Joe Summers - Good news! by First Terrace Records

First Terrace​ is proud to present Good news!​, a new cassette release by label co-founder Joe Summers​ which sets London street preachers against a backdrop of beautiful ambient textures.

Divided into three parts - determined by the three monologues (recorded around the Elephant and Castle/Old Kent Road area on a pocket zoom microphone) - the thread that binds the music is a deliberately loose and improvisational approach, both in composition and tuning, which mirrors the weaving paths of the preachers message; constantly shifting in tone in an attempt to navigate and voice something intangible.

The tape is presented alongside photographs and a pamphlet, all taken and arranged by Summers. The photographs show the places where the preachers delivered their messages. The pamphlet is arranged from phrases and images cut from christian pamphlets and handouts. Sentences mingle and create new meanings, certain words, though freed from their original context, still manage to carry a religious weight, and phrases sometimes gain a new ironic implication ("the young man wondered what in the world he was trying to do"). On the inside of the pamphlet extracts from the first monologue have been transposed into musical notation.

Joe Summers: electronics, organ, guitars, bass, field recordings
Than Mason: cello
Alex Patterson: violin