Pas Musique

On April 23, 2026 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviewsLeave a comment

XUMA – FREE BETTY

‘Free Betty’ is a protest song by Xuma, the Brighton duo duo of Harriett and Chris Robbins Kennish, whose debut album Jasmine I wrote about two years ago. The focus of their ire here is on the jailing of one Ibtissame Betty Lachgar, imprisoned in squalid conditions in Morocco for wearing a slogan t-shirt – in London, where the last time I checked we still enjoyed freedom of speech and expression – that supported two women sentenced to death in Iran for being lesbians. ‘Free Betty’ contains four mixes of the track, fronted by Harriett Robbins Kennish’s angular, punky vocals, the mixes all pack their own political punch, ranging from crisp electro to fast-paced minimal techno. You can read more about the Free Betty campaign here. Released January 18 2026.

https://xuma.bandcamp.com/album/free-betty

Shameless Plug #1: Chris Robbins Kennish released ‘Wedding Piano’ under the name Ultrachill as part of Season 3 of my Mortality Tables LIFEFILES project. It can be found here.

ASHER LEVITAS & MARGARET FIELDER MCGINNIS – THROUGH THESE RED WINDOWS

This collaboration between sound artists Asher Levitas and Margaret Fielder McGinnis uses two discrete inputs as the jumping-off points for the four tracks presented here. The first is a series of sculptures by McGinnis which are named after Wallace Sabine (1868 – 1919), a physicist whose pioneering work on acoustics was integrated into the architectural design of the Boston Symphony Hall. The second input is a recurring childhood dream that Levitas experienced, which, when approached as sound sculptures, become textures that range from dreamy and resolved to tangled and impenetrable. These were then played through McGinnis’s sculptures, fringing them with a metallic crackle like a rattling air conditioning unit which gives even the most elegiac tone a sense of deep and complex uncertainty. A remarkable release from these two seasoned artists. Released February 13 2026.

https://asherlevitas.bandcamp.com/album/through-these-red-windows-2

Shameless Plug #2: Asher Levitas released ‘It’s Like Last Time But This Time You’ve Got A Gun’ as part of another Mortality Tables initiative, The Impermanence Project. It can be found here.

BRASS CLOUDS, FOG NET & VOLCANIC PINNACLES – DIVE 2: SONOLUMINESCENCE

It’s hard not to describe the second release from the Bathysphere imprint’s Dive series as immersive. Recorded in a single day by the mysterious Brass Clouds, Fog Net and Volcanic Pinnacles, Dive 2 is part-jazz, part-ambient, part-soundscape and all, well, immersive. We hear unobtrusive, atmospheric field recordings, singing bowl tones, evocative saxophone melodies, and big blocks of floating texture, often all at once. It is a highly emotional suite, sidestepping specific classification. The inquisitive piano melodies, fluid synth-brass notes and fluttering electronics of ‘Spectral Visions’ combine together to make one of the album’s emotive highlights, its discernible instrumentation briefly collapsing into a dense web of enveloping drones. ‘Phosphor Signals’ trawls through rich, bass-heavy low-end thanks to a combination of sonorous sax and heavy synths, though which poke a joyful melodic pairing of chiming percussion and piano. Immersive, like I already said (twice). Released February 26 2026 by Bathysphere.

https://bathysphererecords.bandcamp.com/album/dive-2-sonoluminescence

HIRO AMA – BOOSTER PACK

In 2024, I reviewed Japan-born, London-based Hiro Ama’s Music For Peace And Harmony for Electronic Sound. This seems to happen to me increasingly rarely these days, but it is an album that I returned to countless times after the review was written. Its gentle, mellifluous atmospherics left a real impression on me, and I found myself playing it during moments where things were getting on top of me or I felt anxious. Honesty, it’s a beautiful collection. Please do check it out. The Hiro Ama of Booster Pack is very different. This is music designed to move your feet, not soothe your troubled soul. In fact, the only trace of the Ama from Music For Peace And Harmony I can find is on ‘Cloud 9’, where a wonky melody briefly offers a glimpse of the lightness of spirit that coloured his 2024 album. The EP proves Ama to be a highly dexterous and unpredictable producer. The intense ‘Lava’ belongs in a Moby rave DJ set from 1992, with a savage, almost EBM bass line. Opener ‘Booster’ is the highlight, occupying a euphoric (but often skewed) deep house zone that, like the spiritual side he showed on Music For Peace And Harmony, Ama makes entirely his own. Released April 10 2026 by PRAH.

