It's here, the highly anticipated luxury sports vehicle of 21st century 'domestic-concrete', the Lambo-gini. Aptly communicating this collection to the uninitiated is going to be quite a task, but here we go...
Graham Lambkin is a central figure in connecting myself and the store to a contemporary experimental music world that feels strange and wondrous while also exploring (or confronting?) the droll and commonplace aspects of present day existence.
Lambkin began his music 'career' as a member of The Shadow Ring (UK, 1993-2003), a group that (to oversimplify) had beginnings on the real outer edge of the UK D-I-Y tradition, a no-budget continuation of Alternative TV's 'Vibing Up The Senile Man', or if early The Fall rejected their rockabilly roots.
The Shadow Ring ended up somewhere else completely. The idea of being a band was disassembled and the process resulted in 2 fantastic final sound-opuses that can be funny, scary, or simulate the feeling of having had 4 standard drinks.
This box set 'Solos' collects his first 4 post-Shadow Ring solo records, Poem (For Voice & Tape), Salmon Run, Softly Softly Copy Copy, and Amateur Doubles. All recorded in Poughkeepsie, NY, from 2001 through 2011.
As the presser says, these recordings "...valorized mundane domestic situations while reveling in the liminal spaces between the acts of listening, recording, and producing". Recordings that are of-the-world, but completely out-of-this-world.
I truly believe there is a real egalitarian reclamation of the avant-garde in both this box set, and the work Lambkin facilitated via his Kye Records imprint.
A magic that I cannot describe. Inexplicable, essential music.
- Nic