isolatedmix 119 - Wardown

Not many producers can create new aliases after 10+ years and still manage to drop something completely unexpected and refreshing.

Peter Rogers’ Wardown project did just that in 2020, debuted on the respected Blu Mar Ten label, the self-titled album found admirers from a cross-section of music styles; spanning Jungle, Drum’n Bass and a strong atmospheric element. Wardown / Wardown was consequently one of my most played and admired albums of the year (finding a sweet spot in the Reflection on 2020 and Atmoteka mixes). I found it near impossible to stop the album once it started, as it flowed easily between stories, styles, and sentimental reflection.

Peter is now set to drop his second album under the Wardown alias, simply titled Wardown II, but those who absorbed the nostalgia from his first, will undoubtedly be confident that despite its modest title, the conceptual approach is as strong as ever, and the music will once again be left to do the storytelling.

Continuing with this brilliant reflective approach from the first album, Wardown II can be considered another vivid capture of one of Peter’s undoubtedly many memories he has begun to create with this alias. And just like his productions, his isolatedmix is a natural extension of this approach. As is the case with many producers in this genre, DJ’ing is integral to the culture, so it’s of no surprise for us to be treated to a little bit of a masterclass with this latest installment…

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ASIP: Many people may know you as one half of the d&b duo Technimatic (and even making an appearance as Technicolour on our Energostatic comp which we were proud to host a few months back). Can you tell us a bit about how you got into producing music and your background?

Pete: I started making electronic music in about 2002. I’d been into jungle and drum & bass as a teenager growing up in Luton, and played in a jazz funk band for many years too. But 2002 - after I’d finished studying graphic design at university and moved to London - was the first time I had the opportunity to buy a computer of my own and actually start trying to create stuff with it.

You debuted the Wardown project on the Blu Mar Ten label in 2020. What inspired this new alias after years under others?

I started Wardown because I had quite specific things I really needed to express and put into music that I didn’t have to the opportunity to elsewhere. Technimatic is my main musical focus of attention and I love it, but sometimes there are things unique to you that you need to be able to say, that might not fit within the canon of music you're making as a duo. Things much more personal. I’ve known Chris Blu Mar Ten for many years and have huge respect for the vision and A&R of his label, so it felt like the perfect fit. Thankfully he was really enthusiastic about putting it out.

Vignettes of people talking about your hometown of Luton open your first Wardown album, (which was a surprise for me to hear, as I grew up in a nearby town). How would you describe your formative years there? How did it impact your music?

Luton has a very chequered past. It’s regularly featured in the kinds of ‘shittest towns in the UK’ lists that appear online. It’s been home to the English Defence League, Islamic terror cells, and is generally thought of as a fairly ugly, non-descript town on the outskirts of London that has an awful airport. But as a kid, I had a really good upbringing there. And crucially, being near London and the M25 motorway, back in the 90s it had a very strong connection with rave, hardcore, and jungle music. Legendary hardcore DJ Swan-E was from Luton, Blame was from just down the road in Dunstable, there were pirate radio stations broadcasting the music 24/7 in the area, and most importantly for me, there was an amazing record shop called Soul Sense where as a teenager I spent a lot of my time, learning and being inspired by 90s underground music.

I assume you made several trips to London back in the day like most music lovers living in the Shires, for the big nights and DJs in the capital. Who, or what was your mecca back in the day? And which record stores were you gracing?

Absolutely. Once I was allowed to go into Luton town centre on my own without my parents, it wasn’t long before me and my friends were getting on the train and heading into London to buy records. This was the mid-90s and obviously long before smartphones and the internet, so on several occasions we went with the intention of going to Blackmarket Records in Soho, but ended up coming back empty-handed as we simply couldn’t find it! But eventually, we worked it out and it was always a huge buzz. Section 5 on Kings Road in Chelsea was another favourite.

In 2000 I moved to London and that’s when my real clubbing experiences began. Swerve at The Velvet Rooms on a Wednesday, Movement at Bar Rumba on a Thursday, but the real Mecca for me and my friends was The End. It’s still my favourite club that’s existed and so much of my dance music education happened there. We went to most d&b nights but the key event for us was LTJ Bukem’s Progression Sessions, which ran monthly there throughout most of the noughties. I think I went to every single event from about 2002 - 2007.

