Of ghosts and buildings...

Gambol

2012-01-20T23:32:00.000+09:00

Cindytalk concerts early 2012 :

Thursday 9th February
NAGOYA – K.D JAPON

http://www.testtonemusic.net/TTM/Live_info.html

Friday 17th February
OSAKA – HOKAGE

http://www.kaguraenterprise.jp/hokage/

Wednesday 29th February
OSAKA – NUOOH

http://nuooh.com/?m=20120229&cat=1

Inland Journey

2012-01-20T22:46:00.000+09:00

"The second in a series of limited edition subscription releases from Lumberton Trading Company, A Question Of Re-Entry contains two tracks of delicately elemental electronic manipulation and spare, melting icicles of piano. The pace is slow, the development considered and the overall effect quite gorgeous. ‘Nanook mit Uentshukumishiteu’ on Side A creaks like a wooden boat rocking gently on the shore, the sun dappling on calm waters as birds fly overhead in the cloudless sky. As the track nears its end the first signs that there are possible dangers afoot begin to manifest themselves. You can almost feel the sky cloud over and the air become colder. The birds that once called above begin to disappear and a dark, desolate sadness prevails. Night falls.
‘A Wolf In Wolf’s Clothing’ is like the morning after. The electronics become almost ear-piercingly sharp at times and evoke the idea of bright sunshine reflecting back off snow. The miniature, granular tinkles that form the track’s backdrop sound like your breath freezing in front of your face and dropping on the compact snow. There’s a very definite shift in tone and texture. Elements of menace encroach from all sides – the deep rumble of glaciers on the move; the barely perceptible whistles of wind biting away at your skin. If ‘Nanook’ was a refreshing exploratory wander along the shoreline then ‘Wolf’ is the perilous journey inland.
As a whole, despite only containing two pieces of music, A Question Of Re-Entry provides an enthralling twenty minutes and showcases two artists working in perfect harmony."

Review of Cindytalk & Philippe Petit, “A Question Of Re-Entry”
by Steve Dewhurst for Foxy Digitalis

(Cinder photo by Spaewaif)

Vinyl-sound postcard accompanying the release.

Dust and Lights

2011-12-24T15:49:00.001+09:00

"The last three Cindytalk records have been the best, most assured releases of Gordon Sharp’s 30-year career. Issued by Peter Rehberg’s Editions Mego, it’s hard not to hear them the triad as a culmination. Like most British men of a certain age (even in far-flung West Lothian, Scotland), Sharp first came to music via post-punk’s decree; to this day, The Freeze remain woefully underrated (especially their two sessions for John Peel). Much overrated, however, was the Peel session that led to Sharp’s association with Ivo Watts-Russell’s This Mortal Coil. “Kangaroo” notwithstanding, there was something about 4AD’s bourgeois glossolalia that just didn’t suit the fractured upbringing of this lad from Linlithgow. As I’d soon discover, that wasn’t all Gordon Sharp was not suited for.

Indeed, Sharp had been fucking around with gender roles (mostly on stage, mostly in Europe) for quite a while. Of that, I was aware. I pegged it as some vestige of transgression leftover from his more “industrial” days. But then I heard 2009’s The Crackle of My Soul — the first in the trinity for Pita’s imprint. The tune “Transgender Warrior” said it all without saying a single word: “Gordon” would now be called “Cinder.” Up Here in the Clouds soon followed, and while there was nothing as startling or revelatory as “Transgendered Warrior,” it was a beautifully damaged record all the same. I pegged that as Cinder finally being comfortable in her own mortal coil.

By the time The Crackle of My Soul saw release, Cindytalk collaborator Matt Kinnison had died of cancer. In the years post-“Kangaroo,” Cindytalk had dwindled steadily down to a one-man/trans-woman band. By the year 2000, on record anyways, it was really just Matt and Cinder. Hold Everything Dear, named after the John Berger book, is thus a lamentation. But make no mistake, a maudlin marche funèbre this one’s certainly not. The electronics are simply too intense, the field recordings processed too abstractly. First cut “How Soon Now...,” with its Teutonic child’s play soaked in sheets of feedback, sounds equal parts Stockhausen c. Gesang der Jüngling and Sutcliffe Jügend’s power electronics. There’s an isolation evinced in a track like “In Dust To Delight,” it’s perfect intervals slyly referencing Wagner’s opening to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. On the other hand, Cinder’s sparse piano stylings never sounded so deliberate, as if every note was an ode to Kinnison.

Whereas before Cinder seemed content to let the samples do the talking, for the first time on the Mego discs, she physically intervenes here, tightening the contextual reins by adding that most fundamental of musical elements — rhythm. But because this is Cindytalk, you’ll not hear a quantized break or beat. Apropos for a tune titled “Floating Clouds,” forward motion actually starts from the ground up; there’s a teeming of organic life (winds and percussion, most prominently) underneath the sepulchral drone. In the interstitial pieces here, the piano often tolls pentatonic, perhaps a nod to the Japanese studio where much of this one was laid to tape. Developmentally, as with most of Cindytalk’s recent work, the happenings macro are still very much protracted. But what do you expect from an album named Hold Everything Dear?

Finding out precisely what is dear has occupied the majority of Cinder Sharp’s life. You may think because you are … but what are you, exactly? Male, female or some third party in-between? Re-listening to the records Cinder made as Gordon, you can almost hear him searching. It’s more than a crisis of style. Having found both a label for herself and for her music now, Cinder is finally free to look for other, perhaps more philosophical answers. Yes, life sucks, and then you die. But what happens to the ones you leave behind? Well, if you’re Cinder Sharp, you’ve come to know a thing or two about rebirth. And here, if you’re lucky enough to be in Cindytalk, ultimately, you make the greatest record of your second lease on life."

By Logan K. Young for Dusted Magazine .

"A muddy green or staring blue..."

2011-12-24T15:20:00.000+09:00

I never loved a dear gazelle
"We’ve been quite taken with Cindytalk‘s brand of slow and fogged-out synthery since hearing Up Here In The Clouds and The Crackle of My Soul, both released for Editions Mego. On Hold Everything Dear (EDITIONS MEGO 122), the solo effort of Gordon Sharp has been supplemented with contributions from Matt Kinnison, the record was recorded in Japan, London and Essex, it took them five years to complete it, and it’s got some connection to the work of John Berger, the polemical left-wing writer and broadcaster. None of this might actually be relevant to the music we hear, but it bears Sharp’s signature traits: layered, slow-moving blocks of processed sounds, informed by a sense of authority and sternness of furrowed brow that verges on the severe. More romantic moments do intrude in the form of short and distant piano music fugues, and little excerpts of field recordings such as the voices of children which open the record. Yet for some reason, these glimpses of hope serve only to add to the abiding sorrow of this record, which seems to be taking universal pessimism about the state of the world into a metaphysical dimension; titles like ‘Waking the Snow’, ‘Hanging in the Air’ and ‘Floating Clouds’ are laced with the sort of cryptic symbolism you’d associate with an ascetic philosopher who has virtually withdrawn himself from all human intercourse and retreated into a world of private signs and meanings. Far more than producing vacant droning, Cindytalk manages to invest his work with complex undercurrents and overtones. Where the Droneskvadronen All-Stars are content to issue largely non-associative sounds which allow listeners to project their own delusions and fantasies, Cindytalk constructs his music to deliver all the intellectual content of an essay from a Marxist journal from the 1970s…also exists as a double LP set."

Ed Pinsent review for The Sound Projector.

I never loved a dear Gazelle–
Nor anything that cost me much:
High prices profit those who sell,
But why should I be fond of such?
To glad me with his soft black eye
My son comes trotting home from school;
He’s had a fight but can’t tell why–
He always was a little fool!
But, when he came to know me well,
He kicked me out, her testy Sire:
And when I stained my hair, that Belle
Might note the change and this admire
And love me, it was sure to dye
A muddy green, or staring blue:
Whilst one might trace, with half an eye,
The still triumphant carrot through
(Lewis Carroll)

Code 39

2011-12-24T14:37:00.004+09:00

Rewind 2011 - Top 50 Releases of the Year

39. Cindytalk: Hold Everything Dear

See complete list HERE .

Rose Bonbon

2011-11-28T08:22:00.002+09:00

L'ambiguïté sexuelle chantée à La Villette
26.11.11

"Ne dites pas à Susanne Oberbeck, alias No Bra, "sans soutien-gorge" en anglais, que ses performances bousculent la frontière entre les genres. Peu importe que la jeune artiste allemande soit programmée dans le cycle masculin/féminin de la Cité de la musique, à Paris. La programmation, éclectique, mêlait, jusqu'au 26 novembre, des concerts revisitant les voix de castrats, des danses sacrées de l'Inde du Sud où les hommes interprétaient, autrefois, des rôles de femmes, etc.
Vendredi 25 novembre, la scène underground était à l'honneur. L'occasion de découvrir des artistes à la marge dénichés par l'association parisienne In Famous, sensible aux questions de genre. No Bra, donc, chanteuse et vidéaste, s'est taillé une réputation de provocatrice. Parce qu'il lui est arrivé de se produire avec une fausse moustache. Parce que sa voix descend dans des graves insoupçonnés. Androgyne ? "Je ne suis pas transgenre, je suis juste moi-même", dit-elle en partageant une bière dans sa loge, avant de monter sur scène.

Jambes interminables fourrées dans un jean, cheveux blond vénitien aux fesses, yeux bleus et teint de rousse, elle rejette toute étiquette et déjoue les codes. "Dans les années 1970, note-t-elle, on ne rangeait pas dans une case l'ambiguïté sexuelle de David Bowie ou de Patti Smith..." Démonstration quelques minutes plus tard, sur scène. Monokini, godillots, chaussettes à paillettes, elle dévoile la courbe voluptueuse d'un sein sous un tee-shirt troué. Chante d'une voix monocorde, façon Nico, des histoires de la vie ordinaire. Et pourtant... Est-ce sa longue chevelure qui l'habille, ou son beau visage grave ? On ne sait par quel miracle elle évoque soudain une version moderne de La naissance de Vénus du maître italien Botticelli (vers 1485). Un ordinateur portable en lieu et place du coquillage. Alors, garçon manqué ou concentré de féminité ? On ne le saura pas, et c'est très bien.

En deuxième partie, place au crooner rose bonbon. Blond devant, brun derrière, robe courte et talons. L'écossais Gordon Sharp, du collectif Cindytalk, a trente ans de scène et de collaborations artistiques derrière lui (Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil...). Il a traversé les genres musicaux (post-punk, dark-wave) et semble avoir trouvé sa voie dans la musique ambient-industrielle. Après s'être frotté les mains au whisky - ou au brandy ? - et bu quelques gorgées de cet élixir, Gordon Sharp ferme les yeux, et improvise. Utilise sa (belle) voix comme un instrument qui ne s'arrête jamais et s'écoule dans une veine poétique et mélancolique. A côté de lui, Robert Hampson explore les limites de sa guitare tout en réglant les nappes électro.

Au-dessus, un film à la beauté expérimentale donne à voir quelques flashs d'Anna Karina dans Vivre sa vie (1962) de Jean-Luc Godard. Un clin d'oeil pour cet artiste qui a très tôt choisi de vivre la sienne en toute liberté, en explorant son genre à volonté. "Gender Freedom !", résume-t-il après la représentation. "Je suis un homme biologique, j'assume ma part de masculinité. Mais dès l'âge de 9 ou 10 ans, j'ai voulu explorer mon côté féminin. Je peux être parfois très mec, ou très fille, cela dépend des jours et de l'hume ur." Dans son album Transgender Warriors (2003), il a voulu rendre hommage, dit-il, aux personnes transgenres qui luttent pour exister. Des héros ordinaires qui font la "révolution" chaque jour, qu'il s'agisse d'affronter le regard des passants dans la rue ou de retirer une lettre recommandée à la poste, en jupe mais avec des papiers masculins.

Et l'on se surprend à fredonner "Cherchez le garçon/Trouvez son nom", le tube des Taxi Girl. Le genre, c'est une vieille histoire sans fin."

Clarisse Fabre for Le Monde

Photo by bladsurb

Art à part

Masculin/Féminin

2011-11-20T17:43:00.004+09:00

CITÉ DE LA MUSIQUE- Masculin/Féminin - Transgender Warriors
VENDREDI 25 NOVEMBRE 2011, 20H
AMPHITHÉÂTRE
Transgender Warriors

Première partie
No Bra
« Entre la performance, la musique et les questions de genre, sans soutien-gorge, mais avec la moustache, elle se produit quasiment nue, vêtue d’une minijupe rose riquiqui. Immense et longiligne,elle psalmodie, impassible, des dialogues fictifs, absurdes et hilarants [...] sur fond de déflagrations électroniques. » C’est ainsi que Les Inrockuptibles décrivaient Susan Oberbeck, alias No Bra (littéralement : sans soutien-gorge), lors de l’un de ses passages à Paris en 2007. La jeune artiste expérimentale allemande, installée à New York, fait tout pour déjouer le carcan de l’identité sexuelle.

Seconde partie
Cindytalk
Cindytalk est né en 1982 des cendres du groupe punk new wave The Freeze.
Gordon Sharp, qui porte le nom et le projet du groupe sur les cinq continents de l’électronique, se produit seul pour son premier passage à Paris. Sa performance – des plages sonores « sculptées en une série d’atmosphères », dit-il, dans lesquelles se glisse sa voix improvisée et du piano – s’inscrit dans le sillage d’un album
récent : Transgender Warrior (« Guerrier transgenre »), album publié par le label autrichien Mego.

Cindytalk voix, électronique, piano
Invité spécial
Robert Hampson guitare

Tarif C : 25 € (1re catégorie uniquement)

Cité de la musique
221, Avenue Jean-Jaurès
75019 Paris

There will be a Cindytalk radio session/interview on Ouvert la nuit (France Inter) on Thursday 24th November between 9-10pm (continental time.)

Re-entries

2011-11-04T20:03:00.001+09:00

Lumberton Trading Company,the sister label of Fourth Dimension,founded in 2005 by Richard Johnson and Hassni Malik,releases LUMB017 CINDYTALK with PHILIPPE PETIT A Question of Re-Entry 12”

Limited to 300 and featuring two incredible collaborative pieces by France’s prolific Philippe Petit and Cindytalk built around piano, electronics, voice and that kinda trans-dimensional murmur and crackle we already love both of them for.
Out in late November 2011.
Available to pre-order HERE !

As Close As We Can...

2011-11-03T17:42:00.001+09:00

Interview with Gordon Sharp by Gianmarco Del Re for FLUID RADIO

Open publication - Free publishing - More cindytalk

OTO : SOUND

2011-10-28T22:35:00.011+09:00

Cindytalk - live at Cafe OTO from Gianmarco Del Re on Vimeo.

Cindytalk Live at Cafe OTO performing with Julia Kent on cello and Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo on electric guitar and electric viola - 18th October 2011

"Third act of the night was the eagerly anticipated Cindytalk. Before coming on stage, Gordon Sharp told me he had prepared a noisy set. Having recently delivered a stunning trio of albums on the Mego label, home to Fennesz and Bill Orcutt, which saw him plunging into uncharted waters to develop a radically new language for Cindytalk, it was difficult to guess how that would translate into a live setting especially one tilted towards the noisier side of the spectrum. Starting off in a suitably sombre mode, more abrasive than melancholic, Cindytalk quickly captured the stage with an assured presence, which indicated that the transgender warrior was not willing to take any prisoners. And yet there was no posturing and nothing confrontational in Cindy’s voice. On the contrary it was immediately apparent how delicate and fragile Cindytalk’s sound was even if coated in an armour of steely dissonance. Performing with his eyes firmly closed as if cocooning himself as one does when inhabiting a non-space as described by Marc Augé, and only occasionally glancing towards the audience or to the back projection onto which spilled images pertaining to the feminine, I felt like an intruder eavesdropping on a very private conversation.

It made me think of a passage from a Don DeLillo novel The Body Artist. “That night she stood outside his room and listened to him whimper. The sound was a series of weak cries, half cries, dull and uniform, and it had a faint echo, a feedback, and carried a desolation that swept aside words, hers or anyone’s. She didn’t know what it meant. Of course she knew. He had no protective surface. He was alone and unable to improvise, make himself up. She went to the bed and sat there, offering touches and calming sounds, softenings of the night. He was scared. How simple and true. He was there in the howl of the world. This was the howling face, the stark, the not-as-if of things.”

Granted that there is no whimpering in Cindytalk sound, it is just the primeval fear I felt creeping up on me that brought me back to this passage, the feeling of loneliness echoed by Anna Karina’s face flickering on the screen. But it might have easily just been me projecting. Whatever it was, I was left trembling until, like softenings of the night, Julia Kent and Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo joined the proceedings halfway through Cindytalk’s set tracing the contours of a possible path leading towards the light. Without holding onto the helm, Cindy let them gently steer the boat within reach of the shore but still refusing to drop the anchor. The pervasive sense of displacement so intrinsic to Cindytalk’s music remained intact. Never going for the easy option Cindy sat at the piano like someone trying to articulate in a foreign language something deeply personal.

Having prepared myself to a barrage of noise I kept loosing my footing taken aback by the sparseness of the sound enveloped by Julia Kent’s cello and Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo’s electric guitar and viola with murmurs of appeasement. It was a performance that subverted my expectations. Once again, I will borrow from Don DeLillo’s novel to voice my feelings. There is a passage where he writes about the wind, which sums up my experience “There is something about the wind. It strips you of assurances, working into you, continuous, making you feel the hidden thinness of everything around you, all the solid stuff of a hundred undertakings-the barest makeshift flimsy.”

In the end I was left with more questions than answers, and that to me is always a good sign."

Gianmarco Del Re for FLUID RADIO

Rebirth in Autumn

2011-10-14T18:30:00.000+09:00

Just as nature lulls itself into its wintry sleep,the official CINDYTALK WEBSITE has been upgraded.
Walk through the rustling leaves...

Kalyug

2011-10-07T18:48:00.000+09:00

Cindytalk (solo) will be playing in Berlin tonight (Friday 7th october)
alongside C-drik Kirdec and others.
KALYUG FESTIVAL .
VENUE .

Of Heart And Silence

2011-09-18T16:44:00.002+09:00

Cindytalk interview for French blogzine D-Side Web ,"De couer et de silence".
Hold Everything Dear review HERE .
Original interview in English:

Open publication - Free publishing - More cindytalk

"A taste of ash with the scent of burning embers..."

