|
Biotron Shelf are Murray Fisher (MINT) and Wil Bolton (CHEjU); solo artists and owners of UK electronic label Boltfish Recordings. Biotron Shelf brings the best of both artists together.
Their first release on U-Cover Records '33 Minutes North' offered 10 tracks of sweet electronic landscapes with strong and well programmed beats patterns. Tracks build around crafted melodies, complex textures and warm synthesizer tones, driven by strong stuttering beats and layered with distance voice samples and lost sounds.
Discography
| 33 Minutes North - U-Cover Records - 2006 |
 |
|
| Transmissions - Smallfish Records - 2008 |
 |
|
Reviews of "Transmissions"
Losing Today
"More essential electronic eargear from the esteemed workshop of the Smallfish HQ. No strangers to these pages Biotron Shelf is the collaborative coming together of Cheju (Wil Bolton - head honcho over at Boltfish) and fellow label mate Mint (Murray Fisher). ‘transmissions’ their latest outing is typically pressed on the now standard 3 inch CD-r and strictly limited in number - how many exactly we aren’t sure but you can bet they’ll fly from the racks. Comprising four tracks, ’transmissions’ shows a radical tweaking of the Biotron Shelf sound, this time of asking they’ve shimmied to a certain degree away from their trademark snow globed montages to this time craft a hitherto lighter, looser and radically more liberated body of work, ‘leave me never’ in particular opts to arm itself knee deep in softly lilting flurries of breezily daydreaming weaves of rustic riff loops lightly framed by chattering beat crunches and squelches all bathed in frosted swirls that collectively viewed recalls a shyly reflective OJN / Landshipping. Equally arresting is ‘Marzipan’ which with its opening and closing undertow of crackles and hisses sounds like it been recorded from a slab of dusty shellac, a strangely funky cutie that curiously mooches about in the same slyly infectious and craftily off kilter sound space as the Cure’s ’close to me’ albeit luminated by the twinkle some glow of the impishly nimble nocturnal pirouettes of music box chimes and threaded by some attractively sighing sleepy headed low strung bass grooves that endow it with a push / pull hiccupping texture that sounds not unlike its been swiped from the studio cutting room floor for New Order’s ‘thieves like us’ sessions. Whilst the still landscapes swathes of the ambi-noire parting shot ‘inches away from me’ are smoked with a brooding underlay delicately fleshed with whispers of 70’s electronic swirls while indelibly touched with a strangely alluring sombre majesty as though conceived by the hands of a collaborating Carpenter and Mancini. Those fearing the withdrawal of the meditative lunatic inclines you’ve come to love and expect from the duo fear not - opening cut ’telamon’ is an overdose of gliding sheens of stately glacial wide screen cinematics woven by subtle nods to Kraftwerk and clipped deliciously with ornately fragile wilderness wandering oscillating overtures and sultry ethnic mirages - essential in other words as though you hadn’t already figured that out for yourself."
Smallfish
"The duo of Cheju and Mint combine forces here for a set of purist electronica tracks... with a twist. Featuring a range of interesting and engaging sound sources, including live instrumentation and field recordings, the blend works a treat. Melodic, friendly and warm, this is the style you'd expect from the Boltfish guys and they deliver in a big way. From the off it's clear that this is something a little different to their solo work and the difference lies mainly in the two tracks 'Leave Me Never' and 'Inches Away From Me'. Both have a startlingly beautiful feel. The former uses a gentle, fresh sounding and airy guitar progression with some delightfully crispy rhythms working their way into the mix. The latter is a more subdued, but no less lush piece of work with a clever bassline and wonderfully atmospheric chords and tones working their way into the mix. In between, we're treated to the lively perkiness of 'Marzipan' and the opening track, 'Telamon' with its finely honed rhythm structure and almost classical sounding moments."
Reviews of "33 Minutes North"
E|I Mag - excerpt from label profile of U-Cover Records
"Under the cloak of Biotron Shelf we find Wil Bolton and Murray Fisher, joint heads of UK electronica imprint Boltfish, already familiar to hep electronicats through separate solo projects, Cheju and Mint. The collaborative ID permits them some leeway to play around a bit more at the outskirts of their synthetic IDM with some more questing sound design touches: perhaps a trace of Biosphere-style ambient, suggested on tracks like opener "Offshore," while "Spindle" is possessed of a doleful but engaging Autechral orchestral sweep. Almost like a 40-minute paean to four decades of everything electronic—be it Gaellic, Anglo or Teutonic, it closes in futuristic hymnal splendor with the magisterial swells of the Jarre-ing "Displacement." 33 Minutes North presents a combination of deliberately under-done analoguery and carefully staged production interventions which bespeaks a meticulous technological skill gratifyingly backed up by a guiding sensual/sensory aesthetic. One of the best of the whole CDR series, at least to this writer's ears."
