beartown records North-West and London based mail order record label that specialises in releasing experimental music on tape and CD-R. |
| catalogue |
Orders can be paid for by CREDIT/DEBIT CARD and PAYPAL. All orders are priced to include worldwide delivery costs from the UK. For multiple orders, please email with details of your prospective purchase for discounted postage. Information on paying by cheque or postal order is available by emailing dj.mellor@hotmail.com. Please report any faulty PayPal links. |
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COMING SOON |
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Robert Ridley-Shackleton - The Butterfly Farm (C??) |
ROBERT RIDLEY-SHACKLETON - BUTTERFLY FARM (C??)
Beartown is pleased to usher into existence a physical realisation of ROBERT RIDLEY-SHACKLETON's BUTTERFLY FARM. Recordings of chattering blabbermouths, blabbering chatterboxes, chapped bladdermoles and slathering cockerhoops are spliced, layered, beamed in, and blown out. Robert is widely considered. Both sides of this tape have sounds recorded on them. Ritualistic radio squeel, bitch slap electro-bass (pronounced like the fish), and improvised piff-paff infiltrate all five "songs", while side A is notable for its continual references to knackered cyberpets. Robert croons a bit aswell - firm. Complete with neon orange tapes, colour stickers and "blood on the sea urchin"-style artwork. Limited to 31 copies. |
Jon Collin - Citizen Kane Junior Blues (C36) |
JON COLLIN - CITIZEN KANE JUNIOR BLUES (C36)
Tramping down to the old mill, encumbered by borrowed office equipment and without shoes. JON COLLIN's trance-hypno guitar explorations sweep away the mundane and reveal the uncanny. A fine tuning of reality through song and the soundtrack to the chip shop myths of western Essex. A certain stuttering symbolism is seen here in full bloom - defying definition and judgement, these masterful noodling are raw and unprocessed - a real tasty mirage. Bumped numb by potholes, and blown dry by a chilled north wind, the listener is lowered gently into a harmonious, warming embrace. One for fans of Fahey, Basho(s) or S.Bull, with big cases, and blurred artwork. Limited to 36 copies. |
Elizabeth Veldon - The Lady Chapel (C46) |
ELIZABETH VELDON - THE LADY CHAPEL (C46)
ELIZABETH VELDON currently resides in the brittle northern outpost/half-downloaded cybernetic dream village of Edinburgh, and has been calmly sculpting sounds (both found and forged) for a long bloody time. Cold stone walls drip with ectoplasm, warm summer evenings exist in the beer garden, bath time meditation and post-"lovely big lunch" relaxation converge. Remember when they found all those dead pigs in the Huangpu river? Thousands of rotten hogs. THE LADY CHAPEL is a stunning narrative on the beauty of collapsing allegory, a silent wail into the oblivion of honesty, a nightmarish whisper followed b a month-long bear hug. Drone Alone. A great tape for fans of stuffy offices, flickering street lamps and lemonade (made with real lemons), and available here with full-colour "twins worry at the mountainside" artwork, foggy tapes and "fungus" on-shell stickers. Limited to 32 tapes. |
Edward Sol - Puncuation Purity (C32) |
EDWARD SOL - PUNCTUATION PURITY (C32) EDWARD SOL began making sounds as a young man in the Ukraine. Having studied moving images in Kiev, he began to compose soundtracks for experimental films. PUNCTUATION PURITY is a rolling, tumbling journey through the dark water rapids of rusted mind-fields, billowing plumes of evaporated puddle-juice and stutter-strewn stained glass meadows. This release is 32 minutes long, contains tape loops, cassette recordings, effects for sound and computer. Edition of 35 tapes in custard yellow cases. This cassette comes with colourful artwork and 'Happy Happy Linda' on-shell stickers. |
SLUMP - Tremble! Leftwych Scallion Salad (C30) |
SLUMP - TREMBLE! LEFTWYCH SCALLION SALAD (C30) Yet another nail in the coffin of free expression as SLUMP continues to be held hostage by history, keyboards, abandoned driving ranges and family cars. Slovenly, aimless and limping down long country lanes. Two dogs fighting in a water-logged pub car park, a garden centre at midnight with ghosts and the shimmering hologram of a clock - this is what Tremble! sounds like. Kneeless in Tunstall, crying at the foot of some busted civic fountain, collapsing in underground markets, browsing the graphics of a school computer. You are now involved with SLUMP. Limited Edition of 23 tapes in large cases. Rodent birth-artwork, and coloured "spiritualist" on-shell stickers. |
