Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 20:41:30 +1200 From: Deodar Subject: Re: Amp At 04:04 PM 8/7/98 PDT, you wrote: >Howdy... > I know this has all happened before but I must ask: Having heard >Sirenes & (So Hot) Wash Away All Of My Tears from the Spacemen 3 tribute >I think Amp is awesome!! How do their other release compare (or >contrast) to these? I think I remember someone saying they ran >hot/cold. Comments? Advice? Thanks... I think the general concensus would probably be buy the Sirenes album first (it's got stuff like the odd tune and a bit of singing as well as a good range of lush atmospherics, effects-style guitars etc). The Kranky album AstralMoonbeamProjections is pretty good, but probably drones on a bit long over the same ideas. Less song-oriented than Sirenes and more moody. The Perception 2CD (Darla Bliss Out) is really good imho. Really nice drawn out lush guitarscapes with choirs and rainstorms. 4 tracks, all about 22 minutes long and basically all (very!) subtle variations on each other. Great going to sleep music and kind of a companion piece to Windy&Carl's Antarctica in my mind. The new split CDEP with Windy&Carl is nice too. Two tracks over 10-12 minutes in kind of a Perception style. Nice but not really essential. The various 7" singles are largely forgettable, which I guess by implication makes the Passe Perfect compilation not exactly essential. The 7" singles are largely tuneless, uniteresting drones. The 3EF collaboration on the Saddar Bazaar split is quite good though. Probably not the best place to start, contrary to what you might think. There's also a another CD of outtakes which I haven't heard, but I gather from the odd review I've seen, it's not very interesting. All imho naturellement! Robin Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 13:28:20 +0100 From: nja@LEICESTER.AC.UK Subject: Re: Amp wKm wrote on Tue, 8 Sep 1998 (Subject: Amp) > What is the difference between Amp and A.M.P. Studio (if any)? > > Also is there any web site or discography available for the above > band(s)? As far as I can tell, AMP Studio is Richard Walker on his own, while AMP is Richard and Karine Charff with occasional collaborators (e.g. most of the Bristol nouveau-shoegazer lot). There's an official-ish website at Southern: www.southern.com/southern/band/AMP00/ Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 06:46:56 -0400 From: larry@INTERLOG.COM Subject: Re: anyone grok Italian? >hm- i find a webpage > >http://www.slip.net/~scaruffi/vol6/amp.html > >with some text about Amp! its not the Southern site! and then i look >closer, and see its in Italian. argh...any polyglots out there with some >spare time feel like telling me what this page is saying? or is it >nothing new that even a casual bristolphile (or semiobsessive >trainspotter) would already know? unfortunately, i know the f word in >italian, and thats it. quote Amp is the project of Londoner Richard Walker, loosely affiliated with the Bristol psych-ambient bunch (Third Eye Foundation, Flying Saucer Attack). Walker recorded the first Amp album practically on his own, with the help of Dave Pierce of Flying Saucer Attack and a few other friends. On Sirenes (Petrol, 1996), which followed the single Get There/ Remember (Linda's Strange Vacation, 1995), the influences seem above all to be Flying Saucer Attack, Seefeel and Main. The melodies on Frieze and Souvenir are immersed in an ambient chaos of chords, but the piano romance of November and So Be It and the Oriental psalm of Soft Stone Soul are still songs. Perdu, Eternity and Rave Mantra push the extremes of sound research.. The first album was followed by the EPs Beyond (Wulitzer Jukebox, 1996) and Justlikeit (Colorful Clouds For Acoustics, 1997). For Astral Moon Beam Projections (Kranky, 1997) he was joined by singer Karine Scharff and drummer Gareth Mitchell (also in Philosopher's Stone). The music changed with regard to the first album - it progressed (or regressed) to a greater level of abstraction and expansion, leaving behind the somewhat naive spaced-out ballads of the debut. The influence of the post-psychedelic and post-ambient Texas school (and perhaps also the New Zealand avant-garde - especially Dead C and Gate) is very strong. The pieces are long and ethereal, free of structure and rhythm. The pattern for the songs seems always to be the same, but actually varies constantly.The girl's fairytale