Donations are taken via our Bandcamp site where the album is available to pre-order, there is both a digital and CDr version available. Due to the urgency tracks will be added as and when they come in, we’ll release it in full when ready. This isn’t going to be one of those compilations that go on forever with hundreds of tracks, we’re aiming for 2 CDs which is 160 mins max.

On Friday 1st May we donated £500. On Thursday 30th April we donated £500. On Wednesday 28th April we donated £500.

In addition we are now donating 100% income from any of our digital downloads to the cause until we have reached our goal of £1000 £1500 £2000.

Donate / purchase via Bandcamp

Donate direct to the British Red Cross

thanks for your support and kindness.

Consisting of two names that will be familiar to many Hibernate fans, The Sly & Unseen are a duo of Katie English (aka Isnaj Dui) and Hibernate boss Jonathan Lees. Following on from two previous EPs, the duo have now turned their hand to a full length album, producing a collection of warmly immersive tunes that take on Russian folk songs, Balinese gamelan and glitchy rhythms alongside harmonium drones and gentle melodies.

All Similarities and Technical Difficulties End Here and its artwork reference the duo’s desire to get ‘back to basics’ and use solely acoustic instrumentation combined with minimal electronic input. The pieces maintain a feeling of spontaneity, being written largely in the studio and recording techniques kept as true to a live performance as possible.

The album is accompanied by a track by track remix CD including a live version and reworkings by acts including Isan, Memory Drawings, Isnaj Dui, Wil Bolton, BLK w/Bear, Leigh Toro, The Laborer, Danny Clay and Spheruleus.

Written and recorded by Jonathan Lees and Katie English at the Box Factory, Spring 2014.

Mastered by Ian Hawgood
Artwork by Pam English

Released May 2015
Available as a double CD edition of 100 and vinyl LP edition of 30.

Once more the We Like Ambient series of free downloads continues. This one comes from The Sly and Unseen aka Jonathan Lees and Katie English who between them choose 10 of their favourite tracks from the Hibernate back catalog to celebrate the upcoming album release All Similiarities and Technical Difficulties End Here. So we present…We Like Ambient, curated by The Sly and Unseen with Konntinent, Listening Mirror, Visionary Hours, Rion, Simon Bainton, Ithaca Trio, WIl Bolton, Federico Durand, Memory Drawings and Danny Clay. It’ll be online for a short time so please enjoy, share, love, like, tweet et al…. thanks!

Download: https://hibernate.bandcamp.com/album/we-like-ambient-curated-by-the-sly-and-unseen

The Sly and Unseen album can be pre-ordered here > https://theslyandunseen.bandcamp.com/album/all-similarities-and-technical-difficulties-end-here

Following on from two albums on the Preserved Sound label, Footfalls Echo is the latest offering from the British but Krakow based artist Hayden Berry, aka Visionary Hours. Always aiming to offer something different with each release, Visionary Hours uses a wide variety of acoustic instruments to create slowly evolving ambient/modern-classical pieces, full of space and gently revealed micro melodies.

Strings, guitar, vocals, flute and clarinet are all in check on Footfalls Echo. Together with Richard Formby (Spectrum, Mogwai, Dakota Suite, The Jazz Butcher), Berry combined these instruments with genuine tape delay created through a Revox B77 reel to reel tape recorder. Various other tape effects were also used to create warm swathes of sound to underpin melodic lines, with recordings of acoustic instruments being reversed or slowed down before a final mix on to high speed 4-track cassette. Analogue recording plays a very important part in the creation of this album, something that is reflected in the abstracted tape reels of the cover.

Released April 17th, CD edition of 100 in a handmade sleeve. Cover lino print by Katie English.

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Federico Durand is a sound artist from Argentina. Since his debut album on Spekk (La siesta del ciprés) in 2010, he has been constantly releasing beautiful albums on labels such as Home Normal, Dauw, Own Records, Desire Path and White Paddy Mountain. Federico’s work includes lots of field recordings mixed in with guitar, piano, tape loops and many other organic sources.

