The Digitalis label is a big favourite of mine, even if keeping up with its prodigious level of limited edition output requires a level of watchfulness and of bank balance both in excess of what I can normally scrape together. Even just dipping in and out of the catalogue as I do, I appear to have acquired more than my fair share of wonderfully heavy cardboard-clad drone goodness; the two picks of their year as far as I am concerned being the new duo LP by Scott Tuma and Mike Weis, and the (very extended) EP by Concern.

While I am aware of Scott Tuma’s work in Boxhead Ensemble, I took my eyes off the Digitalis ball last year, missing his heartbreaking solo folk guitar and childlike vocal CD Not For Nobody. For shame. Consider this review my belated attempt to make amends, if you will. Here he teams up with his friend, Zelienople drummer Mike Weis to deliver a beautiful and enigmatic album of ambient guitar-flecked drone. The album is sequenced so as to lead you on a path from light to dark; the first side of the LP showcasing Tuma’s delicate and diaphonous guitar, his slow and tumbling fingerpicking being supported on “Dropsy” by some sterling unshowy work from Weis, who utilises brushed drums and bells. Occasionally, as on “On Cox” a piano emerges unsteadily from the shadows to eke out evocative melodies. Side two is much darker, all dense guitar/organ drone and bowed cymbals. The deeply submerged melodies of “(dub)”, hidden deep amongst the hum and crackle, are even reminiscent of something by Philip Jeck, while the comparatively lengthy “Rubadub” shimmers in the few drops of light which make it through the canopy, twinkly percussion and piano glistening amongst the dense undergrowth.

Concern is Gordon Ashworth, the brother of Owen Ashworth aka Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, although their music couldn’t be more dissimilar. Truth and Distance is billed (in both senses of the word) as an EP, but at half an hour long its running time isn’t far short of the Tuma/Weis LP. The first half is taken up with one monumental, deep, drone (it sounds organ-driven, but I am assured that only acoustic and stringed instruments were used) with its metallic surface battered into light-scattering dimples. It reverberates magnficently for seventeen minutes, finally collapsing at the feet of a coruscating static pulse. The second half is taken up with two marginally less monumental, but no less impressive, drone pieces. The latter, “Heartsink“, is particularly enjoyable, featuring a harsh middle section of distorted strings giving way to a finale of piano, firstly frenetic arpeggios, and then a slow, soft release into silence.

Both of these excellent releases are available now from Digitalis. If you want to keep up, then do join their mailing list for extremely regular updates on release dates (and tour dates, and printing problems, and website crashes…).