Records On Ribs Present Elapse-O and guests…

First and foremost, our gig beavers have been busy sorting out the following evening of spectacular entertainment in Nottingham to celebrate the impending release of Elapse-O’s self-titled EP- which is already getting some positive press.

recordsonribs.com presents..
@ The Arts Organisation, Station Street, Nottingham,
Friday 27th june @ 8.30pm

Elapse-O

Repetition and texture combine to bludgeon the listener into a state of sublime ecstasy. Guitars spew out waves of feedback- like a less studied Fennesz, and strident vocals power ever onwards.

Bloodcurdlingly intense, there’s a real temptation to call Elapse-O a noise band- but that would miss a lot of what they’re about. Noise is a factor, for sure, but there’s just as much in common with more restrained artists. Like Swans at their prime, they use pummelling noise as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself, and there’s a little hint of 60s psych-rock, Suicide and Big Black in their sound.

You know that painting – The Wanderer – by Caspar David Friedrich? Listening to Elapse-O taps into those same emotions: feeling alive in the face of the eternal.

“There’s feedback and noise, sure, but it’s controlled so tightly that there’s substance, warmth and in places real beauty to be had. The whole affair is underpinned by simple, subtle beats, lending them the urgency of Sunroof!’s explosive improv alongside the clinical majesty of ‘Zuckerzeit’-era Cluster.” – Nightshift Magazine

‘Elapse-O are part of a noise niche, but importantly stay clear of nihilistic musical dead-ends. The subtle percussion timbre put out by the drum-machine on ‘Island’ stood in beautiful contrast to the crunching guitars. It was gloriously confused, the humans were trying to be machines and the machines were trying to be human.’- Gigwise

‘Elapse-O live is like a time-warp back to your childhood, back when you were attempting to make sense of all the sonic clutter around you, except that there is nothing immature about this band. It’s exhilarating – big bright lights exciting.‘- www.drownedinsound.com

www.myspace.com/elapseo

All the Empires of the World
Nottingham ambient doom-metallers with a fine ear for riff, melody and texture. What makes them so great is that they’re not afraid to break out of the slooow shackles for a spot of shredding. Fans of Nadja, Pelican and Jesu will find much to enjoy here.

www.myspace.com/alltheempiresoftheworldwillbelaidtowaste

Human Hair
Jack – Human Hair’s singer – was on my girlfriend’s course at uni. He was pretty quiet apparently- sipping tea and speaking of his love of Byron’s poetry. When she saw Human Hair play she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. He was a man transformed- a rampaging, whirling beast of a man laying his humanity (and inhumanity) bare for the audience.

Featuring Mr Henry Withers of Lovvers fame on guitar, Human Hair stretch the foundations of rock music to their very limit and plumb the depths of the human psyche to make exhilirating, personal rock music. Jesus Lizard, Wipers and Pavement perhaps serve as launchpads, but these guys have long left ’em behind…

…And Stars Collide
Post-rock is 99% tedium. A thousand boys with too many pedals and too few ideas; a million fuckwitted threads on drownedinsound. But …And Stars Collide recognise that guitars played loud are still brutally effective and- when done well- there are still thrills aplenty to be had by doing just that.

Over the course of a few shows they’ve admirably prove their point. Their music is direct, urgent and triumphantly cathartic, connecting with the audience on the most primal level. There’s still plenty to be done with that 1%..

The gig’s free to get into, but we will be taking collections to cover our costs. Rather than just donate money though, we suggest you buy a lil something from our merch desk- we’ll have CD-R copies of the new Elapse-O EP plus the first releases on Tapes on Ribs, which will include some EL Heath, The Last King of Punt and hopefully a split tape from Human Hair/All The Empires of the World.
www.myspace.com/theskyweeps

Two New Release In The Tubes

Monday 21st July will see three new releases available for download/purchase on CD-R from Records on Ribs. As well as Elapse-O’s EP, we’ll be releasing The Butterfly’s Time Spent in Reconnaisance Is Never Time Wasted EP. A full length electro-pop album from Talk Less, Say More entitled Go Lucky will follow sooner than you think. More on these soon.

