New website, Above&Below released

something with changing servers i couldn't be bothered doing so i did stuff with big text instead. Also, Above & Below has been released here, on the Lost Children netlabel. Cheers to them.

The Silent Ballet reviews Loops & Errata

Score: 5.5/10

And so the Wheel of Creativity creaks, meandering along its path toward an omnipotent and inevitable end. Never failing in its pursuit for artistic absolution, the Wheel stalks the ambitious, cornering their desires and aspirations, strangling them into an asphyxiated submission. The resulting output is often disregarded as an afterthought, the vestiges of a new born, an error amidst the never ending trials that the discipline demands; but the destination remains the same. As bands and artists are swept along by its promise and intrigue, they are, unavoidably, selling themselves to the fates; sacrifices to pretensions and soundalikes that plague genres. Take Australia's Scissor Lock. On Loops &Errata, Marcus Whale's third EP release, every facet of the record is steeped in this creative oeuvre, "40 minutes worth of loop-based improvisation," no less, condensed to four tracks.

The emanated creativity is, of course, subjective, and at times Loops & Errata feels very much the sum of its parts; random drone and ambience is interspersed with prickling and stabbing guitar arpeggios to middling effect, leaving both the listener and the record's discourse in a confusing state. Tracks "The Underwater Karate," "Eraser" and "2am: Recurring" reverberate with a repetition and minimalism that's been raped and pillaged of its soul; that is if the tracks were born with one at all (the Wheel can only do so much, after all). And yet, abandoning this sinuous and cyclical process leads Whale to his utopian birthplace. On the closing track, "Bones," stripped micro-a cappellas bathe in a call-and-response vacuum, echoing a structure akin to ASMZ's "13 Angels Standing Guard 'round The Side Of Your Bed". For nine minutes Scissor Lock bridge the creative abyss between beauty and pageantry; the hopeful and the yearning - everything that is lost and everything that is found.

In such circumstances, it's difficult to recommend the album. As a whole, it is, indeed, flawed; ideas are left unexpanded and fermenting in sonic experimentation and sparse creative flashes come and go with the same fleeting synchronisms that produced them. Galvanising this convoluted wasteland, however, its one shining beacon of potential, is the captivating and astonishing "Bones". With it, Marcus Whale has future; without it, the mighty Wheel will continue to turn, leaving him abandoned with the rest of the stragglers…

-Alex Bradshaw

sounds pretty fair to me

Loops & Errata

these are numbered, with handmade sleeves, with the title and author and number written on the sleeve in coloured pencil. they are free. and i will make them until i can't be bothered making them anymore. given out about 14 already, tell me if you want one. 40 minutesworth of loop-based improvisation, in four tracks.

HELLS YEAH, BITCHES

yeah so i've been a bit slack and not told you people anything about stuff, just if anyone actually reads this page...

but anyway. finished the demoes for Above and Below a month or two ago, sent 'em off to some labels, no reply yet. If nothing happens i'll try and get it released on Lost Children, or release them as CD-Rs, or something like that.. And Above comes after Below by the way. Here's tracklisting and the song lengths for the demoes.

Below:
1. Below (8:53)
2. Knives For Christ (6:52)
3. Fractions (6:12)
4. Entropy (8:18)

Above:
1. Above (5:58)
2. Summer Rain (4:30)
3. Here Is Your Gask Mask (5:47)
4. Looking To The Stars (14:56)

Also, i've been recording some loop-based improvisations and i'll be releasing that on a free, numbered, CD-R which might be distributed in New Zealand by Sell Out Records and in Melbourne by some arty teenagers. Otherwise i'll just throw them at people here in Sydney and you might be one of the lucky ones that gets one.

Also, I'm already demoeing for an album, seems like its going to be a far umm.. happier.... affair. Even more guitars too... Less vocals though.

And I'm going to record an album of piano in the Summer, look out for that..

love,
Marcus.