Let’s start with Leah Kardos’ “Little Phase”, from Bigo & Twigetti’s Summer compilation of last year. Press play ~ and then we’ll play a game.

The game is called the exquisite corpse.  Most of us played it with paper in primary school, as seen to the right.  I remember playing it during recess and later in detention.  But there’s a twist to this version: it’s played with music.  Using “Little Phase” as a starting point, the music was passed artist to artist through the rosters of Bigo & Twigetti and Moderna Records until it became something entirely different.  The process began last October and concluded this April.  Because the original files were available, the game was also influenced by another ~ telephone.  The last piece, Tim Linghas’ “At the End All Is Black”, bears echoes of the original, yet demonstrates how far the game has progressed.

So what happens…

A strong selection of field recordings pepper the gentle songs of The Story Surrounds Us. Australian Kate Carr now lives in London, and she’s brought a fresh selection of recordings, taken during her travels around the globe, that both soothe and shock.

These recordings are scattered over and throughout the music, sometimes rolling through arid, absent spaces that lack comfort or reassurance, missing the high definition of a point A to B; cartography is absent as the lifespan of the music diminishes. This in turn opens the door – the creaking, body-aching door that opens the record, perhaps – to a subtle displacement which is not so much associated with the outer geography of the place itself but rather with a series of troubled thoughts and processes that constantly blitz the inner self; these inner lands try to find peace and rest, but it’s hard to find solace among the screeching midnight insects.

These recordings are ushered into the midst of guitar…