Música para Manuel was originally made for cassette and sold out during Federico’s tour of Japan in 2014. The tape was limited to just two tracks but for us Federico has extended it into a full length and added 3 new tracks. The album is dedicated to Manuel Mellado, Federico’s grandfather who lost both his parents as a child and was, and still is, a very important presence in Federico’s life.

Mastered by Wil Bolton, art direction by Ian M Hazeldine.

Released March 2015, digipak CD edition of 200 (Sold out) but / Download available

Due out this March, the ep ‘Through the Winter Woods’ from Tegh and Kamyar Tavakoli. Both based in Tehran, this collaborative project sees the duo using processed guitars, synths and field recordings to create densely textured pieces inspired by their urban surroundings.

Both solo artists in their own right, the duo also work together under the name Artirial but were looking to branch out and try something a bit different for this EP. Having gathered various field recordings they began experimenting with new approaches to shaping sounds and textures, resulting in a diverse collection of pieces. The final product was mastered by Lawrence English at Room 40 headquarters.

Lino cut artwork by Katie English.

Released March 2015, handmade 3″ CDr edition of 60 (Sold out) Download available

“Ganymede” is the latest full length album from Ohio based composer Danny Clay. Having seen past releases on labels such as Eilean Records, Rural Colours, Heat Death and Audio Gourmet, each release has been very different but with each there is a theme where his music takes ordinary objects, sounds and ideas and re-purposes them in new, weird and wonderful ways.

With that in mind, “Ganymede” consists of almost exclusively sounds produced by turntables, utilizing found objects, friction sounds, and lathe-cut records of sine-waves, piano, and music box. Many of these sounds have been further amplified by turntable preparations such as plastic cups with needles, combs, etc. and baby monitors.

“Ganymede” was created entirely from the opening bars of a Schubert art song, “Ganymed,” based on a text by Goethe. In the poem, the speaker becomes profoundly allured by the beauty of God as manifested in the emergence of spring. For Danny, Schubert’s Ganymed sits at a strange intersection between innocence and loss, childhood and maturity, the beautiful and the sinister. So infatuated he was, that he began looking for ways to prolong the beginning music of “Ganymed” indefinitely. The notion of a kind of slow, patient, inescapable seduction though sound was of enormous interest to him, made all the more fascinating by the ominously complex undertone of Ganymed’s abduction in other versions of the Greek myth.

This is the kernel from which this album began – a simple melody washing against the ear gently, insistently, pulling one’s thoughts and desires into deeper, darker mental chambers, drifting quietly into eternity.

Mastered by Fraser McGowan

Releases 13 February 2015, digipak CD edition of 100 (Sold out), Download available

Memory Drawings is the project of Minneapolis hammered dulcimer player Joel Hanson, Hood co-founder Richard Adams and former Lanterns on the Lake violinist Sarah Kemp. Their second album “There Is No Perfect Place” (Hibernate) has garnered plentiful critical praise and the band has gained a larger audience via repeated plays on Gideon Coe’s show on BBC 6.

This follow-up EP to their album “Their Is No Perfect Place” contains a radio edit of the standout track “The Island of the Day Before”, a shimmering, driving, dulcimer-led, kraut-influenced pop gem with sweeping strings and the melodic instincts of early-80’s New Order bubbling up towards the end. The EP highlight, however, is the mysterious, previously-unreleased title track “Captivated.” With Yvonne Bruner’s Liz Fraser-style vocals floating above an infectious, dulcimer-driven melody, the result is something akin to a collaboration between Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins.

Released: 01/12/2014 / Download only via iTunes, Amazon, Napster and eMusic

Out 1st December two new postcards. Postcard 35 is from Ghost & Tape aka Heine Christensen, a self-taught guitarist and sound engineer based in Barcelona, Spain. On Poble Nou, field recordings, textures and processed acoustic guitar playing present an ep of peaceful and pastoral acoustic electronica of a distinctly warm and ultra-immersive kind.

