[Jandek] Belsayer Time

[Jonathan Lee]

I suppose this is off-topic but it seems relevant considering who's
involved.  I can't vouch for it personally since even though I do have a
turntable in the closet I don't have a phono-stage in my preamp :( 
Hopefully this'll get released on CD eventually because it sounds pretty
interesting (despite the C93 slam below)...

Jonathan



from volcanictongue.com

Galbraith/Neilson/Youngs
Belsayer Time
Time-Lag #034 
LP 

Pan-international/generational underground summit between three heads
who have provided a massively disproportionate amount of raggedy
avant/folk/trance kicks over the span of the modern
under-the-counter-culture, with fringe NZ legend Alastair Galbraith
swapping tapes in the mail with Richard Youngs and Alex Neilson
(Directing Hand/Jandek/Taurpis Tula/Tight Meat Duo et al). Neilson leads
off the disc with a beautiful, distant, delay-dosed reading of the
traditional hymn Idumea that goes a couple of giant steps towards
redeeming the almost Andrew Lloyd Webber-style pantomime readings on the
last Current 93 album. Here it has more in common with the kind of magic
that Coil cast with their witching take on "Christmas Is Now Drawing
Near At Hand", the same intersection of hypnotic folk-primitive
performance, beautifully overt drone logic and supernaturally
illuminated arrangements. It's an atmosphere that doesn't let up across
the space of the entire disc, with devotional, seasonal and lullaby
songforms set sail on bows of black, doomy melodies, splashes of
glorious free percussion, psychedelic singer-songwriter ballads up-ended
in bowls of landscape-warping effects and a ton of lonesome atmospherics
that make it sound exactly the way it was created, in spools of tape
slowly winding their way from across the globe, from one secret outpost
to another. Fantastic. Packaged in a stark but beautiful full colour
offset printed & debossed heavy art board cover, with debossed insert.
180 gram virgin vinyl. Numbered edition of 900 copies. Highly
recommended.



from forcedexposure.com (but probably the label's press release)

"Fully mind-blowing dream collaboration from Alastair Galbraith, Alex
Neilson & Richard Youngs. All serious international underground sound
weavers in their own right, this trio collaboration lifts things ever
higher...
for the last 20 years or so Alastair Galbraith has quietly been
releasing some of the most stunning outsider/psych/folk/drone work to
ever come out of his New Zealand homeland, and we couldn't be more
thrilled to
have him back on the scene. Richard Youngs makes a nice UK parallel
with a vast and equally impressive catalog of sub-underground
avant/drone/folk wonderment to his name. And while Alex Neilson's
name might be a bit new, he's been bending many a mind under his
directing hand solo guise, as well as collaboration with MV & EE,
Taurpis Tula and others. Oh yeah, and that small fact that Alex &
Richard backed Jandek at his first ever live performance is pretty cool
too... musically, things are way fucking deep in the zone here folks.
Side one glides along in slo-mo dream state, hovering with Richard's
beautiful and unmistakable vocals soaring and refracting into echoes,
quietly fluttering and droning electronics, otherworldly sounding synth
melodies, rolling splashes of free percussion, backwards effects, and
syrupy sound pools of acoustic strings. Beautifully lulling and deeply
psychedelic... but the second you flip the LP, the bottom drops right
out with a real electro jammer, blasted with throbbingly heavy free
drumming, vibrating walls of synth, and yowling bird-of-prey electronic
squeal... and things just get more abstract from there... really amazing
stuff for those who dig a headspinningly deep listen... packaged in a
stark but beautiful full color offset printed & debossed heavy art board
cover, with debossed insert. 180 gram virgin vinyl. Numbered edition of
900 copies."