The Ephemeral City And now, here’s The Changes by Peter Dickenson with... A trilogy of stories about Second Swimmer an England of the future, when people hate ma- An Equal Reaction chines and lead primitive Fourier lives. In the first book, The Through The Honey- devil's children, twelve- comb Window year-old Nicola finds her- self abandoned and wan- Reservoir Dreams ...The...The WeathermongerWeathermonger dering in an England Figures In The Snow where everyone has sud- Southern England, denly developed a horror Slipstream Fiction Or, like the changeable Brit- I think most people will teau Twins, Pixies and Throw- sively about Geogaddi, we cess to my Dad’s LP collec- March 2018… ish weather, can the first know you from Redpoint, or ing Muses. Then the should try to make some- tion growing up so, through- and hatred of machines. In Infinite Mirror A warm, sun-drenched work- beautiful signs of warmth Bright Pylon, but tell us a shoegaze scene happened thing instead. out the ‘70s, records would Heartsease, four children Ready Brek Kid day in early Spring gives way and optimism be deceptive little about your background right on my doorstep. I just periodically appear. The help a person knowledge- What were your earliest to a cold, crisp, starlit night, and short lived? Do they offer musically. bought a guitar that I could- first that I can clearly recol- able about machines es- Dekatron Memories memories involving music? The same commuters that mere respite from the relent- n’t really play and a new fx lect buying was a tape of cape punishment as a I’ve played in bands since I Oregon Water optimistically swapped coats less and inevitable march pedal every month. My earliest clear memory is Ultravox - Vienna, with a rec- witch. In the final book, for shirts, suddenly scurry for was at school. Usually as a A Memory Of For- towards a much colder, dark- of listening to Bowie’s Space ord token from Boots in Wo- The Weathermonger, peo- cover. The evening news drummer or guitarist but a It wasn’t until I heard Orbital, getting er place and time? Are sick Oddity while looking at a king. I still have the tape… ple recreate the Middle mentions that the daffodils lot of the music I first con- Aphex Twin, Autechre and a times still ahead? Sunday colour magazine cen- Ages by destroying ma- that broke the surface days nected with was electronic. little later Boards of Canada This project seems to have tre spread diagram of the chines and subjecting any- earlier may have been duped. My dad had some Tangerine that I started exploring elec- had a pretty long gestation – Released to There is a snow storm com- One thing be- Apollo/Soyuz link-up. That one found with a machine Dream records tronic music again. The urge there are tracks on your the world ing. A ‘beast from the east’, if comes appar- would make it Summer 1975. or with knowledge of ma- to actually make this kind of Bandcamp page from 6 or 7 and a tape of chines to death, while oth- June 2018 the hyperbole is to be be- ent. As I huddle ‘Sometimes Do you recall what the first Kraftwerk’s music only came about after I years ago. What kept you?!? lieved. against the cold, ers try to find the cause of it’s hard to let met Andy (the other half of record your bought was? Radio-Activity, Sometimes it’s hard to let wishing I’d cho- the sudden change in civi- and I was fasci- Redpoint) and we decided I was fortunate to have ac- Elsewhere, the world watch- sen somewhere something something go. lization. nated by them. rather than just talk obses- es as North Korea first sends that sold a de- go.’ The Changes on TV an envoy to its neighbours in That led, natu- cent cup of tea, Who are Twoism Records? the south to celebrate the or at least had doors or win- rally, to a love of synth-pop Winter Olympics, then appar- dows that hadn’t been kicked which was blossoming at Twoism Records is an independent record ‘You can do all sorts of things with music. You ently offers nuclear disarma- into a dystopian wet dream, that time. Although one of label, based around (although not exclu- can listen to it once, twice, or as many times as ment and talks. In North the person I’m waiting to my school friends had a sive to) contributors from Twoism.org you like. You can do it by yourself or with America, the young find its meet has his own take on our home-made synthesiser, it forum. We passionately pro- voice and maybe – just may- friends. You can give your favorite possible ephemeral future. never crossed my mind to be – begin to affect change in mote artists who demonstrate music as a present. Perhaps you’ll be the wake of yet another hor- But as we’ll learn, even this actually do anything with it. I they understand our ethos. given music as a present yourself. rific high school shooting. can leave us wrong footed. can thank him for getting me The Changes is a British Twoism Records stands Music you’ve never heard of and CD, digital down- Unthinkable just days earlier. into Depeche Mode and children's science fiction An occluded front could be apart from the electronic music wouldn’t otherwise have come load and Special OMD though. television serial filmed in on its way. Brace yourself and scene, continuing the spirit of across. You can talk about music dur- Collector’s Edition 1973 and first broadcast in batten down the hatches. In my teens it was all about the Hexagon Sun Collective. ing the day in the record shop and at Cassette (Limited Are constants changing? 1975 by the BBC. It was The Weathermonger is on his guitars. I became a bit of a home or at clubs in the evenings. numbers only Perhaps. To paraphrase our peers.. directed by John Prowse way… 4AD obsessive thanks to Coc- Music is culture. And culture is life.’ incl. rare remix and is based on the trilogy by ADecentMan) Words and images by John Dinsdale © Twoism Records 2018 When Redpoint went on hiatus I wasn’t sure how to go about writing anything with- out a partner to bounce ideas off, and it took a little while to recognise how I want- ed to sound. I played live a couple of times back then, with a mixture of tunes It’s quite a weird experience - playing pulled from around 10 years of recording, and that helped define what I did and did- something you’ve made to a bunch of n’t want to do. An early version of Fourier came out of those gigs. relative strangers. There were also a couple of tracks on the One On Twoism compilations as Bright Pylon. One of those, ‘Winterslows’, was the jumping off point for writing the tracks that make up ‘The Ephemeral City’. The bulk of the album was written between the middle of 2012 and early 2013. That was around the time my mother fell ill. After she died in May 2013 I barely wrote or recorded anything for a year. I think ‘Figures in the Snow’ is the only track that I completed in that time. It was only when preparing a ver- sion of the album to play for some friends in Summer 2014 that I worked on it again. It’s difficult for me the separate the record from my own relation- ship to it and specifically how it I’d tried to weave all these shortwave re- the reaction to it gave me the confidence is what you hear during ‘Honeycomb links back to my mum. Listening cordings into it and I realised it was just un- to (eventually) finish the thing. It still Window’. The other thing I knew when I to it was an anchor in difficult necessary decoration. It didn’t add any- hadn’t crossed my mind to release it to woke up was what my artist name times. I didn’t intend to write it thing and I took them out again straight anyone other than a handful of friends should change to. for her but that’s how it turned afterwards. It also ended with this relatively though. The album is getting a special collector’s out, although I know she would upbeat track that felt like a throwback to You took some field recordings at Win- edition cassette release too. Considering berate me for making it too mel- French Curves and didn’t suit the mood of spit I believe? Tell us about those. How we all first heard it on tape, that’s pretty ancholy. the album at all. That had to go. In its place were those incorporated? cool. How do you think the choice of came a more reflective closer and in time a As you’ve alluded to, some us media fits with the album? couple more tracks that helped balance the Yeah. I woke up early, around were lucky enough to hear an middle of the album a bit better. dawn. Everyone else was still crashed out I grew up with vinyl and tape. My first early version of The Ephemeral asleep. The waves breaking against the recordings were done on an old Fostex City way back in 2014. How has It got a pretty favorable response even cliffs sounded amazing, so I tried record- portastudio in my childhood bedroom.