https://hiroama.bandcamp.com/album/booster-pack-ep

PAS MUSIQUE – 8 PHRASES

Hot on the heels of the solo Pas Musique performance by founding member Robert Pepper at the Pictor Gallery in New York last week, there’s a new album out this week. 8 Phrases is the soundtrack to a film comprising eight short segments, and finds the trio of Pepper, Michael Durek and Jon Worthley returning to the instant composition / filming approach they used between 2008 and 2011. The full film can be found here. ‘Whisper’ occupies the dead centre of this collection, finding them intoning a nursery rhyme I’d forgotten all about over a sound bed of swirling, slightly discordant electronics doused in phasing, fluctuating reverb. The words are delivered in a low, conspiratorial whisper which imbues them with a grim sense of discomfort and unease, not dissimilar to how The Residents often usher the familiar toward the nightmarish. Elsewhere, ‘Inside A Clock’ fuses a pulsating, restless low-end with murky, shrouded voices from which emerges a dense sequence of unpredictable sounds. ‘Garden Echo’ might have the most beatific title of all of these pieces but it is also one of the collection’s darkest moments, as a polite cloud of pretty textures gets hitched to a dirty, faltering rhythm, accompanied by urgent sirens, and grubby blocks of distorted noise. Released April 24 2026.

https://pasmusique.bandcamp.com/album/8-phrases

Words: Mat Smith

Rupert Lally – Tiny Universes

On December 5, 2025 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviewsLeave a comment

Earlier this year, my Mortality Tables collaborative project released Lunar Forms by Switzerland-based sound artist Rupert Lally*. That album found Lally at what I would argue was his most inventive, using a specific and quirky Eurorack module to trigger randomised rhythms on a daily basis, which he then used as the foundation for the pieces on the album.

The album also found Lally in deeply ambient territory. It’s an area of his work that I’ve always enjoyed, and for Tiny Universes, his latest album, we (pleasingly) find him going even further in that direction.

His choice of title is instructive, if somewhat consciously oxymoronic. These 11 pieces are like studying pinhead-sized universes through a microscope, revealing an incomprehensible vastness that would not be implied by their ostensibly small stature. Musically, there’s a whiff of jazzy Kosmische, a smattering of Vangelis-esque Bladerunner-y widescreen vastness and a determined melodic momentum that’s often missing from a lot of ambient music. Lally is not afraid of introducing unsettling, discordant textures, instilling a feeling of discomfort and uncertainty as much as they seem to evoke the idea of wide-eyed, slack-jawed wonder, surprise and incomprehension.

Lally has always been a masterful electronic composer and sound designer, capable of using an adaptable array of tools and techniques within his work. The sleight-of-hand he deploys here is the art of the slow build. His melodies begin as quiet, ruminative gestures, which coalesce and harden as they progress, often without you noticing. These magnificent, delicate, unexpected, low-key crescendos are critical ingredients of pieces like ‘Cosmic Countdown’, where that aforementioned sense of motion is most acutely felt. Elsewhere, Lally’s approach is to allow pieces to form stately, stirring gaseous structures out of oscillating, restless layers of white noise, lending a creator’s guiding hand while also allowing the tracks to evolve and develop by themselves.

Unlike Lunar Forms, there are no rhythms on Tiny Universes. None. Not even the slightest trace, inference or suggestion. Perhaps they haven’t formed yet in these universes that have caught Lally’s attention. It leaves his melodic and atmospheric prowess utterly naked and untethered; a brave move, for sure, but one that he is effortlessly capable of owning. The result is an album representing yet another high watermark in his expansive back catalogue. And yes, I know I’m biased.

https://rupertlally.bandcamp.com/album/tiny-universes

Tiny Universes by Rupert Lally was released December 5 2025. It is available for a limited period as a pay-what-you-like release.

* There are a small number of CD copies of Lunar Forms available here.

Words: Mat Smith

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
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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
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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

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boycalledcrow – //M E L O D Y_M A N

On October 24, 2023October 24, 2023 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviewsLeave a comment

The premise for Carl Knott’s latest boycalledcrow release is an imagined world where decommissioned transmitters and dusty radios awake from the slumbers of redundancy and begin functioning again. Imagine fractured sounds, faltering rhythms and glitchy sonic non sequiturs, transmitted abruptly into a era more used to the vapid sterility of streaming and internet radio.

I can’t think of a better place for Knott’s music to exist, even if it is fantastical. As boycalledcrow, his work has always occupied a sort of fragmentary landscape of its own: sounds form, burst into sharp sonic fractals and re-emerge in infinitely rearranged forms; melodies falter and collapse in on themselves; guitars, betraying his origins as a folk musician, offer recognisable shapes but are clipped, alien and discordantly unsettling.

Each of the fourteen pieces here is accompanied by a brief and evocative poem, and at times it feels like these collections of words have been subjected to the same skewed logic with which Knott’s music is developed. The verse to accompany the title track is a more adroit description of his work than any reviewer could muster:

And now
He’s pulling all of the strings
A cat’s cradle
Of tangled tunes
Weaving paths
And making up names

I’ll get my coat. I would encourage you to ignore everything I’ve ever written about Knott’s music.

