Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room Junk Receiver (Broadcasts From Bug Powder Radio)

Junk Receiver (Broadcasts From Bug Powder Radio) is the title of forum member Mr Ilektrik's new album, which I'm lucky enough to have a promo copy of. This impressive piece of work is Mark Henson's second album under the name Apparatus And Hand and contains for me the finest, most powerful, sounds to germinate and spread from The Cortex Cockpit yet. Imaginative and deceptively complex, maybe it's the record he has always wanted to make. These are broadcasts from psychosis or a bleak, desolate future under the hegemony of The Machines. A post-nuclear armageddon analogue which the rich and mind blowing atmospheres of Junk Receiver suck you inexorably into as our descendents cry out helplessly.

The nightmares depicted are often narcotically induced, as with 'On Yage In Tangier', in which static haze and a whirring laboratory form a malevolent filter through which we hear a semi-acoustic guitarist playing forlornly and without hope at the last desert cafe. The uneasy juxtaposition of the electronics and a near organic sound seeking space to breathe accentuating the feeling of man in his dystopia. In 'Cortex Department Room 23' a synth refrain spirals hypnotically, building up dread as it leads you down a kinked tunnel to inevitable doom - this time in the form of the all-conquering groans of a leviathan. Title track 'Junk Receiver' has a Day-The Alien Fleet-Arrived filmic feel and is quite simply chiiling; as is 'Gutter Cosmic Nova Dust' , which picks up where 'Junk Receiver' left off and paints an expertly nuanced world you would rather not think about and ends with elegiac organ mourning the God that never was. 'The Narcotic Frequency' is a jewel, an eerier take on Enoesque ambience that ends in a kind of E-Bow last post for the terminally lost.

It's a mad world. But this is music at the very edge of sanity with intricately crafted passages of emotion and beauty among the virtuoso dissonant atmospherics. Marginal, for sure. But for those with a taste for darkest electronic soundscapes Junk Receiver(Broadcasts From Bug Powder Radio) is a delight that should be snapped up.

So where is the link to somnething we can hear?

But of course, Brian.

http://www.soundclick.com/pro/view/01/default.cfm?bandID=176513&content=music

There are 3 tracks from Junk Receiver on Soundclick.

Junk Receiver
Message For The Exterminator
The Narcotic Frequency

Steve, that is a fantastic review! Magestically described scenarios & images. Ruud Punter was saying a similar thing about 'On Yage In Tangier' as yours. Where the Tripper is sitting at the back of a dim lit back bar watching the guitarist whilst 'bugging out' on Yage - That's what the "static haze and a whirring laboratory" forming a malevolent filter, sounds signify.

As I've mentioned before. The album is inspired by the writings of William S. Burroughs. The great thing about Steve's review is that he hasn't read hardly any of Burroughs' novels, so his mind has been influenced by the music only. The fact that he 'dug it' first go, makes me feel very proud & honoured to have him as a friend.

Thank you Steve, it means a hell of a lot!

Here is another review of Junk Receiver (Broadcasts From Bug Powder Radio). This time from Vienna, another Bill Nelson fan who has posted the review on the fan run site Hotel Phoenix http://www.billnelson.co.uk



I'm genuinely really touched by Vienna's review. My music is not the type she usually likes, but there is 'something there' that clicks with her.

I love the way that V is able to express the images & feelings that each track conjours up for her. This is what I try to achieve with my soundscapes. To take the listener into a very personal world of his/her own, far away from this life of habitual reality & media fed lies. I want be able to help people think deeper, to journey into a realm that they have never had the courage to enter before ... & meet me there ...

A great review from Vienna. Trumps mine, I concede!

Junk Receiver is really connecting with people Mark. You want to push it, it deserves exposure and there are lots of people out there yet to know of it who would consider themselves fortunate once they had heard it.

Steve, your review is on a par with Vienna's. Both reviews are very flattering & heart warming & it's nice to know that what I feel about the album is what other people think also.

The hardest part is going to be the sleeve design. It has to be on a par with the music. I don't want to rush it, although I am hoping to have it finished in time for the John & Louis Luminaire gigs.

I too have been bravely sent a copy of this album from Mark.

He invited me to write 'a few notes' and post on the forum, which I did under the "What Music Are You Listening To" thread. It's copied here for consistency and by request.

I had no idea what to expect from the music, and come at it from the generic point of view of someone who explores music a lot and experiments with listening to all kind of styles.
I enjoyed the experience, and wish Apparatus and Hand every success

Apparatus and Hand Junk Receiver

I particularly enjoy listening to music from artists I know nothing about and have never heard before. That experience is enhanced if the artist is undiscovered, unsigned and uncompromising. My desk is covered with unmarked CD-Rs that have arrived from nowhere in particular with just a stamp for company.

I also have a taste for music that I don't quite understand.
Like this.