2011-09-15T00:12:00.000+09:00

Heady times indeed to be a Cindytalk fan, this is their third album in as many years after quite a few out of circulation. Gordon Sharp completes his trilogy of recent works in grand style and surprisingly enough, there's even some prettiness to it. This latest incarnation of the band have taken the concept of abrasion as art to it's limit, alienating a lot of the fans who have been waiting and waiting for a return to their darkwave roots of the 80s. 'Camouflage Heart' is the one I'm speaking of, kids, an album of viciously forceful rhythms and almost psychotic vocals.

These last three albums have pushed the extremities of Cindytalk's sound relentlessly in wildly confrontational ways. You can not ever know what kind of record you're going to get from this bunch, they don't do repeats and they most certainly don't take requests. Just listen through this act's discography and it will soon become apparent to you: Cindytalk do what they damn well please and as for the muse which inspires them... 'Transgender Warrior' is more than just a single.

Sharp gives us quite a few excellent impromptu piano bits throughout but never do they become pompous or overbearing, they accent like ice water on one's back in the searing summer heat. You'll feel a quickening of breath as you're pulled through the ghastly sonic landscapes of what sound like eviscerated hymns twisted and bent by the cruelest of means in the name of creative exorcism. There have been some comparisons made between this one and a film score he composed back in 1988 entitled 'The Wind is Strong...' which are not without merit, however, instead of doing short and sweet little cues Gordon extends and enhances the spiteful nature of his work to new heights. This is not a feel good release nor is it going to make anyone's party playlist; it will raise the hairs on the back of your neck and send chills down your spine. You decide which you prefer, I'll be wearing a scarf.

It's a taste of ash with the scent of burning embers that 'Hold Everything Dear' imparts as I play it and for being the length it is, you won't even notice any time has passed. How Mr. Sharp manages to pull this off is quite beyond me, I've played all three one right after the other even changing up the order but the potency of what's going on here is not diluted in the least. Here's the genius part of it, when played alongside those infamous 80s works, this material clearly shows much more range; an indefinable depth which never could have been achieved if this bunch had stuck with the pre-determined path their brief flirtation with pop music (This Mortal Coil) was beckoning with. It's all the more impressive to know that this kind of work has an outlet and with any luck a new generation of fans who will fearlessly embrace the uncompromisingly unique style of a band who's existence is similar to a viral form: just because there aren't any symptoms does not mean there isn't continual activity and sentience lurking outside the scope of vision. Waiting.

Before I go, I'd just like to add that Cindytalk have been a continual source of inspiration and one of the few remaining bastions of originality to me for well over twenty years. I feel it only proper that I thank you, Gordon, for making so many blindingly visionary records throughout your career and hope there are many more to come.

Peter Marks
13 Sep 2011
Reproduced by kind permission of Brutal Resonance-Hold Everything Dear review.

Dissolved Boundaries

2011-09-14T22:14:00.000+09:00

"Cindytalk are enjoying an increased amount of exposure recently as a result of the trio of fractured ambient albums released by mainstay Gordon Sharp on Editions Mego.It would be a shame if this detracted attention from the full group, whose performance tonight verges on the shamanistic - powerfully dominated by a lucidly funky Paul Middleton on drums.A now wholly improvisatory concern, Dan Knowler's versatile guitar moves everywhere from sheer blizzard to angular Beefheartian flourishes.New recruit Jacob Burns opens up subtle electronic wormholes, Gary Jeff's bass covers dub-like foundations, melodic runs and abstract texture with Sharp's spectrally anguished vocals and body language controlling the overall flow.This emotional maturity allows for that very rare thing : a melting pot where the boundary dissolving of genres results in something genuinely original and uncategorisable."

Supernormal review by Jonny Mugwump for The Wire, October 2011.

Vogue Anglaise

2011-09-06T21:20:00.007+09:00

Cindytalk Vogue Interview -English

August 2011

1. Hold Everything Dear takes its name from a book published in 2007 : how is it linked to it and why did you want to refer to a work that is quite recent ?

My Partner gave me a copy of this book in 2007 and it touched me deeply.The strength of vision and poetry contained within John Berger's writing had a huge impact upon me.I was working on several different threads of music at that time, secluded away in the mountains of Kobe (Japan), surrounded by "the calligraphy of birds…", i was attempting to re-position myself musically, with only my computer and a mini-disc (for field recordings) as my tools.my earliest work with the computer, "the crackle of my soul" was deliberately noise-based and i followed that trajectory more or less with "up here in the clouds" but i was determined to make this latest piece i was working on (in 2007) a bit more STILL.attempting to take some of the nervousness out of my work.i'm nervous by nature, so no easy task as my back catalogue will testify - though, there have been previous attempts at capturing a more tranquil mood with short pieces of piano from "in this world" and "the wind is strong".all too fleeting though and i wanted to stay in that moment of tranquility for longer.I'd recorded a track for a Cherbourg-based compilation for Trinity magazine entitled "Surrounded by Sky and the Stillness of Time" which was a nudge in that direction and then i read John Berger's book and it solidified my belief in what i was aiming for.I mainly use non-melodic sounds to construct my work, whispers from the machinery that collide to create an implied melodic sense.small moments of pure magic that when fitted together create something new and otherworldly.Berger's writing connects because he has an artists eye for the small details that somehow get disturbed, forgotten or pushed aside by that element of spectacle in society that holds our gaze and seduces us away from our paths.It didn't matter to me that it was a recently published book.I just wanted to herald it and pin my colours to that mast.I hope that even one person that hears my record, is inspired to read the book.the world needs to pay attention to such voices.

2. Hold Everything Dear comes quite quickly after last year's Up Here In The Clouds : what do you feel those records have in common ? Are they a reaction to one another ? How are they affected by the fact that they are on Editions Mego : does the label have anything to say about the music itself ?

I had all three albums nearly completed when i first joined the Editions Mego stable.I had begun my computer sketches in 2001 but i was moving between North America and Asia during the first few years - I spent 2003 in Hong Kong and was inspired by the sounds in that magnificent "city"..In early 2004 i had relocated to Kobe in Japan and was ready to pin my ideas down.By 2005 the first album (Crackle) had taken shape.Then the second album (Clouds) started forming and by 2007 that was almost finished so i started to sketch new ideas for a third album (Hold Everything Dear.) A trilogy seemed organically natural.

The point being that the work on all three projects definitely overlapped, so i would hope they are all intrinsically connected.However, i was determined to approach each one as differently as i could.With Hold Everything Dear i wanted to somehow find that stillness and to involve more "actually played instruments" and the field-recordings i'd been collecting on my travels around Japan and China.At this time i had also re-connected with one of my old Cindytalk bandmates from London, Matt Kinnison.He had been incredibly supportive about my earlier computer experiments, which were something of a leap from previous Cindytalk work, so during the sketching of the third album Matt started sending me sounds he'd been working on at his studio in Southend, Essex.He'd been experimenting with Yayli Tanbur and Trumpet Marine, so he sent some of his Trumpet Marine recordings which i incorporated into my work.These were sadly to be amongst the last music he made, as he died of cancer in 2008.Added to this i had it in my mind to record some short piano improvisations for the album too.The involvement of Editions Mego came in the spring of 2009, i think, i was back in London working with a new band line-up, working towards our Autumn tour of France.In fact,band member Sherrill Crosby had secretly sent all three albums to Peter Rehberg, as she knew it was a label i was particularly fond of.He liked them and offered to release all three.I'm not a voracious collector of music, i'm usually too busy making my own but i try to keep an ear open for new and interesting musics.I had become aware of Mego in the late 1990's with Pita, Farmers Manual and Fennesz and i'd followed it's development with great joy over the years.It seems as though Peter had liked some of my early music with Cindytalk, especially the more abstract and experimental work and there's no doubt that since then i'd been inspired by what he and his fellow Mego artists were doing, so i think that this coupling has been very special for me and hopefully to emego as well.I don't necessarily feel i'm technologically at their level but i hope that i bring a different set of skills and maybe add a little shade of warmth to the mix.

3. Your sound seems to rely very much on found noises and field recordings : how do you record / find them ? How do you pick them up to be part of the music ? They seem very much present on the new record : is it a way for you to incorporate the real world within your music which would be too abstract otherwise ? Is it a way of making the record a sort of diary of a particular moment ?

Hmmm, even back in the punk days with The Freeze (Edinburgh punk band 1976-1982) i was using found sound and tape recordings at live gigs.It just seemed natural to play with sounds, to take disparate elements and throw them together to see what might happen.Early on i recorded a family conversation and used it as a backdrop to a live gig.That playfulness was taken to much further extremes when we changed our name to Cindytalk in 1982.Our albums from Camouflage Heart onwards are full of such moments.Camouflage Heart ends with sounds i'd recorded at Euston Station (London) in 1984.As some people walk around with a camera taking snapshots, i carry a mini-disc recorder and record the sounds that i find interesting as i go along.I'm fascinated by the everyday sonic motion that surrounds us.It's always been a huge sonic inspiration.I was influenced by the original EG ambient releases and early European Industrial music and both used environmental sound within their ideas, in very different ways.At this moment, on a warm summers day in London, the door is open and the sound of construction

fills the air.I always liked that, intermingling with the birds, the trees, the sounds of nature.That's the essence of music for me.Since i became a huge fan of the films of Yasijuro Ozu some years ago, whenever i hear those sounds now i'm instantly and beautifully transported to Japan… much of Ozu's best work of the 1950's features the sound of the post-war re-building of Tokyo.It's intensely elegiac to me.During my own travels through Asia, i wanted to capture something of the essence of these places and my way of doing it is through sound recordings.It seems natural for me to then make music with these recordings.Instinct plays a big part in that of course…. during the recordings for Hold Everything Dear, my partner and i visited Shanghai, which of course is one of the biggest buildings sites in the world - constant dustflow, constant clanging of large machinery - we happened upon Fuxing Park in the old French Quarter, at the park gates we stopped to read a sign which said something along the lines of "civilised park of infinite tranquility"… we smiled and walked inside.we didn't emerge from the park for several hours and when we did eventually leave, it was reluctantly. it was exactly as it had promised on the sign, our cynical european minds, suitably altered.the recordings i made in there were blissful.Starting with the machinery from the outside then onto a class of ballroom dancers next to a sparkling fountain (In Dust to Delight.) From there i recorded mesmeric kite flyers, a mah jong tournament and a random harmonica player who just happened to be wandering around the park as he played (Fly Away Over Here.) All very particular things that were happening in that park on that day.The poetry of everyday life.Just like an Ozu film.Of course there are other found sounds and field recordings that are processed into noise, melody and percussion as well.

4. Piano and guitar also are featured : what is your relation to those instruments ? Do you play them yourself or do you sample them ? What attracts you to their sounds ?

There are no guitars on this album.Piano, definitely.All of the Piano pieces are improvised.I'm not a trained musician and couldn't play any tunes on request but i absolutely adore the Piano.It was a matter of pure instinct for me to attempt to find simple melodic structures with the Piano.I don't own one and rarely get the chance to play, so each time i do it's a matter of re-aquainting myself with the instrument.It's a love affair.Ultimately, i'm a singer, so i think it's likely that i'm trying to find a way to sing through the Piano.I love melody as much as i love noise so i'm always trying to flesh out those tiny, fleeting moments of beauty, to capture them before they slip away.I also love the percussive aspects of the piano, the clicking and chiming of the hammers, even the creaking of the piano stool appeals to me, it merges nicely with my breathing as i play.it's organic, and very pure.As far as sampling is concerned, there are no boundaries for me with that.I began this particular phase of Cindytalk by dj'ing at hardcore techno parties, using turntables as my instrument.This was before i even had a laptop.I would abuse and torture the records and try to build up a fabric of noise and rhythm.Then, when i eventually got a laptop (2000) i was able to start sampling some of those brutalised sounds and use them as building blocks for my experiments.I also used cd-decks in a similar fashion.

5. Actually, what instruments do you use ? And how do you process them ?

The only actual instruments i use are my voice, the piano and a virtual analog keyboard (a Nord Lead 2.) Everything goes through my Mac Book Pro where i use Bias Peak, Ableton Live, Native Instruments' Reaktor and Steinberg's Cubase 5.I'm not particularly interested in software, gadgets or technology to be very honest, all i care about is knowing enough so i can write poetry with them.It's a means to an end for me, which i realise is unusual for artists in this field,where the fiddling is an end unto itself.I'm less interested in the processes and much more so in the architecture and structure of the sounds.That's not to say i don't have a lot of fun whilst i'm creating this music, i absolutely do but i don't dwell on it.It's the pure sound and shape of things that gets me excited.

6. Your music is very much atmospheric but always makes itself felt and heard : drones are both very subtle and very present, on the forefront. Who or what has the most informed your sound ?

I'm Scottish, so i'd say that traditional folk music is the first thing that informs my approach.And Celtic folk music from a Scottish angle usually means laments and melancholic moods.The long drones of the highland pipes are a great love of mine, especially the classical bagpipe playing of the Piobaireachd (pronounced

Pibroch), which lends itself very well to experimental areas of music.Whilst Cindytalk were touring in the U.S. in 1996, we'd stopped somewhere and i had been introduced very briefly to a cd box set of sounds recorded in deep space.Sub bass, piercing crackles & solar storms, i haven't heard any of that since but

i was certainly intrigued enough that i wanted to attempt to create a music which had some of that other worldly mystery to it.i only caught a glimpse of it but i

sometimes feel as an artist it's better not to see the influence too clearly but rather to see it from the corner of your eye, then imagine what it could be like and

from there you can set about creating your version of it.Another great but more recent inspiration is Gagaku, the traditional court music of (Shinto) Japan, which to many western ears sounds jarring and discordant but to me is an absolute height of sonic beauty.I grew up listening to Brian Eno, the dark ambient tones on Discreet Music (1975) were an inspiration for me as were his seminal albums with Robert Fripp No Pussyfooting and Evening Star, though i was less interested in Robert Fripp's guitar noodling than i was in Eno's droning synths.Eno's subsequent albums, Music for Films, Music for Airports, On Land and others became crucial influences in my developmemt.Later, i was hugely invigorated by the long slow deep tones of Thomas Köner's early work.Asmus Tietchens is another that i find inspirational.

7. What difference do you make between a record and a live concert : how do you "reproduce" the record on stage ?

That's a dilemma of sorts, one that i'm always trying to reconcile.I'm an improviser at heart and with these recent albums i've improvised the strands and then pieced them together in as poetic a way as i could.But i'm not convinced i would be able to perform them live in this way, not on my own at least.One way of dealing with this was to put together a full live band, using my computer music as an undercurrent thread and have the band either perform written songs or improvise within that fabric of sound.It has been working very well that way.It's quite a unique approach which has great dynamic tension as the music is being pulled in different directions as it progresses.However, lately i've been picking up more and more bookings purely in the solo Cindytalk guise, so what i generally do with that is to very carefully structure a computer set culled from my repertoire and from that solid foundation, improvise voice and piano alongside it.At some point i'd like to be able to use the computer live to generate new sounds from a library of threads and sketches that i have loaded onto my hard drive.. but I don't want to give up singing in the live situation entirely, so we'll see how that develops.It's still a big learning curve for me.an exciting one though, nonetheless.

8. Transgender is often quoted when it comes to you. But, how do you feel it shows in the music ? do you think the transgender issue affects the music you are making ? In which ways ?

I was "transgendered" before i was a musician or singer.I've felt a strong gender shift since early childhood, so in many ways my whole approach to life, which includes my work, has been shaped by that.Although the same could be said about being from Scotland too insomuch as these things affect the way we see anddo things.My gender "difference", as a young person certainly detached me from those around me growing up.Made me very solitary, very internal, made me think deeply, from a very early age, about who i was and how i might be able to connect with the world.We all do that of course, and in fact, i truly believe that we're all unique but if you have a specific "difference" that causes you to struggle with those around you it can force you into corners which either destroy you or toughen

you up.mine was certainly the latter.I always felt as though deep inside i was "female" but i was strong enough when i was young not to entirely discard my "male"aspects, so i was equally interested in say, football (i'm a lifelong glasgow celtic supporter) as i was in poetry.of course i don't particularly pay much credence togender conditioning, i prefer to just be a human being who likes pink AND blue to use a gender cliche.But i decided that when i was very young.. so from an early

age i was gender shifting in very natural ways.my artistic approach has always been hammer and feather and i imagine that is heightened by my being as comfortable with the "feminine" as the "masculine".as mentioned previously, i don't necessarily believe that harsh dynamics in music are masculine and thata lighter touch is feminine, rather, i feel they are just aspects of a more rounded human approach, although i'm yet to be convinced that's a universally held view.

Cindytalk came out of a relatively harsh European post-punk / industrial scene and i remember vividly being castigated in response to our second album "In This World" (split into two separate vinyl albums - one containing mainly dark harsh noisy tracks, the other, much quieter, more subtle, desolate pieces) for daring to show that lighter touch.the accusers thinking we'd betrayed our industrial roots by becoming more girlish in style.not a criticism i was at all concerned by.It should

be said that i'm no expert on the gender situation, i haven't studied it but i have lived it for most of my life.i prefer to define my own position and allow it to be fluid rather than let someone else who doesn't know me, tell me who or what i am and how i fit or don't fit in with my world.we all too easily succumb to that in our lives, sadly.Transgender is just a loose term of reference though, it only hints at who a person is.a label to make it slightly easier in attempting to understanding how we are.My third sex position, if you will, is very important to me, it gives me the freedom to be who i choose to be in this fucked up and intolerant world BUT i have no real desire to be seen as just that.like everybody else i'm an amalgam of many different moods and characters and as i stated previously, being a Scottish Celt

has just as much of an impact on my life and music as does my gender position.Being called Cindytalk is no co-incidence though, when i was choosing this name back in the early 1980's i was very determined to give my music a "feminine" title and i still see Cindytalk as having a particularly "feminine" soul… also, alongside the serious artistic dimensions of my work i also have a HUGE amount of FUN picking out nice clothes and shoes to wear

9. You have played with Robert Hampson : what is your relationship and what does he add to your music ?

I've long been inspired by Robert's work, specifically Main and his eponymous solo works.I was aware of his first band Loop from their beginnings but it was all a bit too rock'n'roll for my tastes, however, when he moved into more abstract areas with Main, i totally fell in love with his work.I'd been going on a similar path myself and definitely saw him as a fellow traveller.He has an exquisite artistic vision.Very pure.He's a tad more academic than i am in his approach but we both have a similar sense of the mischievous.Previously, I hadn't known him personally, i was just listening to his music from afar, however, i had dreamed of working with him in some capacity and purely by chance the first day i met Peter Rehberg to discuss my Editions Mego releases in 2009, he was also meeting Robert for a similar discussion regarding Robert's work.I took advantage of the co-incidence and hung about to meet him.We hit it off immediately, as though we'd been old friends for years and we very quickly started considering a split release on eMego, which eventually became a February 2010 10" vinyl release "Five Mountains of Fire" / "Antarctica Ends Here.It was then a logical step to discuss making music together in some form or another.Robert joined me at the Domino Festival in Brussels in April of this year where he played guitar live for the first time in about 13 years.Within the Main structure he had abandoned the guitar for field recordings a long time past but he had intimated to me that he was looking to re-explore the guitar and i felt that him joining me in Cindytalk might be a nice place to start.We worked from my computer-based music and from that foundation we improvised voice and guitar respectively to create new layers of fevered sound.He hasn't joined the band in an way, of course, it will be more of a freeform arrangement where we will occasionally join up and do whatever takes our fancy… both in a Cindytalk sense and possibly with the newly re-constituted Main as well.In fact, I'm hoping that he will join me for the Cindytalk concert at the Body & Soul Festival : Masculin / Feminin at Cite de la Musique, Paris on the 25th November.