None of this is intended to suggest that //M E L O D Y_M A N is some sort of messy, randomised sprawl of an album, even if the complicated algorithm-like names of the tracks might indicate otherwise. To suggest this would be to undermine Knott’s skills as a sound artist. In fact, quite the contrary – the album contains some of Knott’s most beatific, resonant works to date. ‘God * Woman = C I R C L E ()’ and ‘dr dr dr || WOODS 777’ consist of tiny cycles of pretty melodies that evoke comparison with Steve Reich, offset by plaintive, organic gamelan textures and shimmering reverb that, when combined, produces an arresting, enveloping minimalist warmth.

Nevertheless, there is something endlessly intriguing about Knott’s more restless moments. The velocity at which ideas form and are replaced creates a sort of turbulence within pieces like ‘(S) illy Song #2’ that leaves you more than a little dizzy as it skips and hops along a path seemingly all of its own. Such pieces are an offset to more delicate tracks like ‘’, ‘~ f o r e s t … MOON ~’ and ‘SUN sun +’, leaving the listener stood perpetually on a precipice of expectation.

And that’s what’s ultimately so interesting here: as one track finishes and another starts, you find yourself trying to anticipate where Knott might pivot you to next. To predict this, however, is a fruitless endeavour, and it’s that sense of bold adventurism that makes //M E L O D Y_M A N such an extraordinary and enriching listening experience from start to finish.

//M E L O D Y_M A N by boycalledcrow is released October 27 2023 by Waxing Crescent.

boycalledcrow recently recorded a piece for my Mortality Tables collaborative series LIFEFILES. Listen to ‘LF13 / Westbury’ here.

Words: Mat Smith

The Dark Jazz Project – 3 / Dead King (A Play In Three Acts)

On August 9, 2023August 9, 2023 By 429harrowroadIn Album reviews, Book reviewsLeave a comment

“Don’t overdose on this stuff,” The Dark Jazz Project’s Andrew Spackman told me when he sent me his new album, 3. “It’s pretty potent!”

I reckon I can handle it. I’ve been consuming Spackman’s music for years, first when he was know as SAD MAN and more recently as The Dark Jazz Project. Wonky jazz bangers were always Spackman’s medicine of choice, but with his most recent reinvention, it’s like he’s taken his music into a whole new dimension. I don’t mean into some sort of spiralling, ‘groovy, baby’ timewarp. I mean darker. Jazzier. Projectier.

3 is intense, though, even by Spackman’s standards. The risk advisory is to be noted. Twenty tracks. Two hours. An accompanying play called Dead King (A Play In Three Acts). This sort of stuff would take most artists years to come up with, but Spackman is able to deliver this kind of wonderful sprawl with a spontaneity and fluidity – at high speed – that’s resolutely fresh and refreshingly imaginative.

Never one to repeat himself, 3 flips and flops like around like manic three-legged frog, delving deep into dance music’s murkiest corners to drag out skewed rhythms, off-kilter half-melodies, headcleaning glitchy noise and a seemingly limitless collection of cool jazz samples. And that’s just the first track, the decisively-named ‘Jazz’. The effect here is like watching an especially dexterous DJ seeking out the most floor-clearing tracks in his collection and yet managing to get the stoic crowd to wiggle along with manic glee.

Picking out standout tracks from 3’s vast number of cuts is a tough, nay impossible task. They’re all belters. If highlights you must have, check out ‘The Great Ones’, a track which lurches from graceful, contemplative piano to a segment that sounds like Moby’s ‘Thousand’ remixed by a Dutch hardcore artist while juggling cans of ball bearings. Meanwhile, ‘Carloza’ twitches forth on a breakbeat reimagined by Gene Krupa, over which Spackman sprinkles tinkly synths and buzzing, vital hooks.

‘Babonza’ sounds like a shoot-out between Star Wars laser pistols and a drinking straw noisily chasing the final drops in a plastic beaker containing Ken Kesey’s Kool-Aid. ‘The Stranger Again’ is a tight, 4/4 monster that rapidly switches direction into a noisy mess, just as you’ve started showing off your best moves. It rather reminds me of when I was dancing to the Paul Oakenfold remix of U2’s ‘Even Better Than The Real Thing’ at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Wildmoor nightclub and the DJ switched tracks just as I had started playing air guitar along with The Edge.

3 is effectively the informal soundtrack to Dead King, involving a medieval monarch, a timewarp (okay, so I was wrong about the timewarp: groovy, baby) and a magical, energy-providing creature. The play is beautifully presented, with fantastic photography and a totally bonkers narrative. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well for the King, though the title may have already yielded that clue.