Junk Receiver is absorbing, enthralling, irritating, simple, complex and stubbornly refuses to go where you expect it to; unfamiliar, and to Romantics like me with a mistrust and fear of sci-fi, it shouldn't even pass into the atmosphere of my green and pleasant world. But despite the reservations induced by a 'Message from the Exterminator' I find myself waving, setting up satellite dishes in the forest, winding up gramophones and turning my head from one speaker to the other in confused anticipation.
It grates, bleeps and scratches its way into orbit and combines white noise with gentle melody in a way that shouldn't really work.
I don't even understand the track titles, but that's how I know they're good. 'Cortex Department Room 23' is perfect Ballard, and one of the album's stand out tracks. Monotonous in the same way that the ocean isn't. Distant ships and muffled song. Bells KlingKlang-ing through the mist. Someone should be plucking a harp now, but instead they're annoying me with echoes, distortion and - and what exactly? There are so many reactions here. Am I annoyed? I think I was then for a minute. Must go back there. Not as lost as I feared I was going to get - remember that guitar chord, and turn left.
When you make music like this, Messrs Apparatus and Hand, how do you decide when a piece is finished? Perhaps Robin Guthrie, Harold Budd, Michel Rother or Edgar Froese could answer the same question. These are references, not comparisons. And who else shall go to the ball?

Here is the news. It's in the trees - it's coming. Komischemuzikmitbiospherics.

There are times when this sea of sound drifts dangerously close to melody and tune, when the Scary Monsters of Vangelis and even JMJ break the surface. But then I see dead people, and hear their voices, and I am reassured. The title track slides in on the oil from the ghost tanker rusting in the fjords, and from the gutter, Cosmic Nova Dust settles on what is now a moonscape. Perhaps this is futuristic after all - when industry and urbanisation finally get bored with each other. Or am I just pretending to see...?

Now I'm listening for all the references I've been told about and I just keep finding different ones. And sirens. Good link. I love this stuff. Sirens wailing in wartime streets; ego-sirens on emergency vehicles; sirens seducing sailors - all sending Messages to one another. Junk. Culture. White noise. White Arcades. Dancing.
And suddenly it's Celtic. That fjord is Bantry Bay. I knew there would be a harp in here somewhere! Just needed a good rummage.
There isn't? Oh. Must go back to that part too.

Frantically scribbling mental notes. Mapping the fog. Getting no nearer.
I don't understand Morse Code either, but there's a Gestalt thing hidden in here. The challenge is letting the musicians inspire you to keep looking.

Clever waymarking, that's their trick, but God knows how they do it.

© Birdsong 2008. Thanks to Mark

Martin,

I am overjoyed by your review. It's very descriptive & poetic, & flows very well. Unfortunately I am not very good at being descriptive with words as I seem to be with my music. I get immense pleasure in reading peoples reviews of my noise. This is the way I prefer to communicate, to send messages & signals that are fed into the listeners mind via aural stimulation which, in turn, trigger-off images & feelings as I take the listener on a journey with an unfamiliar map.

I also like the way that although my music is electronic, it conjours up organic images far, far away, from a digitally clean world.

It's interesting that you mention Ballard, even though it is Burroughs who is the major influence for Junk Receiver. Your descriptions of oil from the ghost tanker rusting in the fjords,Distant ships and muffled song. Bells KlingKlang-ing through the mist, remind me of The Drowned World.

How do I know when a track is finished? It's when I can listen to it as if it is someone elses music & enjoy it for what it has become, an entity of it's own kind.

The challenge is letting the musicians inspire you to keep looking. Yes & most importantly of all...thinking...deep thinking.

Junk Receiver is absorbing, enthralling, irritating, simple, complex and stubbornly refuses to go where you expect it to;

EXCELLENT!! Exactly what I wanted to achieve & sums me up perfectly too.

Thanks again, Martin. Sorry if the reply is not as in-depth as you might have been expecting. I really don't know what to say, but believe that your review, as with the others above, make me feel very special.

Mark xx

Thanks for the praise there Mark.
Much appreciated - I'm flattered. Far MORE words than I was expecting too...

Yes thinking, as well as looking - that is the word I was looking for! I hurried the end a bit.

And the organic thing is very, very true, and about the whole being so much more tha the sum of its arts (sic).

I think electronic music really does grow like that - Metamatic of course being a very good example of that. It is far from cold and clinical despite its minimalist arrangement. Obviously Junk Receiver is far more complex, but it exemplifies the same point.

The map image is very strong for me. The thing with maps is that there is no 'instructed' or 'guided' way to read them. No specific correct path. They are not linear, like books for example. The album to me sounds like a map. I am in danger of making less sense than I intended.

I believe that time is itself not linear or chronological but instead moves like Smoke. We travel through our life as if that too were a map, rather than a book with an obvious beginning and end.

I know what I mean.

Suffice to say it's an excellent and deeply fascinating piece of work that asks a lot of intelligent questions of the listener.
Thanks for sharing it with me

All the best

Mx

As for Ballard/Burroughs - It's a braver man than I that draws the line betwixt