Colin Potter & Jonathan Coleclough 'Carboniferous' CD
£10.00
May 2025
A new CD on ICR! Rhythmic drone music?
After running IC Studio for over 40 years I’ve accumulated a large store of recordings by both myself and the many people I’ve worked with. I was recently looking for some masters of another band on a hard drive, where I stored tracks that had been transferred from old digital tapes. I noticed the folder ‘Period Remixes’ which I decided to open, as I hadn’t listened to the material for many years. The tracks were remixes of Jonathan Coleclough's 'Period' album, on which I had worked with him when it was released over 20 years ago. These pieces were made before the use of computers became commonplace in studios. They were all mixed live, without editing, using a physical mixing desk and external analogue and digital effects units.
I was pleasantly surprised by what I heard.
And I hope you will be too.
Colin Potter, IC Studio. London 2025
IF YOU WOULD LIKE A FREE BANDCAMP DOWNLOAD CODE, PLEASE Email : colinpotter@icrdistribution.com
REVIEW BY Frans de Waard, Vital weekly : This new CD is, in fact, an older work. Colin Potter has been running the ICR studios for over 40 years, and that means there's a lot of music in storage, and recently he found a folder labelled 'Period Remixes’. 'Period' is a 2001 work by Jonathan Coleclough, and I am unsure if I wrote a review of that one (I attempted to find one and failed), and I had to refresh my memory of what it sounded like. It was a work that included piano sounds and treatments thereof, and at the time, Potter did some additional mixing. He mentions this to be the time before computers were used in studios, so these remixes were all "mixed live, without editing, using a physical mixing desk and external analogue and digital effects units". Upon re-visiting this material, Potter decided the material is still good enough for release, and who am I to disagree? In this particular world, sound material can be shifted in any direction and reworked at any time. The four pieces on this CD proof this, even when I needed to hear the original Coleclough release first, which was a happy visit. People like Potter and Coleclough, as well as Darren Tate, Andrew Chalk, and Paul Bradley, are a particular breed of musicians who use electronic means to create atmospheric music, each with a personal style. Potter's speciality is working with effects placed upon the original material, so it becomes something else, and his mastery is to make it sound like it's static and minimal. In contrast, it shifts and moves around, very rarely staying in one place. The pure piano sometimes starts the piece or appears halfway through, playing minimalist patterns that are undoubtedly also created by Potter. This serves as a fine reminder of the sources. These are four strong pieces, in which the 'live' element is a strong presence, adding to the lively atmosphere of the music.
