Mano De Fuego
Fuerza EP

Editions Mego: ...As audacious as the sleeve it comes housed in, the UK’s most eccentric audio malefactor returns with his eighth studio album, Practical Electronics with Thighpaulsandra. Unique in the Thighpaulsandra oeuvre, this one eschews the usual group based recordings, consisting of electronics and vocals only.Hovering between haunted narratives and extended instrumental sequences Practical Electronics is an eccentric excursion into playful pop and fearless electronic experimentation. Simultaneously intimidating and accessible, the energy of this untamed mind unleashes an artefact where high art unfolds as an oblique electronic cabaret.Having cut is teeth amongst such legendary outfits such as Coil and Spiritualized Thighpaulsandra has constantly catapulted himself further and further into a musical landscape utterly of his own devising. Practical Electronics is the latest exemplary installment of a voice that is uncompromising as it is outlandish.

Founded in 2015, Tears|Ov are sound artist/self-taught musician Lori E Allen, classically trained cellist/mixed media artist Katie Spafford and illustrator/prison psychotherapist Deborah Wale. The trio first collaborated on Lori E Allen’s ‘Tears of the Material Vulture’ cassette on The Tapeworm, a re-imagination of a brief collaboration with Madame Chaos of cut-up cablecasts, 1995-1996, on Manhattan Neighborhood Network and Television in New York City. That release served to resurrect a hibernating creative practice between the three friends.Their writing process takes the form of structured improvisation. Allen will create a bed of loops, field recordings or a full framework. She then shares this base with Wale and Spafford who embellish or delete, the three building the pieces through long improvised sessions in London, playing late into the night. During these sessions, the feeling of a songs’ words or the emotional tone of a sound can spark sudden mood changes, altering the arc of the compositions. ‘Crucially the music is improvised – it is never the same twice. There are triggers and moments that signal moving to another part of the music, but the timings and lengths largely depend on our moods and interpretation on a given day/performance. Because of this, the album was recorded with ambient mics capturing multiple instruments. It wasn’t possible to record all the instruments separately as we respond to each others improvisation. Even if the changes are very minor, they really affect the emotion of each piece’ Spafford says.