What Paranoid Foundation did next...

It's been a while since there was any Paranoid-related news! While our indefinite hiatus continues, both Crispin and Andy have been working on their own projects.

Crispin has been releasing music prolifically over the last couple of years under the 'AmberHours' moniker. You can find a large part of his catalogue on his Bandcamp page - https://amberhours.bandcamp.com/ It's an uncompromising experimental electronic project, with further releases to be found on Soundcloud and Spotify.

Meanwhile, Andy has just released his first EP (CD and download) with his wife, Joanna under the name 'Vanishing Faces'. This is a hybrid of folk and glitchy electronics. File under Folk Horror! It can be found here - https://vanishingfaces.bandcamp.com/releases

We'll endeavour to provide more frequent updates in the future. Stay Safe!

Side-Line Magazine review 'Thaw'

Belgian magazine Side-Line have reviewed our last album, 'Thaw'...


Paranoid Winter – Thaw (CD Album – Paranoid Winter)

Genre/Influences: Dark-ambient, soundscape.

Background/Info: Paranoid Foundation often adapted their band name in function of their work. Set up by Crispin Lee, the British project now strikes back as Paranoid Winter, which is a name devoted to the Winter solstice for which this 5-track album has been written.

Content: “Thaw” sounds like a paranoid sonic universe, but first of all remains a poignant, ambient work. The songs are pretty minimal-like. There’s a scary and disturbing ambiance hanging over the production, which is empowered by spooky, half-spoken vocals.

The work sounds like a rite, which doesn’t give you the feeling to be devoted to Winter, but to evil forces. The tracks have been accomplished by numerous sonic treatments, and there’s also the surprising appearance of a clarinet. This is a chilling and desolate opus, revealing a few more elaborated passages during the final part.

 + + + : I like the progression of the song writing while the ghost-like male and female vocals add an extra frightening touch. This is ambient music with a strong visual appeal.

 - - - : A few passages are missing an apotheosis and are stagnating in monotone constructions. 

Conclusion: Paranoid Foundation remains a scary sonic trip, mixing minimalism and haunting atmospheres.

 Best songs: “Words (Fail Us)”, “Narratives”, “Presentations”.

 Rate: (7).

Paranoid Podcast - Episode 23 now online!

Attention music lovers! After an 18-month hiatus, the Paranoid Podcast has returned. Episode 23 features a 30-minute/14-track mini-album of brand-new, instrumental electronica. Expect the usual dark, unsettling ride to the paranoid side. Industrial synths, rattling drum machines and ponderous bass collide in a set entitled 'All Change'.

Subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts app (search Paranoid Podcast) or get it here... http://www.jellycast.com/directory/index.php

Over and out...

Texture review 'Thaw'

Canadian music ezine 'textura' has reviewed our latest album 'Thaw', read it HERE

Dream Logic

Yesterday we were pleased to announce the release of our new album 'Thaw', and today we have a brand new track on our Soundcloud to announce. 'Dream Logic' is a contemplative piece, again on the theme of winter - something I put together quickly using a sample of Iona Leigh's folk vocals and some of Crispin's spoken word, wrapped up in a liberal dose of electronic beats and fx. It is rather rough and ready, but hopefully worthy of a listen!

Tune in for free HERE

Andy

The new album is out TODAY!!!

Paranoid Winter - 'Thaw' has finally been unleashed upon an unsuspecting world! Just in time for the winter solstice, this 5-track album is perhaps our finest work yet.

This is deep, dark and wintry ambient electronica. Across its 37-minute duration it features the male/female vocal interplay of Cris and Claire set upon a hallucinatory soundworld made up of glacial synthesizers, ghostly clarinet and a bewildering array of field recordings and manipulated acoustic instruments.

Best listened to late at night in a darkened room, the overall effect is highly trance-inducing with icy atmospheres entirely befitting of the season. Tetsu Okada's amazing cover art gives a perfect visual representation of the music for all the many synaesthesiasts out there!