Rejet / Ekunhaashaastaack - Split (C42) |
EKUNHAASHAASTAACK/REJET SPLIT TAPE (C42) Reining in the spirit of crippled where lock, REJET divided, EKUNHAASHAASTAACK derrided. Now based in the rural idyl, but soon to be exhaled to the wooden peaks of southern nation, they create dense, unfettered expressions of detached (only notional), insipid foolheartedliness. Embark with me upon journeys over crumbled electronic sound swamps, visiting voodoo queens and watching spirals unravel in the orange glow... Thunder feet echo in the brittle serenity of the eternal corridor and relinquishment of sanity/measurable income instantly becomes inevitable and unfeasible. Sinking? I'd rather! Edition of blerty-blive. Coloured nothing. |
Duncan Harrison - Ogre Neon (CD-R) |
DUNCAN HARRISON - OGRE NEON (CD-R) Sample Coming Soon. I've got a bad back typing this one. 2013, 2013, 2013. Where to start? WHERE TO START? Where. Tooth. Start. The new becoming - an, orthodox, post-apocalyptic prison? Move along January, get out of bed. Or at least roll over and let Chepping Wycombe's finest have a bit of the scroon blanket. Buckinghamshire's most celebrated marimba pest has given us some stuff to release. We've put old pictures of Cheshire (Chester in the 70's in fact) and some bears on the artwork like we usually do. Nothing new here. It's like 2012 again isn't it? An eternally recurring Congleton quagmire. Who cares. OGRE NEON is undoubtedly Duncan Harrison's greatest work to date, a demanding and omnipotent tribute to the Bear Gods of East Cheshire probably. OGRE NEON contains over 50 minutes of fizzog-burning (imagine that), meditative, multi-faceted mush rattle - a non-assault on noise? The final negation of a pre-determined (un)ending? Pipe down, pseudo-Hegelian, this wasn't what we were thinking to be honest, like. High Wycombe's furniture producing legacy totally destroyed - by one CDR. Inappropriate. Absolute truth. Don't go yet - each CDR comes with an informative, diary-style insert and a rather wonderful poem by a Mr. I. Murphy. Edition of 35.4. |
The Gamecock - All Right, Hen? (C15) |
THE GAMECOCK - ALL RIGHT, HEN? (C36) Sample Coming Soon. THE GAMECOCK is/was a collaborative venture involving label picklers Nick Mitchell (Golden Lab) and Stuart Arnot (Total Vermin). "ALL RIGHT, HEN?" is a keyboard-burning, drum machine-straddling belter. Part cod-eyed, wheezy dance splutter, part pitch- patience-tester. 4 tracks of lop-sided, crescendo-baiting, synth/drum machine wonk - a humid, sweating, smelting, squelching affair that comes highly recommended. Apparently this was released over the pond somewhere a couple of years back - long gone now though. Thanks to Beartown though, eh? We've bloody rereleased it - with new colour-printed, fold-out artwork and that. Edition of 30, gone when it's gone mentality. Keep pickling. |
Henry Dawson - Live in Brooklyn (CD-R) |
HENRY DAWSON - LIVE IN BROOKLYN 07 - 24 - 12 (CD-R) Sample Coming Soon.HENRY DAWSON is the pseudonym of NYC-based artist Seth Graham. By day, the owner/operator of the rather beautiful Orange Milk Records and by night, torturer of samplers, synths and drum machines. This CDR showcases Mr Graham's formidable talent for improvisation of splurge-core-atronica, heard here performing alongside Lukas Ligetti. An urgent, splantemic presentation which lurches from trance-jazz-chuckle-beats to tectonic-analogue-dreamscape before your very eyes. A great neon paraody of itself, LIVE IN BROOKLYN is strange, alluring, comforting and direct, drawing inspiration equally from late night sleepless city paranoia and sun-drenched park trundles - places, faces, beats and rhythms. Edition of 45 with full-colour artwork and invisible on-CD sticker. |
Angora Morgue - Angora Morgue (C90) |
LIDLESS EYE - ANGORA MORGUE (C90) Sample Coming Soon.Beartown is absolutely thrilled to have Michigan-based sludge-a-teer, Knox Mitchell back on board for a solid hour and a half of madcap electronic improvisation. Using homemade robot band members and a whole heap of chutzpa, ANGORA MORGUE is the ideal hangover cure / headache inducer. An adventure in "hot bun choirs" with Knox's brilliant LIDLESS EYE project, this is a tape with great big granite guts. Two sides of spiralling deeper into the muddy rabbit hole - chased by broken stereos, decaying ad breaks, loose lipped AM radios, and a be-boxing talking clock. Haunting. Exciting. Edition of 41 with "horse confronts mortality" artwork and "inside of your mouth" pink cassettes. |
