THANK YOU...

...to everyone who performed, attended or otherwise assisted with the manifestation of The Outer Church on Friday February 17th, where we screened Patrick Meaney's documentaries Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods and Warren Ellis: Captured Ghosts with live performances from Old Apparatus, Pye Corner Audio and Kemper Norton, all of whom outdid themselves... and, in some cases, outdrank themselves. 

A very special evening, then... and here's proof in the form of Pye Corner Audio's live set, presented in hi-fidelity sound for your edification. If you were there, this will send a shiver of recognition running up and down your spine. If you were not... well. Oh dear!

Stay tuned for news of further events and remember the first edition of The Outer Church Community Broadcast is still available for streaming, with the second edition coming soon!

THE LAW OF FIVES: KEMPER NORTON

Brighton-based multi-instrumentalist Kemper Norton is responsible for some of the most unsettling music ever to trouble the dreams of humankind and shake the beams of The Outer Church, and he's back for the Feb 17th edition with new material in tow. Here, in accordance with The Law Of Fives, the Cornish emigre and slurtronic specialist presents the five tracks that have been fuelling his nocturnal missions to the outer reaches of rural psychedelia...

1. Incredible String Band 'The Half-Remarkable Question'

"Just before they came totally untethered. Touching, ludicrous, grandiose, ramshackle."

2. The Fall  'Before The Moon Falls'

"British psychedelic drug music at its most grey and terrifying."

3. Vapourspace 'Gravitational Arch Of 10'

"US Psychedelic drug music at its most dayglo and joyful."

4. Richard Skelton 'River Song'

"All his stuff is absolutely beautiful. Haunting, melancholy and enveloping."

5. Prince 'The Beautiful Ones'

"My favourite five minutes of the 80s, and it still makes my heart leap every time I hear it."

Kemper Norton will be appearing at the February 17th edition of The Outer Church at Sticky Mike's Frog Bar, get tickets here.

THE LAW OF FIVES: PYE CORNER AUDIO

Who dares dispute the sublime universality of The Law Of Fives? Certainly not the somewhat shady Kent-based outfit Pye Corner Audio, whose Head Technician here selects the five tracks that are currently providing some respite from his valuable archive work (and preparations for Feb 17th's edition of The Outer Church) hmm, mysterious dot dot dot

1. Led Zeppelin 'Ten Years Gone'

"Beautifully melancholic, that progression just gets me every time... and when the harmony guitars come in at 4:18 - oh my!"

2. The Beatles 'Dear Prudence'

"Again with the descending progression... the piano that creeps in for half a bar toward the end, just beautifully produced. As they all were."

3. Naked Lunch 'God'

"I first heard this in a Parisian hotel room, midway through a month long studio session. I was so sleep deprived I thought I had hallucinated this song. Drums is amazing..."

4. Holden '10101'

"Love the arrangement, and the general wonkiness. I'm guessing that he edits between lots of different live takes, sounds that way to me anyway. Always gets the shoulder frug going over here (I'm doing it right now)."

5. Jonny L 'This Time' (Carl Craig Remix)

"Carl Craig at the height of his powers on this mix. One of his epic builders with a groove that kills."

Pye Corner Audio will be appearing at the February 17th edition of The Outer Church at Sticky Mike's Frog Bar, get tickets here.

ADMISSION...

Advance tickets now available 

from the award-winning 

Resident Records 

in Kensington Gardens, Brighton.

In addition, you may be interested to know that Pye Corner Audio - who will be making a live appearance at the above event - has a rather wonderful mixtape to stream over at 20 Jazz Funk Greats. Well worth giving an ear or five.

SONE INSTITUTE LIVE AT THE OUTER CHURCH 08.12.11

Here's a high quality recording of Sone Institute performing live at The Outer Church last December. The Institute's second full-length album is due out later this year on the marvellous Front & Follow label. In the meantime, I hope this serves to whet your appetite...

FRACTURED MIRROR

When someone tweeted earlier today that Oren Ambarchi had covered Ace Frehley's instrumental 'Fractured Mirror' - the closing track from his magnificent 1978 debut solo album - I had to investigate. I'm happy to confirm that Ambarchi's version is every bit as good as I'd hoped, retaining the bittersweet beauty of the original while making a case for its validity as work of non-canonical minimalism. 'Fractured Mirror' is a special track for me, for reasons I find very interesting and rather unusual. Thing is, the track reminds me of a very specific time in my life - in fact a very specific moment. So far, so nostalgic. But what I find curious is that at that particular point in time, I had not heard this piece of music. It took about a decade for me to discover that Frehley had recorded a composition that reached forward in time to that moment, distilled its essence with pinpoint accuracy, then lay in wait for me to stumble across it and find myself involuntarily transported back to that moment. Suffice to say, this raises some interesting questions concerning the less-than-straightforward relationship between music and nostalgia.