Hi

as a visitor to this site you may have previously bought one of my releases...

Record Store Day yesterday (along with things i'd noticed about sales of recent releases) got me thinking about people's music purchasing habits, so, to get an idea of what you may want from future Yellow6 releases (aside from the music of course) I would be grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete this survey. It is on the Survey Monkey site and will not ask for you email address, phone number or bank details, no-one will contact you about your responses or to offer you Yellow6 or related products, and no salesman will call at your home. the link is here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GMFFM7R - the survey is completely anonymous but will hopefully allow me to provide you with the music you want in the way you want it in the future thanksjon./Yellow6 p.s. you can stream CUT, STHLM and Orphan Songs on the bandcamp page http://yellow6.bandcamp.com/

news april 2011... bandcamp, upcoming releases etc.

Hi all

a little bit of news about forthcoming activities, and the new Yellow6 Bandcamp page some of you may be interested in.

No live dates planned in the short term.... but a few upcoming releases this year.

All the planned releases at the moment are collaborations. Timings of all are TBC but i'll update when i know.

So... they are:

Miniatures - 3" cdr in the Hibernate Recordings postcard series.

Collaboration with David Newlyn on a series of 8 songs of piano/guitar/computer processing

VALLEY - second installment of the collaboration with thisquietarmy, this one available on silver vinyl with limited black (expected May-June)

Offtempo - collaboration with Larkian. CD release summer 2011

Sleep of Reason - the trilogy of LPs is now complete and, following our debut live show in Tilburg at Tonefloat 100, we will soon start preparing the 3 LP set for release. It won't be til later this year as there's a lot of work needs to be done on design and packaging

Caught In The Wake Forever - I have remixed one of Fraser McGowan's songs (he was a contributor to 'close/r' in addition to being a member of Small Town Boredom) from his forthcoming EP 'ALL THE HURT THAT HINDERS HOME'.

the EP will be released by mini50 records and initial copies include the remix ep.

check out CITWF here: http://www.caughtinthewakeforever.com/

The EP will be released on 13 June 2011 but the remixes will only be available on the physical cd, not as a download option - the cd will go on pre sale from http://mini50records.bandcamp.com at the end of April.

And so to the Bandcamp page... I have set this up for digital downloads, mainly for the addition of recordings no longer available in physical form but also occasionally i may put up live recordings.

The first of these are:

STHLM, the companion release to 'When The Leaves Fall Like Snow' which is a further 5 songs recorded during the same stay in Stockholm in 2007 which was released by Distant Noise in a limited 100 copy cdr edition. Also included in the download is a Schengen remix that was on the 12th release in the Distant Noise series where artists remixed each others tracks.

Probably the release of most interest is 'Orphan Songs' which is a collection of 20 tracks from compilations, split releases and out of print cdr's etc. from the period 2003-2008. It includes tracks from releases on Dreamboat, Darla, Superspace, Music Fellowship, Fugues, BSBTA, Sound In Silence, Chat Blanc, Contact, Where Are My Records and Make Mine Music. A total of 21 tracks.

CUT is also available as a digital download here. If there are any releases people are specifically interested in please let me know and i'll add them in time.

I've added a small charge for them as this may help offset the cost of producing physical releases.

the page is here: http://yellow6.bandcamp.com/

Lastly, my recommendation of the week... found this through the wonders of Fakebook, proving it does have some use.... http://twopeopleinaroom.bandcamp.com/ highly recommended.... you can also listen to their forthcoming Hibernate release at the Soundcloud page

cheers

jon./Y6

Post-Tour update, video etc.

Hi

finally managed to squeeze in a little time after the tour for an update.

gigs went well and had a good trip, thanks mainly to the many people who either organised, promoted, played etc. Special thanks to Marc Kokcinzki (Docteur Adams) for organising, planning, driving, recording, photographing, and being a good friend. Also special thanks to Dirk for the Sleep of Reason experience, Charles for tf100, Sjaak for the Live Looping Festival, Ronald for the live sound and recording, Andre for the photography and many others.

Photos from the trip are up on the website and fakebook page.

There is also a video of the full set from the Antwerp Live Looping Festival here: http://vimeo.com/21127929
This is a 30 minute set where i play 00:30 (from "In Time This Too Will Fade"), Plane Ari (working title - new piece written during the tour), Norwest Passage (from "When The Leaves Fall Like Snow")

all the shows except one were recorded so audio may be shared at some point... of course, as (bad) luck would have it, the one show not recorded was at le Monde Moderne in Lille which a number of people (who had seen me previously) said was my best live performance. i guess it's good in a way that there is no recording to disprove that! :-)


The debut performance of Sleep of Reason (Dirk Serries and myself) at tf100 was very well received. Tonefloat will release the 3LP set later in the year but prior to that there will most likely be a 10" of the live set from tf100 as a taster.

coming soon will be a couple of releases (dates tbc):
David Newlyn and Yellow6 - Miniatures (3" cdr in the Hibernate Recordings postcard series)
Larkian and Yellow6 - Offtempo CD (Basses Frequences)
egsun/Yellow6 split LP
and more....

last few copies of merry6mas2010 are still available (6 left) and there are also the last few of CUT with bonus un/CUT and of course close/r


picked up some good CDs in the lovely Minor Place records in Lille which i've been playing a lot (along with the new Low album of course):
Anna Calvi
Seefeel
Earth
Arizona Amp and Alternator
and, one that i loved from the first few notes - Dean McPhee-Brown Bear
also heard Silver Jews Natural Bridge album in there for the first time and it sounded great but i have to track it down on CD...

that's enough waffle for now... hope you enjoy the video.

jon.

