Soder Malarstrand
Lena Andersson is a fictional character created by Berlin-based Japanese artist Kyoka and Irish producer Eomac. Both met in 2016 during a residency at the Stockholm EMS studios. The initial spark of their collaboration was a joint session on the studio's Buchla system, quickly expanding to multiple other sound sources and instruments. During the improvisations, a call-and-response working principle emerged immediately which joins the special talents of both musicians. Kyoka's free and experiment…
Vegetal Negatives
**Small repress. White Vinyl** Since the very beginning, there’s always been tension between what experimental electronic music sets out to do and what it does. Conceived as a revolutionary language for democratic sonic creativity and communication, attempting to liberate creators and listeners alike - pushing them into the unknown, it never fully took root in the popular mind. It was, for a time, too wild for all but most adventurous minds. These days, however, it can often feel like that great…
Nimiia Vibie
Aspiring to connect with a world beyond our consciousness and our planet, nimiia vibié sounds the interactions between a neural network, audio recordings of early Martian language, and microscopic footage of extremophilic space bacteria. Here, the computer is a medium, channeling messages from entities that usually cannot speak. However, it is also an alien of our creation. Drawing on nimiia cétiï, Jenna Sutela's project on machine learning and interspecies communication, the record manifests a …
Spazi Futuri
**300 copies, clear vinyl** Brilliant collaborative debut album of riveting noise and widescreen synths by Merzbow and Posh Isolation’s Vanity Productions featuring two longform, elemental works transmuting worries about ecological disaster into a torrent of spirit-gnawing, experimental noise that surpasses the sum of its parts. Masami Akita and Christian Stadsgaard both hail from places with a lot of coastline vulnerable to sea level rises, ‘Coastal Erosion’ sees them grasp the nettle of impen…
Byzantine Private Cia
Vatican Shadow's impossible to find early tapes finally arrive on vinyl, kicking off a completist series of new Dubplate & Mastering remasters with a first volume featuring: Byzantine Private CIA (2010), Mural of Saddam (2011), and Yemeni Commandos (2011). Arriving under a shroud of anonymity in 2010 with the four tracks of Byzantine Private CIA, Vatican Shadow has since become one of the most vital projects manned by Dominick Fernow (Prurient, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement). Daring to grasp …
An empty bliss beyond this world
2019 Limited repress. CD Edition. The second album from James Leyland Kirby's alias The Caretaker, originally released in 2011 following 2008's Persistent Repetition Of Phrases (HAFTW 003CD). By now regarded an absolute classic of haunted ambient music, An Empty Bliss Beyond The World returns the doddering protagonist to the deserted ballroom, wandering its waxed floor and dilapidated grandeur in an attempt to capture an era which has long since disappeared but still haunts the atmosphere. James…
Laughing Afternoon
Mannequin Records and Platform 23 come together to start a series of stand-alone reissues of the music of post-punk / industrialists Bourbonese Qualk, starting with their 1983 album Laughing Afternoon. Formed in Southport during the late-70s, the band came to prominence out of South London's squat scene via their own Recloose Organisation. Early releases including the band's first experiments put to tape and the now highly sought after Sudden Departure compilation featuring luminaries Colin Pott…
Music For Deathbeds
As with the first SchleiBen series, Emotional Response follows the
success of the second set of split releases with a stand-alone album by
one of the highlights, in Neil Tolliday. Recorded over a 17-year period,
the ambient, drone and noise pieces collected here offer a glimpse in
to the depth of a supremely talented, thoughtful and at times, troubled
musical mind. As his love for house music and the success of his Nail
moniker grew and waned during the ascent 90s boom, there followed his …
Bamboo Music
Stemming from Jacobus Derwort’s 1987 solo debut tape ‘Bamboo’, this expanded and reshuffled compilation of ‘Bamboo Music’ celebrates more than 30 years of J. Derwort’s deeply focussed yet dilated and richly spirited recordings which have come to define an etheric strand of late ‘80s ambient pursuits. Pairing his gentle, breezy gestures with spongiform layers of subbass, colourful canopies of bird calls and trickling, fluid electronics, the recordings speak to a bucolic and blessed conception of …
Dots
First time vinyl (2LP) pressing of Atom Heart’s 1994 ambient album as Dots, originally released by his mighty Rather Interesting label and now newly prepped by Uwe Schmidt himself and cut by Noel Summerville for Astral Industries. Modestly self-described by Schmidt aka Dots as “elevator music”, the project’s only release is defined by its spacious parameters and paucity of palette, using icy arps and plangent bleeps to connote a wide, free-floating sense of vastness and airy detachment. If it is…
Nachtmuziek
Belgian artist Bernard Zwijzen, aka Sonmi451, has for over a decade now been quietly making some of the most luscious ambient we’ve heard here at AI-HQ. We are delighted to announce him as part of the Astral family with this six-track EP - Nachtmuziek - sit back, tune in and drift away.
