Ultima Thule News Page

updated 21/8/2009 [14:00]

UT Shop news...

Ultima Thule is moving!
Keeping the shop going has become too much of an expensive burden for us.
We'd been wanting to move for a while, as shop customers have become fewer.
This is happening sooner than we expected, as the landlord gave us an offer we couldn't refuse.
He's let us out of our lease at no cost, with the offer of very cheap office space in the same building.
So, we are not moving far! We will be at 1C Conduit Street (3rd floor).

> The Ultima Thule Record Shop is now closed!
> We hope to be up and running at 1C on Saturday 22nd August.

Ultima Thule Mail Order should remain largely unaffected.
Our phone and fax numbers will remain the same.!

New UT Stocks...

new list for September-October now online!

New items arrive all the while, so watch this space!

Newest UT Products...

EXTREMITIES - X-RAY (Auricle) 2CDR £11.75 - Culled from 2 very different sessions, over 2 months apart, & some different equipment in use, expect the unexpected with "X-Ray"! I put the key elements together as conceived works or in jig-saw fashion, seguing randomly diverse moods one after the other. Sometimes mixed, sometimes jarring, or invisible. The transitions weld together picture music like stories, with melancholy, anger, fear & pure emotion. From the beautiful to the totally bizarre. What started as 30+ chosen fragments & mixes, became 22 pieces, pieced together as the 8 works on this 2CD set.

ALAN FREEMAN - DARK CORRIDORS (Auricle) CDR £5.00 - Originall credited to Xylem. "Dark Corridors" was inspired by hours upon hours of getting lost in playing games on the Sinclair Spectrum, especially those by Gargoyle Games & Ultimate "Play The Game" - fascinating puzzle & labyrinth games, the likes of which seem to have disappeared since. I tried to emulate that spookiness & surreal atmosphere, although I did too much layering & filtering it seems, which resulted in quite a bit of tape hiss. I've tried to rectify that here, & get rid of some crackle & a few glitches. Apart from that, this is true to the original tape with no actual remix. © 1986.

QUADELECTRONIC - CITIES IN FLIGHT (Auricle) 2CDR £11.75 - Quadelectronic is a unique inexplicable monthly event. More of a "happening" than a regular gig. An improv, jam, workshop event for those that love to experiment & interact in free improvisation. Open house, within reason, anything can happen. Naturally, the key focus is electronics, although other instruments extensively feature. Performances have ranged from free-form chaos to space-rock to cosmic jazz, to pure synthesizer or avant-garde electronics. This is one of the finest ever. Featuring Chris Conway, Dave Dhonau, Alan Freeman, Steve Freeman, Dave Powell, Jim Tetlow, etc.

ENDGAME - THINGAMAJIG (Auricle) CDR £6.85 - A collection of diverse fragments & choice pieces from 3 different sessions. It seems that we were into pure experimentation & trying out lots of new ideas in winter 2003/4. There are musical concoctions here that even I've never heard before. In all, it amounts to some of the weirdest Endgame ever, some of it like sonic meteor collisions rendered with the most bizarre sounds imaginable. Yet there are still moments of pure beauty. The familiar meets the unfamiliar, there's a surprise around every corner!

ENDGAME - TEMPORAL CEMENT (Auricle) CDR £6.85 - Another one hour opus, expanded, time dilated & convoluted by Alan, running amok with pitch shifting, collage & digital musique-concrete techniques. From silence to thunderous highs, a myriad different places, & back down again - feel the cement set!

ENDGAME - HORSELENGTH (Auricle) DVDR £8.80 - Live at The Horse Hospital, 14/12/2008. Our first gig outside Leicester, 2 sets in 47 minutes, with video recorded/edited by Jim Tetlow.

ESCAPE ROUTE - COLUMNS OF HERAKLES (Auricle) CDR £6.85 - Spontaneous live sessions recorded at Quadelectronic event in 2008. Who knows what the future will hold when one has ventured towards "the lost realm of Atlantis" & created music like nothing else on Earth!

ALAN FREEMAN - ELEMENTAL MEDITATION (Auricle) CDR £5.00 - Recorded live at Tachyon Studio on 2/12/2001 in real time to cassette tape, with the intention of being used for concert backing tapes but never was!

TRIAX - METAMORPHIC TRICKSTER (Auricle) CDR £6.85 - "A Surly Finalé" was actually the first track recorded here, because it seemed more like an ending, even when we did it. After that we (or, should I say - I) had problems with weird buzzing. Arghhh, perils of the misbehaving noisy computer, I couldn't locate the problem so decided to give it a rest & concentrate on guitar instead, & hence we have a very different Triax here, on the one hand back to early Triax sound, but with a wider ranging, richer, more "melodic" sound palette.

 

Audion News...

Audion #10 - £2.50 - photocopy reprint!
Audion #13
- £2.50 - photocopy reprint!
Audion #55 - £3.00 - Caravan, etc.

The Crack In The Cosmic Egg CD-Rom - £20.00 - exhaustive German Music (Krautrock) CD-Rom Encyclopedia
The Crack In The Cosmic Egg magazine - 24 issues - £3.00 each (£10 per batch of 4) - printed version of the CD-Rom

All prices as in the UT shop, and (subject to availabilty) by mail-order + P&P rates as detailed elsewhere on this site.