Published
Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 00:07
- The batch includes records from Bill Converse, Mystic Bill and a six-LP box set from Bay Area artist Cyrnai.
The prolific San Francisco label Dark Entries will celebrate its ninth anniversary next month with nine new releases.
First up is a new EP from Bill Converse, which is the Texas-via-Detroit artist's fourth release for the label. All four tracks on Hulled were recorded live to tape with no overdubs in Converse's home studio. Converse says Hulled aims to represent "ocean waves in stormy conditions, dark grey blue water, or more generally speaking something ominous and beautiful."
Dark Entries will also reissue Reality Check by Mystic Bill, an EP originally released in 1996 under the name Billy Nightmare on Woody McBride's Sounds label. Along with that one comes a reissue of the debut 12-inch from Talking Drums, called Courage. The label describes the 1982 title track as "eight sprawling minutes of dubby disco funk in the vein of ESG and William Onyeabor."
The bulk of the ninth anniversary releases comprises a sprawling retrospective of the music of Carolyn Fok, or Cyrnai, an Asian-American solo artist from the Bay Area. The label says Fok's musical journey began at age nine, when she recorded stories on a tape recorder. Soon thereafter she started experimenting with instruments, effects and a TEAC reel-to-reel her father had "left lying around the family house," eventually becoming inspired by acts like Cabaret Voltaire and Crass.
While Fok has amassed around 100 albums worth of electronic and experimental music and has been featured in publications like Electronic Musician and Keyboard, she's been a relatively private artist until now. Dark Entries will release all of her material recorded between 1980 and 1990 as a six-LP box set limited to 333 copies. It includes over 70 songs and four hours worth of material, as well as a 7-inch featuring covers of songs by The Cure and Gang Of Four and extensive liner notes. The label will also put out Fok's first four records individually.
Check out our recent label of the month feature on Dark Entries.
Listen to clips from Bill Converse's Hulled EP. Clips for all nine releases are available over at the Dark Entries SoundCloud.
Tracklist
Bill Converse - Hulled
01. Landing
02. Beneath The Ice
03. Endless Tide
04. Station Life
Billy Nightmare - Reality Check
01. I've Seen The World
02. Is This The Life For Me
03. Dance,Shake,Swing
04. Dance,Shake,Swing Version 2
Talking Drums - Courage
01. Courage
02. Parasuicide
03. Descartes Lives
04. Lost In The 20th Century
Cyrnai - 1980-1990
Charred Blossoms
A1 Phobic In Ruins
A2 Waydom
A3 Noct (Mourning Glare)
A4 Incision Tree
A5 Sensitivity
A6 Windmill
B1 Be Happy Or Go Straight
B2 Waydom (Demo)
B3 Burnt Shadows
B4 Progress After Distance
B5 A Prosaic Afternoon
B6 Power to Wait
B7 Kemoflosh 2
B8 The Day Inside
Bonus Covers 7-inch
A In Your House
B1 The Holy Hour
B2 It's Her Factory
Parts Of The Insomnic Wheel
A1 Constant
A2 Red Carpet Hallways
A3 Dungeon of Leftovers
A4 The Pitchfork Of Womanhood
A5 Prison Tree Duet
B1 Numb Machinery
B2 White Sky Moving
B3 Tibetan Bowls Signaling
B4 Fluorescent Nerve Endings
B5 Spirals And Diameters
B6 Clutching A Pencil
C1 Time Has The Humor
C2 Cinder Theory
C3 Indoor Lighting
C4 I Was Over-born
C5 Dig A Hole
C6 Oh, Sun Come In!
D1 A Goodbye Peck
D2 Storing The Past In Formaldehyde
D3 Prison Tree
D4 Dreamer's Paralysis
D5 Have You Heard My Life
D6 Ride Into Your Energy
Hypno-Seizure ?
A1 Is It Colored Numbers?
A2 A Thousand Eyes On One Street
A3 Going Under Hypnotized
A4 Hallucination, Custom Cut
A5 Robot State
A6 I Will Have You
B1 A Rainbow of Business
B2 The Promise of Happiness
B3 Brushed With Water
B4 Oh Why
B5 My Nocturnal Journal
B6 Reclusist
B7 Everlasting Eye
To Subtle-Drive
A1 To Subtle Drive
A2 Techno-Guillotine
A3 Pocket Zimbabwe
B1 It's A Crazy Fear
B2 Subliminalogy
B3 Far Above The Clouds
B4 Electric Meditation
B5 Falling
C1 Suppressionist
C2 Death Row Lingo
C3 Climb The Sun
C1 Lost Your Soul
D1 Backbone Beat
D2 Friction Song
D3 When The Morning Comes
D4 The Guidelines Of Labor
D5 Always
Dark Entries will release Hulled, Reality Check, Courage, A Simple Reflection, 1980-1990, Charred Blossoms, Parts Of The Insomnic Wheel, Hypno-Seizure ?and To Subtle-Drive on September 9th, 2018.
