Here is a review from The Wire –
Andy Backhouse who is a founder of Focused silence label as well as a solo artist and a member of Guerilla Dub system and a radio show presenter of The Parish news presents a montage or collage of field recorded sounds in Dornoch. A small seaside town in Scottish Highlands have been his intimate, personal constants – his childhood life spent with his father travelling.
Andrew used the source sounds to create a sonic map – layering the cake of this intricate kaleidoscope that sets the picture of his own understanding of rural idyll. While the residents may see it in a different way – he, himself travels inwards to see the truth of himself actively listening and hearing the pulse of awareness and understanding in his own,, private way.
Sound art created through empirical process rather than “professionalism” and as Andrew recalls himself – Carl Gustav Jung’s concept of Personal Completion play here a very important role.
A great soundtrack to discover through your own resonance with the spectrum of field recorded soundscape – delicate, intimate, full of natural wonders and happens to be a very relaxing voyage if you let yourself to be attentive.
Precious conceptual work and listening for Andy Backhouse who he also defines himself as a non-professional artist on his facebook page. This disabled character sees art in a way to communicate and empathize with those who want to follow through its radio programs in the transmission The Parish News but above all through this wonderful work of field recordings realized in Dornoch,
in northeastern Scotland. Birds, noises, water, car engines are suggestions that bring to the same perceptive level completely different people, a sort of effective and well-fitted acoustic abduction that puts order to a much more chaotic reality.• Rockerilla, April ’18 – Translated from the Italian.
Preziosa opera concettuale e di ascolto per Andy Backhouse che si autodefinisce, anche sulla sua pagina facebook, un artista non professionista. Questo personaggio disabile vede nell’arte un modo per comunicare ed entrare in empatia con chi lo vorrà seguire attraverso i suoi percorsi radiofonici nella trasmissione The Parish News ma soprattutto attraverso questo meraviglioso lavoro di field recordings realizzato a Dornoch, nel nord est della Scozia. Uccellini, rumori, d’acqua, motori d’auto sono suggestioni che mettono allo stesso livello percettivo persone del tutto diverse, una sorta di rapimento acustico efficace e ben montato che mette ordine ad una realtà molto più caotica.
• Rockerilla, April ’18.
Andy Backhouse offers up a very personal half-hour soundscape sampling natural sounds from the Scottish seaside town of Dornoch, where his grandmother lives. Indeed, you can hear his granny and a variety of other passing conversations alongside the crashing waves, the birdsong, car sounds, and other slightly less obvious sounds seemingly of cafés or very light industry.
The result is essentially a sonic seaside postcard, and to be honest a rather prosaic one, not really imbued with a distinctive character that would allow the listener to place Dornoch in particular unless you’re an absolute master at recognising accents. Only the anachronistic and thankfully short-lived sampled bagpipe sound that appears out of nowhere 15 minutes in (a recording of some piece of tourist tat, maybe?) places this even in Scotland.
But, thanks to the inclusion of calm lapping waves that come and go, it is very naturally a relaxing and calming thing to listen to- a fleeting bit of audio tourism that allows you to imagine that you are meandering carefree along the beachside, without having to worry about the bitter cold you might really get in the Northerly Scottish town.
Andy Backhouse has generated this work as a cathartic experience, which he describes as being related to his perception disorder, which I’m sure is true although the end result could simply be seen as indulgent nostalgia. That being said, as a sound postcard it is picturesque and endearing.
This short EP is an exploration of sound and percussive atmospheres. Let’s not get too technical, though. It’s a collection of sounds and rhythms that draws on my twin influences; Dub Reggae and experimental electronic music, all framed in the greater scope of my artistic enquiry. […] This EP might just be a soundtrack for zoning out. But, I have paid attention to every detail of the production process to make sure this is a showcase of what I am capable of – there are elements of Dub Production (traditional live mixing on a desk) as well as recollections of frantically searching for a recording device before the live patch disintegrated.
Inspired by Monty Python a founder of a Harrogate radio station reveals his surreal talent…
• Graham Chalmers interviewed me in The Harrogate Advertiser
At the crossroads of genres, Andy Backhouse breaks down the barriers between the music he loves, combining it in improbable combinations, to offer the listener a delicious EP, where dub and electronic experiments merge together to give life to swaying atmospheres.
Beneath an assumed minimalism, Forgotten Machines hides textural subtleties that may escape the first listen, only to appear on subsequent listens.
There is a certain immediate jubilation in the music of the English producer, who enjoys changing shores to land on lands strewn with electronic sounds and turning around to flirt with bass with Jamaican curves, all with a joyful singularity and a certain pleasure in sharing.
Don’t look for a common thread, because there doesn’t seem to be one, but that’s also what makes these five tracks so charming, with their spiraling interiority, music for lovers of immediate pleasure without any hassle. Highly recommended.