10. After all these years, where do you feel the music is taking you and do you think you have the kind of life you wished for when you released your first records?

Music, for me has always been about searching, communicating, sharing.an adventure… i've never known exactly where it would take me and i still don't but it has certainly been an exciting journey so far.Lots of twists and turns, some seriously beautiful moments and some deeply harsh and painful ones.I started my journey with little more than DESIRE in my armoury and had to learn how to communicate musically from scratch… now i'm able to perform live with a computer,my voice and a piano, if you'd suggested that to me back in 1976 when i started, i would have been incredulous.Thankfully the desire is still there and burning as brightly as ever, so that means i'll continue to attempt to find new corners to play in, new areas to explore… i'm not a trained musician, or an academic with a readily available theory about my music, i see myself as a normal person who continually seeks out new sonic territories to play in, always attempting to share my vision of the world with anybody that chooses to stop and listen.i want to emphasise the simplicity of my approach, to celebrate those that quietly go about their lives in radical ways.not necessarily feeling the need to make a huge fuss about who or what they are, just being and doing will be that revolution of their everyday lives.simple, honest trajectories.my music is hopefully a soundtrack for that state of mind.i shock myself occasionally, that i'm still doing this, that it has allowed me to travel and meet new people and that i still have a platform to make and share these works with others and i'm reminded that there are people who have helped me over the years, many people without whom i couldn't have done this… i feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to still be able to share my particularly awkward and melancholic view of the world.Where will it take me next? I have absolutely no idea, i just hope that wherever it is, i still have my eyes, ears and heart open and that i'm wearing a beautiful dress and a pair of killer heels……..

Zen Sonore- Cindytalk pour VOGUE

2011-09-06T20:35:00.000+09:00

Cindytalk interview for Vogue France by Joseph Ghosn

Part 1.

Part 2.

The rest of the interview appears in Ghosn's own blog.

Surge,Seethe and Shimmer

2011-08-20T01:51:00.003+09:00

"Hold Everything Dear" reviewed by Mark Fisher in the September issue of UK magazine
The Wire.

"Hanté par l’absence mais habité..."

2011-08-05T13:29:00.000+09:00

Avec Hold Everything Dear, Cindytalk poursuit le chemin débuté en 2009 chez Editions Mego. Toujours un peu plus loin dans l’abstraction et le minimalisme, toujours un peu plus beau.
Cet album est le dernier opus d’une série initiée en 2009 avec The Crackle Of My Soul et poursuivie en 2010 avec Up Here In The Clouds montrant Cindytalk explorer de nouvelles voies sonores. Ce qui est un peu le paradigme de Gordon Sharp, âme de Cindytalk et membre permanent de la formation écossaise depuis ses débuts en 1982. D’ailleurs, d’âme, il en est beaucoup question tout au long d’Hold Everything Dear. Avant tout un très beau disque. Majestueux, d’une lenteur acerbe, d’un silence assourdissant et surtout, doté d’une aura singulière, peut-être encore plus que ses deux prédécesseurs. Sans doute parce qu’il s’agit d’un disque semi-posthume. Composé et enregistré à deux, entre le Japon et l’Angleterre, entre 2006 et 2011, entre Gordon Sharp et Matt Kinnison, entre la présence de l’un et l’absence de l’autre car Matt Kinnison est décédé en 2008. Le disque évolue à la fois avec lui et sans lui, son absence exacerbe sa présence au moment de l’écoute, la rendant à la fois spatiale et spéciale. Le disque lui est dédié mais l’est aussi à l’écrivain britannique John Berger, Hold Everything Dear étant d’ailleurs le titre d’un recueil d’articles et d’essais mêlant politique, sociologie, poésie et psychologie, écrits au cours de ces dernières années et pour la plupart publiés dans le Monde Diplomatique, El Pais et autres quotidiens internationaux.

Il faut dire que Cindytalk a toujours entretenu des liens forts avec la littérature (Wappinschaw, sorti en 1995, comportait déjà une collaboration avec Alasdair Gray par exemple) et plus généralement avec l’art sous toutes ses formes, ce qui apporte non pas un concept mais un message sous-jacent, une dimension supplémentaire à sa musique, même si celle-ci s’écrit désormais sans paroles et que sa voix s’est tue. Ce qui n’a pas toujours été le cas. Cindytalk a eu plusieurs visages et plusieurs musiques : apparus en 1982, la première vie des Écossais se déroule à l’ombre des friches industrielles d’un post-punk très noir et martial dont je ne peux que vous conseiller l’écoute (Camouflage Heart pour n’en citer qu’un, crade et sombre). S’ensuit un parcours tortueux, aux mutations et changements de line-up nombreux avec, pour seul dénominateur commun, la présence de Gordon Sharp, de sa voix et de son piano puis de son piano seul, la musique oscillant alors entre expérimentations concrètes, ambient et électronique aux digressions noise et industrielles.
Ce dernier disque ressemble à une forme d’aboutissement. Complètement épuré, tout comme le line-up du groupe. Débarrassé de tous oripeaux. Des anciens visages de Cindytalk, il ne reste plus grand chose, ou plutôt, tous ses anciens visages se retrouvent amalgamés dans celui-ci. À force de sculpter sa matière sonore, Gordon Sharp semble avoir atteint le cœur, et celui-ci est habité de vide. Comme un éther. Une large part est laissée aux field recordings, rendant Hold Everything Dear grouillant et habité, presque vivant. Et entre ces bruits, voire en-dessus, un piano, des clochettes, des nappes synthétiques majestueuses à l’origine de séquences mélodiques d’une grande beauté et d’une grande pureté. Cindytalk largue les amarres. On navigue ainsi au gré d’une myriade de sons qui suffisent à poser une ambiance, à créer une image mentale et on voyage beaucoup. Tour à tour extrêmement abstrait (l’enchaînement Those That Tremble As If They Were Mad/Floating Clouds d’une aridité extrême, rythmé par des gouttes de pluie, des nappes qui ne vont nulle part. Il faut s’accrocher et en même temps, se laisser faire) et mélodique (I See You Uncovered, Waking In The Snow), l’écoute d’Hold Everything Dear n’est sans doute pas des plus faciles mais dans le même temps, on s’y sent bien.

Et l’on se raccroche quand on le peut aux mélodies, certes parcimonieuses, mais toujours bien placées et à l’effet de sidération démultiplié du fait de leur rareté même. Le propos est majoritairement sombre et mystérieux, le minimalisme poussé dans ses derniers retranchements et pourtant, quelque chose se passe. Parce que sous ses dehors de grande sécheresse, il y a dans ce disque-là de quoi explorer longtemps. De l’entame véritablement céleste avec charivari de clochettes, cris d’enfants avant qu’un piano élégant et solennel ne prenne la place puis s’arrête pour mieux reprendre le morceau suivant, à In Dust To Delight qui pourrait figurer sur la B.O. de Blade Runner. Il s’ensuit une suite de morceaux solaires et inquiets, sans aucun rythme, presque invertébrés mais à l’ossature paradoxalement bien réelle. Découpage aléatoire des plages, stridences synthétiques qui viennent compléter l’ensemble. C’est très lent, très contemplatif et aussi très beau.

Très vite, on ne sait plus où l’on se situe dans le disque, le passage d’un morceau à l’autre est gommé, le climax emporte tout. Et alors que l’on se dit qu’il s’agit d’une morne plaine, un segment mélodique agrippe, pousse à prendre de la hauteur et de là-haut, on voit alors l’ensemble et on ne peut qu’être soufflé par la minutie du paysage ainsi dévoilé. L’abstraction pure m’a rarement pris dans ses filets comme ici. Un disque qui, à l’instar de ses deux prédécesseurs, trouve idéalement sa place chez Editions Mego et se meut quelque part sur un segment délimité par Kevin Drumm d’un côté et Fennesz de l’autre, entre sound-art, dark ambient, field recordings, drone et arrangements classiques minimalistes. Tout à la fois aride mais vivant, abstrait mais accueillant, aléatoire mais fluide, hanté par l’absence mais habité, Hold Everything Dear est avant tout une œuvre magnifique.

Magistral.

Hold Everything Dear reviewed by leoluce for Indie Rock Mag

Silver Stories Of The Wind... Hold Everything Dear...Today...

2011-08-02T13:25:00.001+09:00

cindytalk - hold everything dear (album preview) by experimedia

"Responsible for some of the most affecting post-punk, industrial and dark ambient music of the 1980s and early 90s, Cindytalk is currently enjoying a new lease of life as an umbrella for Gordon Sharp's solo experiments in digital minimalism. This is his third album to be released on Vienna's Editions Mego, following last year's 'Up Here In The Clouds', and it's another superbly crafted and very plaintive suite, Sharp's quietly intense electronics augmented with piano, found sounds and field recordings processed into abstraction. With its sepulchral drones and eerily mystical chimes, 'How Soon Now' is reminiscent of Lustmord, Lull and Inade's demonic ambient, scant preparation for such unprepossessingly pretty piano sketches as 'Hanging In The Air' and 'On The Tip Of My Tongue' – pieces with a pastoral delicacy reminiscent of the 1990 Cindytalk classic The Wind Is Strong. Other tracks evince a weary beauty that makes us think of Fennesz and The Caretaker, the soundtrack to a European isolationist European road movie that has yet to be made. Taking its title from a John Berger book of the same name and dedicated to the late Matt Kinnison, who contributed musically before his untimely passing, Hold Everything Dear is a thoughtful work, charged with sadness and, above all else, a palpable longing for things just beyond human reach. Boasting new artwork by the legendary David Coppenhall, and available as CD in 4-panel digipack or vinyl in lush gatefold sleeve, it's an essential new chapter in the story of one of Britain's last great post-punk visionaries."
(Boomkat)

"Naming his new album after a popular book by contemporary British philosopher & artist John Berger, the chameleonic Gordon Sharp continues in his 30+ year quest to uncover new sonic territory. Once affiliated with the 4AD and Cocteau Twins/This Mortal Coil community, his material in more recent days, over a trilogy of fine albums including this, skirts around the areas of dark ambient, sound-art, field recordings, drone & lovely minimal classical arrangements. His is a wondrous, spiritual, eerie and sometimes industrial sound that glistens, thunders and pulsates with enigmatic possibilities. From opener 'How Soon Now...' your sound-world is his absorbing vision that wanders from fuzzy, clanking dystopia, organic scrunch & cavernous ambient-noir to the reflective piano-laden vignettes he perforates the overall mood with. Out of the many artists practising in this field today, Cindytalk's output is amongst the most expressive & fascinating out there. This sonic hinterland between absorbing dream-scapes & the creeping dread of an extra-terrestrial nightmare supplies you with some really imaginative scenarios to grapple with. It's a rich, ever-evolving sound leaping from the modern stable of effortless class that is Peter Rehberg's Editions Mego."
(Norman Records)

Hold Everything Dear for John Berger by Gareth Evans

"Cindytalkの1年ぶりの新作は、中心人物であるGordon Sharp以外のフィーチャーした三部作の1枚目で、いまは亡きMatt Kinnisonとともに2006-2011年のあいだにレコーディングされた共作であり、彼に捧げられています。アルバム・タイトルと同名のJohn Bergerの本からインスパイアされており、美しいピアノのメロディーの多用とファウンド・サウンド／フィールドレコーディングによって、トラック間の定義がもはや曖昧になる地点にまで働きかけるぼんやりとしたサウンドトラック。前2作でのサウンドを抽象の極点へと押しやります。"
(Doppelganger Records,Tokyo)

"Anyone who is infatuated with the more ambient end of electronic experimentalism — or is it the more experimental end of electronic ambient music — is already intimately familiar with Cindytalk. This Scottish outfit has been releasing records since the ’80s, carefully and consistently unfolding an aesthetic that’s as quietly disturbing as it is graceful and elegant. So what are the odds that they’ve gone off the rails and lost the plot after all this time? Three words: not bloody likely."
(Big Shot Magazine)

"Cindytalkの1年ぶりの新作～！中心人物であるGordon Sharpと今は亡きMatt Kinnisonが2006-2011年のあいだに録音した作品です～。抽象的なピアノのメロディーの多用とフィールドレコーディングによって、全体の輪郭のぼやけた美しさが創出されていますね。因みに、本作はMatt Kinnisonとインスパイアを受けたという小説家John Bergerに捧げられています。是非！"
(Record Shop Reconquista)

A Question Of Re-entry

2011-07-24T15:09:00.001+09:00

LUMB017 CINDYTALK / PHILIPPE PETIT 'A Question of Re-Entry' 12":
The second release in the subscription series of Lumberton Trading Recordings,by none other than Gordon Sharp's ever-wonderful Cindytalk platform and the prolific Philippe Petit caught firmly in the jaws of a twilight setting where piano, voice and drifts of mesmerising sound serve a portrait of emotions rarely found in contemporary music. Limited to 400, with the first 60 including a special sound postcard (comprising an additional collaborative piece by the two artists) only available via LTCo itself. In production during August 2011, pre-orders are accepted now.
The title comes from a short story by J.G. Ballard ,"A Question Of Re-Entry", a story of cargo cults & a returning space capsule.

Normal at the Park

2011-07-24T13:48:00.006+09:00

Cindytalk live at the Supernormal Festival
Location: Braziers Park, Oxfordshire, OX10
Time: Sunday, 21 August 2011 10:00 pm

SUPERNORMAL is a surprising new addition to the festival circuit, a spontaneous and experimental artist-led event, which lends itself perfectly to the magical looking-glass world that is Braziers Park in Oxfordhire. Explore a spectacle of cult live music, performance, discussion and cutting edge contemporary art in the sprawling ramshackle grounds.

(Live photo @ 6dogs (Greece) 17/2/2011)

Read Jonny Mugwump/Exotic Pylon's pre-fest review of Supernormal here.

Hold Everything Dear in early August

2011-06-26T19:59:00.001+09:00

"Hold Everything Dear" is the third installment in the new Cindytalk sound which started with 2007’s "The Crackle Of My Soul", and then last year's "Up Here in The Clouds". It's the first in the trilogy to feature musicians other than Gordon Sharp, namely the late Matt Kinnison, to whom the album is dedicated. Inspired by the John Berger book of the same name, this latest release is a whole new set of parameters which push the sound on the previous two works to an extreme point of abstraction, and in some places near silent passages and haunted melodic segments.
And what a mysterious journey this ends up being with increased use of piano and found/field recordings giving all the tracks a blurry soundtrack appeal to the point where the definitions between the tracks are no longer clearly defined. It harks back to the odder parts of "In This World" and "The Wind Is Strong" albums from the early 1990s.
Superbly packaged with new David Coppenhall artwork in a 4-panel digipack and gatefold vinyl sleeve.
PRE-ORDER here!

Interweave and Disintegrate (Meltdown Reviews)

2011-06-26T19:48:00.002+09:00

(Soundcheck photo by Richie)

"Tonight's line-up, as part of the Royal Festival Hall's popular Meltdown series (now on its 11th year!), is a startling oddity. It's hard to imagine this year's guest curator, frazzled The Kinks frontman Ray Davies at home sipping on his cocoa and slipping on the latest CD by either a transgendered shoegaze chanteuse or a foul mouthed no wave temptress. However maybe he does, and kudos to him for doing go. This evening's show is an absolute blinder and the definite highlight of the festival.

First on is Gordon Sharp AKA Cindytalk. Sadly somewhat obscure these days, his contribution to popular culture is already the stuff of legend, having appeared on various This Mortal Coil releases and a John Peel session with The Cocteau Twins. Quiet in presentation and frightfully polite, Sharp and band take to the stage with little fanfare, seeming to start their first number over the intro track being piped into the Purcell Room.

This modest beginning is a delightful ruse as the adept musicians find their groove and build up a dense slab of angular guitar noise and skittering improvised percussion. Sharp's lyrical ennui and fragile vibrato work perfectly within such intimate surroundings. Melodies interweave and disintegrate just as you begin to feel safely esconced within them. The condensed nature of their performance is mesmeric, both loose and scholarly. When they leave the stage, the music hangs in the air and you want to inhale it, lest it decide to leave you again."
(Matt Cosell,Music Ohm)

"This is the only show I'm going to at this years Meltdown Festival curated by Ray Davies and it is probably the most unlikely of choices for Ray to have made. Or so I thought until I ran into my old friend Theo who I have been having a go at for many years as our musical tastes collide and he told me that this show was one of Ray's Daughters picks! Either way these are two very unlikely acts to see playing at The Purcell Rooms in The Southbank Centre and long may my taxes help to put on shows like this.

First on are the legendary CINDYTALK who I first got into back in 1985 when their Playtime was one of the songs on the Abstract Fanzine issue 5's free vinyl LP. They were a bit of a goth industrial enigma and have remained so ever since. The only other London show that I know of was the one I saw at the Luminaire a couple of years ago that was to promote the Silvershoalsoflight 10" one sided single (www.bluesanct.com).

Tonight they are a 5 piece to bring us a trip into the dark atonal atmospherics and claustrophobia that comes as the drummer hits his cymbals with the padlock chains he is swinging before bowing a breezeblock type thing. Meanwhile,the guitarist is attacking his guitar with a baton, the noises are grinding and Cindy is at odds with the cacophony in a maxi dress howling the dark recesses of her mind. Towards us, the light is anything but silver shoals, more like splinters of dark in the gloom wrapping us all in this brew of noise as they crashed and launched explosions of noise from the synths or the guitars. It created a fantastic journey into whatever world Cindy and Gordon Sharpe are creating for us with this sonic stew that is enough to get a few of the less hardy souls heading for the bar to get away from it."
(simonovitch,whisperingandhollerin)

Meltdown

2011-05-11T20:40:00.002+09:00

Cindytalk (full band) will be performing at this year's MELTDOWN festival in London's Southbank.
They will be appearing at the Purcell Room on Saturday 18th June alongside Lydia Lunch's Big Sexy Noise.
Tickets are £15 and are selling very fast.

