Electric Swampland Home, by Plan Pony

Electric Swampland Home

by Plan Pony

supported by

21stcentury_card-scenemagfreakster thumbnail

	/

Cassette + Digital Album
Pro-dubbed clear cassette with die-cut pro-printed inlay and on-body image shell print, in a clear library case

Limited to 35 copies world-wide

Catalogue No: CN305

Includes unlimited streaming of Electric Swampland Home via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

shipping out on or around April 29, 2024

edition of 35

Purchasable with gift card

£8 GBP or more
Streaming + Download

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

Purchasable with gift card

£5 GBP or more
Full Digital Discography

204

releases

Get all 204 Cruel Nature Records releases available on Bandcamp and save 90%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Mugged, Confidence Of Crisis, In The Ellington Conception, Electric Swampland Home, For Family, Cruel Nature, Robustly Armenian, Everything Is Like Always Until It Is Not, and 196 more. , and , .

Purchasable with gift card

£54.60 GBP or more (90% OFF)

1.	Travelling There 02:14	buy track
2.	The Village 03:43	buy track
3.	Mud Lily 01:54	buy track
4.	Same Cloud 03:41	buy track
5.	Amphibiman 03:49	buy track
6.	8pm Local Time 04:38	buy track
7.	Night Spirits 05:28	buy track
8.	Staying 03:08	buy track

about

"Electric Swampland Home revels in incongruity, in awkwardness, in otherness, and in many ways, it’s a magnificent representation of life in all its colours and chaos."
- Christopher Nosnibor, Aural Aggravation
auralaggravation.com/2024/04/24/plan-pony-electric-swampland-home/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heralded by Dan Holloway’s arresting cover artwork, Electric Swampland Home is the first album from Plan Pony. You may know Plan Pony aka Jason Kester from Omnibadger, the contemporary industrial noiseniks whose 2023 LP Famous Guitar Licks Vol. III threw the Einstürzende Neubauten rulebook at the computer age. Those familiar with Omnibadger will find traces of that project’s oeuvre on this LP - an ear for brilliantly unusual textures, a finely-tuned balance of rhythm and noise - but Electric Swampland Home transports us to altogether headier climes.

On this record we journey to a place of liminal exploration, a village populated by night spirits, ‘Mud Lily’ and the ‘Amphibiman’. It's a bug-eyed and sometimes unsettling listening experience, at once vividly colourful and yet quicksilver, hard to pin down. However, underneath the album's warping heat-haze lies a playful and enticing energy, one which guides musician and listener to a state of something like euphoria come the close.

Kester’s tools for creating Electric Swampland Home were at once modest and meticulously selected. Keen to invoke the gauzy sampledelic majesty of records such as Madvillain’s Madvillainy and J Dilla's Donuts, Kester worked outwards from a Boss 303 Dr Sample sampler to begin crafting these cuts. Tunnelling down into the capabilities of this small but mighty machine, Kester soon began to augment the resulting beat experiments with live percussion and snatches of vocals.

Kester did so while simultaneously forgoing too much premeditation; “I liked the idea of electronica and very earthy natural sounds going together,” says Kester. “Eventually I started to drift into a little world, and that world became this album. I normally listen back to things I've recorded and immediately hear what should be changed, but for some reason I just liked the music instead of being critical. I'm so used to raging about the state of the world/my mind and making bludgeoning sounds - but this was an escape, no comment on anything.”

The result is a record which joins the dots between the outré explorations of Madlib’s most adventurous plunderphonics and acts like Hype Williams or Model Home. You'll be hard pushed not to be charmed by a delightfully dinky exploration such as ‘Mud Lily’; ‘Same Cloud’s bugged-out grind slurps up everything from blues-rock to the Beach Boys into a soupy churn; the run of ‘8pm Local Time’ and ‘Night Spirits’ drops us into a sunken place of eerie chirruping and far-off incantations - it’s the forest at night heard through a peyote haze.

When one takes into account the equipment used to make Electric Swampland Home and the moth-eaten fourth-worldism of the outcome, it's a delight to find that this record also has one thinking of Animal Collective’s golden period. The simultaneously careful and carefree feel to the worldbuilding soundscapes of ‘Travelling There’ and ‘The Village’ invoke albums like Feels and Panda Bear’s Person Pitch. Both of those LPs were masterful at bringing the bliss while also challenging and thrilling the listener through strange and complex sonics - in Electric Swampland Home, they have a worthy heir.

RIYL: Animal Collective, Madlib, Nurse With Wound, Hype Williams, Black Dice

Words by Fred Mikardo-Greaves

credits

released April 26, 2024

All samples captured on a Boss SP303 ‘Dr Sample’ and other sounds are various effects pedals, vocals and percussion

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Plan Pony September 2023

Big thanks to Steve Strode, Dan Holloway, Dan Rowley, The Audiotape People for the cassette and Michael Lawrence for the lathe

license

about

Cruel Nature Records Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

Northumberland (UK) based independent label.

Channelling sonic diversity since 2013

contact / help

Contact Cruel Nature Records

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Electric Swampland Home, you may also like:

Memorex Mori
by Conflux Coldwell

supported by 5 fans who also own “Electric Swampland Home”
go to album
Cruise Controlled
by Rupert Lally

supported by 5 fans who also own “Electric Swampland Home”
go to album
The Outer Banks
by The Lonely Bell

supported by 5 fans who also own “Electric Swampland Home”

Eerie and comforting, like looking up at the sky from the bottom of a lake before breaking the surface. An Goblin
go to album
Call to Love
by Badlands

There’s a mighty cinematic sweep in the songs on the latest from Badlands, the big and imposing orchestration with dreamlike vocals. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 27, 2022
go to album
Djinn
by Badlands

Sweden's Catharina Jaunviksna, aka Badlands, creates gently glowing '80s-inspired pop - think of it as new wave in pastel rather than neon. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 2, 2021
go to album
Hometown [Original Score]
by Safa

Produced for a video installation of the same name. “Hometown” is full of mesmerizing, endlessly morphing electronic songs. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 16, 2023
go to album
WF 76 - The Xenakis Station
by Audio Obscura

supported by 5 fans who also own “Electric Swampland Home”

Love this, Neil - a hauntingly beautiful audio excursion. Jim Jarmo
go to album