Postcard 36 is from The Inventors of Aircraft aka Phil Tomsett. A year ago Phil moved to the countryside after living the whole of his adult life in cities. Unsure of what he was looking for, inspiration perhaps or just a different experience. Maybe he was trying to draw on that classic tradition of finding answers in the natural landscape and this ep (and a series of accompanying photos) is both a physical and philosophical document of the first year in his new environment- particularly all those journeys across fields, in complete darkness finding his way by torchlight.

Both numbered and limited to 100 copies.

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Out 31st October two new postcards. Postcard 33 is from Porya Hatami an experimental sound artist based in Sanandaj, Iran. His compositions explore the balance between electronics and environmental sounds utilizing processed acoustic and electronic sources and field recordings. ‘Daydreamer’ uses recordings of farmyards and the sea along with electronic instrumentation to create an atmospheric composition of gently drifting tones and bubbling textures.

Postcard 34 is from Hybernation aka Stuart Bowditch who’s music is inspired by location and everyday life. Using site specific recordings to create rhythmic, melodic pieces to create something both abstract and accessible, Hybernation’s work crosses the boundaries of straightforward field recordings and electronica. A continuation of sorts from his Rural Colours release ‘Metal Studies’, ‘The Old Waterworks’ is comprised of several pieces, each using only one sound source to create jittery beats and thudding bass lines, all taken from everyday objects.

Both numbered and limited to 100 copies.

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There is No Perfect Place” is the second full length album from Anglo-American chamber-folk outfit Memory Drawings. Led by the beguiling hammered dulcimer of Morocco-based American Joel Hanson, ‘There Is No Perfect Place’ features Richard Adams (Hood/The Declining Winter) and Sarah Kemp (Lanterns on the Lake) on guitars and violin respectively. The album showcases a wide palette of sounds delving into Talk Talk atmospherics (‘There is A World Without You’) uplifting ethnic tinged pop (‘Then and Now’), kraut driven experiments (‘The Island of The Day Before’) alongside Basinski – style piano pieces (‘In the House at Midnight”) and glistening examples of the kind of Badalamenti influenced instrumentals that littered their debut album ‘Music For Another Loss’ (Second Language, 2012).

The album was recorded with Leeds based engineer Ross Halden and in Richard Adams home studio in York with guest spots from Florence Fawcett (Glissando), Gareth S Brown (Hood) and Canadian multi-instrumentalist Chris Tenz. The first 200 copies of the album comes with a bonus CD containing remixes by The Sly and Unseen, Benoit Pioulard, William Ryan Fritch, Pausal, A New Line (Related), and Talvihorros.

Released August 18th 2014

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Seismology sees the soaring romanticism of Olan Mill combined with the mind-bending noise of Keung Mandelbrot. Between them they have graced labels such as Highpoint Lowlife, Preservation, Facture and Serein and shared a stage with the likes of Svarte Greiner, Kemper Norton, Simon Scott and Isan. In his solo work, Keung Mandelbrot focuses on experiments in guitar manipulation, using effects pedals and samplers to create intense soundscapes that take the listener from immersive drones to twitchy static. Olan Mill is well known for his expansive take on modern classical and incorporates strings, woodwind, piano and vocals alongside his processed guitar.

Despite having been friends for years, the pair had never previously collaborated but one weekend they decided to plug in and play. The result is a visceral album that effortlessly combines the styles of these two disparate yet complimentary musicians, moving swiftly from enveloping textural drones to broken fragments of noise and intense rhythmic pulses. Recorded using guitars and numerous effects pedals, many of the tracks are left relatively untouched from the improvised sessions which lends the album a refreshing spontaneity.

