It gives us great pleasure to welcome Courier Sounds to Arcana’s steadily growing playlist section.

Courier Sounds, whose Silhouette Cameo 3 LP was released in October, also did a mix to celebrate their ninth year as a label. It’s compiled by Stuart Bowditch who has previously contributed to the Essex Sound and Video Archive (which can be found here, The British Library, Cities and Memory and The Field Recording Archive.

Begins with the space-style intercom of Eumig’s The Cassegrain but soon broadens out into the sonorous, held notes of Lunar’s Oscillate that waver very slightly – and very pleasantly – in pitch. Lachrylic’s Ellipse is more noise based, with sharp tones that have a sinister undertone, but Bowditch flips the switch, changing the outlook dramatically with ambient but penetrating midrange tones.

I won’t tell you what happens from there on, but safe to say this is a mix that evolves like one continuous note, changing its sonorities in really interesting ways throughout. An intense form of ambience, which really focuses the mind.

The tracklisting is:

Eumig – The Cassegrain
Hybernation – Ptolemy Cluster
Lunar – Oscillate
Lachrylic – Ellipse
Bowditch & Kipps – Proscenium
Silences – (Everyone) Turns To The Wall
Viridian – Cathedral Speech
Belly Full Of Stars – skipandwow
Bowditch – Being
Isnaj Dui – Sunspot Loop 4
Furrows – The Disappearance Of The Things We Loved
Gagarin – Holmbury Hillfort
Wil Bolton – Anguk
((((((PALINDROMES)))))) – Shy
Eumig – F = 2.0 x
Sonicslice – HR2491
Eumig – Eugon A
Diacritical Mark – Lozenge
Graham Dunning – Bulkhead
Rainbow Valley – First Light
Alien – Perimeter (Live 28/11/2017)
Bowditch – Saturday