The Mantra Recordings
Dedicated to the life and work of Robert Lax (1915-2000), the American poet who lived on Patmos, Greece, as a self-exiled hermit since the 60s. Jack Kerouac called Lax “one of the great original voices of our times, a Pilgrim in search of beautiful innocence”. The Chi Factory would like to give special thanks to his good Patmian friends Ulf Knaus and Nikos Eliou, who showed us his house on Patmos (everything is still the same since he left) and also his favourite old wooden door (see leaflet). H…
Portastudio Ambient Tapes
Unreleased synth based ambient creations from mid-'80s by "After the break-up of seminal punk-funkers Liquid Liquid, band member Dennis Young found himself at a bit of a loose end. He busied himself by making funny little new age/ambient creations in his bedroom on some synths and a Tascam tape recorder. Many of these curios have never seen light of day, so it’s a real treat that Inner Mood have managed to lock down a trio of tracks for the Portastudio Ambient Tapes. These are gorgeous, often be…
Dreamtime Return
2018 re-release, 30th Anniversary Remastered Edition. California ambient pioneer Steve Roach released Dreamtime Return, arguably his finest album, in 1988 following extensive travels to the Australian outback. The word "dreamtime" refers to the Australian Aboriginal belief system, specifically to their notion of the distant past and its inhabitants. Though now considered a dated and anthropologically inaccurate term based on the faulty interpretation of an Aboriginal concept, in the '80s it was …
Verboden Dromen
Shakti , a three-man formation around “Praga Khan”. With this first mini-lp Praga once more proves his capability to drill into new rhythmic territories. Demonic Forces is a dance record. Western discotheque rhythmics mixed with Eastern influences. A unique creation that certainly can be called astonishing. The use of original Eastern instruments gives the whole an extra mystik dimension. With the help of some friends amongst whom a.o. Naburak Pran, Shakti succeeds in attaining an unparalleled a…
Missing Link
Studio Mule presents Missing Link, a collection by Japanese living legend electronic producer Takayuki Shiraishi. Missing Link is a collection of unreleased material recorded in the late '80s. Shiraishi started his career in working with BGM, who released material on the Japanese experimental label Vanity Records. Their one and only album Back Ground Music (1980) has been one of the most in-demand Japanese new wave albums. The present album is unique mixture of dark new wave, post punk, kraut ro…
Institute of Sonology 1959-1969
This is a collection of electronic works composed between 1959 and 1969 at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, Holland. Once again, Sub Rosa offers a chance to reflect upon a rare lineage of electronic music's origins, a revolution of the fifties and sixties when an art form was emerging without a base -- ex nihilo -- a new music produced by machines designed to construct the new. Utrecht University's large complex of studios that comprised the Philips laboratories housed an extensive collect…
Miniatures
Edition of 300. Miniatures was recorded between 2016 and 2018 in Oslo and Vienna. It is a collection of short electronic sound objects, situations, landscapes, or puzzles. With influences stemming from early minimalism and composers such as
Eliane Radigue and Maryanne Amacher the influence of 80s home taper
works such as those of Jeph Jerman’s Hands To and John Hudak can also be
heard in Nelson’s work; eschewing the elements of pseudo-spirituality,
passive listening and pastoral subject matt…
Untitled (9 patterns)
Edition of 300. Music for acoustic guitar and four cassette players. Emiliano Romanelli (b. 1979) is an Italian musician with a background in visual art. His work includes sound installation, live performance and composition; they are based on the generative systems and the perceptual relationships between sound, light and space.
Radioland
**Deluxe reissue of Stephan Mathieu’s beautiful classic album of realtime processed shortwave radio signal, now reissued with an extra CD of previously unheard material. Double CD, 6-panel 350g cardboard sleeve Pantone Black with spot gloss detail. Available in a super limited edition of 200 copies** Recently, the electroacoustic composer, performer, and installation artist, Stephan Mathieu, has been keeping us mesmerized with a sprawling array of archival material, issued and reissued by his ow…