How People Find Records On Ribs

Some search terms which have led people to Records on Ribs…

“sexy web sides”
“sexy web”
“how many ribs do humans have?”
“how many ribs do horses have?”
“do fish have ribs”
“how can I record my ribs?”
“virginia ambient”
“www.weshow.com”
“do we show up on radar?”

Marvellous.

New Releases

As one great band ends, so another begins. The Butterfly’s final EP Time Spent In Reconnaissance Is Never Time Wasted will be unleashed on the world shortly, and we’re absolutely thrilled to be able to bring you the self-titled debut EP from Oxford’s Elapse-O. Physical copies will be available to buy at the album launch in Nottingham on Friday 27th June (more details soon!) and it’ll be available for download from here a week or so later. You can get a preview by listening to the EP in its entirety on their myspace.

Physical Releases

Something we’ve been promising for a while now. We’re working on a way to make beautifully packaged CD-Rs of all our releases. We’re getting there and should have physical copies of our albums available soon (artist made copies of Les Etoiles’ and We Show Up On Radar’s albums can already be purchased in physical form). Elapse-O’s EP will be ready in physical form for their EP launch.

Tapes on Ribs

Tapes on Ribs is our new project: a sub-label of RoR. Whilst we love the way downloads mean you can have free music, we also love tapes. So we’ve decided to launch a tape label! Tapes will be available to buy from here fairly soon, but in order to keep in with our cash-less ethos you can send us a blank tape and we’ll post it back to you, plus the music, free of charge. The first release will be a split tape by EL Heath and Strap the Button’s Jack Hunter.

Releases on Other Labels

EL Heath’s ‘A (Rather) Dead Sea Liner EP’ is now available from Weymouth’s fucking ace Dead Sea Liner Records. We hope to have a few copies to sell here shortly. It’s a beautiful record of “abyssal drones and ambient sea shanties” and comes packaged in pages from the Manual of Advanced Seamanship (Volume 3). My copy informs me of the correct way to ballast a submarine.

Elapse-O, meanwhile, have gone transatlantic. Montreal’s YUL Records will be releasing a 7″ with two of the tracks from their RoR EP on in the autumn. Again, we hope to have a few copies to sell from here.

It’s worth reminding you that Strap the Button and their associated side-projects have an absolute shitload of stuff available for free download from My Formica Table.

What Our Artists Are Up To

EL Heath is working on about a zillion EPs. There’s Anime Songs– soundtracks for imagined Japanese anime films and the spaces they open up; an album called Pattern which is inspired by the likes of Cluster and Harmonia and is more beat orientated; some live improv with drums which sounds like it should be on Rune Gramofone and the first of a planned series of albums inspired by the machines of W Heath Robinson. EL is also playing a couple of rare live dates: at the Wheaton Aston Festival (Staffordshire) on Saturday 17th May (with Epic45, Millimetrik and July Skies) and at Lee Rosy’s Tea Room in Nottingham on Sunday 18th May (with Cat Green Bike and Glissando). RoR honcho Dave will be helping Mr Heath flesh out his sounds at both shows.

Strap the Button are set to record their epic The Blood’s A Shimmerin‘- a single track album- which we hope to release in late summer/early autumn. Sections of the track exist in live form on their myspace.

Les Etoiles and Talk Less, Say More are also working on new material.

It goes without saying that our bands play gigs. We’re looking to bring you some way to publicise these soon (a gigs page, perhaps!), but for now we would like to bring one particular show to your attention, for it’s being put on by our good friends at High Society here in Nottingham and features our very own Les Etoiles, alongside Rusted Rail Records’ (The Declining Winter/Plinth) space-folk duo Phantom Dog Beneath The Moon and The Anvil, who lists Fairport Convention, Ginnungagap and The Wu-Tang Clan as influences on the aforlinked myspace, which is nay bad thing at all if you ask me.

 Said gig completely FREE, and takes place at Lee Rosy’s Tea Room on Friday 14th April. 

Records on Ribs endorses Lee Rosy’s Team Room’s pu-erh tea.