The title, Seismology, reflects the extreme spectrum of sound explored in the album, from physical lows to shill highs suggesting the idea of sound as a physical force. The album artwork was taken from Holger Lippmann’s ‘Circle’ series. Each image has an organic quality that alludes their generated inception. There’s a real chaos which is gently refined over closer observation – something we hope people find in the music.

Released June 6th 2014 on CD with the first 100 copies including a bonus disc.

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Artwork by Holger Lippmann www.e-art.co

With his solo project, David Newlyn has been creating atmospheric, textural music since 2007. Known to Hibernate fans for a collaborative EP with Yellow6 back in 2011 he has also had numerous works released on labels such as Cotton Goods, Time Released Sound, Tokyo Droning and Flaming Pines.

Based just outside Durham city, David combines electronics with guitars, keyboards and fretless bass to create hazy melancholic pieces. His latest album, ‘Disintegrating Suburban Dream’ sees David’s love of exploring and photographing derelict or abandoned places translated into a series of twelve impressionistic studies that focus on time and place. Alongside the markedly more acoustic instrumentation than his previous work lie spur of the moment field recordings made simply on a phone or camera, making a feature of the hiss and grit generated by these recordings.

A celebration of dereliction, David Newlyn’s latest work succeeds in drawing the listener through its crumbling corridors as distant, decaying melodies act as a backdrop to ghostly chatter through a layer of fog.

Released 28th March 2014 on limited edition CD

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Ashlar is the collaborative project of Wil Bolton and Phil Edwards. Although Wil is from Essex and now living in London, he lived in Liverpool for several years, during which time he met and began working with Phil, who lived nearby. Wil Bolton is no stranger to hibernate having released two albums, Time Lapse in 2010 and Under A Name That Hides Her in 2012, as well the postcard ep Silver in 2012. In addition Wil has recorded for Home Normal, Time Released Sound, Rural Colours and Cathedral Transmissions. For his solo outings, Phil Edwards records under the PJE guise and has releases on Cathedral Transmissions, U-Cover and Twisted Tree Line. Together as Ashlar they’ve recorded one other album, Saturday Drones which came out on Time Released Sound back in 2012.

Recorded over several Saturday afternoon sessions, the duo’s second album, St James’ Gardens, began with and was inspired by field recordings made in and around the Liverpool park of the same name. This long, narrow park and cemetery nestles below ground level behind Liverpool Cathedral. Although the tracks are largely improvised, the rough sketches created by the collection of field recordings were later worked on in Wil’s nearby studio using a combination of hardware and software. The duo processed acoustic and electric guitars, electric piano and analogue synthesizer using guitar pedals, loopers and laptop to create an atmospheric collection of tracks which change the everyday sounds of a city park into something new.

Released 14th February 2014 on limited edition CD

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Conceived as an organic expression of wide open spaces inspired by coastal visits, “Visiting Tides” is the debut album from British musician Simon Bainton. Previously, Simon contributed “Sun Settlings” to our postcard series, although he is perhaps better known as one half of the duo Pausal – who have released on the likes of Barge Recordings, Students Of Decay and Highpoint Lowlife. His work with Pausal has seen him share the stage with artists such as Grouper, Mountains, Stars of the Lid, Chihei Hatakeyama and Greg Haines.

The album draws from an entirely acoustic palette of instruments including piano, acoustic guitar, voice, harmonica, flute, wind chimes and also features the unmistakable cello of Danny Norbury. These are bound together by an array of sampled vinyl records, field recordings and answer phone messages, all processed and arranged on laptop.

The two sides of the resulting album can almost be seen as ‘night’ and ‘day’, with the first half setting a calming yet slightly sombre tone and the second adopting a warmer and more ecstatic feel. The seven pieces are all named after different coastal areas that have inspired Simon, each one blending seamlessly into the next to provide a continuous listening environment which you can truly sink into.

Released August 2013, a limited edition LP release of 150.

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