MuhMur Radio Broadcast #286 : 26 October 2025.

 

A special broadcast, for the second time in thirteen years MuhMur Radio has a live performance in the studio. In August 2018 Nocturnal Emissions came into the studio to perform 'Wireless Broadcast', and tonight Soloman Tump came into the studio for a live improvised performance. 

Soloman Tump is the project of Andrew Fletcher. Earlier this month I interviewed Andrew for ReMuhMuration. The full interview can be found here : 

https://remuhmuration.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-muhmur-radio-soloman-tump-interview.html

There is also a link to the performance in the interview (just in case you don't want to listen to the whole show). In celebration of the performance the rest of the show is built of tracks by 'solo performers / projects'. * I know in the broadcast I mention that all tracks are by "Solo Men", I know Sirpa Kalla is a solo female sound artist, I wasn't go to play "Oodi Variksille", but I brought it off the subs bench (so to speak) as I forgot to bring my copy of Elton Motello's "Jet Boy Jet Girl" single! 

Playlist :

01: Nurse With Wound : "All The Dead Men" (Lenka Lente) 2025.

02: Ekoplekz : "Fluktuate" (More Than Human) 2014.

03: Dale Cornish : "New Chest" (The Death Of Rave) 2025.

04: Bruce Gilbert : "Where Did The Time Go?" (Mute Records) 1996.

05: Coagulant : "Interiors" (Kringloop Kassettes) 2025.

06: Mark Vernon : "Spectral Marketplaces" (Flaming Pines) 2025.

07: Soloman Tump : "Shewte Rights" (Human Geography Recordings) 2023.

08: Söldnergeist : "Terror (Part One)" (Pure) 2001.

09: Linekraft : "One Kills One" (Tesco Organisation) 2021.

10: Soloman Tump : "Live At SoundArt Studio" 2025.

11: The New Blockaders : "TNB : The Musical!" (Not On Label) 2025.

12: Cheapmachines : "Safeword" (Harbinger Sound) 2008.

13: Putrefier : Sonictrashelectronicasmith" (Birthbiter) 1999.

14: Hyware : "Hypercieve" (Kringloop Kassettes) 2025.

15: Duncan Harrison : "Guardian Dreams" (Adhuman) 2025.

16: Modelbau : "Superimproved" (Grisaille) 2025.

17: Rainier Lericolais : "Fügung Und Niedergang" (Geräuschmanufaktur) 2014.

18: Altar Of Flies : "A Lifetime. Life. Time" (Satatuhatta) 2025.

19: Baudouin De Jaer : "Assiisen = Des = Mittels = Landes" (Sub Rosa) 2011.

20: Organum : "HORII" (L.A.Y.L.A.H. Antirecords) 1986.

21: Dale Cornish : "Bring Out Your Dead" (The Death Of Rave) 2025.

22: Sirpa Kalla : "Oodi Variksille" (Hyster Tapes) 2025.

23: Kevin Hewick : "Haystack" (Les Disques Du Crépuscule) 1980.

24: Secret Cinema : "Under My Skin" (Carnifex Recordings) 1987.

25: Soloman Tump : "Roamer" (Intrusive Signals) 2025.

26: Throbbing Gristle : "Weeping".

The broadcast has been archived on MixCloud, split in to two for easier aural digestion. Part Two starts with The New Blockaders ... 

Part One: https://www.mixcloud.com/muhsteve/muhmur-radio-broadcast-26-october-2025-part-one/

Part Two: https://www.mixcloud.com/muhsteve/muhmur-radio-broadcast-26-october-2025-part-two/

The New Blockaders track was kindly sent by Richard Rupenus and broadcast with his permission. Last broadcast featured tracks from compilation albums. The Kevin Hewick track is from the cassette "From Brussels With Love" and the Secret Cinema track is from the unreleased compilation CDR of Carnifex Recordings projects. Secret Cinema was the project of Gary Warmington. Gary, myself and Andy (Wright) were Rise, also a Carnifex Recordings project. I know Throbbing Gristle were not a solo project. On the "D.o.A. Third And Final Report" album each member has a solo piece and "Weeping"is a solo piece by Genesis P-Orridge.  

