoldzine.co.uk/the_fold_ezine_7.pdf

Hello All

Airplay:

The new album 'Listen,Time Passes' has received more radio airplay. Slobodan Vujanovic on his 'Power Of The Witches' show on Serbian Radio Station B-92 played the following tracks.

21/02/07 Glass Dream One - Charly Is Alone (Propergol Y Colargol Remix)

21/02/07 Goodbye Michelle

14/03/07 Wooden Milk Part 3

Remix:

The new album from French artist Propergol Y Colargol 'Ode To Roger' features a remix from Stylus. The album is released on the Diesel Combustion Label and you can find more details on it by clicking on the link to the Propergol Y Colargol My Space site when you see it in the Stylus favourites section.

Review:

THE WIRE Issue 279 May 2007

by Tom Ridge

The inaugural release on Welshman Dafydd Morgan's own label collects various previously unreleased tracks and rarities from his recording hstory as Stylus, including music orginally produced for Serbian radio sessions and a fanzine. It all fits together well, though the opening bass twang of 'Angle' and the motorik electronica of 'Coracle' are red herrings when set aganst the experimental grit and abstract oscilliations which follow. There's an interesting recontextualisation of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, in three seperate parts spread over the album, which sounds alternately affecting and strangely menacing, with Rchard Burton's original narraton prey to a series of viral sonic disturbances. It sounds torn between being an affectonate nod to Morgan's own heritage and a playful deconstruction of it.

Hello All

Verity Sharp has played tracks this week on her Late Junction programme on Radio 3. On Tuesday Feb 20th Verity played 'Little Dafydd Needs To Fly Part 2' and on Wednesday night Feb 21st played 3 tracks, Wooden Milk Parts 1 to 3, at various points during her programme. Verity also says some very nice things about Dafydd's work.

Here is the link to the show. You can listen again to the programme on line up until next weeks shows. So be quick.... 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/latejunction/

Tuesday December 12th 2006

I have now uploaded the 'Pluen Eira' track that was the Ochre Records Christmas 7" from December 2000.

The track translated means Snowflake. Influenced by Dylan Thomas 'A Child's Christmas In Wales' which is kind of fairly obvious once you listen to the track. 'Pluen Eira' is included on the Ochre 'Archif:01' Stylus CD which also includes a live version of the track that was recorded inside the last Seaweed Collecting Hut At Freshwater West. 

Nadolig Llawen

Dafydd

Wednesday December 6th 2006

Hello Everyone,

The new Stylus album is now out. It is called 'Time Passes, Listen', the first release on my own Stylus Recording Company label. If you look at the previous blog it will detail the track listing.

You can purchase copies by Paypal by paying £10 to Paypal Account sales@talbot.force9.co.uk  I would personally like to thank my manager Talbot from Ochre for helping me release this Cd etc and he will be selling copies on my behalf. The press release follows my message.

I will update you on my current activities shortly.

Dafydd

STYLUS

'Time Passes, Listen'

CD Album. Stylus Recording Company SRC001

'Time Passes, Listen' is the eighth album from STYLUS who is Welsh experimental artist Dafydd Morgan

The album is the first on Dafydd's own STYLUS RECORDING COMPANY. The album pieces together the missing links between some of the albums and with some excellent new 2006 re-mixes included, brings the Stylus story up to date.

The sixteen tracks on this album features two Radio Sessions, one broadcast on B-92 in Serbia the other on Radio Torino / Radio Capidistro in Italy. Also included are several lost recordings plus some stunning new re-mixes from K-188, Siôn Orgon of Thighpaulsandra, The Groceries (the solo project of Ectogram's Alan Holmes) as well as a couple from exciting French experimental artist Properol Y Colargol with whom Dafydd also contributed a remix to their 2006 CD 'Ode To Roger' on the Autres Direction label.

Stylus has had seven other albums released to date. Four of them have appeared on the Ochre Records label, 'The Last Seaweed Collecting Hut At Freshwater West', 'Skomargraph', 'Archif:01' and 'Exposition' (an album of Stylus recordings re-mixed by Experimental audio Research -Spaceman 3's Sonic Boom). Whilst 'Mynydd Preseli' was released on on Mar//ino Records, 'Pedwar' on Fourth Dimension and 'Eisteddfod' on Irrational Arts.

The first three albums formed part of a Pembrokeshire influenced trilogy. The albums take in influences based around the last remaining seaweed collecting hut at Freshwater West, Skomer Island and the Preseli Mountains.

The album 'Mynydd Presli' gained a rave review from Stewart Lee in The Sunday Times who ended, 'Morgan's music demands to be heard'. The Stylus debut album 'The Last Seaweed Collecting Hut At Freshwater West' was likened by the same reviewer to 1997's 'Dutch Harbor' release by the Boxhead Ensemble. Whilst Edwin Pouncey in The Wire likened it to that of Lamonte Young stating the music was 'moving and empathetic'. All albums received healthy airplay on John Peel's BBC Radio One Show.

The music of STYLUS has in many reviews been likened to that created by POPUL VUH who provided many a soundtrack to the films of WERNER HERZOG. Dafydd agrees that Florian Fricke has been an influence in the writing and recording for Stylus.

Stylus is currently working on a new batch of recordings which will surface in late 2007.