alka – the magnitude weighs heavy : a reflection

On September 25, 2025 By 429harrowroadIn Mortality Tables, NewsLeave a comment

A moment of reflection following today’s release of the magnitude weighs heavy by alka. You can pick up a CD copy at mortalitytables.bandcamp.com

I first got to know Bryan Michael (alka) in 2017 while working for Erasure‘s Vince Clarke as the writer of press releases for his VeryRecords label. He asked me to work on the PR text for Bryan’s first album for the label, The Colour Of Terrible Crystal.

We had a call, and hit it off straight away. Not long after, we had lunch while I was in Philadelphia. He gave me a glow-in-the-dark alka t-shirt and CD copies of previous alka albums. I worked on the PR for the second VeryRecords album, Regarding The Auguries in 2020. By then, the world had gone to the dogs and it was helpful, mentally, to have a project to focus in on. I am indebted to Bryan and Vince for having that album to distract myself from what was going on that year.

When Mortality Tables became visible in 2022, alka remixed the very first Product, ‘Two Meditations (For Freya)’, by Please Close Your Eyes.

We pressed up 7-inch copies of an amazing version of Pink Floyd‘s ‘On The Run’ (backed with a remix by Vince), which we de-released after Pink Floyd blocked us from making it available (no, I can’t give you a copy).

He remixed ‘Cyclic Demonstrating’ in 2023. He provided invaluable support and sounds for The Engineer. We released pod, his collaboration with visual poet Andrew Brenza and ‘drama[mine]’, his collaboration with poet Nero’s Tongue, for which he also made a short film, Different Different Trains, which can be found at the Mortality Tables YouTube channel. All of these releases (apart from ‘On The Run’) can be found at our Bandcamp page.

I am in constant awe of Bryan’s creative sensibilities and his endless ideas. Even though we have built up a solid friendship and productive series of collaborations, when he asked if I would be interested in releasing the magnitude weighs heavy, I was blown away. To be trusted with the release of this project is something I’m so grateful for. Vince also gave his blessing for Mortality Tables to conclude the trilogy of albums that his label started.

Thank you Bryan for placing your trust in us.

A Mortality Tables Product
MTP56

Words: Mat Smith

Mortality Tables: boycalledcrow – Kullu

On April 30, 2024May 10, 2024 By 429harrowroadIn Mortality TablesLeave a comment

an audio travelogue of sound artist Carl M Knott’s travels in India

released May 3 2024 in digital and limited cassette edition of 25 copies

mortalitytables.bandcamp.com

Watch the video for ‘Milk And Honey’ here:

“Eventually found a guesthouse. Not very nice: a park-bench bed with two blankets for a mattress, stone walls and a shared squat toilet, but it had an ashram ambience and great acoustics for the guitar. I could really feel those bass notes.

Spent the evening understanding the layout of the city, eating and playing the guitar. I met the devil in New Delhi railway station and sold my soul for his guitar tunings. Robert Johnson is taking over my fingers.”

– Carl M Knott, January 26 2006

Kullu is the new album from electronic musician and former folk artist boycalledcrow, the alias of Chester’s Carl M Knott.

The album is an audio travelogue of Knott’s travels through India in 2005 and 2006, just after he’d graduated. That journey was part of Knott’s concerted efforts to overcome the intense feelings of stress and anxiety that had gnawed away at him throughout his adolescence. Along the way, he documented his travels in a blog and accumulated countless memory cards of photos and videos. He stayed in basic accommodation and made numerous fast friends from around the world, one of whom, an artist called James, provides the album’s sleeve image.

Knott made copious field recordings during his travels, and this diary-like library of sounds forms the basis of the ten tracks on Kullu. We hear busy, vibrant towns from the back of an auto rickshaw, rapturous tabla rhythms, blurred chanting and tanpura drones, as well as Knott’s own playing, made using a guitar bought in Dehradun for £27.

Knott took these foundational sounds, then augmented and processed them in the style that he has developed on albums such as // M E L O D Y_M A N (Waxing Crescent, 2023) and Mystic Scally (Wormhole World, 2020). These pieces roam freely between the engaging and unpredictable; joyous yet reflective; uplifting yet inquisitive. They are pieces filled with constant motion; taken as a whole, these pieces allow the listener to follow Knott’s journey through the remote Kullu Valley and along the Beas river that bisects the Himalayas.

This is an album of intense discovery, of new sounds and new atmospheres, and a sense of healing and catharsis. Knott wrote in his blog about trying to avoid being drawn into the well-worm paths of mediation and yoga, unlike most of the travellers he met between New Delhi railway station and his time in the Kullu Valley.