As always, thanks to Chris and Tamsin and a Huge thanks to Andrew. Next MuhMur Radio is on November 23. 

                                                              Soloman Tump & Chris.

                                                                       Table Of Elements.

                                                                     Live in the Studio.

              

The MuhMur Radio Soloman Tump interview ..

First of all, I would love to know about the music you listened to in your teenage years .

 My parents listened to a lot of Rod Stewart so I absorbed a lot of his work at an early age. And then some Meatloaf - Bat Out Of Hell I (and to a lesser extent II), which i've since introduced my kids to. I grew up in a little town called Carterton in Oxfordshire, which did have Ginger Records store for a while, selling mainly rock and classical tapes and CDs. The tiny studio upstairs was where John Peel filmed some of his Sounds of the Suburbs Oxford edition, interviewing Lab 4 up there. I would go in and buy tape then CD singles on a regular basis with my pocket money. I suppose we are talking early to mid 90s, and I was a Blur fan (still don't like Oasis). I think my first exposure to rave / jungle would have been 1995 with the CD single of Shaggy's Boombastic, the fantastic Firefox & 4-Tree Bassboom Remix which I just listened to again and it's kinda fun. But I quickly strayed from the mainstream sounds and Ginger Records didn't get too much of my money after that, maybe just to buy the new Prodigy or Chemical Brothers singles when they came out. I would stay up late to listen to John Peel like all the cool kids did, taping some of the sessions (such as Kemistry & Storm which I've still got on C60, it's on youtube if you want to hear a proper masterclass in decent drum and bass). Music has never really been a deal with my family, so I've grown up as an outsider in that respect. We never went to live concerts or anything. I remember having a sleepover at a friends house in Lechlade and his older brother came back about 9 in the morning clutching a bottle of water and looking very happy with himself. It didn't take me too long after that to discover what rave music was but I was always just a little bit too young to get into it. Some of the old tape packs with the likes of DJ Hype, Ellis Dee, great stuff. I somehow managed to persuade my parents to get me some belt drive beginner dj turntables and a mixer for my 17th birthday, and would then often visit the iconic Massive Records in Oxford. It was always a great place to hang out in and become fascinated by electronic music culture, even though I was still (officially) too young to go to clubs / raves. Of course HMV around the corner was cheaper if you knew what you were looking for, and there was also AVID Records with the basement full of 2nd hand dance tunes. All 3 shops have gone now unfortunately. Oxford was somehow great for buying electronic music, but never really had a great club. All the music venues played indie rock bands (and mostly still do to be honest). 

  What were the influences / reasons to start making a noise, the inspiration to make SoundArt as were.

 I got deep into clubbing when I went to uni in the year 2000, using and abusing my new found freedom away from home. GodsKitchen in Birmingham was the place to go on a Friday night, lapping up the big sounds of trance and progressive house which had sort of taken over where the rave scene had been killed off by the criminal justice bill. Suddenly it was big money, and I (and my mates) were the target audience. As well as trips to paSSion in Coalville, Gatecrasher in Sheffield, we would travel all over, have amazing weekends, met some great people (many of whom i'm still friends with now, and we still do occasionally head back to those big club rooms). After that honeymoon period of uni I soon tired of the "big" sounds and started diving into techno and abstract forms of electronic music, seeking out smaller venues with less lighting and more esoteric sounds. I suppose listening to noise and dark electronics came about as a way to counteract all the positivity of the big club music that my well meaning mates kept dragging me along to. So I was late to noise as a genre, but it had figured in the fringes of my listening for a while. I discovered Autechre back in 2003 with the release of the Draft 7.30 album which was the recommended electronic album of the week in HMV Coventry. It probably took me about 6 months to begin to understand what it was all about - so different and alien from everything else I had been listening to at the time, but I soon began to realise how important that record would become. And thus this led me down deeper and weirder paths. Diving into anything I could find on Rephlex, Planet Mu, Warp, Blueprint. Buying online stuff from Boomkat and Bleep. Then later when I started making zines around 2017, I discovered other niche distributors and labels like Tordon Ljud, OutsiderArt and White Centipede Noise. I think the first actual "noise" album I bought was the 2016 album by Wince called "Traum" on Freak Animal. 

 Where did the moniker Soloman Tump come from.

 A drive in the country heading west on the A40...you'll find a signpost towards the hamlet of 'Solomon's Tump'... it's maybe at most a couple of farms and cottages in the middle of the Gloucestershire countryside. The remoteness of the place and the name stuck with me as I started recording my own electronic sounds. I bastardized the name slightly as I was a "solo man" doing lonely dismal sounds. I think the Memowrekz album by Ekoplekz was a huge inspiration for me in terms of the lo-fi noisy sounds that I wanted to try and create. In the early days of Soloman Tump it started with plugging a couple of pedals into my DJ mixer; I had a Boss loop pedal and a noise generator synth. So I could sample and loop short snippets of records and layer them with square waves or white noise blasts. All very silly but fun experiments. Then I would loop and layer the run-out groove of records. I don't think many of those recordings still exist. This is a little convoluted but when Dieter Müh was becoming recognised (30+ years ago) a question that was often asked was 'what is the U.K. scene like?' . It was as if UK sound-artists and noise-makers knew each. We were all part of one big club, which back then was quite untrue. But times have changed. Along comes the Internet, file sharing, things like MySpace (R.I.P) and Bandcamp. Small compact & bijou live sound events etc. You have collaborated with other artists, so, What is the U.K. scene like. The whole covid/lockdown thing was a huge creative period for me - whilst I was still fortunate enough to still be working and earning, I had more "spare" time in which I could create. So yes, this is when I started making zines and collaborating. Theo (Territorial Gobbing) ran some online events under the Heinous Whining name which were pretty much essential for tuning in and seeing a bunch of artists from all over the UK come along and do their stuff. Really informative times, and I got chatting with loads of different folks via there, many whom I went on to meet at events like Supernormal Festival or shows about the place. The likes of Blackcloudsummoner, Luxury Mollusc, Knifedoutofexistence.... Heinous Whining also featured the first "live" performance by Soloman Tump, I recorded a video performance which I then edited over with some glitchy filters and stuff. It was fun. Then I performed on other virtual live "noise fests" across the globe that were looking for artists - such as Nim Brut, Wonder Valley Experimental. Hugely prolific times for anyone who was looking to contribute creatively and I do kinda miss it in a way. In terms of collaborations I worked with Lee Riley, a great guitarist from Oxford who I met through an ongoing monthly show called Gappy Tooth Industries. I say Guitarist but he plays it in such a way (with effects) that it's really unlike anything else. Drone wizard, and a great guy. The modern virtual world allows for easy international collaboration too, so I had a one-off project called Clarvont where myself and an artist called Stonejaw from Connecticut (https://clairvont.bandcamp.com/album/the-first) did a faux-psychic "clarvoyant" recording just from a few prompts, each providing 2 tracks of the same length that we just layered over each other. The only bit of mastering I did was adjusting some levels when sounds clashed. Worked surprisingly well to be honest and i'm still impressed at the outcome, a shame we never did part 2. Have I even answered the question? I guess the UK "scene" is still pretty much fragmented but there are great pockets of stuff going on in different towns. Bristol and Leeds seem to be powerhouses in the New Weird Britain sound as the Quietus call it. If I want a big day out of live music it's often far and between in Devon as you know... Bristol always delivers on that front. So yes, the internet (bandcamp / instagram) help to a certain degree with connecting people, but you really cannot beat turning up at a dingy venue somewhere, paying a few quid to get in, and having your ears blasted whilst sipping a random pint of lager.

Has moving down here to Devon changed the outlook / direction of Soloman Tump. A lot of your recordings are made on Dartmoor. 

 I've always been inspired by trying to blend industry with nature; rhythm with noise. Taking my roots of techno music and 4/4 beats and sort of mashing them with the experimental noise of recent years, incorporating field recordings and found sound samples where possible. My first "proper" release was in 2018 via netlabel The Dark Thursday, when I still lived in Oxfordshire. Most of my work since with DIY physical releases were self released, save a few tapes for other labels. I don't think moving to Devon has changed the sound of Soloman Tump more cementing the ideas that I had started with. Grim's Ditch was my first DIY EP on 3" CDr, a great medium that I want to release more of (i've still got a load of them sat in the cupboard ready to burn up). The EP was about the folklore legend surrounding these bronze age ditches, possibly furroughed out by the devil himself. Dartmoor is dripping with dark folklore and i've attempted to convey some of it with my dismal electronics. 

  You also produce a magazine called 'Intrusive Signals'. Is this an ongoing project.

 Zines were a great way to get into the scene and meet folk, both virtually and in real life. I started with a zine called Snare Rush which ran for 7 issues from July 2016, producing a couple a year. These were slightly more electronic / fun focused with interviews, crosswords, art, reviews, silly stuff. Loved it. Then a short gap as life got in the way, before I started Intrusive Signals which only ran for 3 issues from 2021 - 2022. It was slightly more "serious" in tone, taking in more noise / experimental music, drawing inspiration from the mighty Noise Receptor Journal. Zines were great for trading and I acquired a great collection of zines from all over the world for a good few years. I probably traded as many as I sold. The process led me to interviewing some real inspirations of mine, including the aforementioned Ekoplekz and Knifedoutofexistance, Qebrus (rip), Himukalt (recently reprinted in the Sex Works book) and Isnt'ses, amongst many others and including Dieter Muh! Interviewing was the bit that I enjoyed the most. I've been sat on Issue 4 of Intrusive Signals for a while now, never quite finding the right time or motivation to dive deep into it again. I've just not had the mental capacity to sit down and give it the attention it deserves. Recently I've had these internal barriers that stop me from sitting down and "getting creative". I get guilty, like I should be doing some "more constructive". I've found it harder to make music because of this reason too (although this is mainly why Soloman Tump has remained a "hardware" project - as little computer time involved as possible please!). Hopefully i'll get over it soon. Maybe I need the chance of an interview that I cannot possibly turn down! The other thing is that my new day-job contains way more screen time than my previous job, so I tend to spend a lot less time on my phone/laptop in the evenings. I've lost touch with some people, and find less time for the music research that goes into making the zine. But I do hope to return to it at some point, it was very good for my mental health. 

  Can you tell me about your radio programme 'The Tump Clump'. 

 Amassing a great music collection over a couple of decades, it's only right that I get to play some out to people and hopefully there might be a few people out there that like it. The Tump Clump also started as a lockdown project, in 2021, and Chris @ SoundArt was very responsive to me having a show as long as there was no swearing. Brilliant, I can do that. And for the slightly socially nervous me, recording it at home in advance works very well so I can edit out my mistakes. Although thankfully there have been less over time, I could probably do a live show now given the opportunity. The original artwork was drawn up by Blackcloudsummoner, which led to us working on and releasing a split tape a few months later. Each month I slightly altered the original art (different colour filters, moving things slightly, I hope they didn't mind). I know of a few people around the world who listen in each month, but it's mainly nice to know that someone might accidentally tune in whilst driving down the A38 on their way to Cornwall for a family holiday. The Tump Clump is really a melting pot of all the different sounds that I listen to. Be it techno, drone,electronic, noise, soundart, ambient, anything considered weird really. I try not to make it just a noise show or just an hour of drone. There is usually a conscious effort to mix up the sounds and play contrasting stuff adjacent to each other because that's fun. I recorded one show from a forest on Dartmoor. A couple of shows were all from bands I heard at Supernormal the week before. Some were full of exclusives or live tracks sent in by friends of the show. And so this is a reflection on the sounds that I release as Soloman Tump - I can't fully shake the thumping rhythm of a dark dancefloor, even if i'm ankle deep in mud on the moor, clutching my tascam.

The recording of Soloman Tump live on MuhMur Radio 26 October 2025 can be found here : https://www.mixcloud.com/muhsteve/soloman-tump-live-ritual-26-oktober-2025/