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Epic, brilliantly curated two hour collection of new and exclusive material celebrating iDEAL Recordings' (1998-2018) 20th anniversary featuring JASSS, Stephen O’Malley, Jim O’Rourke (an epic 17 minute trance-enducer - honestly worthy of its own LP), Ectoplasm Girls, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Prurient, Puce Mary and many others...
We always say this - we hate comps - they’re almost always shite - but this one’s a bit of a mindmelter, featuring 20 new and exclusive tracks commissioned by label bossman Joachim Nordwall to celebrate the occasion of his label’s 20th anniversary, almost 1 track per year of going against the grain. Trust when we say that Nordwall's selection skills and sprawling network of interconnected artists has yielded a frankly ridiculous tracklisting, including a 17+ minute steamroom special from Jim O’Rourke, a pulsing electroacoustic killer from Stephen O’Malley, a rare new hookup between Prurient and Carlos Giffoni, brand new ambient/field recording peach from JASSS, an amazing fizzing drone tribute to Folke Rabe by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, plus Puce Mary and Jesse Sanes aka JH1.FS3 on fine fine form, and just too many others to mention - over two hours of exceptional music.
The story of iDEAL starts out in London 1998, when Nordwall was living the hardscrabble life: working in an underwear shop near Liverpool Street station; living in a filthy Bayswater apartment; scoring industrial records from the Music and Video Exchange; getting drunk in cheap pubs, and dreaming of starting a new record label and platform. He called it iDEAL, and 180 releases, 20 years later, it has become an invaluable node for non-standard, wayward expressions of modern electronic noise in all its mutable variation.
iDEAL’s success and longevity may well be down to the way that Nordwall treated it as a social and artistic home, offering a place where mutually exclusive styles could bed down away from the mainstream or the genre police, and feed into a much larger, work-in-progress definition of fringe music. ‘The Black Book’ extends, in the spirit of the label, an idealised compilation of disparate possibilities connected by a sense of musical mystery and chaotic energy.
"Twenty. Not sure if its worth celebrating, or mourning. Anyways, we decided to compile an album filled with artists we are very close to, others we admire deeply and a few we feel connected to in different ways. THE BLACK BOOK is indeed a celebration, of musical mysteries, energies and connections. Three LPs, six sides of music.”
We always say this - we hate comps - they’re almost always shite - but this one’s a bit of a mindmelter, featuring 20 new and exclusive tracks commissioned by label bossman Joachim Nordwall to celebrate the occasion of his label’s 20th anniversary, almost 1 track per year of going against the grain. Trust when we say that Nordwall's selection skills and sprawling network of interconnected artists has yielded a frankly ridiculous tracklisting, including a 17+ minute steamroom special from Jim O’Rourke, a pulsing electroacoustic killer from Stephen O’Malley, a rare new hookup between Prurient and Carlos Giffoni, brand new ambient/field recording peach from JASSS, an amazing fizzing drone tribute to Folke Rabe by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, plus Puce Mary and Jesse Sanes aka JH1.FS3 on fine fine form, and just too many others to mention - over two hours of exceptional music.
The story of iDEAL starts out in London 1998, when Nordwall was living the hardscrabble life: working in an underwear shop near Liverpool Street station; living in a filthy Bayswater apartment; scoring industrial records from the Music and Video Exchange; getting drunk in cheap pubs, and dreaming of starting a new record label and platform. He called it iDEAL, and 180 releases, 20 years later, it has become an invaluable node for non-standard, wayward expressions of modern electronic noise in all its mutable variation.
iDEAL’s success and longevity may well be down to the way that Nordwall treated it as a social and artistic home, offering a place where mutually exclusive styles could bed down away from the mainstream or the genre police, and feed into a much larger, work-in-progress definition of fringe music. ‘The Black Book’ extends, in the spirit of the label, an idealised compilation of disparate possibilities connected by a sense of musical mystery and chaotic energy.
"Twenty. Not sure if its worth celebrating, or mourning. Anyways, we decided to compile an album filled with artists we are very close to, others we admire deeply and a few we feel connected to in different ways. THE BLACK BOOK is indeed a celebration, of musical mysteries, energies and connections. Three LPs, six sides of music.”
Details
Cat. number: iDEAL175
Year: 2018
