V/A : Bearsuit Records - "The Invisible & Divided Sea" (BS038)

Bonus tracks (exclusive to Bearsuit Records Bandcamp download only) :

18. PoProPo - When Suddenly The Organ Joins In
19. Alexander Stordiau - A Shadow On The Painting
20. Manga Bros - Testosterone (Uncle Pops & the Dumbloods Remix)

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V/A : Bearsuit Records - "The Invisible & Divided Sea" (BS038)

“Is British Culture Getting Weirder?” Here is a label that would certainly encourage the idea of increasing weirdness – this is Bearsuit records in Edinburgh who, for the past nearly 10 years now, have had an unswerving commitment to releasing, as they say, the weird and the wonderful and indeed the wonderfully weird... Here is one such ["Tous Les Rochers" by Yponomeutaneko]
[Verity Sharp – Late Junction, BBC Radio 3]

No two acts featured are alike, and yet they compliment one another perfectly. Bearsuit stand out for their unswerving commitment to the weird and the wonderful – and, indeed, the wonderfully weird. From minimal, brooding electro-pop to experimental avant-folk via haunting, spectral gothtronica, and space-prog in waltz-time, psychedelic dreampop, scratchy, glitchy trip-hop [and] stark post-industrial noise... They’re fearless in pushing the most far-out stuff from the deepest underground...
[Christopher Nosnibor - Aural Aggravation]

That [“Freakshow – Dance 2” by PoProPo] messes with your head doesn't it – but most enjoyable I think!
[Gideon Coe – BBC6 Music]

The seventeen tracks (plus an additional 3 bonus tracks exclusive to the Bandcamp download) are a stunning look into the wealth of talent to be found on this label. Ranging from deep ethereal moods to glitchy electronica, to guitar driven psychedelia and wistful synthpop, this is an album that will appeal to everyone. This album is an absolute must have.
[Floorshime Zipper Boots]

A most enjoyable album indeed!
[Vital Weekly]

This is brilliant! It's a great thing all round. I could've played anything off it really but this ["World Travel Of The Piano Tuner" by Shinnosuke Sugata] did tickle me.... A great label based in Edinburgh
[“On The Wire” - BBC Radio Lancashire]

In typical Bearsuit fashion, the artists and selections run an eclectic gamut from the “electro ambient trance fusion” of Alexander Stordiau to the funky schizophrenic psychosis of PoProPo, which sounds like Medium Medium and Liquid Liquid wrestling with Talking Heads while out of their heads on amphetamines! Bearsuit has always delivered some of the most interesting and experimental music to come out of Japan and Shinnosuke Sugata is no exception... insane genius – like Stephen Foster on acid!
[It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine]

Amazing stuff as usual. Utterly wonderful!
[Mark Whitby – Dandelion Radio]

The latest compilation from Edinburgh label of alternative and post rock mavericks and sonic explorers, Bearsuit Records. A compilation of such extremes : the psychedelic to trip-hop, ambient to orchestral, from the avant-garde to cosmic. Bearsuit continue to surprise; attracting some of the most strange and experimental of music makers, and confounding (in a good way) with every release.
[Monolith Cocktail]

Some great stuff on that compilation!
[Mark Corrin - Salford City Radio]

It's [“The Invisible & Divided Sea”] an absolutely exceedingly brilliant offering again from Bearsuit Records. Might be [Bearsuit's] best compilation to date! Absolutely gorgeous stuff there [“Nocturnal” by Steeples For People] - really, really nice!
[Phil Vickery – In-Tune, Bcfm]

‘The Invisible & Divided Sea’ features a gathering of twenty tracks from pop’s most outer fringe realms. In truth, this might well be the finest thing that the Bearsuit folk have cobbled together to date. [The] Manga Bros, ‘Testosterone (Uncle Pops & The Dumbloods Remix)’ is a strangely woozy weird ear, constantly shape shifting and pulling the comfort rug from beneath your feet, its shadowy chamber grooving part sinister part playful, forges a curious sinister tension that at once knits and unravels with dark seduction twisting and morphing like a distant forgotten cousin from Bowie’s ‘The Lodger’.
[The Sunday Experience]

The sound universe of Bearsuit Records remains an open-minded window upon minimalism- and experimentalism. From cinema-like sounds to funky work to trip-hop rock to psychedelic-rock to experimental jazz to mystic passages to folk experiments this album is a truly sonic cocktail.
[Side-Line Magazine]

Brave, fresh and audaciously original. Track of the year. : Yponomeutaneko - “Jour 1191” (feat. Alexandre Ferreira)
[Submarine Broadcasting Company]