'Thaw' is available now for download and streaming - on Spotify, iTunes/Apple Music, Amazon and other major retailers. Wrap up warm, for it is sure to be a Paranoid Winter...

Another Paranoid Winter track on the Soundcloud...

With the release of the Paranoid Winter 'Thaw' album imminent (21st December!), here is another track to whet your appetite. Not featured on the album, instead this is taken from the original Paranoid Winter EP, which was featured on our Paranoid Podcast Autumn 2014.

It includes the vocals of Claire Norman and Cris Lee, set against dissonant guitars, clarinets and electronic manipulation.

Listen HERE

New album...

Our new album, Paranoid Winter - Thaw, will be released on December 21st 2015 on our own Paranoid Foundation label. Sample track on our Soundcloud. Some info...

Paranoid Winter’s debut album, ‘Thaw’, is the follow-up to the group’s self-titled, six-track EP, which was released as a free podcast in late 2014 via the Paranoid Foundation website. As with the EP, ‘Thaw’ includes the vocals of Claire Norman and Cris Lee, but is a rather different proposition than their earlier work. Where the EP had a running time of just under thirteen minutes, the five tracks that make up ‘Thaw’ run to the princely total of thirty-seven minutes.

‘Thaw’ was recorded in various locations over the second half of 2014 as Cris attempted to settle back into London life on a full-time basis. As this album attests, all did not go smoothly. ‘Thaw’ is the (lucky?) thirteenth commercially-released album that Cris has produced or co-produced. Prior to recording the album, Cris had spent much of the previous three years travelling between Canterbury, Paris and the New Forest. The ‘Thaw’ sessions marked the conclusion of Cris’ doctoral studies and there is a definite ‘end of an era’ feeling to these tracks. Deciding that something was missing from ‘Thaw’s initial mixes, the newly-dubbed Dr Lee enlisted Claire’s vocal and instrumental talents. The results are impressive.

The lynchpins of ‘Thaw’ are the tracks ‘Narratives’ and ‘Binary’. These two tracks are infused with a slow-burn arc of boy/girl vocalising, doom-laden reverberation, echo and analogue synthesis. As with the dub bassline and shrieking feedback of opening track ‘Presentations’, fans of Paranoid Foundation’s early, drone-based output will not be disappointed. “Thaw”’s biggest surprise is the microtonal ‘Hope’, which is also Claire’s first solo track: layer after echoed layer of dissonant clarinet create one of the starkest – and most beautiful – tracks to be released by this record label in recent years. Album closer ‘Words (Fail Us)’ provides another bruising take on Claire’s solo track; this time, her wordless vocals underpin a disintegrating mass of synths, dissonant guitar and echoing bass.

The package is completed by another outstanding piece of cover art from Tetsu Okada, who has designed many of Paranoid Foundation’s album covers over the years.

Familiar Places/The Beach (original mix)

Here's one from the vaults. Composed in January 2005 for a live show, 'Familiar Places/The Beach' remains the only track Cris and I have written together in the same room! Never released, but this 15-minute epic is arguably amongst our best work. Find it on our SoundCloud here... Familiar Places
-Andy

Hot off the Paranoid press...

We have another new track uploaded to the soundcloud... Geometry and Chaos
Beat-heavy instrumental paranoid electronica...

Paranoid Podcast 22 - Paranoid Winter

After a fairly lenghty break, the Paranoid Podcast is back! The 22nd episode is now available for your listening pleasure. This project and release are entitled 'Paranoid Winter'. Six pieces clocking-in at just over 13 minutes.

These free tracks are the latest creations of Paranoid sonic pioneer, Cris Lee. They feature the new addition of voicing by Claire, under Cris's experienced and attentive eye. Not to be missed are Cris's driving riffs, layered soundscaping, and raw, electrical grit. Download now to journey through these open runs and introspective, sometimes dark, corners.

Paranoid Winter -
1 Safe Harbour
2 The Drink In My Hand
3 Just Because
4 Beyond All Reason
5 We'll Be Tomorrow's Savages
6 Endure

As usual, the podcast can be downloaded from iTunes (search for Paranoid Podcast in the iTunes store) or you can stream it from HERE

Soundcloud Uploads...

