It's Worse, by Shakeeb Abu Hamdan & Sholto Dobie

It's Worse

by Shakeeb Abu Hamdan & Sholto Dobie

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Ltd edition red c23
Cassette + Digital Album
Individually duplicated red c23 cassette with pro-printed full colour double sided artwork on 160gsm card. Comes in clear case.

Includes unlimited streaming of It's Worse via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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	1.	Slows O'er 07:14
	2.	Pond Clack 02:52
	3.	It's Worse 04:02
	4.	Banishment 03:08
	5.	Sling-Shotting 03:55

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*For digital sales, please support the artists by purchasing from them directly here:
shakeebabuhamdan.bandcamp.com/album/its-worse

We have made our digital version the prohibitively expensive price of £999 in order to divert digital sales directly to the artists. Thank you.*

Shakeeb Abu Hamdan and Sholto Dobie unveil a remote sonic partition between their respective abodes in Lebanon and Lithuania. Letting a melange of new and archival material wind around each other, swell back and forth and coalesce into a nebulous mass, they tease the temporality of real time improvisation, opting instead for a near mythical, ghost-like exchange.

At the time of making this, the two had never played together in real life, and while each sonic element can sing on its own, nothing falls out of the frame or feels like a loose fractal. Sholto's self-built organ breathes deep sighs and hisses, meeting Shakeeb's undulating electronics and ricocheting rhythmics in a series of harmonic, tumbling gestures. Like Limpe Fuchs' work with Anima, there is space given for elements to clatter and scatter, but also bring towards circling motifs. Organ dirges & patterned drums emerge out of the misty plains, raising themselves skywards.

Sholto and Shakeeb's own locality might or might not have contributed to their ventures, but we can't help but feel an imprint embossed in its genetic make-up. Listen closely and one can hear the spectres of regional folk musics, ceremonies, lonely streets, day-to-day banality... Together they let their complex inner & outer worlds meet and dance in a sonic apparition.

credits

released December 3, 2021

Shakeeb Abu Hamdan: drums, amplified drums and electronics
recorded in Beirut and Glasgow, 2018-2019

Sholto Dobie: self-built organ
recorded in Vilnius, 2020

Assembled and mixed by Shakeeb Abu Hamdan in Beirut and Gharifeh, 2020

Mastered by John Hannon at NO

Text by Fielding Hope

Originally released on Cafe OTO's digital label Takuroku in 2020

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Steep Gloss UK

A UK tape label specialising in collaborative works of all things sound-art, dada, abstract, conceptual, sinister, delirious, melancholy, unclassifiable, bewildering, dislocating etc... from duos and upwards.

Please note: we do not release solo works, only collaborations. Please do not send us solo submissions - they will be ignored. ... more

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