Supernormal Recordings was originally a 3 CD set including the
complete recording of Black Tempest live at the Supernormal Festival on
the 19th August 2011. The other 2 CDs were culled from many
hours of improvised rehearsals for the festival. This collection traces
the journey from the idea of taking the music of Black Tempest to the
live environment to the actuality.
Supernormal is, in their own words "An experimental, artist-led
event, set in the magical looking-glass world of Braziers Park", and is
a fantastic (and under-reported) event. Black Tempest
headlined the 2nd stage on Friday night, on the last and most beautiful
of the summer days of 2011, taking to the stage as the sun set and the
audience relaxed into the vibe.
The set included a lavishly illustrated 8 page booklet. The physical box set has completely sold out, and is unlikely to be re-printed
Rocket Recordings review of Black
Tempest at Supernormal:
The only Rocket curated band actually to play on Friday was the amazing and
rarely seen live Black Tempest, who headlined the second stage.
Adorned in a white lab coat, BT subjected the audience to some stunning
psychedelic analogue soundscapes from his vintage sonic weaponry, that
even got some of the crowd writhing around in the grass...stunning!!
Norman Records review of Supernormal Recordings:
Not one, not two, but three CDs are in this spunky set courtesy of Tempest Towers.
Basically you get a CD of the performance from the Supernormal festival
from August of this year. The other 2 discs are compiled of tracks from
the various improvised rehearsals for the gig. So there’s the info...I’m
only a few minutes in and it’s taking me on a cosmic journey to floaty
spaceville. Nice Emeralds-esque synthy keyboard business with lots of
ambient noises in the background like twattering birds and that. It’s
reminding me a little of some of the earlier more ambient Orb music in
places. Essentially though it's a CD of kosmische synthy drones and
ambience and if you're hankering for more then this bargain three disc
set would be a decent place to start!!
The Quietus' review of Supernormal Recordings:
"Always show your workings" they impressed upon us in Maths and
Science classes at school, and that's just what Black Tempest - AKA
Surrey musician Stephen Bradbury - has done on this sprawling 3CD
release on his own Tempest Towers label. While the first disc documents a
rare live performance, headlining the second stage on Friday night at
last year's Supernormal Festival, the second two discs showcase the home
studio works-in-progress and rehearsals that built towards the final
set. That many of these are even more engrossing for the home listener
than the actual live tracks is one justification for such a seemingly
self-indulgent compendium; another is the notion of documenting a
journey, or rather two journeys - the narrative contained within the
live performance itself, and the series of experiments that led to its
realisation.
Supernormal is a three-day experimental arts and music festival that
began in 2010, evolving out of the long-running Braziers International
Artist's Workshop. These annual residential sessions at Braziers Park in
Oxfordshire - a 17th century country house and grounds - facilitate and
encourage creative collaborations between artists in different
disciplines and from different backgrounds, and the same spirit informs
the intimate (500 capacity), idealistic open-air event, intended to be
"part festival, part village fete, part living gallery and part critical
forum." Alongside exhibitions, installations, debates and film
screenings, last year Black Tempest joined a music bill that included
veteran mavericks Cindytalk, Skullflower and the Cravats, and younger
malcontents like Gnod, the A Band, Hamilton Yarns and Teeth of the Sea.
Using a combination of digital and analogue electronic instruments -
his stage set-up is also helpfully documented in the CD booklet, and
includes a couple of moogs, a Doepfer Dark Energy synthesiser and a
Mellotron Emulator - Black Tempest's lengthy instrumental compositions
seem to draw equally on experimental techno, New Age/Ambient,
psychedelic-prog-krautrock and the classical avant-garde. But it's the
German Kosmiche music influences that are most apparent, even if Black
Tempest does give a peculiarly English twist to themes originally
developed by the likes of Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, Popul Vuh and,
especially, Tangerine Dream. It's appropriate that his next release is
to be a cover of Schulze's 'Bayreuth Return' on an album paying tribute
to the German Brain label, to be released on cult label Fruits de Mer.
