| 1 | Beginning Middle End | 7:05 |
| 2 | Human Words Machine Lesson | 5:56 |
| 3 | Leave a Message | 5:00 |
| 4 | Skip | 3:15 |
| 5 | Happy Birthday | 6:20 |
| 6 | 25-02-10-02 | 4:02 |
| 7 | 600 to End | 10:01 |
"'Pleasure Island' is British composer Tim Parkinson’s disquieting and joyous Slip debut: play time in end times. Titled after the Disney adaptation of ‘Paese dei balocchi’ (or the Land of Toys) in Carlo Collodi’s ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ (1883), 'Pleasure Island' is a metaphysical playground of organic and digital cohabitation, its inhabitants pacified by toys and comforts. Alongside Dawn Bothwell, Suze Whaites, Laurie Tompkins, and Francesca Fargion, Parkinson exerts an uncannily emotional pull from an unlikely but potent alliance of ultra-minimal aesthetics, dead-beat drums, junk electronics, and mechanised mantras. Voices are hemmed in by electronic sound. People buffeted around by machines. Words surrounded by garlands of digital interference. Time repackaged as countdown.
Tim’s trash-opera ‘Time With People’ continues to be performed around the world, past champions of which include Object Collection, a.pe.ri.od.ic, Edges, and NEC, and he is a co-curator of London’s longstanding ‘Music We’d Like To Hear’ series. Despite decades of fiercely independent production, this is his only piece conceived of first and foremost as an album.
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Tim Parkinson / keyboards, stylophones, drums, percussion, midi, electronics, sounds, vocals
Francesca Fargion / vocals on 'Happy Birthday'
Dawn Bothwell / vocals
Laurie Tompkins / vocals
Suze Whaites / vocals
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Recorded in London Oct–Dec 2017 & Newcastle May 2018. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by Rick Pushinsky.
Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC
Tracklisting:
1. Beginning Middle End
2. Human Words Machine Lesson
3. Leave a Message
4. Skip
5. Happy Birthday
6. 25-02-10-02
7. 600 to End
Tim Parkinson, for the last 25 years based in London writing music (described as “homeless”) such as recent albums piano trio 2020, an album, Here Comes a Monster, piano music 2015-16, (also TIME IS OVER w/Travis Just) and hybrid reclaimed opera Time With People performed somewhere in some form every year since 2014 (except pandemic-time), and other genrefluid things such as Pleasure Island and recent Oxford Triptych (for Audiograft and MAO), as well as for example five string quartets, one of which is in a large box, written for the Samuel Beckett Centre, all written for and performed by friends who understand like Mira Benjamin, Anton Lukoszevieze, the great Philip Thomas, Mark Knoop, Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker, Object Collection, and sometimes broadcast on BBC or Resonance FM or wfmu. Also occasionally performing on piano or keyboards or objects own music or others (like Foetus) from hcmf to Tate Modern to Roadburn to ATP. Also making a corner in London for music noone else programmes at Music We’d Like to Hear since 2005 and still going strong. More of all this on www.untitledwebsite.com