Nacht Und Nebel - Untitled (C15) |
NACHT UND NEBEL - UNTITLED (C42) Sample Coming Soon.Nottingham's NACHT UND NEBEL delivers his finest cello-bothering package straight to the cave of Congle-bear - still warm, still drenched in spittle. A slight crust has formed round the sides of the brown package. The courier scuttles off. He knows what he's done. He's an accomplice now. Proper noise bother. Two tracks of skree on one cassette, like. Meanwhile the Violin family cowers in their cellar, somewhere in Mansfield, protecting the baby violas with their bow arms. Shaking. Weeping. Quivering. Urine-soaked. They know it'll soon be their turn. They're fucked of course. Stringed pillocks. All bows, no clout. Señor Nebel has been sent from the future to create a right old rumble with fresh 21st century cello innards. They will be next. But don't worry shitbags, you won't have to wait. Señor Nebel's latest sea of cello-splice is an absolute joy to sail through, fascinating in fact. A cacophonous sprawl of reflective lagoon-murk, loop-rattle and brittle-bollocky-bass-buzz. Always mutating, rudely belching in the direction of stasis. NACHT UND NEBEL's bafflingly-broad drone visions are unique, intriguing and unflinching. The depth of sound displayed here is rather incredible - an oceanic fuck of a cassette. Most / all of NACHT UND NEBEL's work is available here: http://nachtundnebel.bandcamp.com. Edition of 30, complete with metaphorically redundant, colour, fold-out artwork. Now what? |
Aqua Dentata - March Hare, Kraken Mare (CD-R) |
AQUA DENTATA - MARCH HARE, KRAKEN MARE (CD-R)
Behold earthlings - the bloody best bit of Baraclough is back on Beartown! Celebrated sound-warlock AQUA DENTATA (Eddie Nuttall www.aquadentata.co.uk) returns with the almost spiritual/transcendental MARCH HARE, KRAKEN MARE. Nuttall has developed his AQUA DENTATA project further, utilizing synthesizers, tapes, microphones and bowed miscellany creating a meditative and hypnotic vibe. The result is a sparse, desolate and quite frankly, downright eery affair - think majestic, gushing waves collapsing in on themselves, distilling into vacuumed interzone voids and seemingly sourceless, spectral whispers that may never even have existed. This is a recording that will leave your senses/sensors rendered irrelevant. Don't trust your lugholes son, they just don't do what they're supposed to no more. MARCH HARE, KRAKEN MARE - the soundtrack to the ultimate game of Hide & Seek going totally wrong. He's a fucking cracker live too! Edition of 40. Backyard paradise artwork by CWB. |
Bad Orb - Chat Hole (C30) |
BAD ORB - CHAT HOLE (C30)
BAD ORB beams in a far out feast of fetid field recordings, mesmerically mournful mumblings and doom-laden dirges of dustbin drone... all direct from her seaside abode on the South coast. Beartown is proud to release CHAT HOLE in its all full, (un)edited (un)glory. Fakirs moan in the echoing taverns, accordions wheeze beneath the creaking arboretum while dead or dying televisions creep quietly across the attic floor. Laments are wailed for the flammable careless masses, conversations clipped, chopped and reversed and chicken bone dream catchers rattle against corrugated iron fences from here to there... and back again. Intriguing and enchanting, CHAT HOLE is over the horizon, between the hedges, beneath the surface and above the snow-line. While stocks last... and they always last. Edition of 33 with radioactive green tapes, florescent “chocolate war bride” artwork and instructions of how to attain an MP3 version of CHAT HOLE. |
Smear Campaign - Rapunzel, Let Down Your Mother (C42) |