But the Englishness comes over in the dry, unpretentious sense of
humour, the image of Bradbury as an eccentric scientist, onstage in his
white lab coat, and particularly in the way his electronic music somehow
evokes the rolling rural landscape of southern England. Supernormal
encourages a spontaneous artistic response to the immediate environment,
and Black Tempest seems to be doing just that.
Opening with the twitter of birdsong over ominous, low-lying plains
of drone, 'Astral Pastoral Part 3' adds a spindly, constantly shifting
electronic refrain that repeatedly sinks and then re-surfaces as the
sonic scenery shifts gently around you, like hills and fields viewed
from the window of a car or a slow-moving commuter train. An anchoring
bass pulse appears almost subliminally around the seven-minute mark,
creating an unsettlingly hypnotic effect that's jarringly - but
endearingly - broken by Bradbury's blokeish tones as the track ends,
responding to the audience's whoops and applause. Relatively brief at
just over four minutes, 'Proxima' evokes the nightmarish ambience of
Tangerine Dream's Zeit album, before 'Tanks but no Tanks' ("a
song about an imaginary invasion") begins with the wail of distant air
raid sirens, the rattle of anti-aircraft guns and the menacing grind of
massed bombers overhead. The centrepiece of the first disc, this track
mixes library footage of the Second World War with layers of ominous
electronic sound- the unrelieved circular tension of the sequencer parts
edgy and nervous, the swelling synth drones all humanity and sorrowful
grandeur, near-classical in their yearning, tone-poem simplicity. And
lent perhaps unintended significance by juxtaposition, the flute-like
cries of encore track 'Proxima X' suggest rebirth, the land gradually
recovering from the rape of war, and the steady, sub-bass heartbeat and
rising sequencer notes conveying struggle, growth and stubborn life.
Intentionally or not, the four tracks together conjure a narrative of an
idyllic natural landscape gradually encroached upon by darkening skies
and metaphorical stormclouds, ravaged by war before a tentative but
undeniable recovery.
This idea of the live set as a site-specific musical installation is
given credence by the much longer, earlier version of 'Proxima X' that
opens the second disc. This has a very different feel, the emphasis on
the rhythmic elements moving it aggressively forward into hard-edged
krautrock territory. Though the eventual live version was undoubtedly
right for the occasion, I personally prefer this overloaded studio take,
which already justifies the decision to include 'rehearsal tapes'
alongside the core of a live album. The propulsive darkness of 'Proxima
Y' follows a curve from early Tangs to John Carpenter to Richie Hawtin,
Berlin atmospherics ripped with nasty acid squelches; the
Moroder-meets-Suicide 'Proxima Beta' is another heavy, throbbing beast;
and 'Proxima Delta', while slightly less oppressive, confirms that
Supernormal could easily have got a far fiercer and indeed blacker
Tempest than the relatively benign manifestation they in fact
encountered.
'Astral Pastoral part 2' is also darker and edgier than its
successor- far less pastoral, much more astral, in the sense of evoking
the Lovecraftian awfulness of deep space- while a near twenty-two minute
run-through of 'Part 3' on the third disc sits somewhere between the
two. 'Proxima V' is bristling, cold and metallic, a rusting hulk of a
space cruiser drifting through the void. One could argue that three
work-in-progress versions of 'Tanks but no Tanks,' totalling over half
an hour of music, and a third, twenty-minute reprise of 'Proxima X' are
crying out for a dictatorial A&R man to say "no more!" and
illustrate the flaws in the artist-as-label-boss business model. But the
quality of the release isn't diluted by such largesse, and this is,
after all, total immersion music- you could be listening for one hour,
three, twenty-four or seventy-two and it wouldn't matter. You would
only travel further into the eye of the Tempest.
Ben Graham - March 14th 2012
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