Daphne Oram & Walls – Sound Houses

Artist: Daphne Oram & Walls
Title Of Album: Sound Houses
Year Of Release: 5 may 2014
Label: Ecstatic – ELP 005
Genre: Techno, Experimental
Quality: MP3, Vinyl
Bitrate: 320 kbps
Total Time: 00:36:04
Total Size: 83 mb

Tracklist:
1. Extremely Long Corridor (03:46)
2. Orchards & Gardens (04:51)
3. A Very Large Metal Box (02:12)
4. Rendering The Voice I (01:50)
5. Strange Lines, & Distances (04:21)
6. Reflexions, Refractions, & Multiplications (05:00)
7. Some Shriller, & Some Deeper (04:22)
8. Rendering The Voice II (01:41)
9. Reflecting The Voice (01:42)
10. As It Gems, & Prisms (06:18)

Walls take a brave step and dip into the archive of electronic music pioneer and BBC Radiophonic Workshop founder, Daphne Oram, with a spellbinding set of recordings made in London and Whitstable using elements from her private tape archive. The London-based Anglo/Italian duo have made no bones about the influence of early electronic music on their modern sound, which has manifest most clearly in Alessio Natalizia’s solo project Not Waving, and in the gauzy textures and analogue constructions of their feted Walls productions. After being given access to the Oram Archive at Goldsmiths the pair respectfully indulge that fascination, focussing on the unique concrète explorations and alchemical experiments created by the Oram in the ’60s at her studio in Fairseat, Wrotham, UK. In doing so, they form a figurative bridge between that nascent, fervent period of ’60s creativity and a 2014 scene obsessed with the strange infidelities and ghostly nature of analogue electronics. In particular their ten pieces, ranging from haunting two minute vignettes to pulsing five minute scapes, acutely reflect the underlying darkness and mystery of Oram’s unparalleled archive, harnessing the deeply eerie, spectral timbres created with her patented Oramics system – a prototypical visual-to-audio interface – processing and splicing them with an array of pedals, modular synth and analogue effects to create something beautifully in-between worlds. Thanks to a sensitive mastering job by Spacemen 3/Spectrum’s Sonic Boom at New Atlantis studios, the results are rendered perfectly otherworldly making for a striking, absorbing set.