Domino Pips

2011-04-03T15:54:00.001+09:00

Cindytalk solo at the Domino Festival on Friday 8th april.The venue is Ancienne Belgique at Anspachlaan 110 Brussels, B-1000 Belgium.Playing alongside Cindytalk will be Alva Noto & Blixa Bargeld, Meat Beat Manifesto and Intangible States.

Cinder will be joined by good friend Robert Hampson on guitar.Robert hasn't played guitar live for over 10 years - having jettisoned the guitar for more field-recording based works

some time back.

Rhizzing Solo

2011-02-27T22:17:00.001+09:00

Cindytalk solo gig

March 1st

rhiz - bar modern

U-Bahnbogen 37 - 1080 Vienna - Austria

SilveryMoon

2011-02-15T22:38:00.000+09:00

"In tandem with our concert in Athens next Thursday as part of the "We Dream In Colour" project,all the artists involved will release a limited edition 7inch single (on the Tourette label) in relation to a specific colour.We chose SILVER and will issue the SILVERYMOON mix of TRANSGENDER WARRIOR coupled with an unreleased track entitled SHIBUKU.It has just dawned on me that this release means that I have now released records (vinyl even) in 5 (FIVE) different decades, starting with The Freeze In Colour ep in 1979.Extra reason to celebrate at this gig next week then.Either that or have an early night...The gig is on Thursday, February 17. 22.00 at Six D.O.G.S. Avramiotou 6-8, Monastiraki Athens, Greece, 10551 .
Other artists participating in this wonderful project are : COH, Othon Mataragas & Ernesto Tomasini, Troum, Andrew Zealley, Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo & Little Annie, Andrew Lilles and (I think) Thee Majesty."
(cinder)

2x12+7 = The Poetry Of Decay

2010-11-02T19:01:00.065+09:00

The Poetry Of Decay' compiles Cindytalk's two most recent albums, last year's long-in-development 'The Crackle Of My Soul', and the more recent 'Up Here In The Clouds', together with a 7" released on Klanggalerie in 2003. Together they sharply define the contemporary sound of Cindytalk's Gordon Sharp in contrast with his pre-2001 investigations of broken down rock structures and abstract piano ambience. In the 21st century he's made a move towards obscure computer usage which manifests itself in unsettling spectral ambient music and a range of unclassifiable, textured electronic collages bordering on noise. It's the inherent tension between his textures which makes this body of work a fascinating and often uncomfortable experience. 'The Crackle Of My Soul' is a bleak side of dark and dank ambient music where near-death drones and microtonal scrapes and klangs reminiscent of Kevin Drumm come alive in their attic bedsit/goldfish bowl to scuttle around the space, joined by a piano and teetering at the edge of their own sanity whilst haunted by ghoulish aural mirages. 'Up Here In The Clouds' settles into a less nerve-bitten set of compositions, marked by longer track lengths and ominous drones, still with a taste for cracked electronic textures and imbued with an almost autistic prickliness.

The 'Transgender Warrior/Guts Of london' 7" completes the album with an ethereal, caustic piece of ambience and one cryptic side of computer music with tactile bass drones and acrid digital noise.

(Boomkat review)
(Images from the beautiful Transgender Warrior 7")

Twelve-Foot Wizé

2010-10-25T11:47:00.000+09:00

A Day2 Alliance compilation featuring twelve exclusive tracks and versions by artists on/associated with Bluesanct… what was originally supposed to be a thirteenth anniversary comp has become a fifteenth anniversary comp!

TRACK LISTING:
AUDIO:
01_ Bronze Float with Okay Baby - Strange New Fall
02_ Caethua - Into the Sea
03_ cindytalk - a distant kite
04_ Drekka - Revelation Walks in Don Benito
05_ His Obvious Majesty: Lunar Beard - untitled instrumental #2
06_ Nathanael Markham - If you walk out away from here
07_ Annelies Monsere - Shining Road
08_ Odawas - Willow
09_ rivulets - brownies
10_ Static Films - Wedding
11_ Luke Basil - Light Melts Away (rattle remix)
12_ Vollmar - When Love Love Love (VPRO version)
FILM:
13_ ‘Big Breakfast, Bad Dream’ by Nathan Vollmar

Originally limited to 300 copies,about 100 copies left…
This comp is available FREE with the order of ANYTHING ELSE from the Bluesanct mail order.

LUFF

2010-10-17T14:07:00.002+09:00

Cindytalk
United Kingdom - Mego -
At the Bourg, Saturday, October 23rd, 9pm!!!
MEGO editions exclusively present within the LUFF a solo version of the cloudy Gordon Sharp formation, unique and original member of one of the darkest icon of the English post punk new wave. In the meanders of the band evolution, Gordon Sharp has reinvented the mysterious Cindytalk.
In quest for dark and poetical music, he/she has been digging the post punk vein since 1982, recording along the way a Peel session with the Cocteau Twins.
Icons of the other new wave far from the trends and commercials currents, the distortions and voices of Cindytalk are the desperate and threatening musical echo of the years of lead in England.
Gordon reappears with Up Here In The Clouds (august 2010) and offers a new facet of Cindytalk using computers to push some last arranged melodies to the other side of their volatile textures.
Tonight, Gordon Sharp will sing these new songs of ashes and will fill us with the shadows of his cursed and ingenious voice.