Death reviewed by Silent Ballet

7.5/10

Eric Quach and Jon Atwood have a lot in common: a love for guitar drones and soundscapes, a hunger for making music in their every breathing moment (nearly a hundred releases between the two of them) and an apparent disregard for that long horizontal button on the keyboard that we feeble mortals refer to as a “space bar”. Another similarity is that both are avid collaboration fans, so perhaps this collaboration - as the case is with the album's subject matter – was an inevitability.

The topic of death has been handled in all its forms and varying perspectives by artists, scientists and religious scholars alike. The subject has puzzled and awed humans as far as humanity has existed. It has been viewed as a passage to a different life, a temporary residence for the eternal soul, and simply as the end, the final full stop on the page of life. The thought of death provokes a multitude of mixed emotions: in some, a fear of the unknown, in others, a sense of eternal peace.

Drone music, when done right, has the ability to translate the friction between various contradictory feelings. It has the ability to lead the listener through an intended stream of thought to varying tangential routes determined by mood, personality, life philosophy and upbringing. This album succeeds in forcing this solemn state of mind onto the listener."Sand" starts slowly with a measured progression, bringing to mind Leah Buckareff's drop tuned bass sound and note choices for Nadja. This ensures the listener that this collaboration will yield much different results than either artist's previous works. In reality, neither artist is going totally out of his musical comfort zone; it is more of a compromise on the part of each to make the other's effort shine. Thisquietarmy's heavily abrasive sounds are trimmed down, while yellow6's reverb laden dreamy guitar appears a bit less dreamy, which makes the narrative all the more strong.

This becomes most apparent in the last track, “Salt”, which fills the entirety of the LP’s second side. The track is the best window into both artist's death perspective. Sadness and mourning are there, but one can't help but notice a romantic side. There's a sense that with every step taken back to try to avoid the inevitable, one is taken forward in an effort to discover that vast unknown. In this case, the metaphor used for the immeasurable emptiness of death is that of being stranded alone in the desert. This apt comparison is expertly executed with the aid of Dirk Serries' (VidnaObmana and Fear Falls Burning); his mastering skills help the songs to gel together perfectly.

Proficient might be the key word here. The album doesn't stray far from either artist's established sound, and their experimental willingness seems a bit absent. This is probably why this album doesn't yield the fantastic results of Quach's previous efforts with Aidan Baker and Scott Cortez. Quach and Atwood have already announced that this is the first of two releases they'll be doing together, and this is definitely a good sign. Let's hope they push more boundaries on the next one.-

Mohammed Ashraf

PS. As I was writing this, the light in the hotel I’m staying in went out entirely. I’m left with the music and only the light from my laptop. I would definitely recommend listening to this album in that state; just adds a whole new level to everything.

gig date update

a few small updates to the forthcoming gigs....





Feb 26
yellow6 + when day chokes the night
plane Ari Home gigs
concerts à la maison à WANQUETIN ( près d'Arras)

concert privé, réservation obligatoire / contact: indiesociable@free.fr
(reservation obligatory - email indiesociable@free.fr )

Feb 27
Tonefloat Festival
paradox ,Telegraafstraat 62, 5038 BM – Tilburg, Netherlands
ron geesin / the use of ashes / astralasia / march / sand snowman / the sleep of reason
http://tonefloatrecords.blogspot.com/

Feb 28
Aucan / Yellow6
la zone, Liege
address : La Zone asbl, 27 Rue Méan, B-4020 Liège
http://www.lazone.be/

Mar 02
Yellow6 / Nuage Nuage
le monde moderne, Lille
12 Rue des Trois Couronnes59000 Lille, France

Mar 03
Yellow6 / Le Vehicule
Espace B, Paris
16 Rue Barbanègre 75019 Paris, France

Mar 04
cancelled (working on an alternative)

Mar 05
Live Looping Festival
Arenberg Schouwburg
Arenbergstraat 28, Antwerpen, Belgium

