Four More Cosmic Jams From Daniel Thomas and Kevin Sanders
Cherry Row Recordings. CRR001. CDR.
Muhmur Radio.
Listening to the latest label to emerge from the Leeds undergrowth gives me the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Stone number one being Steve Cammack’s Muhmur radio show where you will hear Four More Cosmic Jams From Daniel Thomas and Kevin Sanders as broadcast through the transmitters of Sound Art Radio [and later through Mixcloud] on Thursday the 23rd of January.
Steve is of course the one man left in Dieter Müh. English Industrial Ritual Ambient-ists [call them that if you will] whose career path has closely followed my own immersion into all things similar music wise. Theres a mutual appreciation society of sorts existing between us but I’ve held back plugging his radio show as its taken me a while to get around to appreciating it.
Not because Steve’s a gobshite DJ with racks of jingles and a matey ‘crew’ to banter with in between playing records, but the actual nature of streaming radio shows. Its the sound quality issues that originally put me off. On an early show Steve played an Incapacitants track that due to the lack of depth of streaming MP3 just didn’t work. Those lucky enough to live within the reception area of Sound Art Radio, which is Totnes in Devon, will have switched on their radios and heard the Incaps in glorious FM. But over the net and through my bog standard PC speakers it was flat. It put me of for a while but I ventured back of course.
And I’m glad I did. Steve seems to have found his feet now whilst mastering the studio equipment along the way. Each two hour show usually begins with three or four tracks and then a gentle ‘erm … that was …’ before some more music. And on it goes. It sounds simple and it is. Its all you ever really need from a radio show of this nature. Recent shows have focused on certain artists or groups and have featured the music of Neil Campbell, Luke Younger, Column One, there was a Sweden special too, most of these ‘specials’ feature music especially recorded for the show. His last broadcast was one of his best and a good as you’re going to get example of what he plays - pick of the bunch this time were tracks by Wolf Eyes, Dome, Inade, Cabaret Voltaire, Hirsuite Pursuit and the Sleaford Mods, who are pencilled in for a future session so I’m told. Its all good stuff and now my Friday night ritual. Taking a couple of hours out of your schedule to relax with Muhmur does wonders for your inner equilibrium. If you’re in the Totnes area it airs from 9pm most Thursdays. Check listings for details as they say.
Steve played the first track from ‘Four More Cosmic Jams From Daniel Thomas and Kevin Sanders’ last Thursday night. Its minimalist industrial drone belying its moniker and the pixelated fruit machine cherries to sit cheek by jowl with Inade, Wolf Eyes and the rest of Steve’s excellent choice cuts [DJ talk].
Once these sonic journeymen lived but ten miles apart running labels and projects in the West Yorkshire environs but the Sanders half gave up Huddersfield for Bath meaning that these tracks were either recorded via file swaps or a bringing together via the miracles of rail and road. Either way the results are highly encouraging. Forty eight minutes worth all told the last track being a gentle stroll around an English country garden seeped in amniotic fluid, the onset of a pounding steel mill hammer gains in volume and increases the tension and urgency until you’re back in the English country garden once more. Each track is delightfully weighted with the groans of dying ghosts, radio static, machine hum, distant pneumatic road drills and muscular heartbeats all slowly drifting in and out of your consciousness.
We’ve been here before. Sanders and Thomas teamed up for a release on Thomas’s own Sheepscar Light Industrial label with twenty minutes worth that went and got NASA all excited but the coupling here appears to have gone beyond that. A stonking industrial drone album that for now lives in a folded up piece of paper as the only release on a very bare blog. A vinyl outing would serve it better.
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