Broken Signals

2010-10-17T14:02:00.000+09:00

An interview with Gordon Sharp, Cindytalk by CJ Mitchell Stride Magazine UK
	I came to Cindytalk by way of It'll End in Tears, the 1984 album by This Mortal Coil on 4AD Records. Gordon Sharp's vocals were a highlight, particularly on a cover version of Big Star's 'Kangaroo' - no mean feat given that Elizabeth Fraser, Howard Devoto and Lisa Gerrard also sang on the record. The record sleeve helpfully credited Gordon as a member of Cindytalk, and as he notes in the interview below, many came to discover the comparably darker world of Cindytalk this way. Cindytalk's work remains elusive and marginalised in the stories of independent music, which may in part be down to their dogged determination to work at their own pace, forging unpredictable creative paths which at times might appear to be out of step with whatever the currently prevailing interests of the music press might be. However, their inconsistent, and occasionally unhelpful, record label support has further hindered awareness of their work, as well as making it difficult to get your hands on their back catalogue. From debut album Camouflage Heart (1984) to Wappinschaw (1995), Cindytalk's singular output ranged across songs, ambient/industrial soundscapes and film soundtrack work. Rich aural textures and a lively interplay between musicians were often enhanced further by Gordon Sharp's distinctive and immediately recognizable voice. After 1995, Cindytalk pretty much disappeared from view until the mid 00's, with talk of new releases and the promise of their back catalogue being reissued through Abraxas in Italy. Sadly, the Abraxas deal subsequently fell apart, but (for Cindytalk) an unprecedented level of new activity is now in full swing. A series of new Cindytalk releases has started to come out through the highly-regarded Austrian label Editions Mego: three albums, The Crackle Of My Soul, Up Here in the Clouds and Hold Everything Dear, along with a split 10-inch vinyl release with Robert Hampson. While the Mego releases are mostly solo work from Gordon Sharp, Cindytalk is also active again as a group, which has been focused on developing new material through live concerts, including a short European tour in Autumn 2009. The musical contrasts between the solo Mego releases and the new group incarnation in some ways may be grist to the mill for Cindytalk; they like to confound and confuse. However, the recognition which has followed from their association with Mego, and the relative ease with which you can now find their new releases, is long overdue. That recognition also hopefully provides a strong foundation which can be built on by the current group line-up. In the interview below, Gordon Sharp fills in some background to his activities over the past 15 years, outlines many of Cindytalk's key artistic concerns, and hints at some future directions still to unfold.
	CJ Mitchell: Cindytalk is currently experiencing a relatively high public profile with a lot of activity, notably a series of releases on Editions Mego which in large part is solo work by yourself. Alongside that, you've also got a six-piece band, playing live and potentially recording in future. So there are two distinct but also related tracks of activity going on just now. Could you summarise from your perspective the main things that are going on with Cindytalk? Gordon Sharp: Wappinschaw, the last proper Cindytalk album, was recorded between 1990 and 1992, but didn't get its release until 1995. In 1996 we toured America, in 1997 I went to live in America, and between 1997 and 2005 I was out of the UK travelling [mostly in USA and Japan] - and not with any of the band members from before, but looking constantly for new band members, a new possible set of people to collaborate with, but not being able to find them. As a singer, I had never really spent a lot of time learning how the gadgets worked. As a singer, I knew how to use effects on my voice occasionally and I would be quite happy to 'clumse' away and tell the sound engineer what I wanted but I stupidly never really bothered to sit down and learn how to do it. But, you know, I was a singer; I wasn't a musician in the conventional sense. And as a singer I also took control of the general direction, image and lyrics, so I was already doing quite a lot. But, lo and behold, I found myself in a foreign country with nobody to collaborate with, and basically unable to do what I wanted to do, so I had to knuckle down and just learn how to do it, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to make music in the meantime. I bought a laptop and tried to learn how to create shapes and sounds that corresponded with what I was trying to communicate. So, over the next five years, still away from London in the main, I'm basically using what I've learnt to make new music, hence the reason that there are effectively three new albums of solo Cindytalk work. When I reached The Crackle Of My Soulperiod I knew that I was beginning to properly create new Cindytalk music. I didn't really want to change the name, I thought it was quite nice to mutate into that. But all the while I'm doing this, I'm desperately trying to start a band. [While] I'm really, really happy with the [solo] albums that will be released through Editions Mego, it's fair to say that if I hadn't needed to do that, I wouldn't have; I would have continued just being a singer and directing the musicians rather than having to learn how to talk to a computer. But it can only strengthen Cindytalk overall for me to be able to do that, and it's been a good thing with so many doors opened up through the connection with Mego and the press and media we received from that. But all the while, all I really wanted to do was forget about the computer, close my eyes and sing, and to do that I have to find the band so that I can work in a more organic, possibly more orthodox way, but still in a way which I'm very comfortable with. (I'm definitely starting to change my view on what I can do with doing solo computer gigs though; I'm planning to introduce voice and piano to those sets and build from a new perspective, deepen it and bring in more layers.) [Regarding the band] we had several false starts between 2005 and 2008: three years of false starts, of not getting very far. The personnel wasn't always right, and then Matt Kinnison became ill and subsequently died. I had been working with him off and on since 1982, but he'd become a partner in that particular phase of Cindytalk, and so that was a colossal blow to all, as a friend first and foremost and for him to lose his life, because he was full of ideas. So we had a lot of problems getting going but I saw glimpses throughout that period of the possibility, the potential to do something interesting with a band. You know, I have a bit of a reputation for being awkward when it comes to my voice and there have been times when I have refused to use it in the obvious way, and I think I was correct in doing that. I feel it was worth continuing the struggle to find the right musicians, ones who would also fight for it and believe in it and take it to new levels and I think I found that. It wasn't until the middle of 2008 that we really got going and I think we could tell that at our first gig - we did a kind of warm up, almost like a rehearsal, in front of an audience at the 12 Bar [London] in June 2008. I think we knew from the minute we started playing live that we had something very special and so it was just a question of continuing to pursue those ideas, get better, and work harder to make sure the musicians can actually go on stage and play even if we had no songs, and could do something interesting without it becoming self-indulgent. And of course, when we play live as a band, for me it's infinitely more enjoyable and more fulfilling than playing with a computer. Both are valid and both are valuable, but I can't deny that I enjoy playing with other musicians. CJM: I've only heard the first of the three new albums, so they might be distinct in their own ways... GS: They're all different from each other. CJM: As a body of work, can you encapsulate some of your interests or concerns in terms of what you were aiming for on these CDs. Since it's principally laptop music, what are the sound sources? GS: It differs. With each album I changed the approach and did it slightly differently. The Crackle of My Soul began as experiments with turntables and then mainly a CD mixer, effectively remixing. It's a form of DJing, effectively. I was DJing with Darkmatter Sound System in Los Angeles, which I helped found back in 2001 with a bunch of young DJs and producers in Southern California. I started off DJing with the beats, but they were all better at DJing than I was. The spirit was always very good and I think you can be a DJ and not be very skilled and still do really good things if you have the right spirit and the right energy for it. But in the end I just thought, 'these people are so much better at doing this than I am', so I changed tack. [With The Crackle of My Soul] I'd build up a library of abstracted sounds, and then I would start to piece these pieces together. I'd get shapes in my head of places I wanted to take it, sound-sculpting it. I didn't have a keyboard, I had no musical instruments with me at all. I'd go into that library of sound and then I'd find little melodies, tiny little fragments of melody. I knew that with The Crackle Of My Soul I didn't want it to be too melodically based. I had been kind of inspired by several of the noise-glitch people: Fennesz, Oval, Hecker, Pita amongst others. But some of that kind of music (not necessarily those ones particularly, and without being disrespectful) had become a little bit kind of coffee-house, going down that path of being very polite noise, noise which was really sort of palatable to everybody. There's no reason why it shouldn't of course, but it struck me that a lot of that music was becoming very wishy-washy. I think that lots of these kind of people were starting with the experimental stuff and very, very quickly reducing the experimental part and getting more and more organised and formed and so orthodox, and I specifically wanted to do something where the experimental in fact was the whole, or nearly the whole, rather than the experiment being cosmetic where you'd have a nice, polite glitchy-thing with loads of melody and then a little bit of noise in the back, white noise, static, whatever. And I wanted the static and the white noise and the pure experiment, the thing where you have disparate noises and disparate dysfunctional rhythms, effectively colliding to create new dysfunction, but interesting dysfunction - in the same way that you might stop [to listen to] a lift shaft because it's got a little squeak which sounds really nice. That pure industrial kind of concept that all the sounds and rhythms you hear are music; I wanted to concentrate on that, microscopically just play with that. And at the same time as keeping the experiment as pure as possible, it might be that I would add just a fragment of melody, just a fragment of underlying almost subliminal melody. There's a myriad of strands of intent with this. I did want to try to make a music which specifically wasn't music, that might reach out or reach back: reach out to the future or back from the future. I wanted to attempt to create a music which actually almost belonged somewhere else and not quite here, as ridiculous and difficult and pompous as that might sound. I was surrounded by musics that were constantly regurgitating the past, [and while] there are specific influences in [my work] which come from the past, I did somehow want to try and push [the music] out as though it were broken signals trying to reach us from somewhere else, trying to come back at us from a distance or a time where sound and melody have been stripped, pulled and abused to the point where they just become broken signals. And, in fact, some of the pieces include actual Morse-code signals that have been abused - they are in fact 'S.O.S.', [laughs] help! And also abused voices, 'cause being a singer I was also interested to have the voice stripped and abused and distorted by distance and time, so that it becomes again part of the broken signal thing. This comes back to that human thing of trying to communicate but not being able to, and that could be reflective of the fact that I was in a foreign place, not quite able to do what I want to do and desperately tapping out little messages on my computer to try and create new music.
	CJM: Is everything you've just described a set of conditions and concerns that is shared across those three releases? GS: Actually no, I would say that is just The Crackle Of My Soul. To be honest, The Crackle Of My Soul was the key album in that respect, it was the one I very definitely had a vision and a structure for. Somebody in one of the reviews mentioned it's thematic. It's not quite that but I definitely wanted its pieces to be connected - they're all from the same two or three libraries of sounds, they're from the same experimental process of turntable/CD mixer experiments, and I very deliberately wanted that to have a cohesion, to be a collection of pieces that were related, although different. Crackle was begun in California, continued in Hong Kong and then maybe as much as seventy-five percent of it was done in Kobe, Japan. Okamoto (a village area of Kobe) was in fact very important in giving me the headspace to make these recordings work. I live there with my partner, Mari, up a mountainside overlooking both Kobe and Osaka ports and the peace and quiet I find there really allows me to create the noise/s I'm looking for. I then found myself post-Crackle, just wanting to continue making music but looking for different ways to do it. I may have used fragments of the same processes but by and large I changed how I did it. I tried to do it from different angles, I maybe even tried to do it in a slightly more orthodox fashion, less sort of high-pitched - lots of the sounds were high-pitched on Crackle, which I loved; part of that experiment was to create a music for dogs! With Up Here in the Clouds, there's a different emphasis, it's more a collection of ideas and there's not the same kind of conceptual vision for it. And Hold Everything Dear is more based on field recordings combined with played music - I drew in quite a lot of Matt Kinnison's experiments with trumpet marine and the yayli tanbur, and I'm still doing kind of abstract electronics. So that album changes again. Up Here in the Clouds is more, 'what do I do when I get here?' It's possibly a bit more relaxed, and in some senses that's a kind of experiment for Cindytalk because we've never been really relaxed. It's always been a bit fraught and nervy, and I don't think The Crackle of My Soul is any different. So it's possible that Up Here in the Clouds is just a wee bit more relaxed - of course, people who hear it might disagree with that! [Postscript from GS: Prior to the completion of Up Here In The Clouds I pruned it a bit, tightened it up and added two new tracks, "We Are Without Words" (which has become the opening track in our current live set) and "Hollow Stare" which attempts to rough the album up a little! This process, I think, has focused the album up a bit and made it more the equal of Crackle but still more relaxed as I mentioned earlier, a bit cooler, even. I also did a version of "The Anarchist Window" that featured Stewart Home reading from his new novel "The Blood Rites Of The Bourgeoisie" but I decided to leave it off the album and will probably use it on a 7 inch release sometime later in the year.] I find it pretty much impossible to do the same project twice, probably because I forget why I've done things, literally. Once I've done it, I'm like, 'how did I do that?' So, thankfully, I have to start from a different position [each time]. I think that has been a great help over the years for Cindytalk because we're never able to become formulaic, it's not possible, as long as I'm there [laughs]. CJM: How did your desire for singing, or using the voice, present itself when you were working by yourself? GS: I found it very frustrating. I'm not a technician, and prior to this [phase of work] I would have described myself as a bit of a technophobe, so it was a bit of a baptism of fire to just get in there and create sound from nothing. That might be the main downfall with the idea of self-producing my own work, 'cause I don't in any way feel confident enough or capable of recording my voice. Over the years I would have considered myself probably quite a difficult singer in a studio or live situation. I can recall many moments during sound checks or setting up the vocal recordings for Camouflage Heart, In This World,Wappinschaw, whatever, and causing the engineer serious problems by being a bit whiney: 'It's not that I want, it's this!', 'But it needs to be red... no, a bit more orange!' - not being able to express technically what I'm aiming for, so using colours instead! So, knowing that I might be a bit fussy, tells me that my own technical limitations would be well out of sync with me recording my own voice. I did it on a couple of occasions by myself on a computer: the little slivers of voice that were used on Crackle were recorded either on mini-disc or on a silly computer microphone - they were seriously lo-fi. At some point in the future, I would like to be better at doing that. I shouldn't be saying this, I'll get sacked from Mego 'cause they're supposed to be all hi-techy, computer-boffin music types, and I'm the opposite! CJM: So, in terms of the current band, other than some single gigs, the recent batch of dates is the only tour the band have done with the current line-up. Are you just discovering what's going on? GS: We've played twelve or thirteen gigs so it's still at an embryonic stage. Though having said that, we'll probably always be at that embryonic stage because we're fairly likely to abandon the set that we've just got used to before too long so it'll never get too focused. We like the uncertainty of not knowing. CJM: Is it fair to summarise it as a set of conversations within which there's room for play and improvisation? GS: Everything comes from improvisational beginnings, and one of the things that I've always tried to do with Cindytalk is make sure that it's very inclusive. Everybody that plays is a writer - everybody that plays on a track, no matter how big or small a part they play in it, is a part of the writing process. I've not been to that many band rehearsals but the ones I have been to by other people seem to use a similar process: people begin from just playing. I guess it's true that there will often be a songwriter or two in a band and they actually come up with an idea and play it and see what other people do with it. But there's not a single songwriter in Cindytalk. It's a band thing; everybody contributes to the composition and everything begins from just one sound - it could be a voice, it could be a beat, it could be some percussion. Any instrument can start, and then another person just adds to it and builds from that organic position, and the current set began exactly like that: it has never been fixed in stone at any point. One of the reasons for touring was to get to know the material better so we could record it at some point, and also to have fun playing live. It's very difficult to get better in rehearsal; you can put a lot of work in but ultimately the place to get better is when you're up against a crowd and you have to bring something together to make that work. Edinburgh was the last gig on that tour and by that time it was fairly together. It may have sounded like it was a cohesive batch of material that was pretty song-like, but there were still many elements that were changing from gig to gig. I know that there are certain melodic areas that I go to. I have a basic skeleton structure of what I'm singing but I don't spend lots of time working it out so that it's the same every time. Basically I know roughly where I'm going but I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get there. So, it's a skeleton structure; that's always been the way with Cindytalk, both in recordings and in a live sense. We try to build a foundation that is quite strong, flexible but strong, and then we flesh it out, when we're able to, in a live or recorded situation. I think that this is the closest 'Cindytalk live' has ever been to being song-based. I've never really believed that we've written songs. We pretend we can write songs and we sort of create shapes that almost mimic the song, but that's how it's meant to be because I'm not a huge fan of 'the song'. I think songs are great but there's too many of them, and too many of them sound the same. It's a formula, you know, and occasionally one will hit you that's so exquisitely beautiful that you can't ignore it. Otherwise everyone plays effectively the same song, or a different variation of - I think it's a slightly overrated medium. What I like to do is to play with the shapes that are around that, but bend them and twist them so that they never quite go where you're expecting them to go. They follow their own trajectory and don't necessarily conform. Having said that, this is the closest we've been to getting in that area, but it's still not verse/chorus/verse. CJM: Is that consistent with what was happening with the band in the 90s when playing live? GS: Yes, except that we were noisier in the 90s and we were less focused because the line-up wasn't quite as good - there were some good players in there but the line-up was a bit less focused. It's gotten a lot better. We can't really be the band that we want to be unless everybody who's there is capable of just going onto the stage and, if everything falls apart, we can still create something, even if it's a minimal thing. Everybody needs to be brave enough or have an element of bravado and be able to blag it, because that's ultimately what you're doing, you're blagging it, you're just saying 'ok, I don't have a fucking clue what we're doing but let's do it anyway' and then you just throw yourself off the edge and see what happens. By and large, if you have the spirit to do that, it'll work.
	CJM: So, what are the aspirations for the band both live and recorded? GS: Hmm... Just to play more... It's a question of seeing where it takes us, the adventure is that. I have been thinking that I'd like to toughen it up again, so I do envisage getting a bit noisier - not losing the melody, because I'm really still happy to have that within it, and I'm enjoying singing, but I imagine bringing in some harsher elements to sort of counterbalance it. Back in the mid-90s, when we were playing live we used electronic beats a lot more. I can't see us ever doing that in the orthodox way where you have everything midi-ed and synced up, it'll always be done in a much more organic 'throw it in, and see what happens' sort of way. I don't really ever want to go down that path where everything seems too together - our music has to be about falling apart! Different ways of falling apart, I suppose; if there's a formula that would be it. I'm artistically interested in things beginning and things ending. That's what I enjoy - when it's beginning to take shape, and when it's beginning to dissipate. You can feel the process, you can feel something joining and getting together and becoming something, and I like that period, and I also like the bit where it starts to dissipate and sort of decay. I'm fond of both. I'm not sure what to do with the middles yet!   CJM: For me, one of the things that is very striking in your work is this sense of the search, the quest, the yearning. And that might be taken to another level by the voice. There is an environment created within which these feelings just take over. And one thing that was interesting with Crackle are the glimpses of that yearning in the music - it is constrained by the textured sounds much more, but it's there. One of the things that also signaled that for me was the choice of the album title and some of the song titles - for example, 'signalling through the flames', 'if we meet, we meet in silence.' When I've been listening to it, I've been thinking about exterior worlds - landscapes, places, urban spaces and so forth, and perhaps environments are one of the things that really feels at the forefront of Crackle. GS: I think that it's definitely no less of a search or of a yearning than any other [Cindytalk] album. [As a solo record,] it is an unusual Cindytalk album as I've always been at pains to say to people: 'Cindytalk is a band, a collective, a group of people.' But Crackle is just one person, it is specifically a record coming from solitude, from being on my own, sitting in a room, headphones on, very enclosed, possibly claustrophobic, possibly locked into this world of sound, but constantly trying... By being involved in earlier years in Soundsystem culture, DJs and electronic producers, I became very aware of the amount of music that comes out of that world that lacks personality. Then you begin to see those people who really know how to use ideas to communicate, because there are relatively few people who are capable of imbuing their midi-ed electronic, analogue or digital music with character that's unique - Leo Anibaldi, Lory D, Marc Acardipane (The Mover), Christoph Fringeli, Toby Reynolds - people who the minute you hear it you know who it is, you know it's that person. But much of the music coming from that world you couldn't tell who it was, because so much of it sounds like it's coming from the presets or coming from some sort of formula. If I add my voice to a piece of music, by and large, people would hopefully know it's me singing. But without singing, how do you do that, how do you get your character into this music?! It struck me that within the context of Cindytalk, one of the things that I used to do, which I think became a kind of voice, was using structure very carefully, both structure in the pieces and also the albums. I would spend weeks, maybe even months, putting the track lists together and trying to figure out how best to make things flow, and so I think I learnt how to use structure almost like an instrument. And so it dawned on me quite quickly that I would do the same thing within the context of this music; that structure would become my voice. And so I used the way things fitted together both in terms of the pieces and also how the pieces fitted together to create a journey, a flow. So, without playing an instrument or singing onCrackle, the structure then became the heart of that voice. I always perceived it as poetic; I perceived that what I was doing was creating a poetry of noise. People asked me what I was doing, and I would say, 'noise poetry', which some people understand, some people don't. The structuring, rhythm, flow, all that kind of stuff became poetic for me and I think that might be one way that yearning and desire, and things that were always thematic within Cindytalk anyway, come into play, somehow. It was very, very important to me when putting together a live band that every single member was capable of that same search, or similar searches, their own journey within it. So yes, from every perspective in Cindytalk, the people are looking, are searching for something. We search individually and we search collectively. Even though we can in no way be connected to the jazz ethic, I often felt that that's a similar thing: you have players who all go off into their own space but then they know how to come back and join with the people they're playing with. We definitely have moments when we just fly off and other times we come back and connect.
	CJM: There's also the acknowledgement (or sometimes the printed acknowledgment: quotations on your album sleeves) of other artists, whether contemporary or historical, as references, as guiding spirits perhaps. And there's some pretty fundamental, big themes that you touch upon, not in a heavy-handed or didactic way, but I think it ties in with that yearning idea. It's unashamedly signalled in the music and in cover imagery - for example, the balancing between extremes with the fire and ice images on the 10 inch single cover [Cindytalk and Robert Hampson], and Wappinschaw's hammer and feather images as well. GS: The first word in the Cindytalk story has to be desire, it's written on the wall on the cover of Camouflage Heart, I'm standing next to my own spray-painted writing, and that's exactly the starting point. So, yeah, absolutely. I can't imagine not drawing in other artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians that have inspired us. It strikes me that we take these people inside us on a daily basis, we don't exist in a void, we're made up of what we know and what we consume and what we seek out - other ideas, other thoughts, other entertainments. I did that from the very beginning with Camouflage Heart: there was one track we needed a drummer on, so I went to friends and said 'we need a drummer on this song, and to be honest there's only two drummers who I'd really like to play with', one was John Murphy, who had previously been in the original line-up of The Associates, and one was Mick Harvey, who wasn't even really a drummer technically, he was a guitarist in The Birthday Party but became a drummer in The Bad Seeds for a while. And it just so happened that the person I asked knew Mick Harvey so he became a part [of that album] - somehow, somebody we'd been inspired by stepped inside, in a very, very brief and fleeting way. When we got to In This World, that idea focused a bit more. I had been reading Kathy Acker and been feeling inspired by stuff like [her book] Blood and Guts in High School, and we were writing a song which related to that and her presence was there already and so I took it a stage further and I went and spoke to her, I explained this to her and said: 'your presence is already there but why don't you become the ghost and actually participate, just come in, unannounced, just appear', as if by magic in a sense, you're listening to something and suddenly the thing that you're listening to is actually right in front of you. It was just meant to let itself appear and disappear, as though it's the kind of thing that the music makes you think of it and so it happens. With Wappinschaw I was trying to reconnect with my roots in Scotland. I'd spent a number of years up to that point, and maybe slightly after that point, trying to move back to Edinburgh, unsuccessfully. My inability to make that step backwards made me want to make an album that somehow spoke of that feeling, that desire to go back, but can you go back?! It's not possible to go back, you can't do that when you've moved a distance away, and Wappinschawwas relevant to that. And I read Lanark by Alasdair Gray and was completely blown away by it, and so in that same spirit that we'd used in In This World, I wanted to draw Alasdair Gray directly inside the work. I'm not sure if that's an unorthodox thing to do, I've not come across it very often, but it just seems nice to take the inspiration and turn it into something more concrete. You're also deepening your work by bringing in real people who have created a whole other world of ideas and sounds, maybe even to some extent introducing new people to them, which did happen a lot. And of course Wappinschaw became a bigger work relative to that concept with the track 'Muster', with its invocation of [artistic] spirits. 'Muster' was the key track of the whole album because it spoke of that spirit of what I was trying to communicate about the world having turned in the opposite direction. It couldn't be any more true now - that idea that we've taken a wrong turning and it's started to strain so tightly that it's cracking apart because we've just gone the wrong way and somehow we can't get back or go forward to get back on a better path. I always reduce Cindytalk to this: it's a person's relationship with the world around them, it's very simple, it's not to be over-intellectualised, it's a simple thing. I've reduced the voice to the broken signals in The Crackle of My Soul. In a live sense I've reduced it in a way by not really using lyrics anymore but using the voice as an instrument. I mean, I've always done that; I went through periods when there was lots of lyrics but I constantly come back to the voice as an instrument, because it's an emotive tool and you don't necessarily need to have a very clear-cut lyrical passage to feel something. The Crackle of My Soul's titles are the lyrics because they're all connected to the human. I mean, I'm quite fond of Autechre and the way that they create new words and hybrids but by doing so they take it further away from us, but I don't want to do that. I'm quite fond of the traditional, European experimental or classical music where, at the same time as it being experimental, it's also romantic. I like that combination, and I think that Cindytalk are a little bit like that, we're definitely broadly experimental but I'm a bit of an old romantic at the same time so I like to imbue it with that spirit, and I think that romance is the desire and the yearning. CJM: A very basic question to finish: where does the band name come from? GS: It was an idea. My band previous to this was The Freeze, which is a generic shit band-name and we eventually had to change our name because other bands also kept calling themselves that. We managed to scare a few off just by saying, 'we've been around longer', but then Freeez came along with their big hit single, I forget what it was called (a jazz-funky type thing, pretty awful) but they refused to change [their name]. They spelt it differently anyway but they refused to change it, so we just thought, 'actually, this would be a good time for us to change our name because we need a good name'. Now, having been burnt in that way, I did think that the best way of having a name that's not going to be a name that a dozen other bands have is to create a hybrid name: take two things that don't necessarily belong together and stick them together. If you think about it from the point of view of Googling: perfect! If you choose an obvious, generic name and put it in Google, it takes you forever to get what you're looking for; you put 'Cindytalk' in, and that's that, just 'Cindytalk'. In an artistic sense, this is it, there's only one Cindytalk. So I knew very early on that I wanted it to be a hybrid, and I wanted something feminine because of being transgender, or whatever it is you call it, since I was very young. When I was between the ages of 15 and 21, that was the period when I was starting to understand it. Before that it was there but it was just abstract, I had no idea what it was. From 15 onwards, I'm beginning to kind of understand it, by 17-18-19, I was starting to explore it, to share it, through clothes, through make-up, through various ways of sending out little signals to try to create a scenario whereby I could communicate it somehow. That was happening throughout The Freeze in different ways and when it came to Cindytalk I actually wanted to make it work straightforwardly, I wanted to have a name that had a feminine aspect. I still wanted to make dark, abrasive, slightly threatening music but I wanted it to have a feminine aspect as well, and it manifested itself through the doll, the Cindy doll - which of course was the Barbie doll in America, but Cindy was British. I just had a mad notion at the time of a Cindy that could talk, I wanted to give her words that she wouldn't normally say. I wanted to have a juxtaposition of the pretty and fluffy connotations that came with the Cindy doll and a darker, abstracted language, or things that might be said that wouldn't normally be said in that context to create that dichotomy and tension. So I just had this vision of somebody pulling the doll's string and it might say, 'brush my hair', but it might also say something completely different from that, something philosophical or political or nonsensical or surrealistic, and I suppose Dada comes to mind when you think of those things, the Dada concept of rhythmic, phonetic poetry, something jarring, and organic. And the thing is that the feminine can be those things too, and it doesn't mean that the feminine and the fluffy isn't interesting in itself either, but I was taking that abstract darkness and placing it alongside something pretty and fluffy and sweet to create something different. This didn't necessarily manifest itself entirely in Camouflage Heart but it did work when you consider that Camouflage Heart came out at almost the same time as This Mortal Coil. You had me on one record singing very, very sweetly and very melodically, and looking very feminine in the video and pictures with all the make-up and flowers, and then I did Camouflage Heart and it jarred, and I did that deliberately. I often thought that had it not been for Camouflage Heartcoming out at that moment, I would not have done This Mortal Coil; I would have turned that [opportunity] down because it wasn't strictly my kind of music. I wanted to explore that area of what I could do but only knowing that the two would come out almost simultaneously, and that you would possibly go from one to the other. Most people think of This Mortal Coil as being quite dark as well, but from Camouflage Heart's perspective it's sort of ethereal and a bit airy-fairy, and I was interested in the idea that you could go from This Mortal Coil and then take that step into Cindytalk and the movement between the two would be quite an interesting step. And over the years that has proved to be absolutely correct and people did do that; very few people have gone the other way, there are some but I'd say ninety-five percent have come from This Mortal Coil to Cindytalk, and they got that, they felt that, they were like: 'fuck!' Some people would push it away, put it in a box, but they didn't throw it away; and maybe at a later point they would open it up. Some people eventually would reach it and that would open up a few sets of doors. To me, there was a really clear idea of helping to accentuate the power that was contained within Camouflage Heart, and the name also leant itself to that. Many people over the years have said that the name Cindytalk sounded a bit too twee, and that may be the case, but if you listen to the music then what happens: a dialogue has begun. In contrast, if you give yourself a band name that immediately tells the story of the band and how it's going to sound, then what are you left with?! I've tried over the years to try to encourage people to participate with Cindytalk. I've tried to create some kind of dialogue or tension, to provoke thought, to encourage people to actually step inside, not to just listen and let it breeze over you. Cindytalk is full of implied melody; if there's not a direct melody there, and sometimes there isn't, you can be sure there'll be melody all the way through the core of it, because it's just a question of a sound hitting another sound - it creates a melody and a rhythm and it's always been there to encourage people to come inside and be a part of it. © C.J. Mitchell 2010

Computers,music,poetry...

2010-09-26T13:14:00.000+09:00

Mego Revamped

2010-09-26T12:24:00.000+09:00

Editions Mego,currently renewing their website,have now a page devoted to Cindytalk.
Mego are taking pre-orders for The Poetry of Decay, special 2LP + 7” vinyl set compiling both THE CRACKLE OF MY SOUL & UP HERE IN THE CLOUDS albums.

Fruit Gathering

2010-09-26T11:50:00.001+09:00

Thursday 30th September
7.30pm-11.00pm, £5 (on the door only)

Seeds & Bridges Presents:
CINDYTALK (solo) live (UK/Japan)
+ Special guests

BRIDGET HAYDEN (UK)
Alongside her work with The Telescopes & Vibracathedral Orchestra, Bridget's solo performances consist of deep drones and vocals filtered through an intense sensibility.

JEZ RILEY FRENCH
Small instruments, objects and field recordings from the East Yorkshire based composer.
New Release: OUT NOW 'Instamatic #6 - Prague' - Jez Riley French

...Those That Do...The Poetry Of Decay...