SMEAR CAMPAIGN - RAPUNZEL, LET DOWN YOUR MOTHER (C42) Sample Coming Soon. Alright Chap? All hail Stuart Arnot, famed futuro-medievalist and div-sound stalwart. RAPUNZEL, LET DOWN YOUR MOTHER is the second part of his Rapunzel trilogy. Mr Arnot has many guises / collaborations / whatevers to his name, including but not to limited to: Hard Pan Trio / Plum Slate / The Game Cock / Acrid Lactations / Mid-Leopard Violet Prism / Ghost Of An Ocotopus / Filthy Smear and a whole bunch of other things we can't remember or pretend to know about. RAPUNZEL, LET DOWN YOUR MOTHER is a warped, scrooned C42. Botched, smleted, pikcled, battered electronics. Rapunzel syndrome for the 2012 generation. Schizoid bouts of reverb, crashing castle-noise, feudal analogue peasant grunts, distort-weird-lumped-natter - it's a real Ludwigsburg of a cassette! Perhaps some sort of robotic knight from Dresden blowtorching a shoesmith in Saxony for not paying his taxes or some sort of wooden bird plane with flint propellas sent from a future that never existed. It's all in there. Stuart really puts the GRIM in Brothers Grimm. Audacious Flagon Saxony-Glasgow futuro-beatbox break metldown... C42, edition of 30, complete with individual, abstact cassette and symbolist historical cover art. |
Slump - Dead Or Dying Roses (C25) |
SLUMP - DEAD OR DYING ROSES (C25)
SLUMP stretches its legs and awakes for yet another failing/failed outing on Beartown Records. DEAD OR DYING ROSES is a splice-fest of brittle textures, angry feedback and lurking synthesis. Filing cabinet percussion, breathless vocal improvisations, and spiraling prayer-box mantras are chopped up and scattered onto the sonic canvas like so many coarsely ground post-noise peppercorns. Delicate sinews of AM radio are knitted into a disorientating fabric of backwards blab-chatter, sloppity-boppity stereo slurp madness and ectoplasmic glass-grinding. Not harsh, but horrid. Not furious, but facile. Not essential, but existential. Not here, but there. All you need to while away the spring evenings, rearrange your mental furniture or glimpse cubist heaven in a cassette tape – fractured diads galore! Edition of 35 with pale blue “hazing” artwork, powder blue “trees in the mist” on-tape stickers and baby blue cassettes. Comes with free rose-petal confetti. |
The Digitariat - Complex Loop Night (C30) |
THE DIGITARIAT - COMPLEX LOOP NIGHT (C30) http://www.thedigitariat.blogspot.com
Active since 1994, Paul Knowles has been releasing work and performing as THE DIGITARIAT for over 10 years. COMPLEX LOOP NIGHT is a disorientating excursion into a world of reverberating vocal sampling, abrupt stabs of screaming distortion, and undulating landscapes of textural sonic improvisation. Butchered synth loops, foreign chic-chat, and prepared abrasives elegantly dance and weave - duetting blissfully and shifting seamlessly under and increasing foreboding sonic sky. The storm on the horizon hits hard at the end of the Side A, I don't think we'll ever find out who fire-bombed the glockenspiel factory. Side B. The last moments of a half-mad dying cyborg – screaming and flailing, recalling and announcing, coming and going in a blaze of rhythmic malfunctions. Edition of 45 with clear tapes, green stickers, “dancing Charlie” artwork printed on tangerine paper, and free educational literature. |
Oubliette - Untitled (C32) |
OUBLIETTE - UNTITLED (C32) http://discogs.com/artist/Oubliette
OUBLIETTE makes his debut on Beartown with a freshly chopped block of good ole fashioned gutter-pop. Spiraling out of control from the word go,STILGAR sees the listener taken on a break-neck, break-brain speed journey through the outer reaches of the noise-composition-o-sphere. Ear-bleed metallic crashes and hyperspeed mumbo-jumno incantations blend and merge, only ceasing to allow echoing washes of FM radio through. 4 tracks over 2 sides of 1 tape. 4 reasons not 2 bother with any 1. Track list - A1 Morning Pool, A2 Stilgar, B1 Deeper, B2 Wet Moss. Edition of 49. With green tapes and monochromatic artwork on textured paper. |
Black Sue - Sugar Low Farms (C35) |
BLACK SUE - SUGAR LOW FARMS (C35) http://www.myspace.com/blacksueuk
The first tape in what will hopefully be a series of releases exploiting the healthy "pre-fire" archive based on BLACK SUE's "Naturecraft Warehouse" recordings. From the dinge of the Cheshire backwaters, to the bright lights of the Staffordshire shopping arcades, SUGAR LOW FARMS incorporates cassette tape field-recording, guitar / keyboard doom dueling and hardcore cassette player wankery. Phantastic phasers, rumble-pack tremolo, swirling drone oceans, meet summertime swallow song and post-post proto rock guitar explorations beneath a harrowing blanket of fuzz and hiss. Certainly a treat for the legions of BLACK SUE fans still hurting after 18 months of blissful silence. Edition of 36. With grey tapes, wasp-like artwork and purple on tape stickies. |
raxil4 - Untitled(C30) |
