Next up we have some reflections on work, words and wooziness. (See Parts I and II.)
Thomas Ragsdale
Thomas Ragsdale is a producer/composer who works across a number of musical fields. He makes ambient electronica, techno, soundtrack work for horror films and more. I asked him about the prolific nature of his work and his various musical guises.
I’m a pretty prolific writer and producer and spend almost all of my time either walking my dog, mucking out my chickens or making music. I’m really into the idea of making music as some kind of ‘life diary’ and documenting my days through sound. And of course, I love to share all of this with people! I like to keep a transparent approach to being a musician and I don’t hide or keep anything back, and I’m totally open to conversations.
I’ll be sat around the house in the evenings and kinda bored, so I’ll get my laptop and headphones out and then over a few hours or so I’ll have a bunch of demos done and start to form a new project! Restless hands/mind syndrome I think.
I make synthy electronica and techno as Ffion, murky drones and noise as Sulk Room and I also compose soundtrack work under my birth name. I usually start a recording session with a clear idea of which project I’ll be writing with and then just go from there. For next year I have a few more projects to come out, which should be interesting as one of them is..... metal. I’ve started a Bandcamp subscription this year, which is going beautifully and gives me an outlet for lots of projects that I don’t really know what to do with! These are generally film scores/live recordings/demos and concept albums.
I love working with labels and always looking to collaborate. I like it when labels have an input with the music and drive me to shape things in a certain way. It can be really interesting to get other people’s creative input, especially when they’re not musicians themselves, yet still have great ideas.
Thomas Ragsdale on Bandcamp
Fort Evil Fruit
Fort Evil Fruit is a tape label based in Ireland. It deals in music that can loosely be called experimental, covering everything from improv and noise to ambient and techno. I asked label boss Paul, an avid reader, to give us a rundown of his favourite reads of 2021.
At the start of the year my priority was the last three volumes of Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle series. “Immersive” is hardly the word - it sometimes felt like having the totality of someone else’s memories grafted onto my brain. He and Sally Rooney might drive me to bombastic pronouncements on the power and purpose of fiction, which could be a bit much coming from someone who until recently struggled to finish a handful of books a year. Instead, here are a few things that made a particular impact on me in 2021.
The Ark Sakura sent me down the Kōbō Abe wormhole, and to other recent reprints, set in subterranean, baffling, decadent and liminal spaces where desires and expectations (the protagonists’ and yours) are sure to be confounded.
Terminal Boredom is the first English collection of the late Izumi Suzuki’s almost nihilistic, slightly Kafkaesque SF stories. I haven’t encountered anything with this precise atmosphere and tone, so I hope more translations are in the works.
The belated English translation of Adam Wisniewski-Snerg’s very misleadingly-titled 1973 Polish classic Robot combines hard SF rigour and philosophical heft. It’s a genuine mind-bender that throws you into a profoundly strange world that gains rather than loses intrigue as the veils are lifted.
The Inhabited Island is the latest Arkady & Boris Strugatsky translation to repair the original’s mutilation by Soviet censors. There’s little attempt to distinguish this alien world from ours, but the knotty plot and impassioned satire are totally engaging.
In this most Arrakian of years I got as far as the fourth Dune book, God Emperor of Dune. The rigorous worldbuilding of the series left little room for the weirdness Frank Herbert crammed into some of his standalone novels, but this one is pleasingly out there. Roll on the film adaptation in 2036 or thereabouts.
A couple of contemporary novels stood out. Gwendoline Riley’s My Phantoms details an excruciatingly awkward mother-daughter relationship. Restrained but emotionally brutal, there’s humour in it, but my main reaction was mild panic. Still mulling it over.
Max Porter might as well have been directly pandering to me with The Death of Francis Bacon. Its density, inscrutability and brevity cries out for repeated reading. That’s equally true of what was the biggest literary / fanboy deal for me this year: Jandek’s first foray into printed prose, The Rays of Light That Did Not Illumine. It’s of a piece with his more recent lyrics but more reduced and honed, with a touch of late Beckett.
Speaking of Beckett, his influence is obvious, but not detrimental, in the deadpan humour and abstracted settings of Donald Barthelme’s 1975 novel The Dead Father. Alarmed that this only recently came to my attention!