The Wardown debut was one of my favorites from 2020. A wide spectrum of sounds, running from lush ambient pieces to extremely energetic tracks. The narrative aspect pulled me in, giving off a nostalgic mixtape type of vibe. It felt like it was a pivotal album for you to get out into the world given how personal the elements contained within were - almost a ‘letting go’ kind of feel?

Absolutely. During the start of 2019 I returned to Luton quite a bit. My granddad, who was the last remaining family member living there, was ill. So I went to visit him at his home, and then the hospital until he eventually died. He was 98 so it was no huge shock, but when I was back there, these ideas started forming in my mind. Luton was my home town but the last remaining Rogers had now left and there was nothing left linking me to it. But despite losing those roots and living away from the town for over 20 years, it still had this strange power over me and I felt a really deep connection. Obviously, some of that was down to simple nostalgia for my childhood. But there was something else tied up in it. Something a bit more complex. And making that first album was an attempt to try and express those feelings.

That first track on that album (Culverhouse) has to be one of the most euphoric moments to kick off an album in recent memory of mine. I was definitely keeping it locked for the remainder after that beginning! What was the intention with the sequencing of the album?

I honestly can’t remember much about the sequencing of the first album. It wasn’t like I made 30 or 40 tracks and then whittled them down and picked my favourites. It’s a 10 track album and I think I made 11 tracks, and decided to ditch one of them. I wanted it to be a mix of jungle and ambient soundscapes as I think despite the two genres being in some ways at the opposite ends of the spectrum, they also work beautifully together. When I was initially buying records in the 90s, I used to be obsessed with the intros and breakdowns of certain jungle records. There was a run of releases on DeeJay Recordings from DJ Crystl and Future Sound Of Hardcore that had these sprawling instrumental openings that I used to play over and over again. And obviously LTJ Bukem and a lot of those early releases on Good Looking Records are on the same page. That aesthetic felt like a really good way to try and manifest the ideas I was having.

According to your first album notes, Wardown is an attempt to capture what the Germans call 'sehnsucht', an "inconsolable longing in the heart for we know not what". Where did this attachment come from?

That quote is from the author CS Lewis, attempting to describe the sense of longing he felt for much of his life. And I’ve been kind of obsessed with that feeling for quite a long time too. ‘Sehnsucht’ is a German term that gets somewhere close and there are others in various languages. But it’s a very hard thing to accurately pin down and describe. I sometimes feel as though to get a sense of it I have to look out of the corner of my eye, as when I try and focus directly on it, it disappears. It’s often a very fleeting feeling brought on by certain scenes in the world, weather, photographs, old films. A kind of bittersweet, melancholy feeling about the past and things that have been lost. But quite often it’s a longing for things I’ve never personally experienced or may never have even happened.

“at its simplest, Wardown II is a vision of the future from the past.”

The new album is a subtle shift in concept from the original and perhaps a continuation chronologically. The nostalgia is still there, but I’m getting a look at the future instead of back like the first album. Maybe the artwork is subliminally pointing me in that direction too. Is this Luton today or in the near future?!

With the first Wardown album I was trying to evoke those feelings of loss and yearning I felt for my home town and earlier life. And that got me thinking about nostalgia in a wider sense and why it’s so alluring, particularly as you get a bit older – but also why it’s so pervasive everywhere you look these days. TV, film, music, advertising, even politics draws on the past, utilises it, and sometimes even weaponises it. It’s an incredibly powerful thing, and for me it can create a strange kind of ‘uncanny valley’ feeling, as though today’s popular culture has become unmoored from history and its once-definitive eras and epochs. So much of what we consume today is full of anachronism, a kind of rehash of what’s come before. I found myself wondering: what happened to the future I imagined when I was a kid?

I think nostalgia is incredibly alluring right now because the future no longer looks bright. We live now with the looming threat of climate change and a catastrophic loss of biodiversity across the world, not to mention war, economic instability and the rise of populism and nationalism. It all feels just too much sometimes, and nostalgia is always there, showing us how better things were in the past – even if the safe, optimistic world it portrays didn’t actually exist in the first place. In that way, nostalgia is dangerous because it stops us looking forward and taking responsibility for the future, with all its challenges – something we all need to do.

