FirstPerson

Stoke-OM-Trent, United Kingdom

Billboard

All enquiries > www.frstprsn@yahoo.co.uk

April 2008

Singular 046 NEON DEATH SLITTES "Grim War of Chaos Magick"
Singular 047 A BROKEN CONSORT "Crow Autumn (A Mercy Kill)"
Singular 048 ENFER BOREAL "Les Plumes Noires
Singular 049 FORDELL RESEARCH UNIT "The Shape of Rage"
Singular 050 (a) THE SUBS "Kissing the Fist on the Arm of a Killed Kid"
Singular 050 (b) ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS "Brittle Licks 666"

Releases 2004 - 2007

Plural 001 Neil Campbell // Fickle
Plural 002 M. Jarvis / A. Jarvis
Singular 003 Sculptress
Singular 004 Ashtray Navigations
Singular 005 Ben Reynolds
Plural 006 The Piss Superstition // Culver
Singular 007 Morganstewart
Singular 008 Andy Robbins
Plural 009 Ben Reynolds / Andy Jarvis
Singular 010 Violence Beyond The Snowline
Singular 011 A. Jarvis
Singular 012 Johann WLight
Singular 013 PUFF I
Singular 014 Edward Ruchalski
Plural 015 Bjerga / Iversen
Singular 016 Ben Reynolds OWS
Singular 017 HL
Plural 018 Chora
Plural 019 The Black Hands
Plural 020 Helvetica Is The Perfume Of The City
Singular 021 Ben Reynolds OWS II
Plural 022 Culver / Jarvis
Singular 023 PUFF II
Singular 024 Ashtray Navigations
Plural 025 Saaboteuse
Singular 026 Frozen Stake
Singular 027 Peasandpopoff
Singular 028 A. Jarvis
Plural 029 Stuckometer
Singular 030 Uton
Singular 031 Ben Reynolds OWS III
Singular 032 Voice Of The Seven Woods
Singular 033 PUFF III
Singular 034 Taiga Remains
Plural 035 Amber Lions (Valerio Cosi)
Plural 036 Serfs
Plural 037 Saboteuse
Plural 038 Lanterns
Singular 039 Joe+N
Plural 040 Schofield / Jarvis
Singular 041 Slow Listener
Plural 042 Xochipilli
Plural 043 Ghost of an Octopus
Plural 044 Ys Trys
Singular 045 Culver

Andy Jarvis, whose history within the English underground in Sculptress and collaborator with Ben Reynolds and Phil Todd (Ashtray Navigations) marks him out as one of the UK's most inspired creatives, runs the First Person label. His aesthetic is consistent with every 3" CD-R packaged in beautiful clear sleeves, stapled and printed with minimal black type and art.

The most recent batch of First person titles are among the label's best. The first two feature powerhouse Glaswegian Alex Neilson, who plays with Scatter and guides his own conceptions as Directing Hand. On The Black Hands The Perfect Beauty of Venus (Plural 019) Neilson collaborates with Frank Januirek on an extended piece that beds down with the halation of a tremolo-stoked organ before cluttering the stage with wincing, scratchy metallics reminiscent of the New Blockaders. Somewhere someone sings absentmindedly to himself as Neilson pours ball bearings over his kit.

Neilson is also a heavy presence in Helvetica Is The Perfume Of The City (Plural 020) whose self titled disc documents a live performance with Jarvis, Ben Reynolds, Phil Todd and Isobel Campbell (ex Gentle Waves and Belle and Sebastian). The set starts quietly and tentatively with tiny melodies sounding out the territory before everything meatballs and a humming drone takes over. Repeatedly speared by snake charmer melodies and Neilson's attention deficit percussion, the recording plots a generous graceful arc. Lars Müller would be proud.