We won’t detain you long, but today sees the release of EL Heath’s Winter Soundtrack- a truly truly remarkable album. Here’s what its maker has to say of it:

 “The album was made in my freezing cold studio on a shit old computer and a lot of red wine. It’s about how whenever I went outside the cut-off point of the day seemed to be 4pm, like I’d be in town then suddenly it was dark and I lost all my energy. I would have plans in the evening and not do anything because of this lack of energy. It’s also about how all the colours in the scenery are simply hidden by the quality of light we get in the winter. It’s not that it is not beautiful, but the colours are hidden by this quality of light and, well, generally the lack of such light.”

Listen or download for free from here.

Like all good websites, we already have an RSS feed for our news, the very news you see on this page. But wouldn’t it be good if you could have the same concentrated just on releases, so every time we get a new record out you are made aware of it, and can grab it as soon as possible?

Fortunately Ribcage, the shadowy software that runs this site, allows for it. We have have an RSS feed for releases you can subscribe to and an individual RSS feed for every artist (for example, here is Talk Less, Say More‘s). The format is simple you can even work it out manually – http://recordsonribs.com/artists/your_artist/feed. Just copy and paste the link and add it in your favourite feed reader.

If you are using Firefox (57% of the users to this site) click the RSS icon in the address bar on any page of the site and select “Records On Ribs Releases RSS feed”, or navigate to any of our artist pages or release pages and select (in this case) “EL Heath Releases RSS feed”. Its pretty self explanatory, but if you need a hand, help is here. Never miss a release again!

This all Greek to you? Wikipedia is your friend.

Hello!
The tumult of our launch may be subsiding, but we continue to paddle madly below the surface like the proverbial swan. And this effort is not without its rewards- for we find ourselves in the position of being able to announce to you both new records and new signings, as well as some exciting news about old releases.

We will deal with the latter first.

New Signings

It brings us enormous pleasure to inform you that Oxford’s quite remarkable Elapse-O will release their debut EP with us very shortly. They’re currently putting the finishing touches to it. We will have more details and a release date very shortly, but the impatient amongst you (and good on you- patience is no virtue) can head over to their myspace page, where they will be battered into submission by the offerings available there. Fans of Swans, Spacemen 3 and being punched so often it starts to feel good will find plenty to enjoy there. More eulogising as to their splendour can be found in this excellent drownedinsound article on southeast noise.

New Releases

For those whose thrills are of a more genteel nature we are proud to announce a new album length release from EL Heath, which will be released for free download on Thursday 21st Feb. Entitled ‘Winter Soundtrack’, it is exactly that – tunes recorded at Heath’s Shropshire home this winter with the aim of capturing the beauty arising from the marriage of countryside and winter. It’s as gorgeous as you’d expect from Heath – elements of folk weaving their way in and out of the lush ambience. A wintry companion to Virginia Astley’s ‘From Gardens Where We Feel Secure’, perhaps.

Exciting News About a Past Release

EL Heath has also garnered richly deserved praise for his ‘Dusk Dappled Fall’, which is compared to both a major televisual drama and ambient-drone legends Stars of the Lid in angryape’s review. Reviews will soon be incorporated into each album’s page on the ROR site.

In Other News

EL Heath’s mighty fine Reflecting EP is available as a joint release from the lovely folks at My Formica Table and Either/Or Records. Like ourselves, their music is free – and we can vouch for the quality of Reflecting. Its closing track- ‘epick’- must be heard to be believed, and even then skepticism will linger: how can a mortal being produce such wonder from a synthesizer or two and a loop pedal?

Rescuing us from an EL Heath news monopoly come Strap the Button, and the news that they’re on a 3CD compilation entitled Brave New Wales. It’s compiled by the superb Fourier Transform label, and they say this about it: “some of the best new music being made off the grid and under the radar by artists from and/or living in Wales. 4 hours of challenging music spread over 3 discs, with 32 page booklet, housed in a custom foil-embossed box. Limited edition of 1000.” Wow! You can pre-order copies from their website now. It looks absolutely stunning, we have to say.

My housemate just brought it to my attention (about five minutes ago) that we have been accidentally serving up Gay Death Probe‘s brilliant The Night of Long Knives twice. Though the zip file was differently named the files were the same for both of their EPs as MP3 zip files.

