★Astral Industries
Alterazione
"Alterazione presents a critical statement – distinguished by its technical execution and breathtaking artistry. The album itself is a cathedral of sound, each cavernous chamber an exploration of space and consciousness. Presented in four movements (one track per side), altogether they extend as a transportive experience of evolution for the listener.Iniziazione – a steady departure that unfurls like the opening of a portal; a process of molecular transfiguration commences. Panoramic landscapes …
Travel in Peace
J.Derwort (15/07/1952 - 11/02/2019) left all his flutes, old guitars, strange percussion and some weird found objects at the Chi Factory studio. Hanyo van Oosterom went back to Patmos in April 2019 to visit all the magic places where Chi once started. He recorded the basics for ‘Travel in Peace’. Playing and recording these handmade bamboo flutes without the master himself being there was a lonely and emotional journey. But along the way the magic connection returned and the last Chi Factory alb…
Ancient Circuits
Multicast Dynamics returns with a sixth studio album but one that marks something of a new chapter. Ancient Circuits is a departure from previous works on Denovali and one that stands the project aside as a powerful electronic act that tells stories while also serving up heavy hitting soundscapes that are persuasive, unexpected and disturbing. By now, Multicast Dynamics is revered for absorbing and journeying albums that are as immersive as a film or evocative as an audio book. Since 2015, long …
Bioluminescence
"Rod Modell and Walter Wasacz join forces as Shorelights once more to deliver a marvel, an opus on deep sea meditations. The acts herein are engrossing artefacts of sensory exclusionism — not deprivation, for the music is divine enough to take over all sense and sensibilities upon listening. Numbness teases at your fingers as the mind drifts away with the current.Bioluminescence is indebted to all the merits of total submersion; deep drone, glimmering upper reaches, and clattering echoes paint t…
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…
In A Garden of Eden
"Kim Cascone supplies another ‘90s ambient dream sequence to Astral Industries with a first vinyl edition of In A Garden Of Eden [1993] following last year’s Lunar Phase reissue. Originally realised at Cascone’s Silent studios in San Francisco for the Space Age Lounge, “a technomystical chill room in Goa, India”, his Heavenly Music Corporation debut is a typically balmy affair awash with tranquil synths and threaded with tropical field recordings to gently levitating effect.It sounds very much o…
Immersions
Rod Modell returns as Deepchord for his first solo release on Astral Industries since inaugurating the label with his sought-after ‘Lanterns’ EP. Consisting of two stunning long-form pieces split on one side each, 'Immersions' captures the emotive, halcyon sound that Rod has long become synonymous with. Opening with glistening ambient textures, ‘Immersion I’ grows into an 18-minute piece of deep rolling dub techno. On the other side ‘Immersion II’ paints pristine soundscapes of soft, lapping wav…
V2.0-2.9
Rod Modell (DeepChord) returns to Astral Industries’ elevated planes, this time with Chris Troy on a 20 year follow-up to their first Waveform Transmission; V 1.0-1.9 for Silent. With the 72 minute V 2.0-2.9, they present a supremely serene addition to their nebulous catalogue, paradoxically plumbing reverberant, expansive space to beautifully introspective effect. Modell’s signature dub techniques are in effect, but only as part of a greater system of ambient processing, with having bass reserv…
The Original Recordings
Astral Industries pluck out a cult ambient peach for reissue with Chi’s The Original Recordings (1985); a heady collection of communal invocations written on a farm in Holland during the fertile early ‘80s era of new age and post-punk exploration.This is essentially the comprehensive version of The Original Recordings, compiling all tracks from their s/t tape and the later CD reissue - including both Kuhl II and Hopi - to frame their meditative, electro-acoustic wanderlust in all its dreamy effe…
Colours of Time re-interpreted by Wolfgang Voigt & Deepchord
Peter Michael Hamel emerged from the 70s Krautrock scene dreaming of “the blue flower growing between the milestones on the road to a future world-music”. A truly visionary artist who worked and studied with John Cage, Morton Feldman and Terry Riley, his 1980 Colours of Time LP - an epic, sprawling, 22-minute saga - was hailed by The Guardian’s Rob Fitzpatrick as “an absolute masterpiece of skull-bursting, synth-led ambient minimalism”. Thirty six years on, Astral Industries reinterpre…