Preslav Literary School

A concert.

2012-01-23T18:31:00.001Z

Artists: Rinus van Alebeek, Preslav Literary School, Violet-Sylvia Schedelbauer
Venue: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Kohlfurter Straße 41-43 10999 Berlin
Date: 29 January, 2000h. Opening hours each day:
Door tax: 5 Euro
Details: Special Preslav duet, new set built for oscillator, reel to reel
tape, walkmen.

2011-11-15T21:31:00.001Z

Thorsten Soltau and Preslav Literary School
Grün wie Milch / Alamut

"Writing of a place and time, from beyond that place and time, is irredeemable. It is something backwards that cannot be brought back. It is writing from a place that gives away its distance in every letter and word. It means nothing of the place and time described, only of the place from which writing takes place. So, of Paris and the twenty-seventh of March, two thousand and nine, this says nothing. Of this unnamed date in Berlin, from which I write to the past, it says everything."

Alamut (excerpt) by Preslav Literary School
Picture LP now available on Corvo Records. Limited to 300 handnumbered copies each w/ custom silkscreen bag.

http://www.corvorecords.de/

La Réflexion Du Tir

2011-10-19T14:45:00.000+01:00

Out now, a new Preslav Literary School tape inspired by Benjamin Laurent Aman's artwork and the amazing Zone by Mathias Énard. Available now (but selling fast) from Full of Nothing.

There's tension in the air and the birds are quiet. The day is dull, life is still. Haunting cassette hiss fills the room. Outside, the children are screaming in agony but muffled whispers are all that comes out. Was that your first lover's voice? Another flashback from unremembered youth? There's a fire crackling in the old castle and ghosts dance in the ballroom. And you pass by the church but there's no one there... Preslav Literary School is dedicated to tape collage and endless rearrangements of outsider noise and found sound. "La Réflexion Du Tir" was recorded by Adam Thomas in Berlin, "with thanks to alabaster tenements, sonic phosphorescence, supreme courts, branch creation, Cap-Vert Peninsula, reticulating splines, magic martyrs." Cassettes with full-colour J-cards and stickers. Edition of 75.

Let's play a game.

2011-09-03T10:17:00.001+01:00

Thursday September 8th 2011 sees Preslav Literary School join a stellar line-up that includes Schneider TM and To Rococo Rot's Robert Lippok for Play, an event hosted by CTM (formerly Club Transmediale). It takes place at Monarch, Kreuzberg, Berlin from 21h, entry 7€.

CTM co-founded the network ICAS – International Cities of Advanced Sound. In total, 30 organisations and festivals on 5 continents joined forces to (co-)create projects and foster discourse, and thereby promote artistic development at the interface of music, art, technology and society. CTM's ICAS SUITE takes place during the second Berlin Music Week (7. – 10. September)

Play will include Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM), Preslav Literay School, Jan Zimmermann, Benjamin L. Aman, Robert Lippok (To Rococo Rot), Mario de Vega and Erik Minkkinen.

Past, present, future.

2011-08-24T10:43:00.001+01:00

Taking its title from Albert Einstein’s theories of the fourth dimension, Wysing’s 2011 annual music event explores the legacy of psychedelia; from the emergence of the term, through 1960s counter culture movements to contemporary art and music.

Preslav Literary School will be playing alongside Alexander Tucker, Ashtray Navigations, Astral Social Club, Demdike Stare, Disinformation, Man from Uranus, Raagnagrok Allstars, Simon Scott (ex Slowdive), Marcus Scott (Hyperdub) and more.

Takes place outside Cambridge, UK for a very reasonable price including coach travel. Can't wait - check the Wysing site for details.

Five summer shows.

2011-05-21T15:10:00.003+01:00

Preslav excursions this summer. All Berlin, all the time.

Friday 3rd June 2011
Emergeandsee Festival
Bötzow-Brauerei, Berlin, Prenzlauer Allee 242. 1930h

Thursday 9th June 2011
Raum 20 w/ HHY & The Macumbas
Ziegrastrasse 11 12057 Berlin, DE

Wednesday 13th July 2011
Bei Roy, w/ Man From Uranus
Ziegrastrasse 11 12057, Berlin, DE.

