WATCH REPAIR

At artist John Coulthart's blog feuilleton, always a cornucopia of the strange and wonderful, he mentions his design for the cover of a new work of modern experimental music by Watch Repair. "The perfect accompaniment to an Autumnal afternoon reading a good book", according to Matt at Piccadilly Records, Manchester, where the release may be found.

I've been able to listen to these recordings as they developed and have certainly been impressed by their stark and austere beauty. This is fragile music that requires close listening, drawing on barely-touched guitar strings and echoes and shimmers from treated clock chimes augmented by the subtlest possible electronic treatments. There's a sense of a chiselled work, whittled to its purest form so that it exists close to the margins of silence. In my experience, the compositions bring a brittle sense of otherness for the listener, which lingers long after the work has come to an end.

Mark Valentine