We are overjoyed to welcome r mccarthy to MailTape this Sunday morning :) His selection embraces new worlds of new age music, stretching time and sound into spaces unknown — carrying creativity into these early morning hours.
r mccarthy joins us on MailTape for the second time since 2017, when we welcomed his other label, infinite bisous for an episode. Based in Paris, Rory’s releases under r mccarthy explore alternative ambient and experimental analog movements.
r mccarthy’s selection
Operating Theatre - Elation After Hours
r mccarthy: ” Irish musician Roger Doyle had this musical theatre project (Operating Theatre), I don’t really understand the context it would have appeared in, but I love the music. He was apparently the first musician in Ireland to get his hands on a Fairlight CMI, one of my favourite instruments. The whole album (Miss Mauger) is very surprising and beautiful.. “
Yoshihiro Hanno and Mick Karn - Lunette
r mccarthy: ” This is taken from one of my favourite albums, ‘Liquid Glass’. Mick Karn sometimes has no respect for the key of a song, and it doesn’t make a difference because what he’s playing sounds great. I think he just plays things which feel funny under his fingers, I respect that and it sounds amazing. “
John Powell - Chicken In The Pot
r mccarthy: ” I was watching one of the Star Wars shows (’Solo’ apparently), which was ok. But then there was this scene in a bar, obviously the original ‘Cantina Band’ was amazing, so I thought ‘Hmm I wonder what they’ll do for the music here’, and then this song started and it’s one of the strangest feeling pieces of music I’ve heard in a while. Once again the bass player has no respect for the key, it’s in an alien language, the strings are pretty amazing, I like it. “
MailTape’s selection
r mccarthy - I Think I Lost That Love
Sarah: ” r mccarthy’s weaving synth work throughout this track shifts and builds so effortlessly, it seems to hover in air. The sparse percussives and hovering synth harmonies slide alongside each other with so much grace — engulfing us in blanketed textures woven into soft vocals. The slightly distorted lead synth toward the track’s end flows so well across the walls of rounded synth harmonies below it, it’s entrancing. The rest of the 2017 releasecontinues this balanced freshness in production, look out for Jyoti :). “
Omni Gardens - Algae After All
Sarah: ” This track brings us to another world, brimming with the filminess of green underwater flora, stretching upwards to a speckled surface in the distance. I used this track in my play for brainscape and aquascaping scenes, the harmonies here transport you to the swaying micro worlds of green and growth. (side note: r mccarthy’s Jyoti also featured to give a sounded body to this otherworldly space). The synth work’s exploratory melody along with the droning hums of these undertones feel healing in some sense, like you’re growing roots and new leaves just by listening to it — living a newfound peaceful life as a patch of algae :) “
Paul Lansky - Her Voice
Sarah: ” On our last class of the semester, my music professor introduced us to Paul Lansky’s exploratory 1994 album, Fantasies and Tableaux. This is the first track off the release, and after listening through the rest of the collection, it’s still my favorite (Her Song is a close second). The production process here is interesting, Paul Lansky uses his wife’s voice as a technical instrument for the entire piece (bassline, chords, etc.), producing some of the synthwork with linear predictive coding. I love the haunting quality of his resulting product, approaching the uncanny valley of voice but still with the underlying romantic context to make me smile. “
Elori Saxl - Moss II
Sarah: ” The fleeting power and playfulness of the sax sways in conversation with itself, at once ancient and evolving. I am reminded, maybe by the title, of my favorite recurring dream, where the moss reclaims me into its beautiful humming world of green. (Patches of carpet moss, strictly speaking… there’s a film of mist all around and overhead, hosting a peaceful and insulated string of moments — the moss has little green hands that embrace my arms as if it’s been ages, and all that can be seen are these bright green stretches of softness welcoming me back… the image might be from reading too much Seamus Heaney, especially this poem and the last stanza of this one.) Elori Saxl’s epic arrives from Touchtheplants’ 2021 album Sound Wonders: A Series of Epics, a compilation that includes several other wonderful artists including harpist Nailah Hunter and SK Kakraba. Elori Saxl’s description of her contribution in the album’s release details a certain binding to the moss, where she explains how she felt, sitting on a bed of moss in a shaded forrest, that “the world was pulsing all around me and I never wanted it to end” but she also was “very aware that it was already slipping away.” “
That wraps up today’s morning selection, the last episode of 2022! Thank you for joining us, we hope it brought some light into your morning. Our love to r mccarthy for his delightful Sunday discoveries, and our thanks to Meriam Kharbat for this episode’s fantastic illustration! Merry merry merry, we’ll see you in 2023 :)