Things have been a little quiet around here lately! Not to worry - our lengthy hiatus is now broken by a quartet of new tracks now uploaded to the Soundcloud. The four short pieces are murky, lo-fi demos put together by Andy while developing ideas for the next album proper. Expect glitchy, dubbed-up, beat-heavy downtempo electronica. Find them HERE

Stay tuned for a new Paranoid Podcast (episode 22). Very soon come!

The review that got away...

Here's a review for Paranoid Motives 2 that we missed when it appeared a while back. It comes courtesy of the Swedish Brutal Resonance ezine and can be found HERE

In other news, we are busy at work on new material. Expect an announcement early in the new year!

Vital Weekly review Paranoid Motives 2

Long-running and much-respected webzine, Vital Weekly, have reviewed our last release, Paranoid Motives 2. Here's what they had to say:

"Paranoid Motives 2 is the fifteenth edition of Paranoid Foundation from England and is played by a group of musicians around Cris Lee. He worked three years on this album. Previously, he worked on projects such as Paranoid City, Paranoid 404, Entity and Paranoid Paranoid Motives. Rory Kettles is responsible for drums and percussion in this album and Ferhun Kahraman for sensitive piano tunes. Paranoid Motives 2 takes you into the dark world in which different musical landscapes support a monotonous narrative voice. In this sense it is a nice sequel to the albums like “Threads” and “Close Down.” The music is hypnotic by the slow narrative voice that keeps coming up and you want to take in his stream of thoughts. But suddenly the song ends and another tone and timbre begins that you puts on another leg. However, the voice remains the same, regardless of how the melancholic music is colored. One minute piano parties prevail, then seeking a bass and guitar parts with a lot of echo or raised punky guitar riffs backed with noisy synth. The music is usually played with a lot of echo and delay, giving the music a spatial character, but also at a distance, because the voice is clear and in the foreground. The strength of the CD is in the psychedelic effect that the voice and echo know to call. A paranoid atmosphere is definitely in the music, the unrest is palpable, but also the melancholy caused when you feel that humanity turns against you. (JKH)"

The link to the Vital Weekly page is HERE.

new album Paranoid Motives 2 OUT TODAY!!!

OUT TODAY, our new album - Paranoid Motives 2. Available as an MP3 download from CDBaby http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/paranoidmotives2 , Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/2/dp/B00BDAW2ES , Apple iTunes and other reputable online vendors.

Dark, foreboding, yet beautifully melancholic atmospheres and post-punk noise...

Paranoid Motives 2 is currently getting airplay on Radio Marabu - one of Europe's finest alternative radio stations on Don Campau's "No Pigeonholes" show http://radio-marabu.de/ and on Infectious Unease radio in Melbourne, Australia with Gordon Taylor... 96.5 Inner FM with live web streaming http://www.infectiousuneaseradio.com/

Discography

We are in the process of compiling our complete discography. This was previously on our Facebook page, until Facebook decided to delete artist discographies at some point with absolutely no advance notification!

Anyway, you can currently find a list of our releases with accompanying artwork in the discography page by clicking on the tab above or by clicking HERE. Soon we'll add the track listing and additional info for each release. Stay tuned!

Next up...

Further details to follow...

New Soundcloud uploads

A quick note to inform you that several new tracks have been added to the Paranoid Foundation Soundcloud page. There are a couple of new and unrelease tunes plus several obscurities plucked from our various podcasts/oblivion! Find it all HERE

Paranoid Radio Vol. 5

For those who Spotify, here's more of the sounds that rock our world. Paranoid Radio volume 5... HERE (will open Spotify)

Paranoid Foundation on Soundcloud

You can now find us on Soundcloud - a variety of audio can be found here for your listening pleasure including sample tracks from each of our 'official' releases plus new and exclusive material. We will be uploading new material here frequently, so be sure to check the page often. Visit www.soundcloud.com/paranoidfoundation