I have come to discover and adore a new, eclectic, musical mix, thanks to Scotland’s Bearsuit Records. In atmosphere, it more than lives up the its name, invoking conflict, despair and in spite of such, the release of pent-up euphoria. The album’s success, therefore, lies in its many vantages: a unique, morphing, vagabond path that’s scary, seductive, psychoanalytical and therapeutic to the ears. It will open your eyes--and emotions--in ways you never before believed...
[Bizzarechats]


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V/A : Bearsuit Records - "The Invisible & Divided Sea" (BS038)

V/A : "The Invisible & Divided Sea" album from Aural Aggravation :
The album’s acknowledgements indicate that the little Edinburgh label has some high-profile and well-respected champions, including Stuart Maconie, Tom Ravenscroft, Gideon Coe, Mark Riley, David Stubbs… and some guy called Nosnibor. I’m deeply flattered to find myself in such prestigious company. It’s no secret that as a music writer, I’m a fan first and foremost, and Bearsuit stand out for their unswerving commitment to the weird and the wonderful – and, indeed, the wonderfully weird.

From minimal, brooding electro-pop to experimental avant-folk via haunting, spectral gothtronica, and space-prog in waltz-time, it’s all here on this latest compilation. Psychedelic dreampop, scratchy, glitchy trip-hop, stark post-industrial noise, and a jumble of all other elements which should never meet cozy up side but side and on top one another. Quirky isn’t in it.

Luscious, sweeping strings glide over a softly pulsating throb, and it’s all very cinematic, very John Williams on ‘Fulfilling Eclipse’, Alexander Storadiau’s contribution to this collection. No two ways about it, it’s a grand opening worthy of JG Thirlwell. But then PoProPo bring a busy mess of high-friction jazz-funk-punk, which just wouldn’t be complete without the wibbly Theremin wails. The weirdy, sultry cabaret of Martian Subculture’s ‘Chewing Gum’ contrasts again.

The reason I love Bearsuit isn’t because I love every tune they release, but because every tune they release opens my ears to something new, and because they’re fearless in pushing the most far-out stuff from the deepest underground. There are some truly ‘what the fuck?’ moments on here. ‘Tous Les Rochers’ by Yponomeutaneko leads the way. Swaggering brass and monotone spoken word breaks into discord and a load of crazed shouting. I haven’t a fucking clue what they’re shouting about, or why, or why the track even got recorded, but the fact it did, and that it’s on here is utterly brilliant. The sing-song vaudeville oompah of ‘World Travel of the Piano Tuner’ by Shinnosuke Sugata is music completely out of time, complete with muffled wax cylinder production.

The Moth Poets offer up some glacial post-punk disco hybrid collision with operatic bombast. Swords Reversed bring a palace of oddball melody and thumping beats, while Petridisch – one of three acts with two tracks featured – cultivate an air of otherness. No two acts featured are alike, and yet they compliment one another perfectly. Sequencing matters as much as selection on a compilation album, and The Invisible & Divided Sea flows nicely.

It’s a gloopy, tangential, often disorientating concoction of disparate sounds that somehow stands as the perfect representation of both the artists involved and the label itself.
Christopher Nosnibor
[Aural Aggravation]

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Bearsuit Records V/A : “The Invisible & Divided Sea”

Staying with compilations, two more to come, possibly more if we get time to squeeze them in, here’s more from that spiffing latest from the Bearsuit folk mentioned here a little earlier, which to recap briefly, titled ‘The Invisible & Divided Sea’ features a gathering of twenty tracks from pop’s most outer fringe realms. In truth, this might well be the finest thing that the Bearsuit folk have cobbled together to date. Always good to start on an upward curve with a spot of Vangelis-esque classicism, for Alexander Stordiau’s elegantly ethereal cinema-scoped ‘Fulfilling Eclipse’ ought to attract the ear of the Burning Witches posse as it manages to simultaneously stride the sound fractures that divide the disciplines of kosmische, cold war electronica and the whole Stranger Things community, beautifully ominous and longingly dream draped in a star glazing symphonic pristine. He features again much later in the track listing with the equally arresting ‘a shadow on the painting’ and into the bargain amid a deeply immersive head tripping mosaic cooks up something that we had to double check the credits to ensure it wasn’t cut by the hand of Biosphere.

PoProPo, we mentioned on an earlier visit, safe to say we are still recovering from the experience, herewith the bonkers and erratic critical meltdown funk struck ‘freak show – dance 2’ – features Theremin’s which gets a huge thumbs up and lock grooves an insidiously fried and kooky motif that hints of a worrying obsessional fondness for John Lurie. Matters thankfully and radically adjust to normality with the visit of ‘chewing gum’ by Martian Subculture, now this is quite tasty, oozed in a nocturnal noir phrasing and to these ears sounding like a lost would be gem left behind in the 90’s fascination for all things heading out of Bristol, though that said scratch a little deeper and what emerges is a coolly coalesced shy eyed 60’s shimmer tone that could easily pass as a distant cousin to Lake Ruth and Beautify Junkyards.