trills rise and fall on the eleven minutes of reverberations and chaos of Onehopesinuncertainty, and it all brings to mind early Sonic Youth, Lee Ranaldo's guitar maelstroms coupled with Kim Gordon's subconscious wailings. The singing is instead merged with the other instruments in the underwater evolutions of Lightdripglow. The drone of Transmigration,which includes a nosediving airplane, builds into a raga cresecendo. The music Walker has in his blood (My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins) comes to the surface in Stellata, which does the same things as the other tracks but compresses them into a more limited space (and time). Walker sorely tests the listeners' patience for some 75 minutes (some might have had enough halfway through), but the talent in orchestrating these cacophonous mini-symphonies deserves to be acknowledged. Walker went on to record (still as Amp) the Heart And Soul Dissolve EP (Darla, 1997) on his own. unquote Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 22:53:15 +0100 From: Andrew Norman Subject: Post-rock corner Couple of interesting things arrived in the post this morning - one is an AMP EP on Ochre (Cheltenham label specialising in vaguely psychedelic stuff). Three tracks, which I think are alternative versions of tracks from their forthcoming Kranky album, and all quite unlike previous AMP releases. "Sunflower" is the nearest thing to a song with a tune and a conventional structure that they have released since the first album (like an unplugged My Bloody Valentine), "Zoe" is full of dub echoing effects, and "Ice-house" is techno-ish, vaguely Seefeely. First two are produced by Robert Hampson of Main, and the packaging is stunning - the CD comes in a sunflower-shaped paper sleeve with the petals folding around the CD. The Kranky album should be excellent if it's anything like this. Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 11:55:26 EST From: Riouxs@aol.com Subject: Rioux's Records Update #26 (Pt. 1/4) AMP - Sunflower CD (Ochre) $7.25 "AMP's first release since Richard Walker's solo excursion as A.M.P. Studio. Infectious, gossamer-light and seemingly guileless, it is the ideal first glimpse of AMP's seductive world to the uninitiated. It's also an introduction to their forthcoming album Stenorette due out on Kranky; both EP and LP feature Richard and Karine's collaboration with programmer Olivier Gauthier and producer Robert Hampson of MAIN. The Sunflower EP expresses their new-found accessibility without neglecting their inclination towards the sonic frontier. Released in a stunning package in which you have to to open up the petals of the sunflower to get your hands of the disc. Limited to 1000 only." If you preordered this, take note that the price is lower than originally listed. It will be adjusted accordingly. Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 21:04:58 -0000 From: Andrew Norman Subject: Turntables and recent albums AMP - Stenorette ...produced by Robert Hampson (Main) and is quite unlike previous releases. A dozen tracks in about 50 minutes, and there's proper singing, tunes and everything. A much cleaner, clearer production (as you might expect - Hampson may be the king of abstract noisy ambience but he knows how to record with clarity). In parts it sounds rather like Piano Magic, whose Che album from last year has been played a lot recently - very autumnal atmosphere. From: "Andrew Norman" Subject: Re: Newish AMP stuff etc. Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 23:36:08 -0000 > So waking from my slumbers I see that Amp have released at least > two new things this year, an EP and a full album. And the reviews > imply the album sounds more like Sirčnes than like > astralmoonbeamprojections, which I applaud. Anyone heard this stuff > and care to comment? Yes - The EP is three tracks from the Kranky album, remixed. The album was recorded with Robert Hampson and it's very different from AMP's previous releases - the sound's cleaner and I think it's better for that, and the songs were (I believe) mainly written on piano, an instrument which features heavily. The EP's on Ochre, and the album was partially recorded in North Wales which is where a lot of Ochre acts seem to hail from or record (including David Wrench who engineered those parts). I think the involvement of an outside producer (especially one as talented as RH) has done AMP a lot of good.