R.I.P Adam D Mills

A really sad day for music.
We send our condolences to his family.
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Matt Rösner Tape Series Volume 1

Matt Rösner Tape Series Volume 1

A. Transits

B. March 7, A Dry Heat

Western Australian sound artist Matt Rösner delivers the first in a series of three cassette only albums on Meupe. Volume 1 features 45 minutes of previously unreleased collaborations with Perth artists Greg Taw (Ghost of 29 Megacycles) and Adam Trainer recorded over the past 18 months. Using guitar and piano improvisations performed by Taw and Trainer as a starting point, Rösner has added his trademark field recordings and max/msp processing to craft longform pieces that play at the listeners sense of time and place. The cassette format suits these piece immensely.Available at a launch at Kulcha, Fremantle on Friday May 28, 2010. From then on exclusively from the Meupe Shop. Edition of 50.

Textura review of Love via Paper Planes

The Ghost of 29 Megacycles: Love Via Paper Planes
Sound & Fury Records

For some odd reason, I half-expected to hear a set of guitar-generated blaze when I put on Love Via Paper Planes by The Ghost of 29 Megacycles, a Perth, Australia-based trio featuring Karen de san Miguel, Matthew Aitken, and Gregory Taw. Maybe it had something to do with the stark blood-red photograph on the package or perhaps the My Bloody Valentine reference on the promo sheet. Regardless, the album's material is far closer in style to ambient dronescaping than shoegaze, as the group's debut full-length finds the trio serving up six long-form and miniature pieces in equally satisfying manner. The trio builds its sound using reverb-drenched layers of organs and guitars—drums and percussion conspicuously absent—and occasionally wraps a breathy vocal mass around it too.

For almost sixteen minutes, “The Cold Light of Silence” drapes de san Miguel's ethereal murmur over a beatific haze that turns even more church-like when the vocals drop out a dozen minutes in, leaving immense, cathedralesque chords to intone in their absence. In “Passing, Daydreams,” a shuddering and blurry mass quietly roars for eleven minutes, the chords of its melancholy song splintered into shards within the vortex. At the opposite end of the temporal spectrum, “Dusted” breathes shoegaze fire for a too-short three-minutes, while “True Love Will Find You in the End” catches one off-guard by ending the album with a shoegaze-&-country ballad (featuring near-buried vocals by producer Matt Rösner). Elsewhere, the stately title track and “We Are the New Romantics” ride blissed-out waves of crushing, guitar-based drift and distortion. A strong showing all around.

May 2010

http://www.textura.org/reviews/ghost29megacycles.htm

The Ghost of 29 Megacycles last show (for awhile at least)

This is perhaps the last Perth show of The Ghost of 29 Megacycles as Greg, Karen and Matt. The band will exist in some shape or form but not in Perth. We are proud to play our last gig supporting the amazing Matt Rosner as he launches his limited edition cassette at Kulcha.

Love via Paper Planes review from Cyclic Defrost

The Ghost Of 29 Megacycles – Love Via Paper Planes (Sound & Fury)

By Adrian Elmer April 3, 2010

The Ghost Of 29 Megacycles take their name from a book from 1986 by John G Fuller which explores the possibility of recording the faint voices of ghosts. There’s a good chance that, given guitars, synths and a 4-track recorder, those ghosts just might make music that sounds like Love Via Paper Planes.

It may just be coincidence, but the 6 tracks on this, the first album the band have released via a label rather than on their own, are ordered from longest to shortest. This is a nice tactic, not allowing fatigue to set in, but still giving space for a track like the 15 minute opener, ‘The Cold Light Of Silence’, space to work its magic. And with the ethereal nature of the sound, a sprawling, growing ambience, talk of ghostly voices and actual voices both washed out in the distance and whispering their wordless melodies in your ear, magic is certainly an apt word. The tracks are each based on extended drones but, unlike much first take improvisation which works with drones, The Ghosts Of 29 Megacycles work with harmonic structures. It takes well over 5 minutes, but when ‘The Cold Light’s initial two chord suspended cycle finally falls onto the root chord, the effect is monumental, almost physically tangible. Elsewhere, ‘We Are The New Romantics’ has huge, ringing distorted guitar chords mixed low and embedded into their own reverb trail but, again, the chordal progression sets it apart from run of the mill drone. In this case, it’s a dead ringer for part of the chord structure of U2’s ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ and aims for (and achieves) the same level of grandeur, though, obviously, in a different sonic manner. Having said that, Eno-esque atmospheres abound across the album, if Eno were to embrace the lo-fi underground. Which is not to say this is particularly lo-fi, but it does away with the sparkle and sheen and replaces it with more muted timbres and also allows harmonic feedback loose in a way that a ‘proper’ producer might not allow, but is used in the title track particularly effectively.

All this may sound overly serious, but a small glimpse into process at the conclusion of ‘Dusted’ demonstrates the group’s humourous sense of themselves. Following two and a half minutes of typically languorous walls of sound, the decidedly non-ghostish voice of vocalist Karen de san Miguel can be heard to ask, “Hey, could you ask Greg, does he always play that quickly? Maybe a little slower would be better…Seems a little fast. Is that just me?” The fact that it’s been left on the finished work automatically renders it ironically amusing and adds a remarkable amount of human warmth to the cascadingly monumental music.