Next up, Bunny and the Invalid Singers serve up ‘Eamon the destroyer’ – this sly to catch quiet gem is adored in all the usual lounge noir tropes, truth be told sounds like a soundtrack orphan from a highly arty 70’s spy flick somewhat lost in the fog of funding and fashion, be warned has moments of fried wooziness. Not at all sure what’s happening on Yponomeutaneko’s ‘Tous Les Rochers’ which I guess typifies the whole Bearsuit remit, again very much cut n’ paste with a nod to John Lurie, it delightfully teeters to a puzzling push n’ pull dynamic that swerves between dreamily dippy Francophile fluffiness and moments of animated agit action, in truth strangely recalls those early Pickled Egg happenings by Pop Off Tuesday. They ‘pop’ up again a little later this time accompanied by Alexandre Ferreira for the ostensibly less skewiff ‘Jour 1191’ – a chamber folk spiritual replete with, is that a, didgeridoo.

As with PoProPo, we mentioned Manga Bros in an earlier brief, here they are again with ‘Stoma’ as remodelled by Harold Nono. Much like the martian subculture track, this takes Bearsuit into new found terrains, a ghost spelled slice of sparsely chilled chamber folk softly turned in an adoring quietly hushed bruising which without warning, suddenly opens up mid way through a turns about face instilling an aura of jubilant awe. Perhaps the sets kookiest offerings come from Shinnosuke Sugata whose ‘Wednesday! (January 1992)’ and ‘world travel of the piano tuner’ both arrive impishly dinked in what sounds like toy instruments and an over anxious vocal, the latter oozed and adored by a toy room parade of brass band fanfares and all manner of tiny tot oddness, all very disturbingly delightful. Ah, The Moth Poets as the title might suggest – ‘the shabby gentlemen’- makes for a by and large deliciously crooked and kooky 60’s styled futuristic spy TV theme tune that you’d have expected to be ushered out by the ITC network, that said mid way through it does splinter and fracture to skedaddle off message in a most head tripping way.

Another of the many welcome finds on this set are the two contrasting contributions by Petridisch in the shape of ‘Le Sablier’ and ‘small train song home’, the former a sublime slice of frosty minimalist shadow playing of the type that by rights you’d expect to pop up on the esteemed moon glyph imprint, simply think Death and Vanilla in a secret studio summit meeting with Tara King Th. As to the former cut, totally different in style, texture and musicality though nevertheless all the more alluring, just love the locomotive rythmics almost hypnotic and eerie and certainly venturing into youthful Stereolab terrains albeit as though rephrased by Pram. Swords Reversed, alas supported by just one solitary track opt for a spot of 90’s nocturnalist ambience with ‘looking for a perfect connection with an imperfect person’ veering very much into Orbital realms.

Been an age since both Ageing Children and Kirameki troubled our listening space, the former applying something of an ominous post punk toning to the New Order-esque though re-routed by Bauhaus’ David J ‘sick puppy’ while the latter disturb and delight in equal measure with the dream draped apparition that is ‘the ha happy app’ into the bargain going very old school Cornelius, though this being Kirameki there’s always room to manoeuvre into the odd. Another previously unknown to us, Steeples for People’s serve up the aptly named’nocturnal’- a beautifully crated lunar snow globe sighed in mystery, magic and a murmuring of woozy enchantment. Which leaves us to wrap matters up with Annie and the Station Orchestra’s ‘song for the invalid divers’ – given the season, a perfect farewell given this comes dusted in a twinkling nostalgic aura that wheezes and shuffles with a warming campfire like fuzzy glow at its core. 
Mark Barton
[The Sunday Experience]

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Many apologies to the Bearsuit folk whose last release of the year ‘V/A : The Invisible & Divided Sea’ we’ve thus far neglected to mention, hopefully we’ll get a chance to inspect it fully over the weekend, though failing that shortly after the silly season. Anyway, to whet your appetites a little two-way starter to get you intrigued / puzzled / indifferent – delete as applicable. We’ll start this brief mention with the end groove track, by Manga Bros, ‘Testosterone (Uncle Pops & The Dumbloods Remix)’ is a strangely woozy weird ear, constantly shape shifting and pulling the comfort rug from beneath your feet, its shadowy chamber grooving part sinister part playful, forges a curious sinister tension that at once knits and unravels with dark seduction twisting and morphing like a distant forgotten cousin from Bowie’s ‘The Lodger’. PoProPo will, trust me on this, drive you to distraction, for ‘when suddenly the organ joins in’ is indelibly fried n’ freaked with the yabbering disconnection of surreally schizoid and scatter-brained rhythmic contortions sourced from a curious sonic cocktail chiefly made up of kooky binary breakdowns and off the wall weirdly funk struck power house electronica. As said more soon.
[The Sunday Experience]

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