That’s right, the Ghost E.P. is released today. You can get the digital version from iTunes or Amazon. Or if you really like your music with extra lo-fi goodness, you can buy the limited edition cassette (with digital download coupon) over here.

O.E. veterans Low Low Low La La La Love Love Love will drop their fourth release, the Ghost E.P., on 04.05.11. These recordings were nearly lost in the ether, but some clever trickery brought them back to life.

On Ghost, Low Low… return to their lo-fi origins with a six-song cycle of basement-incidentals, humming /flickering guitars, affective harmonies and reverb-heavy percussion. Created in various stages over the course of a year on a 16-track reel-to-reel and 8-track cassette recorder, these songs almost didn’t see the light of day. After months of basement storage, the tapes appeared moldy and smelled damp. Flecks of tape were falling off and volume seemed irregular, leading to a diagnosis of “sticky shed syndrome”. In an effort to save the recordings, the band found an engineer to “home bake” them, preserving integrity long enough to extract the mixes. Coincidentally enough, those experiences of decay, cloudiness and frustrated hope reside strikingly parallel to the lyrical themes in Ghost’s songs.

To complement the nature of the original recordings, 100 limited-edition cassette versions were pressed. The artwork was hand-printed using a big old Albion Press and is based on the lyric from track four, “The wasp in my hair… Then the shock in my arms… Is close to the day that I need”. Each cassette comes with a digital download card, so you’re covered in case you like to store your tapes in a damp basement too.

Link.

These days you pull up on the drive at home and whip the keys out no matter what song is playing. What changed? Did the effect music has on you get shallower? Or has life become a series of moments bumping into one another? Are you so eager to get to the next mundane moment in your life?

What is wrong with this one?

We have recorded a cover of ‘Sing Swan Song’ for a Can tribute album put together by the guys at OE. Stream it, download it for free and check out all the other OE artists on there here.

Lunar eclipse. Winter solstice. End of the world. Happy Christmas and New Year.

I spent the morning yesterday trying to get this to print correctly on an Adana machine, but I think the block was just a bit too big as I was getting uneven results on two different machines. I spent the afternoon printing from the block on a big old Albion press – beautiful machine, but the process was a lot slower than I had hoped for. So I let the time restraint dictate the length of the edition. By 5pm when the studio shut for the day, I must have done nearly 100 prints I think.

Today I have been to pick them up and have just hung them out on my drying rack.

The EP itself has been burned to CD and mp3 for listening. It sounds like there are a still few tweaks before it is finished.