Love Via Paper Planes is a wonderfully immersive document. Rather than feeling like the progress sketches often associated with drone based work, these pieces are fully formed and, combined into an album, create a truly beautiful listening experience.

Adrian Elmer

http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/2010/04/03/the-ghost-of-29-megacycles-love-via-paper-planes-sound-fury/

ERASERS & GHOST OF 29 MEGACYCLES @ THE MOON, SUNDAY MARCH 7

Articles

Live Reviews

ERASERS & GHOST OF 29 MEGACYCLES @ THE MOON, SUNDAY MARCH 7

March 7

ERASERS & GHOST OF 29 MEGACYCLES @ THE MOON, SUNDAY MARCH 7

What the herring does one do on a Sunday night? It’s a peculiar time of the week; You’re saying toodle-oo to the weekend, delivering it a jocular slap on the back, saying, with little consolation – “see you in five days!” And then you sit back, twiddle your thumbs and await the inevitable, obnoxious arrival of Monday: it will storm through the door as you snooze, blowing one of those party-hooter things, and sneeringly exclaim “Guess who!”
So Sunday night takes on the characteristic of a sort of desperate, dragging limbo, an uneasy purgatory in which one claws at those last slippery threads of freedom. Unless, of course, something presents itself as a diversion – and thanks to The Moon, the One Trick Pony series on the first Sunday night of each month guarantees a diverting diversion indeed.

The intriguing task of providing a soundtrack to limbo was first passed to ERASERS, who were in fact tonight, just one ERASER, with guitar-and-gadgets man Rupert Thomas giving a solo performance. Caged within an electronic control panel, Thomas established an endless road of rich droning sawtooth synth before gradually releasing onto it any number of retrofuturistic, meandering vehicles. Translucent, slow-motion bicycles chimed their bells of crisp, icy guitar; weaving cars hummed dozens of drifting mechanical reveries, disappearing around corners, encircling the block, and reappearing in precise repetitive patterns. Between segments a voice from some unseen loudspeaker would issue an anonymous address. The whole thing glowed with the aimless, eerie but beautiful languor of suburbia; complimented in sinister fashion by scenes of unsettling cult film ‘Gummo’ projected onto linen on the back wall. Soothing and cinematic, the set took pains to ensure it didn’t suffer from the absence of two band members – if there’s any criticism, it’s the same as of the group as a whole – the sound recalls a touch too closely the influences it channels, and though altogether enjoyable, is yet to carve out a definitive stylistic identity.

The Ghost of 29 Megacycles is proving, from what I can gather, to be a charmingly enigmatic group: the few shows I’ve seen them play have been wildly different, ranging from tech-savvy sound-art to exotic unplugged jams and now tonight, concealed by animal masks, the trio set out to perform none other than the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack. How this decision was reached is beyond me; all I know is that the concept is awesome – the fruition thereof, even better. This is an alternate reality in which Patrick Swayze shares a grubby flat with Kevin Shields, where Jennifer Grey eschews the mountain resort in favour of hazy psychedelic happenings in dark, resounding warehouses. The soundtrack is reimagined via distorted guitar, thick bass, understated garagey drum thump and spatterings of distant vocals, ultimately sounding something like Galaxie 500 but even reverbier. The undeniable highlight is ‘(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life,’ which transposed into a sedate hurricane of cavernous fuzz ends up sounding like an early 90’s shoegaze classic. It’s worth recording, it was that good.

With a beaming carafe of Moon Goon and two serene but intriguing acts in which to immerse oneself, Sunday night at One Trick Pony certainly proved to be a quality alternative to Sunday night at home, reading the nutritional information on a bag of slivered almonds, or Sunday night trapped in a lift, counting the eyelets on your shoes. Of course, Monday soon came, grabbed me by the ears, gave me a wedgie and threw me out the door, but I was contented in the memory of the preceding evening. The ‘Pony is always worth a ride.

http://www.coolperthnights.com/articles/live/52

Love via Paper Planes cd review on Foxy Digitalis

This debut full-length from Perth, Australia band The Ghost of 29 Megacycles (named after a book about recording the voices of ghosts on tape) is strong, with an emphasis on texture rather than immediacy: slow, drawn out, lovely tones are created from guitar and organ (especially the guitar part on the song "We are the New Romantics") with occasional vocal lines, reminiscent of Liz Harris's, blending with the instruments rather than driving the songs via lyrics. It is a great combination of sounds and timbres. There are times on the album when melody comes to the forefront, as on the album's title-track, and when a straightforward vocal delivery occurs, as on the song "True Love Will Find You in the End"--it will be interesting to see where they might take this sound in the future--but mostly these pieces are slow, and reward patient listening; they are more like distant landscape paintings than close-ups. 7/10 -- Jordan Anderson (24 March, 2010) http://www.digitalisindustries.com/foxyd/reviews.php?which=5390