2010-09-12T15:23:00.000+09:00

eMEGO 112V
CINDYTALK : THE POETRY OF DECAY
Release Date: 01.11.2010
SPECIAL 2LP + 7” VINYL SET COMPILING BOTH THE CRACKLE OF MY SOUL & UP HERE IN THE CLOUDS ALBUMS

(those that fall)
signalling through the flames
of ghosts and buildings
maglev
troubled aria
our shadow, remembered

(those that fly)
feathers burn
one hundred years tomorrow
if we meet, we meet in silence
debris of a smile

(those that see)
the eighth sea
we are without words
i walk until i fall
switched to lunar

(those that seek)
hollow stare
the anarchist window
multiple landings
up here in the clouds

(those that live)
transgender warrior

(those that die)
guts of london

Recordings by Gordon Sharp 2001 - 2010 at Belmont Shore (ca), Mid-Levels (HK) & Kobe (Japan) but mainly at Roi Vert, Okamoto Japan.
Cut at Dubplates & mastering, Berlin, August 2010

Cindytalk have been active since 1982. During the 80s and 90s their sound was defined by broken down rock structures and abstract piano ambience. A third side to their coin emerged at the dawn of the 21st Century with a turn towards obscure computer usage pushing all resemblance of melody and conventual texture to the outer edges.
‘The Crackle Of My Soul’ is the first full length to come from this new direction, starting in 2001 and now finally ready for release. Its also the first Cindytalk album since the 1995 release of ‘Wappinschaw’.
Although very abstract in nature these 10 tracks still echo the vocal brilliance and subtle beauty that they become known for, as well as pushing back the boundaries.
Up Here In The Clouds is the second installment in the new Cindytalk sound which started last years The Crackle Of My Soul. Whereas Crackle was more of a blistering burner, Clouds has a fresher cooler sound to it, with longer tracks that slowly evolve in great patches of aural beauty.The sound that Gordon Sharp and co create now is a unique blend of cracked electronics, near awkward ambient textures that always seem to flow smoothly like the most natural of sounds around, building up a great set of modern electronic music which closes with the child like melody of the title track.
The 7” coupling of Transgender Warrior and Guts Of London is analogue to their debut appearance as a 7” released by Klanggalerie in 2003 (gg62).

Pre-order www.editionsmego.com
Copies ship mid-October 2010

Vortex Audio

2010-09-12T15:04:00.000+09:00

THIS CITY PLAYS feat. CINDYTALK by clairurbahn

Audio output including interviews from performers, crowd members and staff from The Vortex.

Torino

2010-08-29T21:21:00.004+09:00

Cindytalk will be playing in Torino on September 1st alongside Blind Cave Salamander at the Cortile della Farmacia.

Photograph by Nicholas Lativy.Cindytalk Live at The Vortex in Dalston.

Clouds Re-Viewed

2010-08-27T18:16:00.003+09:00

boomkat

Gordon Sharp's Cindytalk returns with another new long-player for the mighty Editions Mego imprint , a follow-up to last year's The Crackle Of My Soul. 'Up Here In The Clouds' might well be said to bear as close a resemblance to ambient music as it does noise, and while much of the record plays out as a slow influx of electronically cultivated texture - largely divorced from the usual musical languages of pitch and rhythm - there is an uneasy kind of prettiness to Cindytalk's new sound. Making for an enticing opener, 'The Eighth Sea' could either be based upon undulating, watery field recordings or computer-generated waves of static, or maybe both merged together in some strange electroacoustic broth. In amongst the piece's hypnotic motions a female vocal sample emerges (sounding naggingly like those heard during DJ Shadow's 'Midnight In A Perfect World'). It's an enigmatic, slightly tense introduction, setting up 'We Are Without Words', with its skewering drones, ear-tickling interference signals and factory floor knocking sounds. 'Guts Of London' offers another immersive, heavily layered and abstract mix - the album's sonic properties are always to be admired, in fact, pieced together with a thoughtful, craftsman-like skill. That's not to say that Up Here In The Clouds steers clear of the more confrontational end of noise music altogether: 'Hollow Stare' lets loose with a compressed, piercing screech of Daniel Menche proportions, while the throaty, trundling passages of 'I Walk Until I Fall' are interspersed with Prurient-esque atavistic vocal exclamations. Towards the close of the sequence, nine-minuter 'Multiple Landings' brews up a doomy intermingling of glossy, metallic drones, ratcheting up a general air of industrial dread. Any sense of ill will disperses with the album's closing two minutes (its title track) which sound like a mournful fax machine bleating out a rather lovely melody. Highly recommended.

Norman Records
Cindytalk is somewhat of a rotating cast centering around Gordon Sharp, who I thought came across as being a wonderful spirit in his recent interview in The Wire. These recordings were created between 2003-2010. This sounds great from the moment I hit play. It’s difficult to tell if the sounds of waves across a shore are field recordings that have been processed or purely synthetic. Meanwhile ghostly tones hover above opener ‘The Eighth Sea’. Onto ‘We Are Without Words’ which really grows building tension and a sort of slightly uncomfortable Euphoria. ‘I Walk Until I Fall’ has a howling digital wind with superb cracked electronics and glitched up textures. Then some super imaginative sound design enters the mix. I could waffle on all day about this so I’ll stop now. Like any really decent electronic music, it is beyond words and should be experienced rather than talked about. Highly recommended.

Trinity
Après le radical "The Crackle of my soul" (2009), Cindytalk revient avec un nouvel album aux couleurs toujours aussi noise-industrielles; la "laptop music" explorée ainsi forme un univers singulier, plus intimiste que ce que le groupe propose sur scène. Pour autant "Up here in the clouds" se démarque subtilement du précédent album, souvent plus floconneux, atmosphérique aux lentes respirations, secoué d'infra-spasmes, idéalement suspendu entre déséquilibre et harmonie.
Tout au long des neuf compositions (dont "Guts Of London", originellement présent sur le 7" "Transgender Warrior"), l'oreille se fraye un chemin dans des paysages tour à tour microscopiques ou étendus dans un territoire inconnu, comme vierges de toute présence humaine. On pense alors à un "monde d'après", à des espaces rendus à une Nature mutante, fragments de technologies mortes instillés dans les éléments du sol, racines et terre compostées en un substrat post-industriel.
Parfois le rythme s'installe plus ostensiblement, sur "The anarchist window", mais cela s'inscrit toujours dans la veine presque rituelle de l'ensemble de l'album.
Apesanteur ployée sous des nimbulosités, inquiétude calfeutrée sous de grands calmes. Exigeante poésie, si lumineuse, si familière de l'abîme, à tomber.
Bientôt édité en double album vinyle, couplé à "The crackle of my soul", cette nouvelle pièce sonore de Cindytalk devrait être suivie d'un album "en groupe" qui montrera l'autre face du projet de Gordon Sharp.
Stanislas C.
jeudi 26 août 2010

After the radical 'The Crackle Of My Soul' (2009), Cindytalk comes back with a new album, still tinged with noise-industrial tones ; such "laptop music" creates a singular world, more intimate than what the band offers on stage. Yet "Up Here In The Clouds" subtly differs from the previous album, often snowy, atmospheric with long breathes, shaken by infra-spasms, ideally suspended between imbalance and harmony.All through the nine tracks (including "Guts Of London" previously on the "Transgender Warrior" single), the listener explores landscapes which are alternatively microscopic or wide open in unknown territory, as if free from any human presence. Hence one imagines "an afterworld", spaces given back to some mutating Nature, debris of dead technologies instilled in the earth, roots and dust fertilized into post-industrial substrata.Sometimes the rhythm becomes more visible as on "The Anarchist Window", but it's always inscribed in the quasi ritualistic tone of the whole album.Curved weightlessness, fears hidden under great calmness. Demanding poetry, full of light, so close to the abyss, poetry to fall for.Soon issued on double album vinyl with "The Crackle Of My Soul",this new sonic work by Cindytalk will hopefully be followed by a "full band" album that will show us the other side of Gordon Sharp's Project....

(Thanks to Fabrice for the translation!))

Bird on The Wire

2010-08-20T20:46:00.003+09:00

Cindytalk article in the September issue of British magazine THE WIRE.
Also available on their website are an exclusive mix Listen to those that at a distance resemble flies mix pt1,images and some chosen links for the section The Portal.
The full-length mix will be played out on Wire's Adventures In Modern Music radio show on Resonance FM in a future edition.

Tracklisting:
[Film sample: "F For Fake" by Orson Welles]
"We Are Without Words"
"Cloud Symphony No. 3"
"The Eighth Sea"
"If We Meet, We Meet In Silence"
"I Walk Until I Fall".

"The vortex is the point of maximum energy... All arts approach the conditions of music...The primary pigment of poetry is the IMAGE."

2010-08-01T12:25:00.008+09:00

Exotic Pylon Presents
Resonance FM DJ and music journalist Jonny Mugwump brings his Exotic Pylon radio show to the club for a series of bi-monthly events.

Cindytalk
Now working with Editions Mego, Gordon Sharp has reinvented the always beautiful and mysterious Cindytalk into an extraordinary improvising unit unravelling an idiosyncratic and abstract cracked ambience pitched in a twilight zone of eerie bliss and searching melancholy.
Sample Cindytalk live from their appearance on Exotic Pylon from earlier this year here: http://www.exoticpylon.com/pages/2010/04-10-10.html

Position Normal
Woozy sounds and weird Dadaist junkshop collage-pop, unveiling a through-the-looking-glass London – an England that is more real than you realised. Position Normal put together a highly acclaimed show for Exotic Pylon in late 2009 and you can download that here:
http://exoticpylon.com/pages/11-14-09.html

Doug Shipton (from Finders Keepers Records and B-Music) will be Djing.
There will be a strong visual element to each event, and the presence of The Exotic Pylon Radio Orchestra, a shifting collective of musicians, non-musicians, artists, writers and freaks, will add a further element of spontaneity.

Photography by Alice Wilby

Cracked and Pitched

2010-07-11T14:51:00.001+09:00

"For our opening night we have three awesome live guests for you as well as a synaesthetic overload of sound and texture from the Exotic Pylon Radio Orchestra.We’re feeling very ambitious for this event and are hard working to make it entirely unique.

Cindytalk (live)
Now working with Editions Mego, Gordon Sharp has reinvented the always beautiful and mysterious Cindytalk into an extraordinary improvising unit unravelling an idiosyncratic and abstract cracked ambience pitched in a twilight zone of eerie bliss and searching melancholy. "

The Vortex Jazz Club.August 13th.Tickets £8.

*Cindytalk will also be playing live in Torino,Italy,together with Blind Cave Salamander,on September 1st
at the Cortille della Farmacia.

Cindytalk Live in Cherbourg

2010-07-11T14:47:00.004+09:00

Extrait du concert de Cindytalk à Cherbourg le 10 octobre 2009
by Vidéos de Loïc Stervinou + CV (videos).
Concert co filmé avec l'Association Trinity (Trinity webzine) à l'Epicentre.

“I love the clouds… the clouds that pass… up there… up there… the wonderful clouds!”

2010-06-20T21:17:00.010+09:00

eMEGO 106
Cindytalk: Up Here In The Clouds CD
Release Date: 30.08.2010
9 tracks:

the eighth sea
we are without words
i walk until i fall
guts of london
switched to lunar
hollow stare
the anarchist window
multiple landings
up here in the clouds

Recordings by Gordon Sharp 2003 - 2010 at the Mid-Levels (HK) but mainly at Roi Vert, Okamoto Japan.
Mastered at Piethopraxis, June 2010
Artwork by David Coppenhall

Up Here In The Clouds is the second installment in the new Cindytalk sound which started with last year's The Crackle Of My Soul. Whereas Crackle was more of a blistering burner, Clouds has a fresher cooler sound to it, with longer tracks that slowly evolve in great patches of aural beauty. The sound that Gordon Sharp and co create now is a unique blend of cracked electronics, near awkward ambient textures that always seem to flow smoothly like the most natural of sounds around, building up a great set of modern electronic music which closes with the child like melody of the title track.
Superbly packaged with new David Coppenhall artwork in a 4-panel digipack.

Pre-order here . Copies will be shipped early August 2010.

Bambule Delight

2010-05-30T14:01:00.002+09:00

Vendredi 25 juin à l'Epicentre
(6 quai Lawton Collins-Cherbourg)

Soirée Dark Delights "très spéciale" avec la présence aux platines de Bambule (aka Cindytalk) + local dj's.
un mix from post-punk to electro-industrial & dubstep
21h à 1h
P.A.F. libre
Ouverture des portes (20h)

"How This Ends..."

2010-05-21T17:00:00.004+09:00

Cinder has contributed electronic noises to good friend Chris Connelly's new album "How This Ends".

Release Date:13 July 2010
Label:Lens Records

How This Ends is the 12th solo album by Chris Connelly, and it is certainly the most extreme. Picking up from where 2008's Forgiveness & Exile tailed off. In some ways, this is an extension of that, where Chris uses an ensemble cast of musicians, orators and non-musicians to produce something that vacillates between an almost serenely melancholic paradise, and a terrifying hellish vortex of noise. There are no songs on How This Ends - rather one long poem that is both spoken and sung by Chris and his collaborators.

"I wanted to compose without any regard to the song-form. I enjoy writing songs, but I've done it, and I want to try and move forward. To me, my work now is all about the words, and coming up with the best sounds to augment these words. It doesn't have to be a musical instrument. I have in my mind a very clear image, almost like an impressionistic film of what it should be like. The hard part is making sure that nothing is wasted, that every word can carry it's own weight, and that the people I have asked to help are the right people".

And the subject matter is no less grave than Forgiveness & Exile. Forgiveness (sic) was about torture and people being displaced from their homes in trying to escape fascism. How This Ends is about death, genocide, homicide by corrupt powers upon innocents. It's about the people who didn't make it, the ones who either tried, or were taken by surprise.

The ensemble cast is perhaps the most diverse Chris has assembled:
Izi Coonagh (Sugar Bullet)
Tania Bowers (Via Tania)
James Marlon Magas (Magas, Lake of Dracula)
Gordon Sharp (Cindytalk)
Zak Boerger (These Wonderful Evils)
Bill Rieflin (R.E.M., Ministry, Swans)
Brent Gutzeit (TV Pow)
Sanford Parker (Minsk, The High Confessions)
David Levine (Mucca Pazza)

The album features the following dedication:
"Dedicated to David Tibet & Gordon Sharp,
True Friends,True Inspiration".

Why elephants never forget

2010-05-07T18:52:00.006+09:00

"May 7th 2010 and amidst an already deepening depression, today brings dark clouds from all directions.
The Labour vote increased in Scotland and the Conservative vote increased in England.Those of us that live on the margins will find our lives becoming much more difficult as those wolves in sheeps clothing begin to cut a swathe through much needed services, so that they can assist the already rich with tax cuts...
On this day in 2008 our friend and fellow musical traveller, Matt Kinnison died, I miss him immensely.
My life is such that I have few deep and resonant friendships, Matt was definately one and it hurts badly that not only was he robbed of further adventures but that I was robbed of sharing them with him.Matt asked me to donate all of his Cindytalk royalties to an elephant sanctuary and with help from his sister B we decided that the David Sheldrick trust was the best place to donate to.
It was my intention to set up a fund for Matt and Cindytalk so that we would have a place that all of us could contribute to if we were so able.
Today,my thoughts are with Matt and the elephants.... "
(Cinder)

Matt Kinnison left us two years ago today.

Towards Europa ...

2010-05-03T12:09:00.008+09:00

25 June 2010:
"Trinity mix at the Epicentre (Cherbourg) from post-punk to electro via industrial avec Cinder (Bambule/Cindytalk) aux platines + guests de Birthday Party à Somatic Responses une soirée pour briquer les tympans et faire trembler le corps."
12 Nov 2010:
Wroclaw Industrial Festival.

Exotic Resonances

2010-04-16T20:05:00.025+09:00

Cindytalk Live ResonanceFM by spaewaif
CindyFlight

Dan,Paul&Gary

Gary&Sherill

David Ros

Robert Hampson

Photos by jonny mugwump/Exotic Pylon

Cindytalk Live Improvisations
questions of re-entry 1:
how long now…
100 years tomorrow
instagone
guts of london
maglev
fibre tension
the anarchist window
questions of re-entry 2 :
ikiru
hanging in the air
hollowstare
i walk until i fall
from the mountain
questions of re-entry 3 :
we are without words
cloud symphony number 3
the eighth sea
if we meet,we meet in silence
square peg,roufftqqq|||
signalling through the flames
questions of re-entry 4 :
fly away over here
in dust to delight
above the paving stones,the stars
sentinel
how long now until we disappear

Cindytalk:
gordon sharp, electronics
paul middleton, drums & percussion
daniel knowler, guitar
gary jeff, bass & percussion
sherrill crosby, electronics
david ros, sound engineer

Editions Mego Launch Party at Exotic Pylon- Cindytalk & Robert Hampson

2010-04-08T22:12:00.013+09:00

This is the one...
Exotic Pylon is extremely proud to be the host for the official launch party of the new Cindytalk/ Robert Hampson split 10" on Editions Mego.
Cindytalk will be improvising live throughout the show and they're bringing some very special guests including a mystery guest DJ that even i'm in the dark about!!!
Resonance have graciously given us an extra 30 minutes sonic playtime this week so we're running 10pm til midnight.
Show available for download Sunday evening Exotic Pylon .

Boomkat Review:
"This split 10" from Editions Mego features new work from Cindytalk (whose album, The Crackle Of My Soul was released towards the end of last year by the Austrian label) and Robert Hampson (best known for his work with Loop and Main). On Cindytalk's side 'Five Mountains Of Fire' plays out as a bristling, very organic piece of realtime soundscaping, performed by a group who meld abstract drum and guitar tones with the electronic component of their work. The erratic, nervy percussion guides the piece with a real sense of edge and volatility, meaning that it never strays into humdrum drone territory and remains a deeply unsettled work throughout its duration. On Robert Hampson's side, 'Antarctica Ends Here' comes with a dedication to John Cale, and avoids the tempestuousness of its A-side companion, instead favouring a very harmonious and steadied compositional approach that delicately arranges piano, jangling, almost sleigh bell-like percussion and a deeply undulating flow of richly sonorous electronic tones."

Dubnium

2010-03-22T00:48:00.004+09:00

Cindytalk - Five Mountains Of Fire
Gordon Sharp: electronics
Paul Middleton: drums
Dan Knowler: Guitar
Gary Jeff: Percussion
Sherrill Crosby: Electronics
Pre-mixed /re-played by GS at Roi Vert, Okamoto, Japan, March 2009.

Robert Hampson - Antarctica Ends Here
Dedicated to John Cale
Recorded and Mixed at Thirst 2007-2009 in London and Paris
Design: Dave Coppenhall

Cindytalk's Gordon Sharp and Robert Hampson (Loop, Main...) are 2 characters of legend circulating on the periphery of London (and beyond) underground music over the last 2 plus decades. It may come as s surprise then that this stunning split 10" is the first meeting of these two singular minds.