raxil4 - UNTITLED (C30) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzebWrrG43s
We first laid ears on raxil4 as it rolled from our radio, tuned as we were, to the formidable ILLFM. Droning dead stations, lumbering low-end static, and piercing mosquito whines combine with long lost choirs of marooned AM singals. Buzzing street lamps, the echoing yawn of flexing metal, and ambient bleep-scapes are all shrouded in a thick fog of tape hiss and delay. You're working the night-shift and drinking beef tea in the abandoned drop forge. Dubbed with variable beginnings, each tape is unique - 60 minutes of music distributed randomly over 30 minutes of magnetic tape. Edition of 32. With monochrome artwork. |
RiggsRoyal - Dear Minotaur, I will Love You if You Spare Me (C30) |
RIGGS ROYAL - DEAR MINOTAUR, I WILL LOVE YOU IF YOU SPARE ME (C30) http://www.holycheeverchurch.com
An exciting collaboration between CHRISTOPHER RIGGS, of the sadly defunct Holy Cheever Church Records, and ANDREW ROYAL. A combination of improvisational violin and juddering electronics/found sounds, this tape represents a measured exploration of the sounds between the sounds, the noise behind the noise, 30 solid minutes in the timeless void of delirious experimentation. Straining metallic grinding and screeching, searing dissonance abound. Pure bow-abuse. Stuttering thumps and fridge-hum populate the background of the piece, lulling the listener with the forgotten textures of some long-lost, malfunctioning appliances. The two pieces evolve and undulate over 15 minutes, from fumbling inconherence to sublime, intuitive synthesis and back again - improvisation and experimentation at its most rewarding. Edition of 38. With tropical ocean blue tapes and brain-frying "dead-fish" artwork. |
Knox Mitchell - Open and Close Works (C35) |
KNOX MITCHELL - OPEN AND CLOSE WORKS (C35)
From chaotic excursions into Free Jazz, to late night tape chumpery, from cassette label runnery to Mid-West nonesense domination, KNOX MITCHELL continues to radiate diverse and engaging music from every pore. His output is baffling, and the bear likes baffling. So-called "handmade electronics" are the starting point for this study in confusion. Someone is torturing your old modem. Two lawnmowers and a motor boat have fallen into the casio-canyon. Both sides of this tape are detached, disturbing and free-flowing departures into the glitching world of circuit board savantism Having listened to this tape, one would like to imagine any piece of beat-up electronic hardware could, in the hands of a disturbed scrunge-merchant like KNOX, form the basis of something as endlessly futile and joyous as Open and Close Works - here's hoping. Edition of 34 with blue shells and "artwork". |
Cavaties - The Egg Man (C35) |
CAVATIES - THE EGG MAN (C35) Sample Coming Soon. Debut cassette from a peculiar, misanthropic and mysterious pissed-up duo (or trio, we're not really that sure). Each side mangles up minimalist object manipulation, along with a tragic belching, broken synthesizer, dubious samples of live sound and whatever they can get their grubby, drunken, little hands on - a glorious, awkward mess. This is the sound of a collaborative breakdown. Consociational failure. Collective apathy. We took a big chance on putting out a CS from these reclusive goons - and it definitely paid off. This is their first (and probably last) release. Complete with screwed up, irrelevant collage artwork. Not to be missed. |
Skip Tooth - Untitled (C30) |
SKIP TOOTH - UNTITLED (C25) www.myspace.com/skiptoothnoise Beartown is proud to present yet more punishing Danish havoc in the form of this untitled examination of free speech, censorship and liberty. 25 minutes of distorted screaming, throbbing power-drones, spine-jangling feedback and ear-melting sonic atrophy pick you up, shake you by your grubby lapels and finally abandon you to contemplate your lack of faith, failure and selfishness. SKIP TOOTH's music wanders the desolate precipice between frenzied coherence and wild-eyed insanity. This cassette sees him surge at your head-box with shuddering anger, a taste for the blood, and a frightening desire to make, in his own words, "a big fucking racket". This release includes hand-sprayed C25 (SILENT on side A, SPEAK on side B), black and white insert with embossed red lettering and relatively extensive liner notes. Limited to 50 copies.
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