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BRADLEY, PAUL / JONATHAN COLECLOUGH / HITOSHI KOJO / COLIN POTTER - Water Mountain

Format: do-CD
Label & Cat.Number: Omnimemento OM 08
Release Year: 2013
Note: studio recordings from 2006 of Drone Rec.-artist HITOSHI KOJO (SPIRACLE) in collaboration with three UK drone-masters, leading to excellent multi-layered transcension drones, dreamy & organic, full of overtunes and shimmering acoustic colours.. lim. 250, die-cut artwork; "..a perfectly balanced out aerial spiralling mass of sound...sweeping & virulent as well, when it comes to evoke hidden forces..." [Daniel Crokaert/MYSTERY SEA]
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"It has been far too long since we've heard anything from Jonathan Coleclough. So long in fact that we probably need to refresh some of our readership on this stalwart British drone artist, whose name alone became a shorthand for mesmerism that deftly balanced dissonance with sympathetic tones and a subtle use of melody drifting ever so slightly within a narrow band of frequencies. Yup, that's what Coleclough delivers; and for many years now, we've cited his work as the gold-standard of dronemuzik, with perhaps Tim Hecker as the only other experimental musician to get cross-referenced in more instances. Those lovely tones and eerie metallic shimmers that enamored us to Coleclough are firmly entrenched on this album, which also features some other pretty heavy hitters. Colin Potter is another British experimental chap whom everyone should know, not only because he's responsible for working on some of the best Nurse With Wound albums (e.g. Salt Marie Celeste, Thunder Perfect Mind, etc.) but also because he's crafted some intoxicating electronic albums over the years of kosmiche brainbending and full-thrum minimalism that would give Manuel Gottsching and Coil a run for their money. Hitoshi Kojo is the Japanese drone-minstrel who has alternately worked under the solo moniker Spiracle and in the duo Juppala Kappio, slipping between the glassy acoustic mantras of Organum and the freak-folk ragas of most any album on Fonal. Paul Bradley may be the least well known contributor, here; but this British drone musician has done exceptional work over the years with both Potter and Coleclough in various guises.
This album was recorded back in 2006 in Colin Potter's former studio, which literally was a water tower with all four parties conjuring their various shadow-clad drones, shivering phase patterns, spectral frequencies, and lonely textures. Water Mountain feels very much like a thoughtful Conny Plank production in which an organic dreaminess flows through all of these sounds, which seem to be transmitted by each individual through whatever means, and effortlessly molded into a eerily blissed out drone album. Watery gurgles, bowed metal trills, and crumbled soil stain the sparkling hums and stretched occlusions throughout both discs, gliding in and out of hallowed, church organ minimalism, tectonic rumblings, and one blustery crescendo of atomically cracked distortion that fires up near the end of disc one. Altogether, this is a magnificent set of recordings and one that will pull Coleclough back into the public spotlight by hook or by crook. Super limited pressing of
just 250 copies." [Aquarius Rec.]



"..Although being an explicit reference to the Chinese term “Shanshui” [山水/ mountain-water] used to define amongst other a certain type of pictural landscape, usually more turbulent than the Japanese uncluttered paintings, and soaked with cosmology, and notions of struggling primordial energies, it makes no doubt that Hitoshi Kojo has relied on his own cultural founding values (perhaps even unconsciously) to name this creation.

Water rituals in Japan are numerous, and some essential part of Shinto polytheist, animistic cults...
most shrines have “Chōzubachi ”near their entrances, small basins with water where visitors can cleanse themselves...and mountains have always been worshipped, as embodiment of the very spirit of nature, and gateways to the other world.

This gives all another self-explanatory dimension to the title, and delivers an acute metaphor of the music impulse.

Undoubtedly ceremonial in its form“Water Mountain” creates the basis for an imaginary geography of our own...the reflection of an inner “island”...

Extended exposure to the sound seems to induce dissolution of all conscious thoughts, and a process of inner transformation.

All in all a very potent psycho-active brew able to infiltrate the smallest recesses of our beings, if only for a moment...

a symbolic space of endless depth...

a singular taking over liturgy, intoxicating and perplexing..." [Daniel Crokaert / Mystery Sea]