"Five Mountains Of Fire" by Cindytalk is a cracking track taking their recent brittle electronic experiments and charging them with firecracker like percussion to create a pleasantly disorienting soundscape. Flip it over and Hampson delivers the practical polar opposite with "Antarctica Ends Here." An exceptionally beautiful piece utilizing piano and carefully placed electronics so as not to break the ice, a tribute to John Cale's 'Antarctica Starts Here' (from Paris, 1919).

Limited to 500 copies.

"Two 9min 40s pieces. Although recorded separately at different times and in different environments, these pieces complement each other in many ways.
A continuity that threads its path through the more visceral textures of Cindytalk's "Five Mountains Of Fire", its influence taken from the Kyoto fire festivals, where huge Japanese Kanji symbols are literally burned on the mountains surrounding Kyoto, to Robert Hampson's "Antarctica Ends Here", where frozen minimalist piano notes, are timestretched to become sinuous multi-layered drones against a backdrop of field recordings of wind and large bamboo plants rustling in the breeze."

A Swing on a Boat...

2010-03-10T18:08:00.005+09:00

Music by Cindytalk,
songs are "Cherish; Homeless; Still whisper".
Images from the Korean film "Hwal" (The Bow),
directed by Kim Ki-duk.
Edited by Musica Eternal.

Wealth of Flyers

2010-03-10T17:53:00.002+09:00

Stolen from Paul Middleton's collection...
:-)

Indietro e in Avanti

2010-03-08T12:41:00.009+09:00

Cindytalk article by Paolo Bertoni published in Blow Up # 141 (February 2010).
(Grazie Paolo!)

Blue Blue Third

2010-03-08T12:14:00.006+09:00

Interview by Paolo Bertoni in Ciao 2001 # 1156
(28th April,1992)

DJs4Peace

2010-02-23T12:54:00.003+09:00

Bambule will be performing a DJ set at Trinity,
Kobe on Feb 26th.

"This is a fundraiser for the PC4Peace charity. PC4Peace has sent over 1000 computers to needy Cambodian schools since 2003.
They are currently working on a project to build community centres, schools and job development centres in Mindanao, Philippines, with a host of well qualified cooperating local organizations.
Entrance fee is 1000 yen, half of which goes to PC4Peace".

Wind-Swept Crackles and Silent Flames...

2010-02-04T21:14:00.004+09:00

Canadian magazine Feedback has reviewed "The Crackle Of My Soul" in their latest issue.

"For something so minimal and pulled back I’m surprised how often I cringed while listening. The deafening high frequencies that Cindytalk plays with are truly astounding, and well shaped. There’s a real eloquence in the way Gordon Sharp brings harsh high ends into collisions with peculiar samples on The Crackle of My Soul. Some tracks, like “Maglev”, are quiet, glitchy compositions that are so minimal it becomes an exercise in attentive listening. Most tracks are slow squeeling drone experiments but listen to it and you’ll hear many pleasant surprises. “Troubled Aria” for instance, brings in wind-swept crackles like a radio tuner gone berserk and “Signalling Through The Flames” consists of six minutes of ringing and vibrating that get consumed into some silent, well, flame I guess.
Cindytalk definitely goes for the abstract and dreary angle on this album with far less rhythm and drone that I’ve heard from them before. So many different elements play into each track that listening to The Crackle is certainly enlightening and very entertaining."

February 3, 2010
Written by kahht

Antarctic Fire

2010-01-28T13:13:00.005+09:00

Cindytalk / Robert Hampson: Five Mountains Of Fire / Antarctica Ends Here 10"

2 tracks:
Cindytalk - Five Mountains Of Fire

Gordon Sharp: electronics
Paul Middleton: drums
Dan Knowler: Guitar
Gary Jeff: Percussion
Sherrill Crosby: Electronics
Pre-mixed /re-played by GS at Roi Vert, Okamoto, Japan, March 2009.

Robert Hampson - Antarctica Ends Here

Dedicated to John Cale
Recorded and Mixed at Thirst 2007–2009 in London and Paris

Design: Dave Coppenhall

"Cindytalk’s Gordon Sharp and Robert Hampson (Loop. Main...) are 2 characters of legend circulating on the periphery of London (and beyond) underground music over the last 2 plus decades. It may come as s surprise then that this stunning split 10" is the first meeting of these two singular minds.
'Five Mountains Of Fire' by Cindytalk is a cracking track taking their recent brittle electronic experiments and charging them with firecracker like percussion to create a pleasantly disorienting soundscape. Flip it over and Hampson delivers the practical polar opposite with Antarctica Ends Here. An exceptionally beautiful piece utilizing piano and carefully placed electronics so as not to break the ice, a tribute to John Cale's 'Antarctica Starts Here' (from 'Paris, 1919' album)".
Limited to 500 copies.

Pre-order here .
Copies will be shipped mid March 2010

Broken Blossom Kyoto

2010-01-28T12:09:00.005+09:00

Broken Blossom
Cindytalk : Broken Blossom Kyoto 11.1.10 by cindytalk
Cindytalk computer noise set , Monday 11th January at Urbanguild in Kyoto.
Playing alongside Editions Mego labelmates Sister Iodine .

Sentinel,
Of Ghosts And Buildings,
Flux Planet,
Hollowstare,
Tallis,
Broken Blossom,
Troubled Aria,
Foray,
Sentinel,
If We Meet,We Meet In Silence,
Sea Without Time,
Five Mountains Of Fire.

"Beautiful and Brutal......"(Michael Mitchell)

Fabrics&Snapshots

2009-12-10T22:07:00.006+09:00

Cindytalk interview for D-Side Magazine (France) September/October 2009

1) "The Crackle of my Soul" is really different from everything Cindytalk has made in the past. How did you come to mutate the project in that way ?

It's definitely different in its use of computer as the main instrument but I think that Cindytalk have always explored sonic neuks and crannies.From the very early days of "Camouflage Heart" and before we were using rudimentary sampling,reversed tape hiss and crackling noise as part of our musical repertoire.This album though, does go into that territory with a microscope and linger around those corners much more than we ever have before.
Following our lengthy tour of the U.S. in 1996, I moved there to live, disbanding that particular line-up of the band, so I found myself in the rebuilding process whilst I was re-adjusting to a new country and culture.I had started a Cindytalk electronic side-project called Bambule in 1995 which eventually released two records on Praxis Records in 1996 and 2000 (Cunning meets Bambule - Praxis 19 & Vertical Invasion - Praxis 29 which featured remixes by Somatic Responses.) But at this time I wasn't computer literate enough to do it myself, so as with Cindytalk, friends were mainly responsible in the technical areas.
Whilst in the U.S. I found it very difficult to find musicians that I felt were right for Cindytalk, so I started to look in new areas to communicate.In the previous few years in London, as mentioned with Bambule, I had become involved in the underground hardcore techno/electronic scene, so I decided to connect with soundsystems and dj's and help to distribute records by various european labels : Praxis, Ambush,Zero Tolerance, Uncivilized World, etc. From that position I found myself involved with the foundation of a "breakcore" soundsystem Darkmatter, in 2001 in Los Angeles, we were throwing parties in downtown L.A. every month and bringing over dj's like Scud (Ambush), Christoph Fringeli (Praxis), Dan Hekate, Noize Creator (Suburban Trash) - eventually I wanted to be able to contribute to the parties in an actual playing sense but so I bought my first mac laptop and started to learn how to do this. I'm originally a singer who didn't really play a conventional instrument within Cindytalk (my piano work is all purely improvised) and despite directing and overseeing the experimental side of Cindytalk, I've never been technically minded.I had lots of creative people around me,Cindytalk has always been the work of everybody involved on any particular project.I'm in L.A. with an outlet to perform, so I started to create abstract NOISE POETRY as I termed it.In that same period there was an aborted Cindytalk album "FieryPlanetEyes" (1996-2001) but I never felt it worked as well as it should have so it neither got finished or got a release.I will release it one day but maybe only as a bootleg or something.From Long Beach, I then moved to Hong Kong where I continued to learn and record new pieces, including the Klanggalerie 7" release "Transgender Warrior/Guts Of London" and from there I moved to Kobe in Japan where I did the bulk of the "Crackle" recordings.
So ultimately it was out of necessity that I began computer recordings but in truth I had tired of both the orthodox musical line-up, hence my ascent into electronic music but further still I was beginning to question the breakcore and related scenes for becoming too gimmicky and lifeless as well.

2) You have already announced three albums in the year to come, and you even give their titles. Are they finished yet ?

More or less, yes."The Crackle Of My Soul" is due out on November 2nd and "Up Here In The Clouds" will be released early next year.The only one not completely finished is "Hold Everything Dear" which just needs a tidy up and it'll be ready too.When I reached Japan, my partner had a house on a mountainside, I found it very easy to work there, to find the stillness which enabled me to create what I was looking for.Almost 3 albums were recorded in 3 years.I've certainly never worked that quickly before.In the past, lack of money was often the reason Cindytalk didn't record and release more.

3) After so many years of silence, is it important for you to release so much so quickly ?

Hmmmm, not really no.If I only had "Crackle" to release I would have been just as happy.I wrote and recorded these albums because I had no other choice.I had to find new ways to communicate, I had become a bit reclusive and always with Cindytalk it was my way of speaking with people, of reaching out, of touching the untouchable.I've never been that social, so my way of connecting and more importantly my way of sharing, is to play with sounds,shapes and textures and with these new works I never really thought too much about releasing them until they were done.Although with "Crackle" I did think early on, that
one day I'd love it to be released by Mego.Cindytalk always had a sparse recording history, often due to lack of money,as mentioned above, although sometimes it was also to do with not having a full line-up available.So I've never been too concerned by the "silence".Behind that "silence" there has always been struggle and that has kept us keen & searching.

4) Is the fact that you signed on Editions Mego due to the new sound displayed for Cindytalk ? Do you feel at home with this label ? Was Pita aware of previous Cindytalk works ?

Yes.According to Peter (Rehberg), Mego was aware of Cindytalk's work from back in the 1980's.I had been listening to the label since the late 1990's with the early Fennesz and Pita releases and I was a huge fan of their output.There's no doubt it was an inspiration to me when I started my computer experiments.I would guess that, yes, this new area of Cindytalk exploration would be a reason for Editions Mego showing an interest in my work.Do I feel at home with EMego.... instinctively, YES, I do, and I have never felt at home with any label before - well maybe with Praxis Records but my work with them was faltering, so I was insecure.EMego was the label I most wanted to release the new Cindytalk material with, so it has been an absolute JOY to see it happen.In fact, the new album arrived today by post and I am absolutely delighted!!!

5) Even if it sometimes fits in the "abstract noise" category, "The Crackle of my Soul" is often very delicate and finely layered. Do you give a great attention to details when you work ?

Yes! I was aware that my computer prowess might be somewhat lacking but I knew from my previous work that layering and structuring sound was instinctive to me so I wanted this work to reflect that.I was looking to create a sort of "noise poetry" and as I've never been one for gadgets, or that very masculine fetishising of effects pedals to create noise, I wanted to create noise that wasn't just an assault on the senses but was more to do with nuances, feel, touch, the natural colliding rhythms and the inherent melodies that occur when you marry sounds together.We had started to do this in earnest during the In This World sessions back in the mid 1980's,so from this new position with the computer I was re-entering that territory and looking for new places to take it... Also, after a number of years (rightly) worshipping bass frequencies with electronic musics, I was becoming more and more curious about high frequencies.I wanted to play with high end sibilence and try to create melody and natural music from that.As if high end sibilence was one of the last musical taboos, most people run from it, flinch and ask you to turn it down or even turn it off all together.This is another area of sound that I think Cindytalk and Editions Mego connect on.A lot of the pieces on "Crackle" began life as vinyl turntable and cd mixer experiments... I would be d'jing at parties with Darkmatter Soundsystem and the natural extension of that would be to take some of the experiments and sculpt them into tracks using simple structures with additional flashes of electronics and sampling snippets from films ( for example Japanese furin [wind chimes] from a beautiful scene in Akira Kurosawa's "Akahige".Little flourishes like that hidden inside the abstract noise are what create the poetry.Likewise with the "Debris Of A Smile" a sample taken from Jean Luc Godard's wonderful film "Eloge de L'Amour".It was a telephone conversation between two characters where one says "Each thought should contain the Debris of a Smile"... Godard has been with Cindytalk since the start and he remains beside us.On "In This World" we used a conversation between Anna Karina and Brice Parain from Godard's "Vivre Sa Vie" where they talk about the futility of language and how we need to take a break from speaking, to think what it is we really want to say.This was the key to unlocking the whole album, shortly after that I stopped singing and started to use the piano to tap out little broken melodic signals by way of communication.I see "Crackle" in a similar way, except I think "Crackle" is set much more in the future when music has been reduced to signals from distant stars,a long way from home, isolated by time and distance, tapping out signals on a broken morse code machine.Recalling William Burroughs, "A Distant Hand Lifted".In this way it is fitting that although I was making Computer Music, it was not in any sense high tech, but rather, it is quite primitively, broken down and dilapidated in the way that the best science fiction goes far into the future to come out in the past and vice versa.

6) "Paradise City is made of noise", as you put out on your website. Do you feel that you captured the mood, the hum of the modern city in this album ?

Hmmm, i'm not sure that was the intention.I've already mentioned that I was up a mountainside, amongst the trees in Japan, recording most of this album - although some of it was recorded in a high rise in Hong Kong and that definately qualifies as the hum and clang of a modern dusty city.Technically, I'm more at home in cities than in the countryside, though I was born and brought up in the country, and one of my reasons for liking the urban screech of noisy electronic music is that it feels like the modern collision of city noises, of hybrid music forms, jammed together from multi-cultural positions.However,I didn't approach this with that in mind.This, as previously stated was my way of making a future music, a distant bell that had diminished over time and distance and was now in a state of decay, yet still transmitting, still trying to connect.I had begun to use my own singing voice in this way, a disembodied voice, still singing but now reduced to a series of signals that no longer contained a language.I would use it as the basis of some tracks and build from there, so I hardly "sing" on any of these new tracks yet the voice IS still there as a root and source sound throughout.Paradise City is made of noise,was taken from an old party flyer from the techno underground scene in London back in 1994.We used to go to a party (club), which was run by Praxis Records,called Dead by Dawn ( a party of noise and politics ) the full quote is "Pleasure in being, instead of having - this will make you stronger.Paradise City is made from Noise." I lived through the punk days in Scotland from 1976 to post-punk in the early 1980's but that period from 1994-1996 in London, as noise & politics infiltrated the electronic dance scene is one of the most cherished periods of my life.I was certainly a lot more openly social during that time and I definitely still draw from it in many ways.

7) And as you travelled a lot and lived abroad, which kind of city would it be ? A European one ? An Asian one ?

Hah! Or a city on a distant planet, as yet unvisited.In reality, it's most definately inspired by both European cities and Asian cities, although the field recordings that I've used are almost all from Asia - Hong Kong, Shanghai, Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo and Kobe.

8) You're now the only member in Cindytalk, do you have a new band for the concerts ? And will there be a real band approach for future Cindytalk works or do you plan to keep it as it is now ?

No, Cindytalk is definitely a full band. After finishing the three albums that will be released by Editions Mego, I returned to London and started to put together a new line-up with the intention of not just playing live but also recording a new band album.I was desperate to be on a stage again, to close my eyes and just SING!!!
So we will be playing almost all of the "Crackle" and "Clouds" tracks during our live show but we mix that with live band organics (semi improvised) and we fuse the two together to create a tension with the two different dynamics pulling in opposite directions.I won't be doing any of the electronics live onstage, we have a member dedicated to that, she plays my tracks but she also manipulates them and adds her own sounds into that mix.I wanted to concentrate on singing.
I felt it was quite important that if i was going to keep the name Cindytalk alive over the years, it shouldn't become stale and stagnant.It would need to be capable of splitting into different units approaching things in different ways.I see no conflict in releasing a record with just me doing noise-poetry and then releasing an album of pretend-songs with a full band.The future will hopefully be a mixture of these differences and some new ones we haven't yet thought of.

9) "Transgender Warrior", that appears here, was already released six years ago. Was that track a kind of basis for the album ?

Maybe in some ways, yes."Transgender Warrior" was the first completed track to be written, and certainly it was the first to be be released (along with "Guts of London.")But it wasn't quite the beginning of the process, in fact , I think that the first element of "Crackle" was "Our Shadow, Remembered".Although that was mainly written in Japan, the original fragment was recorded as far back as 2001, in California.

10) Two years ago, a massive re-release operation of all your back catalog was announced, but it stopped after the first two albums ? What happened ? Are there plans to re-publish the rest of Cindytalk work ?

This has been something of a sore point for us. We were approached by Italian distribution house Abraxas to reissue our entire back catalogue.However,once they had reissued "Camouflage Heart" and "In This World",they broke off all contact with us.They never paid us the money due from the licencing deal and they never sent us ANY copies of our own reissues!!!
We tried to speak to them through lawyers but they failed to respond.My gut feeling is that they targeted us in a rip-off but in the end we decided we'd rather spend the money, time and effort towards new projects rather than chase them and the past.It was a terrible thing that they did.We plan to reissue everything ourselves as soon as we are able and would advise people not to buy our reissues on the wheesht/abraxas imprint - we do not expect to receive a single penny from them.

11) Could you already give us some information about "Up here in the Clouds" and "Hold everything Dear" ?

I began recording "Up Here In The Clouds" immediately after finishing "Crackle" although for the most part I attempted to use different methods to reach the sounds this time.I was much quicker - my aim was to be more spontaneous, to capture simple snapshot ideas rather than building a whole fabric of layered sound as I had done with "Crackle".I'm particularly fond of the opening track on the album,"The Eighth Sea", which features a beautiful siren-like vocal sample from Meredith Monk.
With "Hold Everything Dear", I tried to change the approach again, basing much of the album on field recordings from my travels in Asia.Kite flyers from Fuxing Park in Shanghai on "Fly Away Over Here" ; my daily walk (complete with shuffling movement of bag hitting thigh) to Okamoto village (Kobe) on "From the Mountain".I also changed this project by introducing a played musical element with Matt Kinnison's trumpet marine and yaili tambur experiments.Matt was dying from cancer by this point but he worked for as long as he could to send me his pieces, they were possibly his last ever recordings.The album title comes from a wonderful book by British writer and long term resident of France, John Berger.

12) Cindytalk is now 27 years old... What do you plan for the future ?

