i’ve just gotten my copy of the new pikelet ep in the post, its really good. it is released on a label called sabbatical recordings that specialises in short-runs of local experimental artists. pikelet makes music by looping her voice, accordian and percussion and et cetera. if you were to make a lazy comparison you could maybe draw a line between pikelet and argentinian lady of the loop juana molina. i’m sure more apt descriptions of pikelet’s sound are out there - oh hey look, here’s one that i ripped off from the sabbatical website -

While the narrative elements of her self-titled debut are largely absent here, vocal harmonies continue to play a key role alongside melodic cycles and deceptively complex rhythms. Pre-Flight Jitters also pursues some unexpected textural qualities and compositional approaches, while maintaining the rich layering typical of Evelyn’s recent work.

check out this track “bryson” from the release and then make sure you head to the sabbatical website to pick up one of only 200 hand-numbered copies of the EP (mine is number 40).

MP3: Pikelet - Bryson

regular readers of the blog would know that i remixed one of evelyn’s tracks “bug-in-mouth” and that the remix appears on my latest EP. for the sake of having something to talk about i thought i would tell a brief story about how the remix came about. basically i became really obsessed with that song after hearing it late one night on the radio - i managed to track down a free mp3 of the track on last.fm (sorry but you can’t download it any more)… i resolved to get in touch with evelyn and ask her if i could get the original recordings of the track to play with - the separated parts - but for one reason or another it didn’t come together. late one night i was working in the edit suite of the production company of a certain australian ex-tv-game-show-host when i was fiddling around on my laptop with the mp3 of “bug-in-mouth”.. a few hours later the track was more or less finished. it was like 3am or something, and i was working alongside the hum of spooling tapes and buzzing tv screens. but yeah it was such a natural thing to play with, and fun to work with the track as a whole and not with the separate pieces of it, if that makes sense. it made me try some weird and wacky things, and i discovered a couple of oddball techniques (mostly involving the loooping and stretching of vocals) that i’ve been using a lot since, while working on new stuff.

so in conclusion, thankyou evelyn morris, and thankyou glenn ridge

you can hear “bug-in-mouth” at pikelet’s myspace, and you can hear my remix of “bug-in-mouth” at my myspace or on the changes EP or here: