The first in our hand-stamped cassette series is an EP of improvised electronic compositions by Ireland's Herv - an artist who has since the late '90s tamed, conquered, and mutated most synthetic genres you can think of. Three excursions are featured here, delving into the inner workings of various machines to reveal how they can harmonise and conflict in equal measure - whirring, chattering, and bleeping profusely under the nefarious guidance of their human puppet-master.

The B side sees the spare parts of Herv's robot children melted and rebuilt in slow-mo by drone-happy psychonauts Whirling Hall Of Knives - and these three further workouts are shaped and elongated into the customary dark, grinding WHOK style.

See the process involved in hand-making these here.

Buyer of the cassette will be immediately sent a link to a digital version of the album in lossless audio format. The digital version of the album will not be available otherwise.

VERY limited hand made edition on Type II High Bias BASF Chrome Plus C42 in hand stamped triple panel argato-style sleeves + 6 track lossless audio download.

Jan 2012, NUTE009.

Listen to samples



Herv on the process of making Mineral Lamp:

"In mid 2011 after working for several months purely with hand held devices for the “Portable Music” series on Boy Scout Audio I decided I needed to do exactly the opposite for a period and restrict myself to working with bulky hardware which would rarely leave my bedroom studio.

I began putting any spare cash I had into picking up bits of analogue and analogue emulation gear and started to experiment. I had a policy that anything I would pick up would have some sort of internal sequencing capacity as I was determined that I only wanted to use the computer, once my main compositional and sequencing tool, as a tape recorder of sorts and that nothing should be sequenced externally.

I began making melodic and percussive patches on the equipment and tried to make things that would be self sustaining with elements of randomness once they were set in motion but that were also governed by certain limitations or rules. Then I decided that it might also be interesting if the machines generally ran entirely independently of one another and there was no attempt to clock them together.

I then would set up several synthesizers, each programmed with a patch that I felt might complement it’s neighbours, press record on the computer and then start to improvise. I would also occasionally use large field recordings from my phone as a background texture and often try to steer the sound in the direction the recordings were heading. Occasionally I didn’t even have to as the synthetic sounds would follow the recordings curiously by chance.

After using snatched moments of my previously limited free time to work on Portable Music, I found this way of working really exciting: no longer was I trying to find odd minutes in the day to work on more traditionally structured and “composed” electronic music, now I could come home every evening, make some patches, press record and let the machines fight amongst themselves."