Theo Travis, Aidan Baker, Premonition Factory, Kunst4life, Simeon Harris, Yellow6.
http://livelooping.be/



and some fliers:

close/r review from [sic] magazine

http://www.sicmagazine.net/articles/811/yellow6-closer

by Brett Spaceman 7.5/10

yellow6 (real name Jon Attwood), the thinking man’s guitarist, the connoisseurs choice, the former punk now pushing minimalism to the utmost limits, rejects the idea that he is ambient. When previously I tried to tag him as a ‘guitar Harold Budd’, he claimed never to have heard Budd, nor to have paid over much attention to Eno or any of the early ambient pioneers. Fair enough. But when Attwood started y6 it was, what I suppose we’d call, guitar and electronics nugaze and he has moved steadily more and more….less. Recent y6 albums have been stretched out, Iberian guitar vistas with percussive beats few and far between. Sometimes Attwood is so laid back he’s horizontal. A cliché, I know, but many clichés are born out of a kind of truth and the horizon is prominent in y6 work.
This time around, Attwood has REALLY gone and done it. This album should probably be considered as more of a project or even a study. The tagline for Close/r is something like “Three chords. Ten collaborators”. The basic premise – Attwood conjured a simple guitar refrain, a three chord progression, albeit a languid one (35-40 seconds!) and then he sent it out to friends. So, whereas many artists rope in colleagues to remix their work, Attwood wanted his contemporaries to focus in on a specific movement and offer their interpretation. Once the results were back in, Attwood arranged them into three gargantuan tracks.
Close/r is 70 minutes of that same sequence. Yep, it’s relentless. I didn’t even know before I played it so I sat open mouthed as ‘Close/r One’ staggered past 6 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes etc before finally clocking in at 29 minutes long. 29 minutes of the same thing! Well no, actually the whole album is the same. Could this be a monumental pîss take, I thought? Or is it just monumental? The former is a delicious idea. Y6 has his detractors and the thought of certain individuals sitting through Close/r, tormented to carpet-chewing degrees, is worth recording an album in itself. Sadly though, it is 99.9% certain to be a serious piece of work. And so it should be for it certainly made me think.
“There’s joy in repetition.” (Prince)
If we’re saying Close/r is all the same thing, so what? So is a long, hot soak in the bath. But actually, crucially, it isn’t. That’s the point. Yes the chord sequence is the same. But each track takes that melody and builds upon it. Each of the three Close/r’s is a progression, putting layer upon layer of individual nuances into the piece. Close/r Two and Three are particularly rich. Indeed the climactic minutes of Close/r 2 almost take us out of the ‘foundation’ sequence altogether. (Fear not, it’s still there. It just sounds different)
After living with Close/r for a while it is obvious to me that the repetitive element is just a vehicle for the rest of the contributions. Here, the guitar is the car, Attwood is the driver, but his friends provide the scenery en route. It is almost not a y6 record in this respect. Where Close/r is revelatory is in its message. This record reveals the myriad possibilities open to recording artists. There are choices to be made at every turn. How to perform? What instruments to use? What key? How to record, produce, edit, mix and master? So many directions that a song can go in. Or in this case, one simple chord pattern. That now infamous sequence becomes a mantra, more emptying than filling. Close/r is greater than a project or a study, it’s a meditation.
An amazing and informative piece of work.

gigs and things...

Hi

belated happy new year / late january.

a bit of Yellow6 news... i'm heading off to mainland Europe in a few weeks to play some shows. full details below, but include the Tonefloat tf100 festival which includes the debut live performance of Sleep of Reason (Dirk Serries and myself), and the Antwerp Live Looping Festival.

for now, there's a break in the new releases after the mad rush of late 2010. Heavy With Snow, the 3" cdr release from ABGVRD of Moscow is now available. All my copies sold on pre-order to people on this list, but it is still available from the label. contact abgurd@gmail.com for info (as it is not listed on their website)

future releases during 2011 will include:
David Newlyn and Yellow6 - Miniatures: 3" cdr of piano/guitar/processing
Sleep of Reason - 3 LP series on Tonefloat
Larkian and Yellow6 - Offtempo (CD album)
Caught In The Wake Forever - album with remix disc including Y6 remix
collaboration with Masturbation Goes Cloud and split LP with -egsun-
and maybe some new Y6 material....

but for now, on to the gig news....


Feb 26
yellow6 + when day chokes the night
plane Ari Home gigs
concerts à la maison à WANQUETIN ( près d'Arras) concert privé, réservation obligatoire / contact: indiesociable@free.fr

Feb 27
Tonefloat Festival
paradox ,Telegraafstraat 62, 5038 BM – Tilburg, Netherlands
ron geesin / the use of ashes / astralasia / march / sand snowman / the sleep of reason
http://tonefloatrecords.blogspot.com/

Feb 28
Aucan / Yellow6
liege : la zone
address : La Zone asbl, 27 Rue Méan, B-4020 Liège
http://www.lazone.be/

Mar 01
TBC

Mar 02
Lille (TBC)

Mar 03
Paris
Espace B, 16 Rue Barbanègre 75019 Paris

Mar 04
Yellow6
19.30Jan van Houtkade 7, Leiden, NL
http://www.myspace.com/hannahdriesse

Mar 05
Live Looping Festival
Arenberg Schouwburg
Arenbergstraat 28, Antwerpen, Belgium

Theo Travis, Aidan Baker, Premonition Factory, Kunst4life, Simeon Harris, Yellow6.
http://livelooping.be/


if anyone can make suggestions to fill the dates 01-03 March please mail me

that's all for now

jon.