Of course, all this is strongly culturally inflected, and when I say ‘we’, I’m coming from a white, Western and affluent perspective; the relationship between nostalgia and progress is likely to be very different for someone born in the global south. But as someone who came of age in Britain in the 90s, the future means a different thing today than it did when I was a child. Back then it felt like there was still a kind of general, unwavering optimism about the coming years, a faith in progress and a belief that society was on the path to an increasingly better place. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of communism in the USSR and other Eastern European countries, New Labour, the impending Millennium, which felt like the epitome of all things futuristic – all these things pointed to the fact the future was something to look forward to.

So at its simplest, Wardown II is a vision of the future from the past. I decided to give it quite a strong 1950s / 60s flavour, as to me it seems like that is when the idea of ‘the future’ was at it’s most potent. After the devastation of two world wars came the rise of modernism and its belief that, rather than just being an aesthetic, it could literally improve people’s lives through the creation of a new kind of architecture and design. There were the American and Russian plans to send people into space. Film and TV that painted the future as a shiny kind of utopia, with flying cars, and machines that allowed humans to forget the horrific memories of war and enjoy a life of comfort and leisure.

Samples are obviously a big part of your work (and your isolatedmix). It sounds like your first album was more personal, collected soundbites and samples. And this new album seems a little more abstract in its samples and direction. Can you describe your process for the sample-heavy tracks such as Instant Money? Do you build a track around a sample, go looking for something specific, or have a bank of samples ready to go?

I’ve always been a fan of collage. Art that brings lots of different, often disparate sources together to create something fresh. As a kid I used to cut up catalogues and booklets that came through the front door and make these mad, stuck together images with them. And at university, I was fascinated by the work of artists like Robert Rauschenberg. So when it came to making music, growing up through an era of sample-heavy jungle and hip-hop (‘Entroducing’ by DJ Shadow is one of the most important albums in my life), I adopted a similar technique.

However, with Wardown the approach is slightly different to when I’m working on other things. I initially try and establish quite a strong conceptual starting point before I’ve made any music. I do lots of reading, watch things, and generally think about the world I’m trying to create before anything is made. Obviously things change and develop through the process of actually creating the music, but by starting out like that, I try and attune myself to what I’m looking for, samples wise. It’s like I put little antennas up and then go about my usual life of reading, watching films and documentaries, and listening to music. But because my antennas are up and scanning for quite specific things I’m able to isolate sounds that can potentially work a lot better; sounds that would probably pass me by if I had just been taking it all in in a more general sense. And once I’ve had a strong idea for something I’ll then dive a little deeper, in terms of second-hand records, tapes, online archives and the like.

I’m also a little gutted that Instant Money didn’t make it onto the mix in full here (i hear a quick sample only!) It’s one of my faves and extremely addictive (reminds me a bit of Roni Size’s Dirty Beats in how the vocal burrows deep inside your brain for hours after listening if I dare compare). What was your intention/concept for the mix overall?

The idea for the mix was essentially an extension of what I’ve done with the two albums. A collection of jungle and electronic music combined with longer ambient passages. There are a few personal favourites in there, as well as some lesser-known stuff I thought worked well. I’ve also taken apart elements of some of the music from Wardown II and used that throughout. More collage!

The drum’n bass / jungle mixtape is of course an iconic piece of music culture and by the sounds of it, you’ve perfected your skills at putting one together. Do you consider yourself a DJ? Do you enjoy this aspect of your music?

Well I’ve just come off the back of playing a summer of festival shows as Technimatic, so in that regard, definitely. I do think these days however, there is quite a big difference between being a DJ who plays live shows, and someone who puts mixes together online. Years ago you would just press record and essentially recreate what you do in a live setting. But because of the changes in technology and what you’re now able to do with sequencers, recorded mixes feel like they’ve become a separate thing in their own regard. They definitely are to me, anyway. I love putting together online mixes that pull apart tracks, alter tempos, have multiple elements working at the same time to create something really unique. Maybe a really talented DJ could do it live, but I definitely can’t!

What have been some of your fave mixes over the years that we could go check out? A favorite of all time?

