Recent Activities

Due to the nature of the web recently, this website has not been updated at all in the last 9 months. Things like myspace have kind of taken over a bit.

With the various outputs of nogroundprocesses the following myspace pages are out there.

For Hurra Caine Landcrash or HL Music http://myspace.com/landcrash

For Daniel Hopkins Films and Personal contact via myspace http://myspace.com/landcrashfilm

For Know Point http://www.myspace.com/knowpoint

For the Record Label http://www.myspace.com/nogroundr

Upcoming

Christopher is curating a screening of short films based on landscape film at the Port Elliot Literature Festival

Hurra Caine Landcrash is Performing in all sorts of places all over the UK. go to his Myspace for up to date info.

Daniel has an exhibition of his film 'Fields that Speak at Handwerkergasse at the World Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte, a branch of the School
of Fine Arts Saar in Germany. This is part of the Virtual Residency Project. http://www.virtual-residency.net

Reviews of the last release on noground-r

HL - Takuma Review from Cyclic Defrost Blog. http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/?p=1149

HL is Hurra Caine Landcrash or Dan Hopkins, English filmmaker, curator, musician and site-specific artist, who is incredibly adept at creating warm soothing though quite experimental ambient music. He seems to draw his energy from his environment, plugging into the mood of his surrounding landscape, into the sombre sparseness of the English countryside. It’s much more explicit in this double three inch disc set, primarily because whilst the first disc is 18 odd minutes of audio, the second is a DVD, which also includes the soundtrack as an extra. And it’s on this DVD that the relationship becomes more explicit, with HL’s gentle ambient sounds seamlessly melding with a slow paced ten minute short film, featuring calming still shots of the local countryside including a grass eye point of view, cloud formations and windswept fields. The first disc, however, features different music, four tracks of warm pulses, soothing atmospheres and vague suggestions that often gently trail off into a hypnotic delay fuelled oblivion. It’s clearly electronically manipulated with gentle beats and odd waves of atmosphere. It’s also a work that is apparently inspired by Takuma Sato, a formula one racer known more for his spectacular mistakes than his trips to the podium. Though it’s difficult to hear the relationship, as HL’s music seems to be about anything but mistakes and words like subdued and morose seem to offer more than in terms of capturing the mood than any conceptual idea. Unless that’s the point, unless it’s about Takuma’s struggle to retain his focus beyond the nagging doubts and his growing reputation for failure.

Bob Baker Fish

http://www.etherreal.com/magazine/disques/?file=hl_takumaep

HL
Takuma (EP)
(No Ground-R / Import)

Émanation de la plate-forme artistique No Ground Processes (vidéo, graphisme), No Ground-r est un label adepte du CD-R 3". Le gérant de cette structure, Dan Hopkins, croisé au mastering sur le disque d'August Stars paru sur Make Mine Music, nous propose, sous l'alias HL, un EP d'ambient assez intéressant.

Sur des textures plutôt sombres parsemées de cliquetis, l'Anglais pose parfois sa voix parlée (Twenty Years, Your Ghost Still Haunts Me) ou installe une lointaine et sourde pulsation. Pour autant, la noirceur n'est jamais complète car contrebalancée par des éléments plus lumineux comme les accords travaillés de Nowhere but Here ou les petits tintements d'Autumn Leaves. Sachant également intégrer une rythmique plus construite, Dan Hopkins la confronte à des roulements peu éloignés d'une rafale de mitraillette et à des plages opaques pour la mise en place d'une ambiance anxiogène plutôt intrigante bien que peu novatrice (Your Ghost Sill Haunts Me).

En sus de ce mini CD-R, un DVD-R 3" est offert où, pendant une douzaine de minutes, la musique de HL sert d'illustration à une suite de plans fixes de la campagne anglaise. Justement intitulé Fields That Speak, ce court-métrage s'inscrit dans la lignée des traditionnelles vidéos diffusées en arrière-plan des concerts où ce type de musique est en jeu. Pas véritablement de surprise ici aussi, donc, mais un savoir-faire indéniable.

François Bousquet
le 21/01/2007

http://spazioinwind.libero.it/extremes/touchingEK.htm

HL - Takuma / Fields that speak (No Ground-R)

Dan Hopkins returns with a couple of 3-inch discs (a CD and a DVD). "Takuma" is dedicated to Japanese Formula One driver Takuma Sato, sort of eternal loser. The four tracks are mostly based on skips, extraneous noise and convulsive rhythms breaking a general sense of calmness, the whole enhanced by deep drones, (s)low guitar arpeggios and pinched crystals, an atmosphere of meagre oneirology at times spotted by voices and external interference. "Field that speak" is a 10-minute film that depicts particulars of the Somerset Levels and Moors, the places where Hopkins grew up and that, according to him, haven't changed since his childhood. Trees, grass and clouds are observed by a fixed camera accompanied by an austere and pretty obscure soundtrack based on droneyish ambient music, mostly revolving around tantalizing low frequencies that electrostatics and various hisses contribute to tangle a little bit. The DVD also contains a data section with a few extras (more films, the soundtrack as a MP3 and "various source materials"). A nice helping of good multimedia art by a talented man.

Massimo Ricci

http://www.textura.org/reviews/hl.htm

HL: Takuma
No Ground Processes

HL (Hurra caine Landcrash) is an alias used by Dan Hopkins who issues music on his own noground-r label, typically in the form of petite 3-inch discs. Takuma is no exception although, in this case, the 20-minute audio CD is accompanied by a DVD containing a 10-minute video entitled Fields That Speak that was also created by Hopkins .

The CD is named after Takuma Sato, a Formula One racing driver apparently renowned for “chaotic performances and spectacular mistakes.” You'd be wrong, however, to assume that the four tracks mimic the high-speed attack of a race car—quite the opposite: Hopkins' settings are uniformly lulling, even plodding, dronescapes filled with echoing Rhodes tones, ghostly guitar ambiance, noise textures, and voice micro-edits. The shuffling beat pattern that introduces the fourth song feels incongruous though its ominous synth sputter and obsessive voice-over gradually align it more naturally to the opening three.

What sounds rather sketchy on CD assumes more significance when paired with the DVD footage, despite the visuals' relatively static character. An affectionate portrait of the Somerset Levels, the peaceful locale where Hopkins grew up, Fields That Speak depicts the natural movements of the land elements (slow-moving cloud formations, tree branches, windswept fields) accompanied by music from the CD (the film can be previewed at http://www.myspace.com/landcrash).