Icebergs, eh? They keep so much hidden below the surface. Just like a) Anna Kavan’s queasily repetitive, addiction-addled Ice, and b) Ann Quin’s Berg, which I revisited for its off-season seaside town grimness, but I still don’t feel I’ve entirely plumbed its depths.
Having had it lying around for a few years, I finally dug into Michael E. Veal’s Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae. It’s a perfect balance of solid research and fan enthusiasm, and an invaluable guide to a notoriously labyrinthine genre. The new music books I most enjoyed were Steve Davis and Kavus Torabi’s Medical Grade Music, the massive Coil tome The Universe is a Haunted House, and Ronnie James Dio’s posthumous autobiography Rainbow in the Dark (co-credited to widow Wendy Dio and journalist Mick Wall).
If you want a memoir full of hilarity, tragedy and brutal self-analysis with the occasional orgy thrown in, Bob Monkhouse might not be the first name to come to mind, but his Crying With Laughter: My Life Story from 1993 is truly great.
The best new autobiography I read this year was easily John Lurie’s The History of Bones. Lurie is a true eccentric but unusually self-aware with it, and his early years in New York and elsewhere were bursting with chaotic incident. There’s some resentment and score-settling here but it all feels painfully sincere, and I was sorry to reach the end of it.
Fort Evil Fruit on Bandcamp
EMA
Summing up the year has cheered me up! We’ve all suffered over the past 12 months so, it’s important to remind ourselves of our own achievements and the achievements of others so we can stay positive and motivated.
Here are my Top musical moments of 2021 in no particular order.
Elevate
I was lucky enough to be invited to play Elevate Festival in the beautiful town of Graz, Austria in August by my now great friend DJ Durbin aka Nico. The gig took place in the middle of a public park five minutes walk out of the centre of the town in a small cafe/bar called Parkhouse that had this conservatory feel to it. It was magical. Coffee machine behind me in the booth as I played, the space constantly rammed and sweat dripping from the walls with no real constraints as to what I would be expected to play. The highlight of the festival was Azu Tiwaline’s live set in Volksgarten Park on the Saturday, everyone flaking out coming down from the party the night before, Huge soundsystem, dub paradise! The festival is funded through a number of bodies including the Creative Europe Program and hosts a range of installations, talks/discussion, workshops and gigs all around the town; it felt so far removed from an Irish festival experience. Amazingly the city’s council also supports the organisers every year by allowing them to use a number of spaces in the city. This year it granted access to the 15th Century Domkirche Cathedral cathedral for performances. If you’ve not been and thought about it, go next year!
WZY002
Finally, Woozy released a physical record! This project was a collaboration with Dublin Artist Sputnik One and London based artist Blixa on design. Together we put out South London based Coe’s first EP ‘Radial’ with an Or:la refix on the flip. I won’t even try to describe the record myself as my partner Nevan wrote the press release so beautifully.
Collabs have been the most rewarding pieces of work this year, especially being in lockdown for the majority of it. I am really looking forward to the next release I have been working on with a certain Russian duo! Out next spring!
Kristina Records Instore
The WZY002 release totally feeds into this next moment. I shamelessly DM’d Krstina Records in London to see if they would be willing to host an in-store for the launch of the record. To my surprise they said yes! Kristina is a very special spot on Well Street and is probably one of the few stores I’ve ever been in that made me feel so at home and relaxed, I am usually a bit of a nervous wreck going into record stores even after all these years. Big turn out, few records sold and most importantly a tasteful celebration for Coe who played a killer 2hr set! Shouts to Sid for looking after us!
P.U.P. Volume.1
Speaking of my partner, Nevan aka Jio, he put out an incredible all-Irish garage infused compilation in September. The comp boasts the vast abilities of four Irish producers each releasing under a new mystery alias for the record. If you look hard enough you’ll cop who they are… BWORNER, WASTEE, djkushgold & DJ Too Hard. The insert alone is a nice reminder of the PUP Covid forms a lot of us had to fill in when everything shut down. Definitely one for the Xmas stocking. (Bandcloud’s note: PUP = Pandemic Unemployment Payment.)