Monday July 18th 2011
Madame Claude w/Krasnoi & DJ Ramdon
Lübbener Str. 19, Berlin. 2100h

Saturday August 6th
Staalplaatfest w/Eric Lavander
Flughafenstr. 38, 12053 Berlin

Veer out on Interdisco.

2011-05-15T10:00:00.001+01:00

Veer, a new album from Preslav Literary School, was released on Sunday 15th May (coinciding with my appearance at the Netaudio London festival).

The album is available as a free download from Interdisco, esteemed Zurich purveyors of sonic materials. Some descriptions...

"Dense, stunning & ritualistic live cassette collage & found sound conjuring." Lend Me Your Ears
"Slowly turning from divine to more secular sounds we are shifting from Cage to Brahms... a tron-esque journey on the surface of a harddisc that reminds me of the eternal Selected Ambient Works Volume II by the mighty Aphex Twin.... somehow three or four divine pop songs are taking place coinstantaneous. The best part of a pop song processed, filtered, deconstructed and preserved for 5:22 minutes. Part of a series of experiments of how to synthesise the euphoric secrets of Pop." Real Vinylz

Click here to download now!

This is what the label kindly wrote.

We're very excited to introduce you to the Preslav Literary School. Preslav's ambient drones are an offer of peace and tranquility. Veer is disarmingly heartfelt and has an emotional intensity which leaves you with goose bumps and a deep feeling of sobriety. While doing that, it's not esoteric or New Age-y in any way. So we're not talking about waves breaking on the shore, whales mating in the deep ocean, or the like. No, droning out of the tape archive are lost & found violins, ghostly voices, stretched out guitar riffs and industrial soundscapes.

Veer uses live recordings of a Preslav Literary School concert at Open Broadcast's Radio Village, Basel, Switzerland on Friday June 18th 2010. It was mixed and named in Berlin in March 2011. Artwork is by Benjamin Laurent Aman. Immense thanks to Open Broadcast, Micz Flor, Benjamin Laurent Aman, Cara Bell-Jones and, in particular, Oliver Hagmann.

Netaudio London 2011

2011-04-22T15:50:00.005+01:00

Thrilled to have been selected to perform at Netaudio London on 15th May at The Roundhouse in London.

The Open Platform was partially programmed by the wider Netaudio community who voted on submissions received through the call for entries, facilitated via a customised SoundCloud service.

The stage will run from 1 - 6pm at The Roundhouse on Sunday 15th May, hosted by Tony Nwachukwu, former member of Attica Blues. Very happy to see that Jo Thomas (namesake but unrelated) has also been selected. Her debut LP E82 Alpha was released by Entr’acte records in 2010 and is great.

Two interviews.

2011-04-07T13:03:00.004+01:00

"A strangely compelling work, impeccably put together, full of neatly chosen sounds—decayed, altered, and organized in gloriously blending layers. Echolalia stands out from the ambient crowd for two reasons: first, the vast, almost encyclopedic range of sounds gives the exciting sensation that the whole world is contained within it; second, a resolutely unfocused quality makes the music always move forward, not just revolve around a couple of drones..."

Quote from interview with the awesome Antoine Richard, published in April's Tokafi magazine.

Daniel Green of Laish also posted an email interview with me over at his blog. That was via email so there's less umming and ahhing and erring.

Three shows.

2011-02-13T15:21:00.004Z

One, two, three show announcements for the coming month in the Live (Excursions) section of the site. Now booking for Summer/Autumn 2011 too, all offers considered. I love playing to rooms full of empty chairs.

Transmedia.

2011-02-03T18:31:00.005Z

Playing tomorrow (Friday February 4th) at the wonderful transmediale in Berlin. Reasons to go:

i. Half of my equipment died, so I bought a synthesizer.

ii. It's free.

iii. The festival is really quite special this year.

1930 on-the-dot. Cafe Global Stage, HKW, Berlin.

http://www.transmediale.de/content/preslav-literary-school-live

Echolalia press round-up.

