SMALL CRUEL PARTY - Ancien des Jours

Format: 7inch

Label & Cat.Number: Adi Grand AG01

Release Year: 2023

Note: NEW SCP material, two pieces that only KEY RANSONE can create like this, based on half-musical / half-concrete loops and low fi drones, and electro-spiraling clatters, a strange beauty, and it sounds somehow archaic; lim. 250 copies w. mysterious letterpress printing, label art by JOHN HUBBARD

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €12.00

More Info

listen: https://fernsrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/ancien-des-jours

Exclusive distribution.
Mastered by Scott Konzelmann, cover art and letterpress printing by Patrick Barber, label art put into form by John Hubbard.

"When Small Cruel Party was active in the early 90s (before going on a long hiatus), there were several 7" releases, a format William Ransone seemed to enjoyed for his somehwat conceptual releases. Now there is a new 7" and in both pieces he uses sounds from a radio. First there is 'Qui se poursuit dans le vide et substitue à son accomplissement une horrible exaspération' (meaning 'Which continues in the void and substitutes for its accomplishment a horrible exasperation'), which was recorded for a WFMU fund raiser (download only), and is a close to six minute piece of strange sounds, in which I found it hard to recognize the radio. There was a sort of cut-up sound, mildly bouncing through sound effects, but also loops of what sounded like a violin. Strange but very effective. Google translate couldn't come up with a sensible translation of 'Ka jengbarsi wolinje', clocking at 06:49. The source material was already recorded in 1988 and reworked and edited in spring of 2022, in France (the home country of Small Cruel Party since many years). There is less of a stutter here, and, instead, more loops that shift around a bit, creating a denser pattern. Maybe some piano music lifted from the radio along with a loop and all grows minimally and organically into an even tighter mass of sound. The music sounds very much like the work from his early days. I have a slight preference for the second side, but I enjoyed both a lot, even when reviewing 7" releases is not something I like." [FdW / Vital Weekly]