blue thirty-two: Stuart Chalmers and Taming Power

Pro-dubbed C45 with full onbody printing in printed O-card

Now, this is the stuff. Dust and breeze and spirals of gold. All the crackly magic in these stutters and looped invocations of electric guitar, swarmandal, tape manipulations and FX feels like it could keep us nourished and guarded through winter, through all winters.

These lo-fi ragas by Stuart Chalmers and Askild Haugland (aka Taming Power) might appeal to fans of Blue Tapes artists such as Chemiefaserwerk, Brian John McBrearty or Constantina. As solo artists, Stuart and Askild have built up a phenomenal catalogue of difficult-to-define, always-inspirational releases that range across diverse instrumentation and approaches always rendered in an immediately identifiable and distinctive voice.

Praise for Stuart Chalmers:

“Stuart Chalmers has taken Laraaji’s cult classic, cosmic-zither aesthetic, and expanded the lungs wide enough for a whole other world to drift right on in there. Themes haze & meld along Primordial beginnings, Call & Response spirit fights; Oh, the Light, Ahh the Dark, Owe the Other…” – Cassette Gods

“Chalmers is a Yorkshire based cassette tape scavenger, Swarmandal improviser and recorder of caves. His interests are in merging the personal/universal aspects of sound, exploring unusual states of mind, discovering hidden meanings in the environment and harnessing chaos. He has collaborated in the past with Neil Campbell, Edward Sol, Graham Dunning, Yol, Sindre Bjerga and Claus Poulsen.” – Colour Out of Space

“Chalmers career in soundtracking sci-fi movies or the works of David Lynch should be assured.” – Idwal Fisher

“Beautiful tracks of downbeat tape loops, dreamstates, hypnagogic soundfields, paranoid moonlit scenes with werewolves and ghostly children, snythesizer and tape hiss.” – Open Sound Group

Praise for Taming Power:

“In all this sound art by Askild Haugland there is a metaphysical presence, as if Haugland desperately seeks a way of conveying an intuitive knowledge of life, the world and everything that can’t be transmitted through traditional, verbal means… Maybe that is why I’m so fascinated by these sound works, which are absolutely incorrupt, absolutely honest, characterized by absolute integrity.” - Sonoloco