We endeavour to move forward with each step we take... it's our intention, if possible, to splinter into as many workable parts as we can.To play as a full live band, as we're doing now in France / Switzerland or to do the noise-poetry computer only performances.As a band we went into the studio at the beginning of the year to record three days of improvisations, which I then started to cut-up and pre-mix, the first fruit of these sessions is a nearly 10 minute piece called "Five Mountains Of Fire" which we are hoping to release early next year on Editions Mego as a split vinyl 10 inch alongside a beautifully desolate Robert Hampson track called "Antarctica Ends Here".Both tracks work very well together in an elemental way, even though they are very different from each other.We'd like to record and release the new material that we're playing live on this tour.Beyond that, more concerts in new places coupled with new music in strange territories , always... a distant hand lifted.

The magazine includes a sampler featuring Cindytalk's "Debris of a Smile".

Pop&Crackle

2009-12-09T19:01:00.007+09:00

The Quietus, a new rock music and pop culture website,features a Jonny Mugwump review of Crackle that includes an exclusive Cindytalk laptop set, A Distant Hand Lifted, recorded in May 2006 at Otoya Club in Kobe, Japan.

"Cindytalk have been in existence as a band since 1982 with transgendered Gordon Sharp as its one constant. Beginning with a heavily European-influenced post-punk sound, Sharp appeared on some of the early records by the 4AD ethereal umbrella project This Mortal Coil. They moved quickly and quietly towards a more fractured ‘ambi-dustrial’ feeling and over the last two decades have released sound sporadically as well as becoming involved in sound-system culture. To be honest, I had lost track of their movements until The Crackle of My Soul landed on my doorstep last month, so I had no idea what to expect barring the unlikelihood of this being a commercial endeavour giving the album’s release on Editions Mego. And what an astoundingly shocking and beautiful band they have become. Crackle sounds like pop music at the absolute extremes of the sonic margins. ‘Signalling Through the Flames’ encroaches slowly around you - something like a glitching bell hovers for a minute before fragmented static eerily creeps into view. Further unidentifiable layers of sound slowly join this ritualistic loop until it dawns that somehow this is still pop music. As you adjust to the strangeness of its unfolding, every layer becomes a refrain, becomes a hook. For all its abstractness though the record is never less than... human. Cindytalk are a band though and repeated listens give an indication of this although it’s impossible to discern the physicality of the sound sources - it feels both played AND sculpted. Closing track ‘Debris of a Smile’ reveals the most: just rain and cracked piano for several minutes before things take a turn for the strange with whispered tweaked voices, shards of ungraspable sound, and digital detritus. The absolute highlight though is ‘Our Shadow, Remembered’ which is one of the most downright eerie things I’ve heard in a long long time. What feels like an internal exotica - abrasive with strange electricity, Sharp’s genderless voice begins to materialise out of nowhere seductively (and destructively) serenading “come here” over and over. The Crackle of My Soul is just that - the inner landscape of the soul breathing through weird electricity."

Cinder photo by Stuart Arentzen,taken during the fieryplaneteyes/after the flood 2 sessions,1996.

Le discourse du désir,idées et vision

2009-11-22T19:28:00.007+09:00

Cindytalk interview in French for Obskure Digital Magazine.
02/10/2009 - Bordeaux
Photo by Max Lachaud

Cindytalk Interview by spaewaif
Broadcasted Nov 23rd 22.30 pm (European time) at Canal Sud,Midi-Pyrenees 31

Twice-Wired!!

2009-11-22T14:22:00.008+09:00

British music magazine Wire has reviewed
"The Crackle Of My Soul" twice!

Poésie Noise Minimale

2009-11-02T14:47:00.009+09:00

"The Crackle Of My Soul" is officially released today on Mego Records.
Described by Cinder as "poésie noise minimale" in a recent interview for Elegy Magazine,this is Cindytalk's first album since the 1995 release of ‘Wappinschaw".
Join this journey of memories and premonitions,of shadows for possible futures...

Available on iTunes

"Today is the official release date of our new album The Crackle of My Soul.It's been a long time coming - I started recording it in Long Beach, California, as early as 2001 and it wasn't properly finished until 2006 in Kobe, Japan.A further 3 years later and it gets a glorious release on a very special label.A massive thank you from Cindytalk to Peter Rehberg and everybody at Editions Mego.They have been wonderful beyond words, exactly the kind of label we always dreamed of being involved with.This is the follow-up to our 1995 album Wappinschaw and though much has been done in between (Bambule,Darkmatter Soundsystem & unfinished album "FieryPlanetEyes") I'm personally very happy with this album as the natural follow-up.
Listen loud and on headphones if you are interested.
Cheers, Cinder x."
(From Cindytalk's myspace blog)

"Since the early ‘80s, Cindytalk has transformed from post-punk band to experimental electronic improvisation ensemble. Eight years in the making, The Crackle of My Soul marks a new transformation of Cindytalk's sound, a new step in the abstraction of the group's music. The sheer fact that it is released by Editions Mego (synonymous with glitch electronica and experimental noise) is a sign one shouldn't ignore. For this outing, Gordon Sharp has worked alone, in three different studios, to concoct a gorgeous set of shimmering high frequencies, delicate rumblings, and obliterating white noise. Forget the song-based approach of the early days: this is sound-sculpting, the transmogrification of raw thoughts into sounds without harnessing them to melodies or beats. The music on The Crackle of My Soul has the depth of Fennesz's best work but some of the harshness found in the works of Kevin Drumm and Pita. It's a subtle blend, a heady one too, as the album takes you on a continuous journey, all tracks sounding like variations on a single theme (except for a quiet piano-based piece). "Signalling Through the Flames" and "Transgender Warrior" (the latter previously released on a 7" EP) are the highlights, but the overall quality of this album is very high, and it is clear that a lot of thought and care have been put into its composition. An impressive comeback."
(by François Couture,review for Allmusic)

Artaud,Rimbaud,hip hop and a sardine...

2009-10-16T19:18:00.008+09:00

Cindytalk play tonight at L'Embobineuse,Marseille together with KK Null and Evil Moisture.

...époustouflant...

2009-10-13T21:27:00.005+09:00

La plus petite ville du "Cindytalk tour 2009", Cherbourg, aura sans doute été le lieu d'une des plus belles performances.

Après des répétitions magiques au cours de la balance de l'après-midi, donnant lieu à de nouvelles constructions sonores-vocales. L'atmosphère a commencé à se charger d'une énergie très particulière, comme si de miniscules choses se mettaient en place avant l'arrivée de la nuit.

Progressivement la salle s'est remplie, dépassant les 120 personnes, des amateurs énamourés du groupe, des curieux, des oreilles ouvertes aux expériences sonores. La soirée a été une inoubliable montée d'adrénaline et d'émotions.

Vers 21h, les Cherbourgeois de Minh [May] ont su harponner le public en propulsant leurs titres toujours en équilibre entre groove et tension. Une ambiance à la fois chaleureuse et attentive, propre à cette salle si particulière. A nouveau l'Epicentre s'est mis à respirer et à trembler sous le feu des plages énergétiques de Minh [May] plus en verve que jamais.

Le changement de plateau a permis de transformer progressivement l'ambiance. Quelques titres coldwave, post-punk et electro-pop plus tard, un dernier X Mal Deutschland puis le silence.

Après la mise en place minutieuse des musiciens: Shrill au laptop, Gary Jeff à la basse, Paul Middleton à la batterie et Dan Knowler à la guitare. L'attente et la tension sont devenues palpables. Entrée de Cinder dans un élégant kimono bleu, cheveux rougeoyants dans des jeux de lumières subtiles et minimalistes, puis le groupe a initié une lente introduction, une montée entre brûlure, caresse et stridulations. Le chant tout d'abord rentré, introspectif et intérieur s'est progressivement déployé vers la salle au rythme ondoyant et berçant des vagues sonores. Pendant près d'une heure, les plages imbriquées et enlacées se sont succédé. Sculpture sonore, poésie totale, temps en apesanteur, instants de magie, coeur et épiderme mouvants sous la peau de la musique. Au milieu de ce temps suspendu, des échos du "Prince of lies" et du titre fantôme final de "Wappinschaw". La morsure noise-industrielle du nouvel album "The Crackle of my Soul". Un concert transformé en véritable création sonore et émotionnelle en direct.
Dans le public, des personnes magnétisées, se balançant ou "explosantes-fixes" (cf André Breton). Une vague finale, expérience sonique, guitare en spasmes noise, sons électroniques comme tressés et abrasifs, la basse bousculant les fondations rythmiques comme des effets sous respiration artificielle et un incroyable désossage de la batterie, Paul démontant ses cymbales puis jouant tel un scratcheur mutant et tribal, écho au chaos de Neubauten.
Un membre du public le rejoignant pour prolonger les vibrionnantes stridences et fracas des cymbales tournicotantes. La voix se retire, les sons s'éloignent, de lointains échos sonores.

Puis s'élèvent des cris, des hurlements, des applaudissements, après cette heure d'osmose. Près de dix minutes pour remercier, exprimer l'énergie reçue et partagée et demander un rappel.
Le groupe ne revient pas, laissant émerger le désir.

L'impression d'avoir vécu des minutes hors du monde.

Une nouvelle fois, l'Epicentre aura été propice à d'étranges espaces de magie. Trinity tient à remercier vivement le public, les bénévoles, l'équipe de l'Epicentre et les trinitéens présents pour avoir contribué à la réussite de ce moment.

Stanislas
lundi 12 octobre 2009

Cinder & Dan photo par F.D. (Trinity)
Cinder&fan photo by Ed Luna

"Prendre le public par la peau du cul..."

2009-10-11T12:19:00.011+09:00

"En tout cas, le show ils savent ce que c'est. Ils démarrent sur un truc très calme, mais ils savent prendre le public par la peau du cul et l'obliger à rentrer dans leur trip. Tous calés comme il faut (et sous les spotlights Laughing ), très bonne harmonie, les morceaux qui s'enchaînent de manière über-fluide, on est littéralement ailleurs pendant une heure, et même l'atterrissage est super bien géré."

(Boncamin about the Nantes gig)
Photo by Ed Luna

More photos by boncamin/Jean Delpech:

Japan/UK

2009-10-11T12:08:00.007+09:00

Flyer for the Genève gig.

"Few days ago Blind Cave Salamander (as Paul Beauchamp, Julia Kent and myself) played a show in Geneve, Switzerland, to launch our new album "Troglobite", just been released on Shayo. This show has been a double bill with one of my favourite band ever Cindytalk. I've been in touch with Gordon "Cinder" Sharp of Cindytalk for years, but this has been the first time we ever met and i've got to see them perform live. The show went really well and I wanna thank Yann of Shayo and everyone @ L'usine for having set it up, but further than that I' ve to say that not only Cindytalk live set made me cry but that between Blind Cave Salamander and them has been love at first sight and for sure our paths will cross again and there will be collaborations -live/studio/spiritual...- between our bands.
Cindytalk have been far from the scene for a pretty long time, but now they are back with a new instrumental album of very intense and abstract music/sounds that I strongly suggest you to buy; it is titled "The Crackle Of My Soul" and should be out on the first week of Nov."
(Fabrizio Modonese Polumbo of Blind Cave Salamander)

Under Full Sail to Cherbourg-Octeville!

2009-10-09T18:24:00.022+09:00

Drums:
Paul Middleton

Guitar: Dan Knowler

Bass Guitar:
Gary Jeff

Electronics: Shrill

Voice/Electronics: Cinder

Cindytalk play at L'Epicentre - Cherbourg-Octeville tomorrow,Oct 10th.

Photography by Jean Delpech

Entretien élégiaque

2009-10-09T18:04:00.009+09:00

This month's edition of French magazine Elegy features an interview with Gordon Sharp and a Cindytalk track in their sampler,the unreleased "Old Jack Must Die".
Copies are available here: Elegy E-Shop

Crackles

2009-10-08T12:25:00.001+09:00

L'Heretic Bordeaux, Aquitaine
2 Oct 2009
Video by musica eternal

Paris tonight!
Le Klub, Ile-de-France

By the Loire

2009-10-07T19:55:00.003+09:00

Photography by Jean D.
Thanks to Stephen Jenn Andersen/No Projekt for the link!

Swisshness

2009-10-05T23:18:00.004+09:00

6 Oct 2009 Kab De L'usine
Genève,Switzerland
with BLIND CAVE SALAMANDER

Photo:Cindytalk @ Brighton's Latest Music Bar
Sept. 2009
By GREG NEATE

Cindytalk live in Bordeaux 2.10.2009

2009-10-04T09:59:00.009+09:00

Videos created and uploaded by musicaeternal.
A million thanks.

For bigger,better quality clips, go directly to the youtube page:
Cindytalk Live in Bourdeaux

"Au coeur de tes oreilles..."

2009-10-03T16:59:00.007+09:00

Cindytalk have just started their French tournée!
Yesterday,the band played in Bourdeaux and tonight the noise and crackle melodies move to "Le Floride" in Nantes.

Guts of London

2009-09-30T18:40:00.002+09:00

Video by Shrill,2004

"Guts Of London" appeared in 2003 as the B side to "Transgender Warrior".

(Follow the link or scroll down this page to stop or pause our Ghosts' player).

Tenebrous Waters

2009-09-22T18:11:00.006+09:00

CINDYTALK will be warming-up for their forthcoming tour by supporting good friends THE TENEBROUS LIAR at a gig in Brighton next Tuesday evening.

Edina Posters

2009-09-09T13:06:00.013+09:00

Posters for Cindytalk's
Voodoo Rooms gig,
Edinburgh Oct 24th 2009.

Design by Andy McGregor

.com

2009-09-08T17:19:00.006+09:00

Cindytalk's official website is currently under a temporary look awaiting a proper revamp.
Under the main page's "Fire in Our Eyes",a player reproduces Cindytalk's live set at Otoya Kobe,May 2005.

eMEGO 097,crackling...

2009-09-01T14:35:00.007+09:00

Official announcement and pre-order:
emego097

White label

2009-09-01T14:11:00.012+09:00

The Archive recently acquired the white label test pressing for The Wind Is Strong.
Cinder mentioned that the handwriting is quite possibly
Nick Ralph's,producer and founder of Midnight Music,the UK post-punk/experimental label active during the 1980s and early 1990s.
Artists on the label included Cindytalk, Robin Hitchcock and The Egyptians, Sad Lovers And Giants,Wolfhounds-who became Moonshake- and MCarthy-who went on to become Stereolab.
Cinder also explained:
"Nick played a huge part in financing,recording and releasing our first 4 albums".

"Equally Insignificant" and "Brain Bomb"

2009-09-01T13:11:00.010+09:00

Books containing Freeze/Cindytalk references:
Andy Hutchinson's semi-biographical novel and Mark Fleming's "ride through the highs and lows of mental illness experienced by a Scottish twentysomething".
Andy,long-time Freeze/Cindytalk friend,is a regular of this blog.

Fleming is currently the guitarist in the Axidents and was at a gig in Forfar in 1980 when Twisted Nerve covered the Freeze's song Neutral Zone .This is mentioned in the book together with the "hero" painting "Psycho Dalek" on himself while he says that the song itself is "a futuristic masterpiece".

In fact,one of the chapters in the book is also called
Psycho Dalek Nightmares!

(Special thanks to Ken for his always helpful support!)

In This World. Radio stories.

2009-09-01T12:59:00.005+09:00

“PLEASE NOTE: SECOND HALF OF ‘IN THIS WORLD’ IS TAPED TO THE BACK!”

Wheesht

2009-09-01T12:21:00.004+09:00

Wheesht by Cindytalk with Alasdair Gray

Video uploaded by Burntime TV.

Music From The Empty Quarter (Mfteq),music magazine
Review of Wappinschaw,November 1995
(Thank you Dissecting)

Mego Press Release for "The Crackle Of My Soul"

2009-08-27T14:41:00.008+09:00

(Click on the photo for an enlarged version)

Fugued

2009-08-02T19:33:00.007+09:00

Last Wednesday (29/7/09) Cinder was invited to sing during the last part of Peter Rehberg's set at Fugue.

Of this completely improvised collaboration,Cinder has said:
"I interacted for the very last part of the set to computer music of an abstract nature but brilliantly filled with implied melody so for me it was perfect to sing to.I didn't do any "big" singing but rather just put a simple human voice into his machine-music.Disembodied but attempting to connect."

Peter Rehberg,also known as Pita and based in Vienna,is author and performer of electronic audio works and operates the Editions Mego label that will release Cindytalk's "The Crackle Of My Soul" in November.

FUGUE is a "weekly intervention from 7-11pm on the 4th floor and roof terrace of 23, providing a safehouse for the unsafe and unfettered with rarest and various accompaniment. Come get lost. "

(Photos by Shrill.Thank you!)

"The Spirit Behind The Circus Dream"

2009-08-02T19:16:00.006+09:00

Video uploaded by musicaeternal.
Music by Cindytalk.
Images from David Lynch's "The Elephant Man"

French Tournée

2009-07-19T13:47:00.010+09:00

2009/10/02 20:00 @ L’Heretic, Bordeaux, Aquitaine 33000
Cindytalk plus Oharu and Hypos.

2009/10/03 20:00 @ Le Floride Rue St Domingue, Nantes,
Bretagne 44000
Cindytalk plus Les Modules Etranges,Hide&Seek
and Wehwalt.

2009/10/06 21:00 @ Kab De L’usine, Geneve,
Cindytalk plus Blind Cave Salamander

2009/10/08 20:00 @ Le Klub 14 Rue Saint Denis, Paris,
Ile-de-France 75001
Cindytalk plus Hide&Seek

2009/10/10 20:00 @ Epicentre, Cherbourg,
Basse-Normandie
Organised by Trinity

Cindytalk will also be performing what promises to be a very special gig in Edinburgh
on 2009/10/24 20:00 @ The Voodoo Rooms 19a West Register Street, Edinburgh,
Scotland EH2 2AA
(Cindytalk plus support and dj’s).

Release of "The Crackle of My Soul"

2009-07-19T13:34:00.004+09:00

"The Crackle Of My Soul" will be released by Vienna based label editions MEGO on November 2nd 2009.
(catalogue number eMEGO 097)
MEGO are planning to release two more Cindytalk works:
"Hold Everything Dear" and "Up Here in the Clouds".
Excellent news from an excellent label.

Silver Shoals of Light

2009-07-19T12:46:00.004+09:00

To the Room

2009-06-10T23:48:00.001+09:00

"Shapes of Words or Hints of Words"

2009-06-01T11:56:00.004+09:00

In 1984,Issue 4 of British magazine "Abstract" published a three-page article about This Mortal Coil.
I am scanning some of it here since it contains a Gordon Sharp photo that you seldom see,together with questions regarding Gordon's work for Ivo's project.

General scans of the magazine: