Hannah Jones is best known as the percussionist for Circulatory System and the lead singer/songwriter of the post-punk outfit The New Sound of Numbers, but her first solo recordings were experimental pieces released under the name Lorkakar.

Lorkakar: The First of the Lost Signals was recorded on two four-track cassette recorders, and featured a stirring ambient landscape of dense forests and buzzing circuitry. It was released on a beautifully decorated CD-R as part of Cloud Recordings' series of "Homemade Releases," alongside W. Cullen Hart's field recordings and Circulatory System remixes, and Eric Harris' needle drops and sine wave drones. Lorkakar released a follow-up, The Second of the Lost Signals, which is now...lost (i.e. out of print). When Optical Atlas spoke to Hannah Jones about The New Sound of Numbers last summer, she mentioned that she hoped to give both CDs an official release someday. In the meantime, with no fanfare whatsoever, another underground release from Lorkakar has surfaced at Cloud Recordings' website, as we mentioned last week. Called Bell Notations, it's the first Lorkakar release in about five years.

It's not dissimilar to her live Lorkakar set from the AUX event of experimental music in Athens last year. As with that set, it relies heavily on bells, but also drones, guitar, and layered vocals. It's a dense and complex recording, atmospheric and oddly haunting. If you're on the fence and wary of Cloud's homemade releases (some of them are more interesting in concept than execution), I recommend it. You can grab it now at Cloud Recordings, but be quick, as it's limited to 100 copies.