So if you’d like to grab The Other Side Of Fabulous Florida go right ahead. Or you can navigate to the files via any of the usual means. We apologise for any disappointment caused.

If you find anything around this site that seems odd or wrong like this, please do not hesitate to drop me an e-mail. We are only human and mistakes can easily happen with 10 releases and many GBs of files flying around our servers. With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow.

‘Forever and ever endeavour, To be together, forever,and ever…together at the altar with a stake through my heart.’

All good things have to end. But that doesn’t make it any less sad that they do. And on Friday night, The Butterfly (a very good thing indeed) bid their farewell to the world in spectacular fashion. It was an occasion of much merriment- as their gigs always were- but tempered by an enormous sadness for myself, Alex and many others.

Still – we must not get too upset! We console ourselves in the hope that the multiverse theory is true and that in one of these other universes The Butterfly’s bombastic songs of Camus, Freud and the ancient Greeks are filling Wembley stadium. Joy is also to be found in the fact that a brand new The Butterfly EP will be out soon on this here label.

A Plea

We wouldn’t normally ask for donations, but such a calamity befell myself on Friday night that I throw myself upon the kindness of your hearts. For in our attempts to record The Butterfly’s farewell show, I had taken a quarter-inch jack to phono lead up to Leeds with me. I do not have a good history with these leads. For months at university my good friend and housemate Mr.Joel Wright did steal my lead in order that he might listen to music from his laptop via his stereo. My lead soon gave up under the strain of continuous yanking. A replacement was hastily bought, but was lost when I moved house. The replacement for that proved to be of ill-quality and soon packed up. This lead left in Leeds was of superior quality and had been mine for a mere 3 weeks. I’m sure you will sympathise when you understand that now I find myself in the position of having to by another lead, or face not being able to listen to my record collection. Any donations to my ‘new lead fund’ can be made via the donations page.

We thank you.

This post is set to publish at the time when The Butterfly take to the stage for their last show. I don’t think the final curtain for The Butterfly could have passed without me saying something about it. Or without us, that is, me and Dave, saying something about it. It’s maybe a bit long, but I think necessarily, so you’ll have to click on more to see it all. They will hopefully be releasing two records with us posthumously. These are, of course, much anticipated.

The Butterfly’s music is utterly unique, the cause of much foundering for reference points by journalists and promoters alike. Jump cutting innumerable genres and ideas effortlessly, its bold, arch and confident eclecticism is never cynical and always clever – from a throughly insane racket to a graceful chord change. Songs were stunningly worked, fully equipped with a nuanced sense of dynamics, a wink to grand theatre and an eye for pop. Each and every one is piled high with sheer invention. It is an uncompromising musical vision, an awkward fit to any pigeon hole or scene you would attempt to ram them into.

Read the rest of this entry »

As I write this post we have had 1,682 odd hits since our launch, 134 records in total have been downloaded. Hits have come from as far afield as China, Russia and Canada. So, we’d like to thank everyone who has visited, downloaded, listened and hopefully loved our music in the last three days.

If you like the music we are giving away and what we are trying to do here, and have a spare moment over the weekend, why not write an (MP3?) blog, send a Myspace bulletin, post a Facebook link or make a post on a message board about us and the music we provide?

Some of you have already done so already, and we thank you a great deal for it.

The more people that know, the much merrier. Let’s harness this Web 2.0 madness to get free music and new ideas to people! Let’s try and see if we pull together that we can’t get those release downloads up to nearer 300 by this time next week!

Its not all about the launch though. No sir. We have much, much more in the pipeline. Details of new releases from those already on our roster and of releases from new additions to that roster will be announced in the next couple of weeks.

I’ll also be writing a series of posts on how precisely we did this, mainly from a technical angle, but featuring general tips and tricks along the way. We’ll also be rolling out a few new features on the site, including hopefully a Podcast push of our releases that ensures you will never miss one in future, Twitter and Pownce integration and maybe a Facebook application if I really roll up my sleeves. Jell and Dave will be posting too. So keep checking the site, and keep listening!

Thanks again!

(Photography by dweekly)