CD recording of Hastings of Malawi live at the Klang30 festival in Vienna in 2023 available on the Klanggalerie label
CD recording of Hastings of Malawi live at the Klang30 festival in Vienna in 2023 available on the Klanggalerie label
The eighth recording released under the name Hastings of Malawi - a digital only release available on the Papal products label
Duration 37 minutes.
Single released in 2023 - features the first twelve lines of T S Elliot's The Hollow Men in badly translated Cantonese, translations of the words of Yuri Gagarin spoken as he flew around the world and the voice of Billy Graham - released by the Butte County Free Music Society and Chocolate Monk - available here. Art work by Ted Trager.
Duration 3 minutes.
The seventh recording released under the name Hastings of Malawi - a digital only release available on the Papal products label
Duration 25 minutes.
The fourth Hastings of Malawi vinyl LP. A dance that takes place within the chain, or pipe, that is brain - mouth - telephone - telephone exchange - telephone - ear - brain. It combines the sounds of mechanical telephone exchanges, the voices of telephone engineers, digital voice synthesis and the voice of Yuri Gagarin. Released on the SubRosa label. Download here
Duration 35 minutes.
The fifth Hastings of Malawi LP. Individually lathe cut transparent acetate disks presented in a transparent cover. Sounds of electromagnetic induction, sounds of internal combustion engines with clarinet, saxophone and voice interpretations of numerical data transmitted between Mission Control and astronauts during the NASA Apollo and Mercury space missions . Released on the Papal Products label. Available here
Duration 35 minutes.
The sixth Hastings of Malawi release. A Self help method. Released on CD by the Papal Products label. Available here
Duration 30 minutes.
The third Hastings of Malawi album (The Xmas Album) - a 38 minute poem. Available on the SubRosa label. Album artwork by David Hodes.
38 minutes.
Second Hastings of Malawi album - a 40 minute radio play. Released in 2018 on the Belgian SubRosa label on yellow vinyl. Available from SubRosa
Includes the voices of George Washington Johnson (First African-American recording star of the phonograph 1846-1914) and Dr Hastings Banda (First president of Malawi). Album artwork by David Hodes.
...two extended audio collages, establishing an impenetrable and surreal atmosphere with the use of manipulated field recordings and found sound. ..... a glitchy answering message, cracked organ tapes, etc. They’re damaged, dusty, and absolute gold in the hands of these skillful sound sculptors.... The two tracks are disjointed, confusing, and utterly terrifying, but undeniably convey a detailed abstract story. - jckmd noisenotmusic
...the human voice is distorted into absolute ruin, producing incoherent mumbles and inhuman groans ...layered artefacts from old 78s and discs and decaying tapes combine to produce audio textures that are almost aesthetically satisfying, if one could only ignore the unfolding nightmare they depict. ...The horrifying intensity of these grooves – near the end of side B – cannot be overstated! ...continued theme of communication failure ...many listening moments which are guaranteed to short-circuit common sense. ... I suppose Visceral Underskinnings could easily be read as a “noise” record, which would tend to align it with the history of industrial music and related enterprises, but I would prefer to see it as a text; an audio text where every sound has been selected, arranged, treated and sequenced with considerable care. You can dig out more and more from this text every time you spin it, and there’s enough information here for scholars to go mad as they try and process it.... very highly recommended. - The Sound Projector
http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2019/01/04/idealised-freedom-lament/#fn-29532-1
The inclusion of the word ‘visceral’ in the title of Visceral Underskinnings is apt. This two-track, forty-minute record toes the line between music and sound art as well as incorporating blasts of pure noise. Machines malfunction, strange voices chant, seasick computer melodies ghost in and out of the mix, and structurally the sides have plenty in common with the surreal collage of the album’s artwork. It’s a challenging record, but persevere and you’ll realise that Hastings Of Malawi have given us a Dadaist masterpiece. - Bleep.com
Collaboration with French sound artist Christian Renou (aka Brume) released on the Rotorelief label in 2017 available here
Nihil Unbound is one of the most unsettling albums I have. Given that John Grieve’s primary listed instrument is a tenor saxophone, such a statement sounds incredulous. Yet this is menacing. Animal, dark violence soaks this black vinyl. Hold it up to the light, and a glimmer of deep red leaks through.....The sound is a smart intersection of digital, analogue, acoustic and instrument sources. There is bashing about but almost as if happening haphazardly around you. This melds with other, more immediate sounds and provides a truly uninviting structural ambience....Much of what might be mistaken for synthesizer underlayment is, I believe, processed and manipulated low saxophone notes. Noise saturates. Voices growl intermittently. Whatever slight tweak, processing, or recording acumen used turns them truly demonic.
Myrtie Lake - www.special-interests.net
1981 "classic masterpiece" album by the "legendary" Hastings of Malawi who were John Grieve, David Hodes and Heman Pathak.
The album was released in 1981 as Vibrant Stapler Obscures Characteristic Growth by Hastings of Malawi on the Papal Products label.
Reissued in 2017 on the Belgian SubRosa label on red vinyl, just like the original pressing and then again on gold/black vinyl. Described as dada, underground, post-industrial, concrete music, DIY, punk. Available from SubRosa
Features Pat Simmons who was the voice of the UK speaking clock between 1963 and 1984.
"Rarely has an album so consistently made me question what the actual fuck is going on" - The Wire
...a heavily beguiling session of dadaist lo-fi concrète, coruscating haywire synths, the speaking clock and lots of acousmatic clangour ...Strikingly future-proofed by way of its outlandish, disclocated temporality and punkish disregard for convention, - untrammelled, explorative madness. ...one of the wildest records you’ve never heard before. - Boomkat