In stock
2 CD
OMIT
“Interceptor”
2008. Back in stock.
“Omit is the nom de plume for Clinton Williams, an electronic musician who has been quietly toiling in New Zealand for a good portion of the past two decades. His work has appeared alongside such luminaries of the NZ free noise community as Birchville Cat Motel, The Dead C, Flies Inside The Sun, Dean Roberts, Surface Of The Earth, etc.; however, Omit’s home-spun constructs widely detour from the sculpted grit and mottled distortion found in the work of his countrymen and -women. In listening to his masterful Quad (a 3CD opus released in 1998 through Corpus Hermeticum), one gets the very palpable sense of an artist in a contentious argument with his own unwieldy mousetrap of tape-loops, modular electronics, effects pedals, drum machines, and the creaking sounds of his house. That internal debate with himself through his machine exudes an existential melancholy, which could be applied to any number of grander metaphors of the dependency of electronics, cybernetics, and technology upon mankind. Interceptor is the result of an experiment whereby Williams worked with a portable studio away from his longtime home of Blenheim. He possessed two suitcases of drum machines, effects, and analog synths; and, Williams recalls being “pissed off with myself wasting time recording this stuff when I was trying to find a job”. His frustrations stripped away much of the grandiose sweeps of ambience and shadow, leaving behind a life-support system grid of overlapping, phase-shifted blip and click. An undertow of hypnotic tonalities pulls those rhythms towards a crepuscular gloom. Williams has always been at odds with his own work, yet his self-doubt continues to deliver magnificent albums which thrive in a symbiotic struggle with mechanical disintegration. Interceptor conjures the best offered by Mika Vainio, Klaus Schulze, and the Throbbing Gristle tracks authored by Chris Carter. Always the pessimist, Williams grumbles, “In many ways, it’s a document of my failure to do the most simplest things in life”. If only all of our failures could be this brilliant.”
16,50€
Out of stock
2 CD
OMIT
“Tracer”
clinton williams admits that he has never been particularly keen in marketing the obsessive electronic constructions he's produced under the moniker omit over the past two decades. williams once infamously quipped to nick cain that he should simply print a couple pages of zeros in lieu of the failing interview that cain was conducting for his own opprobrium magazine a little over a decade ago. while such actions may be confused with those of a curmudgeonly hermit, williams is concerned with his impeccable battery of synthetic sounds intent on psychological dislocation.
having released the bulk of his work in tiny self-published editions of lathe-cut singles and hand-dubbed cassettes, omit has enjoyed several high-profile releases thanks to the diligence of corpus hermeticum and anomalous records who both rescued some of omit's finest work from terminal obscurity. the helen scarsdale agency is proud to announce the arrival of his latest recording tracer a double disc set.
as with all of his previous work, tracer is an antiquated behemoth, constructed from analogue synthesizers, primitive drum machines, homespun electronics, and numerous effects pedals. simple wooden rhythms trot, trudge, and even glide along taut metric grids hotwired with bursts of mechanical splutter and the occasional creak from pierre henry's wooden door. an occasionally menacing, but more often melancholic orchestration of synthetic tones ripple, flex, and dissolve across the uniform structuralism, creating an ecstatic paranoia rarely heard with such splendor, rigor, and sublime blackness. if sonic references are required, then the klaus schulze masterpiece cyborg remains the closest analogy to what may be found in tracer.
14,00€
Out of stock
5 CD
OMIT
“Enclosures 2011-2016”
Co-released with End of the Alphabet Records.
Since his first self-released cassettes in the early 1990s, New Zealand’s Clinton Williams aka Omit has been on a singular and personal musical journey. Described as one of the greatest outsider artists currently working in the field, Omit employs homebuilt instruments constructed from modified electric motors and salvaged sound sources to create a startlingly original soundworld. It is a world he inhabits alone, isolated in the small town of Blenheim in southern New Zealand, but it involves a deep exploration of the human condition. Over the years OMIT’s music has become less noisy and more sparse and minimal, as open signal patterns and oblique textures pass each other in haunted spaces.
“Enclosures 2011-2016” is a 5xCD box-set co-released by Pica Disk (run by Lasse Marhaug out of Norway) and End of the Alphabet (run by Noel Meek in New Zealand) and collects Omit’s most recent self-released albums, artefacts that originally came in super limited edition CDRs with hand-made covers between 2011 and 2016. Unavailable except directly from the artist, these beautiful works are now available remastered in a deluxe box-set along with OMIT’s famous surrealist drawings and science fiction themed artwork, plus liner notes by close friend and collaborator Bruce Russell (The Dead C/A Handful of Dust).
“Clinton Williams is the hardest-working man in minimal electronic music. He is one of two people I know fairly well who I honestly believe is possessed by genius.” Bruce Russell (from the liner notes)
Since his first self-released cassettes in the early 1990s, New Zealand’s Clinton Williams aka Omit has been on a singular and personal musical journey. Described as one of the greatest outsider artists currently working in the field, Omit employs homebuilt instruments constructed from modified electric motors and salvaged sound sources to create a startlingly original soundworld. It is a world he inhabits alone, isolated in the small town of Blenheim in southern New Zealand, but it involves a deep exploration of the human condition. Over the years OMIT’s music has become less noisy and more sparse and minimal, as open signal patterns and oblique textures pass each other in haunted spaces.
“Enclosures 2011-2016” is a 5xCD box-set co-released by Pica Disk (run by Lasse Marhaug out of Norway) and End of the Alphabet (run by Noel Meek in New Zealand) and collects Omit’s most recent self-released albums, artefacts that originally came in super limited edition CDRs with hand-made covers between 2011 and 2016. Unavailable except directly from the artist, these beautiful works are now available remastered in a deluxe box-set along with OMIT’s famous surrealist drawings and science fiction themed artwork, plus liner notes by close friend and collaborator Bruce Russell (The Dead C/A Handful of Dust).
“Clinton Williams is the hardest-working man in minimal electronic music. He is one of two people I know fairly well who I honestly believe is possessed by genius.” Bruce Russell (from the liner notes)
30,00€