2011-01-02T10:16:00.002Z

The Echolalia 12" vinyl out on NO-FI (feat. Machinefabriek, Posset, Poldr & more) has been getting some very kind press, described as "a very exciting release for anyone with a penchant for tape aesthetics... a heated, shimmering masterpiece" (Geiger), "a fascinating body of work... intriguing, seductive and musical" (Ampersand Etcetera), as managing "to be intellectually and emotionally engaging in a way that no other record has for me this year" (Cows Are Just Food), a "f**king amazing tape loop record!" (Second Layer) and as "one of the craziest things I've heard in ages and yet completely compelling" (Norman Records).

Renowned blog Anti-Gravity Bunny described the record in detail:

Trying to talk about the performance as a whole is hard because they jump genres every half second and use anything & everything as source material. So, obviously, this is rad as hell. There’s squawky electronics, bird chatter, synth patterns, squeaky balloons, hidden arias, ancient TV/radio broadcasts, high pressure crackle & hum, typewriter windchimes, indecipherable voicemail recordings, vacuum cleaners, and tape hiss galore. And that’s just a fraction of the sound sources, which get warped, twisted, rewound, slowed, shifted, and glitched in every way possible. They take tape manipulation to places I never thought of, ambient doom, grooved psych, gauzy pink bliss, debased spaced journeys, all with the help of impeccably juxtaposed random shit. Echolalia is about as crazy & erratic as a record can get while still being fucking fantastic, exceedingly listenable, and coherent.

The Wire's Nick Cain wasn't so keen, but the magazine was still kind enough to invite me to London to play an exclusive set live on Resonance FM for their Adventures In Modern Music show which you can stream/download at their site.

Head straight over to NO-FI to buy the limited edition deluxe, screenprinted vinyl with liner notes, photograph, essays and more for a low, low price (with free shipping).

Split personality.

2010-12-06T09:00:00.001Z

The new split 12" by Glue Pour/Preslav Literary School entitled Telepathy Shots/Sonuna is released on Monday 6th December on Razzle Dazzle.

Sonuna (excerpt) by Preslav Literary School

Consisting primarily of decaying voice recordings descried from various operatics, looped cassette narratives and obscure outsider pop oddities, Sonuna was recorded in 2010 in Berlin and mastered by Michael Northam. An ode to the discussion of end times, all the sounds have had previous lives elsewhere.

Buy vinyl direct from Razzle Dazzle!

Dezember Konzerte.

2010-11-23T13:58:00.005Z

To celebrate the release of the Preslav Literary School/Glue Pour split 12" on Razzle Dazzle, Benjamin and I will be taking our wholesome racket to three European capitals this December.

Madame Claude, Berlin. Mon 13 Dec
The Wire/Resonance FM104.4fm, London. Thu 16 Dec (9pm-10:30pm)
TBC, Paris. Sat 18 Dec.

Lots of new merchandise available, yule see.

Veer & Full Of Nothing.

2010-11-06T18:28:00.004Z

Super happy to announce that Preslav Literary School will release albums for two new labels in early 2011.

The first will be Veer for Interdisco in early January. They'll put out a digital-only version of a live set played in Switzerland in summer 2010. Tracklist:

1) This Good Lesson Keep (2:39)

2) Mirth In Funeral (4:46)

3) Most Miraculous Organ (7:27)

4) Dirge In Marriage (3:19)

5) Unto The Voice (8:15)

6) Exeunt (3:38)

The second will be my first cassette release, ironically enough. The lovely folks at Full Of Nothing, surely the best avant-garde label operating out of the Republic of Karelia in North-Western Russia, will manufacture a limited edition 50 tape run. The Finnish don't call that part of the world 'the Songlands' for nothing.

STRP tease.

2010-11-04T22:26:00.008Z

Preslav Literary School is delighted to announce a special festival performance at STRP, Eindhoven, Netherlands on Friday 26 November.

worm@STRP.

Klokgebouw, Beukenlaan 10151, Strijp-S,

5616 VJ Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

Programme starts at 2000.

Live at Kringloop.

2010-11-03T14:47:00.002Z