Skin&Blister
Where to start with this! Nearly a year since myself and four of my great friends, Gina, Eva, Meg & Ana, founded the Skin&Blister collective. Its purpose is to nurture and encourage Female, Trans and Non-Binary artists in the realm of music and arts in Dublin and Ireland. We have accomplished so much in the past year. Some projects for us included Skin&Blister In Conversation with Podcast. It’s interview based, where we speak to a number of accomplished creatives across a number of fields so we can understand how they got to a position they did and let them give us some more insight into the industry they work in. We launched a Selectors Series on Spotify, a mini mix series for upcoming DJs called MINX, ran an all-vinyl stream out of All City Records for International Women’s Day and ran our first club night with South Korean superstar DJ Fart In The Club alongside designer Julie Weber who did an incredible ‘Hand Holing’ installation in the booth. This event was a fundraiser to support workshops we will be hosting in the new year! Our most exciting moment was the launch of the database for creatives in the scene. You just have to go in and take a look to see how much talent we have here in Ireland in all creative spheres! It is a wonderful community drive resource!
Dublin Modular
Have to shout out Tadhg and the Dublin Modular family who invited the Skin&Blister crew to chat with them at one of their pop up events in the city centre. This event at Kirkos on Prussia St also had performances from SynthDad, Icebear, Chris Myer and there were a number of art pieces dotted around the room, all by local talent. Tadhg is a powerhouse and someone who is pushing boundaries in this city and making the most of the spaces we have. I have huge respect for him and what he is doing so if you see one of these events advertised, make sure to pop in!
Leon Vynehall Live At Pepper Canister Church
This was the most immersive and enjoyable live performance I have ever been to and it was in Dublin which I hate to say, was a surprise. Leon Vynehall performed his new album Rare, Forever live at the stunning setting of Pepper Canister Church last month. The light production was programmed down to the millisecond and of course Vynehall’s musical ability is just next level, the journey he took us on was immense, a few of us cried at the end.
Lisbon
I didn’t know much about Lisbon before heading there. Luckily we were linked up with a friend of a friend, Ricardo, who knew the city’s music spots inside out. He took us to Cosmos, a spot he co-runs. It’s a beautiful cultural space and bar west of the city that actively supports independent and local artists in Lisbon. We were invited to play some tunes, starting off experimental, moving to garage and ending in a reggaeton version of ‘Something About Us’ by Daft Punk, maybe a different vibe they were used to lol. Ricardo took us to several record stores - Carpet & Snares, Peekaboo, Collect Records & Amor Records where I picked up a load of seminal dubstep records, dnb & one of my favorite tunes of all time, Instra:mental’s ‘Watching You’, kid in a candy store moment. Randomly stumbled into a market on the last day. Two DJs b2b’d and played an unreal dnb set and then Violet (Naive) strolled into the room with her cute dog and played a set for about 10 of us seated, it was pretty special.
Tengu
This year I landed the dream job of Booker/Programmer at the beloved Yamamori Tengu, one of the few remaining dancefloors in Ireland. It has been an absolute pleasure to have so much creative freedom and support to bring in new bookings and new initiatives such as our Night Time Monitor Program. Even when we were restricted to opening the venue from 8-12midnight we still managed to curate something special. Over the two months we saw the likes of R.Kitt, Cáit, Nene H, Nabihah Iqbal, Riz La Teef, Leon Vynehall, Darwin, Sim Simma and so many more talented acts in the booth. Really looking forward to getting back to work there in the new year :)
Photo by Karl Magee
Juan Forte X Sinai Soundsystem
I played in Sheffield for Juan Forte with the most stacked Dub focused lineup I have ever been a part of, Sicaria Sound, Riz La Teef, Rareman, Leftlow, Fearless Dread, Foamplate, Truant ++ MCs. It was a dream come true to play on such a huge rig, Sinai Soundsystem! Strictly Dubstep, all killah no fillah, it absolutely blew my mind. Big love and shouts to the Juan crew!
A few ‘firsts’
DJ Mag Feature
Not many words here, but this was pretty cool to be included in the artists to watch list for April in DJ Mag! Shouts to Niamh for the write-up.
Polar w/ Facta - First gig in LDN! Thanks for having me Blixa!
Outsiders: One Eye Witness w/ EMA - First all-vinyl mix in a very very long time!
Louise Chen - First NTS guest mix - Very cool moment!
Merry Christmas everyone, thanks for reading! xox