Instead, the pieces on Kullu find someone acutely listening to the turning of the world around him. It represented an awakening of Knott’s approach to documenting the sounds he is drawn to, fused with a distinctive, emotive and original compositional style.

1. Charas
2. Pretty In The Sun
3. Joy
4. Vipassana
5. Tuktuk
6. Milk And Honey
7. Golden City
8. Kanashi
9. Sadhu
10. Kali

Music and production by Carl M Knott.
Mastered by Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw.
All field recordings and photographs by Carl M Knott, India, 2006.
Design by Neil Coe.
Video editing by Neu Gestalt.

Digital edition and limited cassette edition of 25 copies released May 3 2024 through mortalitytables.bandcamp.com

All proceeds from sales of Kullu will go to CHUMS. CHUMS provides mental health and emotional wellbeing support for children, young people and their families.

chums.uk.com

A Mortality Tables Product
MTP29

ABOUT BOYCALLEDCROW

boycalledcrow is the alias of Chester-based sound artist Carl M Knott (Wonderful Beasts, Spacelab). Knott, a former folk musician, uses his myriad acoustic influences to create unique, strange and beautiful compositions.

boycalledcrow.bandcamp.com

Mortality Tables – Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds

On March 31, 2024May 10, 2024 By 429harrowroadIn Mortality TablesLeave a comment

Earlier today, The Moderns played ‘Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds (Performance #2)’ by my Mortality Tables project as part of their latest episode.

themoderns.blog/2024/03/31/the-moderns-ep-308/

To celebrate that, here are some 50% discount codes which can be used at the checkout at mortalitytables.bandcamp.com:

Performance #1 – ivesone
Performance #2 – ivestwo

I feel like this piece requires some explanation.

On face value, ‘Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds’ is just an eight-and-a-half minute field recording from Central Park in New York, beautifully mastered by Alex from the quiet details label. There’s more to it than meets the ear, and its development has occupied me almost ceaselessly since 2021.

The location of the recording isn’t random. It is derived from your age and your life expectancy in 1874. I made a special map of Central Park divided up into areas corresponding to those life expectancies, and the ‘performer’ makes the recording in that area.

Why 1874? That was the year that the American radical composer Charles Ives was born. One of his compositions was ‘Central Park In The Dark’ (1906), with which Ives intended to evoke the sounds of the park that he heard while sat on a bench not far from his apartment on Central Park West. Incidentally, Ives is the guy with the beard in the illustration by Savage Pencil that gave Mortality Tables its entire visual identity.

Savage Pencil – Mortality Tables illustration (detail)

Why life expectancies? That’s because being a composer wasn’t Ives’s main occupation. For the majority of his working life, Ives worked in life insurance, way Downtown on Nassau Street, near Wall Street.

Why eight-and-a-half minutes? Because that’s how long the first recorded version of ‘Central Park In The Dark’ (made in 1951) lasted.

Mortality Tables – Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds (Performance #1)

The intention is to publish the instructions for making a performance / recording of ‘Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds’, along with more details about Ives and his work in both music and insurance, in October of this year.

A couple of other explanations, maybe. A list of life expectancies is called a mortality table. You may now see where the name Mortality Tables comes from. And my main occupation involves working with insurance companies. That’s why Ives is important to me, as an inspiration, and as a role model.

– Mat

Mortality Tables: Andrew Brenza / Alka – pod (Chapter 2)

On January 19, 2024January 19, 2024 By 429harrowroadIn Mortality TablesLeave a comment

ANDREW BRENZA / ALKA
pod (Chapter 2)

a collaboration between visual poet Andrew Brenza and sound artist Alka

released today

“So many machines alive and singing in a single room…”

A new release from Mortality Tables, the collaborative project of Further.’s Mat Smith. Out now at mortalitytables.bandcamp.com

‘pod’ by Andrew Brenza (2023):

“Over a period of several months in the winter of 2022, a nameless entity, via manipulations of entangled particles across time, or pods, as they referred to them, transmitted an expressive model for the development of an eternally sustainable utopian consciousness into the plastic architecture of the author’s dreams. ‘pod’ is the visual-textual record of those transmissions.”

‘pod’ is published by ghosTTruth, an imprint of Montag Press (montagpress.com)

CREDITS

Words, narration and design by Andrew Brenza
Sounds by Alka
Mastered by James Edward Armstrong

andrewbrenza.com
magicksquares.com

A Mortality Tables Product
MTP33