Pausal and Olan Mill have been playing some live shows over the last month. It has been fun presenting our music again and reminding ourselves of many realities of the so called touring musician. Along the way we’ve meet some great people and I’d like to thank Dan Crossley @ Fluid, John Luther @South Street, Jo Brook @ Bad Timing and Simon Scott @ Keshhhhhh for putting us on.

I often watch films, but rarely pursue their soundtracks. I personally find that a piece of music created for visuals and narrative is often left isolated when alone. Of course there are exceptions and some of these have been included in this mix along with compositions directors have heard on albums and put to work in their films.

• Wednesday 28th March, Reading, South Street Arts Centre.

w/ Grouper, Diamond Catalog and Pausal.

• Sunday 15th April, Bristol, Crypt of St John.

w/ Rustle Of The Stars, Daniel Thomas Freeman, Olan Mill, Christoph Berg and Antonymes.

• Saturday 28th April, Cambridge, Unitarian Church.

w/ BJ Nilsen, Pausal, John Chantler and Ypsmael.

• Thursday 3rd May, Reading, South Street Arts Centre.

w/ James Blackshaw, Olan Mill and Joe Marshall.

• Sunday 13th May, Bristol, The Cube Cinema.

w/ Esmerine, Eric Chenaux and Olan Mill.

It can be heard along with some written commentary on the tracks at A closer Listen. Thanx for listening

‘Paths’

Bleu Polar (5.14)

The Square Is Porcelain (4.39

Amber Balanced (8.09)

Intestinal Flora (2.07)

Eye’s Closed (For Rube) (2.44)

Stalled Boson (8.12)

The six tracks were captured from two live performances in Bristol and Reading in late 2010, and have been sewn together from the multi-track recordings into a run of 300 limited edition 180gm vinyl mastered by Shawn Hatfield. The release is presented with a 4 panel letter pressed CD, a booklet written by Vincent Vocoder Voice for Olan Mill, limited edition 12×12 prints, A2 poster and interconnected artwork by Jurgen Heckel. All collated in the characteristic hand stamped, sealed and numbered on the UK label Facture.

Album’s

PJ Harvey – LetEnglandShake

Mountains – Air Museum

Dustin O Halloran - Lumiere

Chihei Hatakeyama - Mirror

Deaf Center - Owl Splinters

Tasseomancy - Ulalume

Stephan Mathieu -A Static Place/Remain

Oneothrix Point Never – Replica

FORMA - FORMA

Mike Weis -LoopCurrent/Raft

Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer - RE: ECM

Other

Selected Concerts

Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.

Surviving Progress presents the story of human advancement as awe-inspiring and double-edged. It reveals the grave risk of running the 21st century’s software — our know-how — on the ancient hardware of our primate brain which hasn’t been upgraded in 50,000 years. With rich imagery and immersive soundtrack, filmmakers Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks launch us on journey to contemplate our evolution from cave-dwellers to space explorers.

Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired this film, reveals how civilizations are repeatedly destroyed by “progress traps” — alluring technologies serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. With intersecting stories from a Chinese car-driving club, a Wall Street insider who exposes an out-of-control, environmentally rapacious financial elite, and eco-cops defending a scorched Amazon, the film lays stark evidence before us. In the past, we could use up a region’s resources and move on. But if today’s global civilization collapses from over-consumption, that’s it. We have no back-up planet.

Surviving Progress brings us thinkers who have probed our primate past, our brains, and our societies. Some amplify Wright’s urgent warning, while others have faith that the very progress which has put us in jeopardy is also the key to our salvation. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking looks to homes on other planets. Biologist Craig Venter, whose team decoded the human genome, designs synthetic organisms he hopes will create artificial food and fuel for all.

Distinguished Professor of Environment Vaclav Smil counters that five billion “have-nots” aspire to our affluent lifestyle and, without limits on the energy and resource-consumption of the “haves”, we face certain catastrophe. Others — including primatologist Jane Goodall, author Margaret Atwood, and activists from the Congo, Canada, and USA — place their hope in our ingenuity and moral evolution.

Surviving Progress leaves us with a challenge: To prove that making apes smarter was not an evolutionary dead-end.

Pausal have just released a Tape on Students Of Decay, ”Autumnal” is comprised of two long-form drone compositions which aim to be as dynamic in form and structure as they are peaceful in effect. They were created primarily using guitar and processed vinyl recordings, later supplemented with the violin of Svitlana Samoylenko (of Olan Mill) and arranged/edited on computer.

Elements of these tracks have existed for several years – even back to improvised sessions in 2007 that resulted in our debut self-titled EP. On completion of our first album “Lapses”; we were able once again to focus on this material.

“Autumnal” is available as a limited pro-dubbed cassette on the Students of Decay label in an edition of 100 copies and on mp3 from our Bandcamp page.