Ben Reynolds also turns up on his lonesome with Other Worlds Sermons II (Singular 021). Reynolds has pretty much cornered the market for 'space is the place' crackle and shimmer, and the two sermons on this disc are quite psychotropic, disappearing down giant wormholes of sound faster than you can say 'Asmus Tietchens, please'
Indeed what's surprising about Other Worlds Sermons II is how much it recalls the glory days of German electronic music, the 1970's starburst where characters like Tietchens and Kluster created mazes of galactic tone from hotwired equipment. Reynolds is not merely indulging in updating these references, though; he is rearticulating their key motifs within his own lexicon.

Lee Stokoe has spent many years working his analogue equipment into the earth as Culver and his recording with Jarvis, Nothing Has Changed Since The Time Of The Sea (Plural 022) whirs and spatters with gritty risk of re-routed consumer electronics. The juddering coal-black intro, like a nervous system in perpetual collapse, slowly sinks into the mud created by pungent swells of circuitry. The hypnotic stasis of this 20 minute piece recalls Maurizio Bianchi's early industrial tapes, sharing the go-nowhere craft of MB's perpetually looping power electronics.

Finally there is the mysterious Puff and his II (Singular 023). Research suggest that Puff is the current working nomenclature of Joincey, one of the most unfairly unheralded artists of the English underground, whose releases as Coits and Wagstaff
are among the greatest outsider visionary slabs since Jandek got naked in the afternoon. II is as confusing as anything Joincey has done, as he has hung up the guitar that he tortured on his Coits releases and switched to trading in subterranean forms. It is hard to work out exactly where this stuff beams from, but suffice to say it is some of the most pleasantly garbled noise you are ever likely to hear.

Jon Dale (The Wire March 2006)

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A short introduction to the First Person label by Mats Gustafsson

2003 was probably the year when home-made 3" CD-Rs reached a sort of peak in terms of underground status, but when it comes to the actual sonic quality 2005 has been just as great, if not even better. This is to a high degree thanks to Andy Jarvis' (formerly member of A Warm Palindrome that released one monster LP back in year 2000 but of some strange reason remains tragically unknown) First Person imprint. I was lucky enough to get my hands on the majority of the label's back catalogue a cpl of weeks back and the only sad thing I can think of is that I let it pass such a long time before tracking down these discs. All releases are 3" CD-Rs that are housed in hand-made clear acetate covers with information printed on one side and an image on the other. It's simple, beautiful and perfect at the same time.

The music presented on these discs range from the beautiful and surprisingly structured folk meanderings of sister/brother duo Mikarla and Andy Jarvis and the warm but quietly intense drone blankets of Julian Bradley's The Piss Superstition project to the droning hypnotism and thermal pools of bubbling electronics of Neil Campbell and the cascading overtones of Culver.

The list can go on for quite a while since this label covers a lot of the aural grounds that I am interested in these days. Andy Robbins delivers droning folk of the timeless and more structured variety, Puff dives deep into the fractured waters of gurgling noise created from all sorts of metal objects and toy instruments and we get three discs of music from the always-impressive and inhumanly prolific Ben Reynolds. We get ominous tones and subtle percussive elements that create a haunting whole that strikes me as a secret meeting between the man's compositional talents and his predilection for claustrophobic minimalism and improvisation.

Scotland's Morganstewart presents reverberant guitar melodies that cycle endlessly and that effortlessly will cut a hole in your heart and seep right in. Think of a mix of Bert Jansch and Six Organs of Admittance and you're in the right ballpark. No matter how fine this disc is I'd say that the free folk/improv unit Sculptress presents my favorite disc among all these as it brilliantly searches for genre conjunctions well outside explored territories and manages to do so in a similarly successful way as the aforementioned A Warm Palindrome. The swirling clarinet sound hovers just over a riverbed of meandering guitars, tapes, melodica and percussion and to describe the sound as mesmerizing and beautiful is probably the understatement of the year. If you're foolish enough to only pick up one of these items you might want to start with the Sculptress disc, but given the fact that they're priced at £3 each or £10 for 4 I think you know what to do. I can wholeheartedly recommend anything that wears the First Person signature.