Mr. Spackman, you have outdone yourself this time.

Footnote: this review was completed while flying over Canada. As ever, I had eschewed the onboard entertainment in favour of the moving map. Two places were beneath us as I concluded the final sentence – Flin Flon and Pukatawagan – while Medicine Hat was off in distance. I fear that my mind had reached such befuddlement by Spackman’s latest collection that place names and track titles had become indistinguishable. Sheesh, he wasn’t wrong about the potency.

Shameless plug: Spackman contributed to my Mortality Tables LIFEFILES series with a track that was literally made with nothing but clothes hangers. Check it out here. All proceeds to the Deaf Children’s Society and Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

3 and Dead King were released / published by Irregular Patterns on July 7 2023.

Mortality Tables: Goodparley – Two Meditations For Freya

On July 1, 2022June 30, 2022 By 429harrowroadIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

MORTALITY TABLES
GOODPARLEY – TWO MEDITATIONS FOR FREYA

digital EP released today | remixes by Alka & Xqui

mortalitytables.bandcamp.com

Two improvised pieces for guitar. Recorded by Oli Richards (Goodparley) on 10 February 2022 in response to a concept by Mat Smith.

1. Meditation Twenty-Four (i) (For Freya)
2. Meditation Twenty-Four (ii) (For Freya)
3. Meditation Twenty-Four (i) (For Freya) – Alka Remix
4. Meditation Twenty-Four (ii) (For Freya) – Xqui Remix

Response: Oli Richards
Concept: Mat Smith
Mastering: John@SEODAH
Design: Neil Coe

A Mortality Tables Product
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CONCEPT NOTES BY MAT SMITH

‘Two Meditations For Freya’ is a sound response to anxiety.

On 10 January 2022, my youngest daughter found herself too scared to sleep. She was never a great sleeper as a baby and toddler, and now, as a teenager, often struggles to relax enough for bed.

This night was different, however. She seemed to be gripped by an intense and unrelenting panic which she could not explain. In context, she had been receiving weekly cognitive behavioural therapy treatment for anxiety and depression through CHUMS, a Bedfordshire charity focused on helping young people cope with mental health issues. She’d had one of her weekly sessions earlier that day and it seemed to have triggered something inside her, but she could not – or perhaps would not – articulate it.

In an effort to help her, I offered to stay in her room so that she could feel safe and reassured enough to drift off. As she tossed and turned, I decided to practice some guided meditation in the midnight darkness of her room. She eventually fell asleep while listening to the rhythm of my breath. For the next week, we practiced short meditations together every night just before bed, and she slept better every night that week.

Around that time I was working with Oli Richards as he prepared his album Meditations Vol. 1 for release by Wormhole World. The album collected five improvised guitar ‘meditations’, each one recorded in the first few minutes after he woke up in the morning. Oli had begun releasing these pieces in November 2021, and I had been struck by their beauty and simplicity. I began seeing them as brief moments of acute stillness in which to detach from the world, and support my own meditation practice.

I approached Oli with the story of how Freya couldn’t sleep and asked if he’d consider recording an improvisation for her, to support the meditations she and I were doing together. His recordings were made on 10 February 2022 at his home in Cardiff. They were originally released through Oli’s Bandcamp page later the same day.

All proceeds from this release will go to CHUMS. CHUMS provides mental health and emotional wellbeing support for children, young people and their families.
chums.uk.com

ABOUT GOODPARLEY

Goodparley (Oli Richards) is a Cardiff-based musician and sound artist. His sounds are largely based around improvised ambient guitar loops and textures, manipulated in real-time using various modulating effects to create inherently experimental soundscapes.
goodparley.bandcamp.com

ABOUT MORTALITY TABLES

“In an effort to circumvent our unalterable mortality, we create. We make SOUNDS, ART, WORDS. These things are our INSURANCE against death.”
– Mortality Tables, On Mortality, Immortality & Charles Ives (2022)

E Peritia Ratio: reason from experience.

Nothing happens without context. Every event has a catalyst. There is no such thing as a blank page.

So it goes that each Mortality Tables Product must begin with an outline of an initial creative concept – a thought; a notion; a moment of serious whimsy; a considered reflection on life, memory, love, loss, trauma, death.

We document those ideas, then invite collaborators to respond freely to them.

They may ignore us. They may say no. They may say yes. Whoever we invite to participate shall be unencumbered by restriction, constraint, expectation, convention, limit or judgement.

There are never any right or wrong answers, because there are no questions. There is nothing more than the idea and the response.

Mortality Tables
Est. Bloomsbury, 2019
mortality-tables.com
Mortality Tables illustration by Savage Pencil