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email cathode at mail ( at ) cathode dot org dot uk

site by european animal (contact tom dot storey at gmail dot com). 

SPARKLE PLENTY

ALBUM OUT NOW



1. Stabiliser City (listen on myspace)
2. Dream Feeder
3. Another Wish (listen on myspace)
4. Control & Restraint
5. Structure Hunger
6. Without Memory or Desire
7. Piper Alpha
8. Brockenspectre
9. Nightly Builds

CD/download on Expanding Records.  

Download it from bleep.com

In Newcastle: buy the CD from the nice people at
Alt-Vinyl, a record shop



Online, buy it from Norman Records or Boomkat

See videos for several tracks from the album on the Cathode YouTube channel

 

Some kind people had these words to describe the record:


"lovely music" - Stuart Maconie, BBC 6Music


“the relationships between rhythm and texture are always complex and uneasy, never benign or predictable.  Plenty here indeed." - David Stubbs, The Wire, May 2009.


“It's good quality well produced electronica … Lots of tinkles, beats, whizzes and clicks all combine to make a near ear treat. Comes in a lush digipack …Tasty!” – Norman Records


“timelessly warm, tuneful electronica … A very fine album from the ever-consistent Expanding and a great return to solo recording for Cathode” – Boomkat

Here's a kind review from Foxy Digitalis

and some more kind words from Metro


“Sparkle Plenty” - the second album from Cathode - couples the precision and warmth of the debut with a richer sonic palette – for instance, the skittering improv percussion of “Dream Feeder”, the strings, flutes and piano of “Without Memory Or Desire”, or the battered acoustic guitar and ticking clocks of “Nightly Builds”.  Centrepiece of the album is “Structure Hunger”, a juddering serialist-krautrock wonder, which has its origins in a collaborative project with film-maker Adam Finlay at Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema to provide new soundtracks to a batch of vintage colour-saturated summertime movies.

The title “Sparkle Plenty” comes from developmental psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist Daniel Stern’s work on infant development.  “Sparkle Plenty” is his phrase for children whose way of coping with caregivers who are unresponsive or depressed is to “sparkle” – with lots of smiles, activity and excitement, that masks the child’s authentic (possibly much lonelier) emotional state.  It’s an apposite title for the record; Cathode’s music has always been unashamedly about creating something beautiful, which acts to sweeten something that’s much more melancholy underneath.  
 

GHOST TRACE STELLAR
free live set for download

Ghost Trace Stellar was an evening of covers and interpretations of 1920s and 30s out-of-copyright folk, blues, jazz and music hall from the Open Music Archive, which took place at the Star & Shadow Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, on 17 July 2009.

Audio & Video downloads of Cathode's set performed on the night (skeletal, stretched and static-laden empty-dancehall reverberations of the source material) are available here and here.

OUSEBURN BOATHOUSE
free improvised live set for download

On 9th May 2009 Cathode played an improvised live set at the Ouseburn Boathouse in Newcastle, at the kind behest of estimable headliners Lanterns On The Lake. This was experimental in the proper sense - a first road test for a totally improvised live set, moving away from straight performances of previously recorded cathode songs to something more minimal, textured and performed. It was also a first experiment with live-triggered visuals. This work-in-progress can be downloaded in sweet 320kbps here

The live visuals for the three pieces can be seen on YouTube here

WARM DIGITS MYSPACE SITE

Warm Digits, the collaborative improv project featuring Steve Jefferis (Cathode) and  Andrew Hodson (The Matinee Orchestra) finally has a Myspace site.  You can hear & download edited highlights from our recent live show at the Distraction Weekender at The Cluny, Newcastle upon Tyne.  We hope to be making some recordings for an album soon.

CATHODE ON YOUTUBE!

There's now a cathode "channel" (as is the modern parlance) on YouTube. Most of the films are adapted from the visuals that go with the Cathode live set, and include edited versions of six (count 'em!) songs from the new album, Sparkle Plenty:

The quality of YouTube's encoding leaves a bit to be desired - it doesn't seem to be able to deal at all with the full-flicker effect of "Brockenspectre", which seemingly gets deleted each time I upload the proper version - or maybe Mr Tube employes some exploitable youngsters to weed out anything too avant-garde for his tastes.

You can also see an edit of "The Texture Of Democracy", a film made for Northern Architecture last year about the wonders of Newcastle Civic Centre, with sound by Rory OCDC; "Sundowning", the collboration with video artist Rob Kennedy from a few years back; and "On Demand", one of the AV Festival Richard Fenwick collaborations.