Dronehenge is a small record company and studio in Norwich, UK. They are run by Transept, and were initially set up with funding from Arts Council East.
Email: info@dronehenge.com
Title: TRSPT001
Artist: Transept
Formats: Download, Vinyl
Release date: 24.01.11
Press enquiries: sean@mutante.co.uk
Produced, engineered and mixed: 06.09 - 01.10 by Transept
Mastered: Tim Debney at Fluid
Label: Dronehenge Records
Catalogue number: TRSPT001
Clocking in just under 45 minutes, ‘TRSPT001’ is a stunning piece of progressive space-rock melancholia. This Norwich trio have constructed a record which contains both film score textures and orchestral drama. ‘Death Of The Sea Sentinel’ and ‘Nothing The Noth, Part 1’ barely register above a whisper before reaching a fuzzy feedback-driven climax. Opener ‘The Demands Of Levitating Heavy Stones’ is a 12 minute monster that harnesses more emotion and moods than most bands manage on a whole album. It's as if the Flaming Lips just gave birth to Spiritualized. view
This one stayed on the bottom of the pile for a while because of its press release, which said it “sounds like Robert Wyatt struggling to tune in his wireless during a robot thunderstorm”. The tracks are leisurely, eight-minute affairs strung out along a spine of pulsating organ or synth on which the three boys, from Norwich, visit various far-out sounds—laser crystals, copper pipe and “plant controlled omnichord”. It is subtle and stately and it gets under your skin. The second track, Antler Song, has me thinking of that great Gorecki piece that’s always used to soundtrack WWII footage. view
Any band named after the horizontal corridor in a cruciform church would, you’d hope, have a pretty good grasp of all things gothic and sepulchral. However, this recently formed Norwich noise synth trio go far deeper than mere ecclesiastical history, leading us into dank reverberating crypts and mist-shrouded cemeteries. Eleven-minute album opener, The Demands Of Levitating Heavy Stones, sets the tone, building from sweetly soporific organ drones before shaking the foundations with calamitous Quatermass pulsations. Conjured forth on primitive keyboards, bowed antlers and haunted circuit boards, the music shifts from electronic whispers to folk melodies to screeching distortion, evoking the chilling north Norfolk atmospheres of the classic antiquarian ghost story, of young men meddling in the ways of the ancients, unwittingly summoning forth something powerful, remorseless and demonic. view
Heroically defying contemporary rock fashion with an Arts Council grant and an underground lab full of noise weapons, Transept are an experimental trio of neo-prog post-rockers from East Anglia. Quaking with cosmic thunderclaps and howling solar winds, their debut shudders and throbs like a Betamax version of the Large Hadron Collider. These six extended pieces are mostly instrumental and keyboard based, although Floydian guitar licks and strangulated violins make fitful appearances between fragmentary, ghostly vocals. Though some numbers feel bloated and glacially slow, centrepiece epic “Leopard / Slug Love Song” is both magnificently pompous and oddly moving. view
It peeps deliberate around the corner, then all of a sudden it makes you so sad that you want to make a call to the emergency pastoral care but then you don’t, cause you rather keep listening to this gruesome beautiful sound. view
Für begabte Tränenaquarellmaler, die sonntäglich auf dem kalten Kunstmarkt stehen, wo niemand diese Aquarelle kaufen möchte, woraufhin sie in Zeitlupe heimtrotten, die ebenso kalte Atelierwohnung betreten und weitere Bilder malen. Dann schlafen sie ein, auf ihrem nassen Kopfkissen und träumen von Steinen. (english)
…a document of a band in continual evolution through lengthy improvisations, emerging as a swirling monster of multi-dimensional sound on sound… more
…Transept have created an album that is kaleidoscopic in scope both musically and psychologically… more
…experimental structures, provocative concepts and rich, intense noises with distinct cinematic appeal… more
…Imagine the Fuck Buttons jamming with Acid Mothers Temple or Amon Düül II making music with things like bowed antlers, laser crystals, accordions and copper pipes. It's also occasionally rather beautiful. more
Having shifted direction after early attempts at prog-folk fell mercifully short of expectation, Norwich three-piece Transept now delve deep into hallowed analogue drones and vintage electronics on this, their debut long-player. Brought to us by the wonderfully named Dronehenge imprint, TRSPT001 features six tracks of sustained organ tones and extended synth-smoulder that hark back to the golden dawn of the seventies. Like a careful blending of 'Pompeii'-era Pink Floyd's sunburnt daze, the kosmische throb of Tangerine Dream or Vangelis and hints of Harvest label progressive noodlings, much of this works by making a meditational mind-mulch from clean, ecclesiastical keys and more strident fuzz-roughened pulses. There's even pop of a sort with twin versions of 'Leopard Slug Love Song's lava lamp two-step while the submersive, liquid pull of 'Death Of The Sea Sentinel' shows just how much they can achieve by adding vocals to these predominantly instrumental sine-wave levitations.
As guitar bands slump and the pop industry regurgitates the same ideas over and over, it’s nice to see that some outfits still have the gumption to go against the flow. Norfolk three-piece Transcept [sic] create immersive soundscapes that take you to fascinating places that didn’t necessarily know you wanted to go. Admittedly challenging and quite dark, their album offers a rewarding experience for adventurous listeners, even if the highlight is the opening number, a hymnal piece that builds from haunting Isao Tomita-style vintage synths to a hair-raising squall of sound.
Transept’s new album, (Dronehenge; trspt.net), is limited to just 300 copies and offers quite beautiful layered, electronica with an organic structure that reminds me of some of the more uplifting Boards Of Canada productions. With only three tracks per side, they give themselves plenty of room to explore sonic deviations.