Smallfish Records
"Biotron Shelf is the collaborative guise of Cheju and Mint who together run one of our fave labels, Boltfish. Here they've tailored their sound to U-cover's flavour by not only giving us their classic UK Electronica sound with synthed-out sounds and crunchy beats but also delivering some top notch sculptural soundscape work in amongst it as well as one particularly nice 4/4 Techno influenced track. Deep, friendly and warm sounds that sit happily with their other output but definitely show another side to them as well. Lovely stuff.
"
Cold Room - October 2006
"..You love Mint, you adulate Cheju, you will adore Biotron Shelf, it's worthy of a chewing gum advert, but this one won't lose its flavour after 20 seconds, be reassured of that.."
The Wire - Issue 271
"Another strong release from a label dedicated to bringing out limited edition CD-Rs of high quality music packaged in uniform grey sleeves. Biotron Shelf are Murray Fisher and Wil Bolton, a UK based duo who are unafraid to explore the finely grained sensuality of sound. Over ten tracks neatly sequenced together, keyboards unfurl and sequencers swell; voices lifted off the TV and radio sputter and fade while big floating melodies rise over them. There's an abstract emotional roughness at work here, especially on darker offerings such as "Broken Transmission" and "Displacement", which is onlly enhanced by the clear and dramatic use of levels and fades throughout this bold production."
Electronic Desert - July 2006
"... one unique sounding treat. U-Cover and Biotron Shelf you simply cannot go wrong."
Textura - July 2006
"33 Minutes North, a collection of warm, melodic soundscapes released by Bolton and Fisher under the name Biotron Shelf. With each piece flowing into the next, the ten tracks seem more a suite than unrelated pieces, making for a satisfying travelogue effect. Much like the music associated with the Boltfish label, the pieces here unfurl with graceful calm and are rarely dissonant or abrasive, though the throbbing She Gave Me Dark Thoughts and grindfest Broken Transmission ooze their share of ominous portent. Offshore and the mournful Spindle exude an inviting, almost orchestral sweep while the title cut roots the duo's sound in a lush electronic terrain of minimal beats and silken textures. The disc's most striking piece, however, is Displacement which slowly swells into a grandiose hymn of vaporous ambient, bringing this elegant set to a compelling close.
Etherreal - June 2006
http://www.etherreal.com/magazine/disques/?file=biotronshelf_33minutesnorth
Losing Today - June 2006
"...this sumptuous ten track space suite of sorts provides for a deliciously appreciative floorshow of finite electronic pop symphonies the type of which these days seem sadly lacking no so much due to them sounding retro but rather more in the care and attention afforded to their delivery.
33 minutes north is a 40 minute warmth exuding odyssey of sorts best summed up as everything you probably needed to know about electronic pop in the last thirty years and its various generic factions from the mid 70s Gallic and Teutonic(especially as regards to Kraftwerk as on the numbing motorik futuro android promenade pop of 33 minutes north) nu-music for the masses supremacy right through to the 90s pupils dilated house meets IDM ambient work out structures and all between and beyond. Theres no escaping that the principal reference point here is late 70s Jean Michel Jarre in particular his Magnetic Fields set (especially on the stately Displacement)
and Warp mainstays Plaid (check out the ISAN like dinky diodes in conversation pop of Blind Shim and the lunatic cyclic contortions of the ghosts in typewriter groove of Inkjet Hum), but were Jarre was prone to incorporate bossa nova / rumba interludes Biotron Shelf are mindful of getting the real task at hand done cutting through the melodic dalliances of the French legend to execute a sumptuous and elaborately interloping suite of deliciously crafted dreaming sound-scapes. Offshore opens the proceedings courting with the more ambient invested elements of the acid house club scene paying nods along the way principally to FSOL while the booty shaking sleekly seductive Nervous Systems with its decidedly funky cosmic mind altering aura dips suggestively into Biospheres DNA. Early Warp-isms are the order of the day for the click n blip Bond-esque incidental score She gave me dark thoughts which continues its strain of thought bleeding into the abstract Broken Transmissions itself mutating into the twilight like Chandler-esque bleakly noire-ish surroundings of Spindle. All in all quite gorgeous if you ask me..."
"Purchase now to avoid recurring long nights of disappointment."
|
