New Churn Milk Joan album, featuring original Big Block 454 guitarist

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The third Churn Milk Joan album, "8 Black Postcards", is now available on Bandcamp.
It features 5 pieces that sprung from improvisations recorded in Hebden Bridge on Saturday 13th October 2012 - Richard Knutson and Colin Robinson with original Big Block 454 guitarist Pete Scullion and Marian Sutton.

As usual, you can listen & download for free.

http://churnmilkjoan.bandcamp.com/al...lack-postcards

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This from Michael Inman:

Wrap your brain around this heady improvisational new release from Churn Milk Joan! To describe their new release "8 Black Postcards" (if that's even possible) in a nutshell (and I think they cracked the shell)...take some Funk, Krautrock, Brit Humor, mix it up with a bit of Eno, Fripp, a bit of David Bowie and T-Heads ala Remain in Light....and toss it in a blender with some Cayenne Pepper....and a Valium or two or three....strap yourself into your comfy chair with your best headphones and go for a ride.

[Lino]

Great stuff Colin!! Listened one time through and it is very, very cool! Highly recommend. I have a bit of a scheduling conflict for this week's radio show, but I look forward to spinning this on the program in the coming weeks. Go check it out folks, it's a "pay what you want" type thing and surely, for my ears it's well worth it.

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Thanks very much Lino, glad you liked it. We're all really pleased with it.

Now's the time to download it, before the free downloads get used up...

[NogbadTheBad]

Nice stuff.

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Good review of it here:
http://echoesanddust.com/2013/01/chu...ack-postcards/

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And here's Paul Foster's review:

Colin Robinson and Richard Knutson are seasoned musicians with a background in prog/punk/post-punk who have seen many fads and fashions in music pass-by and have mingled at different levels with some revered names in the alt-rock canon.

Those of you with a more eclectic knowledge of the current UK prog/post-rock scene may be aware of Big Block 454, Robinson’s long-standing, prolific and ever-shifting band project, and also possibly know of Knutson’s Plum Flower Embroidery project.

Here, with Churn Milk Joan we find a meeting of the two in a package that grooves, unsettles, exhilarates and occasionally makes you smile.

Including contributions by guitarist Pete Scullion and vocals by Marian Sutton, the new album 8 Black Postcards presents five tracks of unclassifiable genre-bending, all recorded in Robinson’s hometown of Hebden Bridge (seemingly a hive of avant-garde activity).

Opening track Fell Through The Sky opens with an almost-motorik beatbox loop that gradually, along the course of its 7 minutes, develops into an intense, darkly hallucinatory guitar-led noise jam. Emotionally desperate vocals interject at times, as if to suggest moments of lucidity for the narrator. Like in a 50′s US army acid experiment; the narrator occasionally noting his feelings and impressions….Fell Through The Sky.

The Letter (Episode 1) evokes early Cabaret Voltaire and Talking Heads. Washes of electronics, a mecha-funk beat, guitar delay soundscapes and stilted, impressionistic vocals weave in and out.

Robinson often cites Zappa and various krautrockers as a major influence and this becomes apparent throughout the album. Without resorting to pastiche or reverie, Churn Milk Joan are forging a peculiar path between referring to past music and creating a music for the present. There’s no evocation of bygone days or futurism….if anything, this is existential music.

There are elements of the duo’s other musical projects (Robinson’s mellow and place-specific Jumble Hole Clough and Knutson’s PFE) in Menagerie, a gentler, spacious and quite beautiful guitar soundscape which gradually morphs into avant-garde tape-manipulation-style collage of noise and found sound.

We return to experimental dub-funk and punk-funk for Boom Dipper Stick, the album’s closer. This extended workout distills the components of virtually the entire album into one track.

The beauty of 8 Black Postcards is that, despite being recorded initially as improvisations, there is a coherency to it, a one-ness; without becoming too uniform. The musicianship is admirable but never becomes the end to which all other means becomes secondary. There’s a willingness, nay a necessity, to experiment with form and structure; and no instrument, or personality, overpowers the whole.

The album is dark in a slightly unhinged way. Some lovely, almost-haphazard sounding, improv grooves. Great building guitars and soundscapes. And a feel somewhere in between early Talking Heads and The Normal. If that’s your thing (as it is mine) you should buy it.

8 Black Postcards is available direct from Churn Milk Joan’s Bandcamp site as a download (wav, flac, MP3) for whatever price you see fit to pay (including free).

Words by Paul Foster.

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In the top and straight out the bottom !

[Lino]

Have a listen PE'ers!

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We've just about finished the next Churn Milk Joan album, so grab this one now... !

[scags]

Cool!

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Another good review:
http://unwashedterritories.blogspot....postcards.html