I can’t really discuss jungle and Wardown without mentioning LTJ Bukem’s ‘Essential Mix’ for Radio 1 in 1995. It really was such a defining mix, one that created a kind of blueprint for a whole new musical sub-genre. All the classics are there, and it still sounds fresh and exciting to me. In terms of more recent times, Visible Cloaks’ ‘Music Interiors’ from 2013 is another really important mix for me. It’s a collection of 80s ambient and experimental music from Japan, and it totally blew my mind when I first heard it. The fact there was this huge, rich, inspiring area of music I had no idea existed before listening was really extraordinary. And it just flows so well. I’m eternally thankful for VC for creating it; I’ve played it more times than I can remember.

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astrangelyisolatedplace · isolatedmix 119 - Wardown

Listen on Soundcloud, Mixcloud, or the ASIP Podcast.

Download

Tracklist:

01. Soft Robot - ‘Point Nemo’
02. Kerguelen - ‘Proxemics’
03. Sycamore Investments - ‘Cherry Bomb’
04. Wardown - ‘Stimulus Progression Pattern’
05. LTJ Bukem - ‘Rainfall’
06. Offthesky -‘Insofar, In So Far’
07. Freedive - ‘Watering A Flower On The Moon’
08. Photek - ‘Complex’
09. Ki One - ‘Life At The End Of The World’
10. Micronation - ’Photographs of Clouds’
11. Wardown - ‘The Ideal City’
12. Advanced Sound & Vision - ‘The Engineered Yes’
13. Wardown - ‘Lifespan’
14. Fisher Associates - ‘Scorched Earth’
15. Wardown - ‘Graphite and Glitter’
16. The Architex - ‘Altitude’
17. Creative Innovations Inc. - ‘Stone Tape Theory’
18. r beny - ‘Eistla’
19. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - ‘Song Of Forgiveness Pt. 1’

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Wardown | Bandcamp | Discogs | Twitter | Instagram

Portals: Power Ambient

"Ambient as interesting as it is interesting"

The term Power Ambient is yes, another attempt at putting a badge or genre to a wide-encompassing range of music stylistically, but it’s one that I have often gravitated towards amongst many others when describing a particular style of music we are dealing with here.

When it comes to a spectrum of Ambient music styles, I’m more often than not on the ‘lean in’ side of things, than the ‘lean back’. It’s easy to throw up Brian Eno’s definition of Ambient music “…as ignorable as it is interesting” to help elaborate on what I mean, as essentially within a Power Ambient context, we are removing the desire to ignore it.

To put it another way, Power Ambient is best suited to those who want to immerse themselves in the music; the wall of sound; big movements; rumbling bass; wide frequencies, and layers of dense drones. These are elements that envelope a space in richness; be it soft and all-encompassing like a heavy blanket, or more on the noise spectrum, making your body rattle and the hairs on your neck stand-up on end. But the common output is that you're better off taking note of what's happening, than sticking it on in the background and making a cup of tea.

It’s not a new descriptive term. A 2014 Fact magazine article captured a few artists that seemed to be prevailing in this style, alongside a mix that Chris SSG loosely described as including Power Ambient (now Chris references his style as Big Room Ambient) and more. recently a Bandcamp list (although not sure all that stuff aligns with my own vision for it). There is no doubt in my mind, however, that a powerful style of Ambient music has exploded in recent years (as has the creativity of Ambient music in general, really). Perhaps this style has been more embraced due to a couple of things.

In dark times comes inherent anger and expression, and it’s pretty grim out there right now. For any music culture, this can often send people into darker production spaces. Secondly, I can feel an emerging undercurrent of rebellion for what ‘Ambient’ can stand for nowadays. With a world of meditative apps and ‘Piano Chill’ playlists continuing to give Ambient music a certain reputation, (at least we have moved on from Spa music, right?), I have a feeling this stereotyping is pushing producers, and even listeners to explore new styles of Ambient music, and opening doors into more expressive forms of music that stand out against an all too frequent beige playlist.

Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean that Power Ambient is just noise and complexity for the sake of it (it can be) but like all music, there's an art to getting the balance right. For me, Power Ambient can range from relatively quiet, intense soundscapes with a mysterious underpinning, to just short of full-on Merzbow wall-shaking. Call it a version of Noise, Drone, Experimental, whatever, but wrapped in a different guise, it’s still bearable as Ambient music but stops short of becoming too much.

I wanted to highlight just a few of my favorite artists whose broad strokes defined ‘Ambient’ music, has always made me sit up and listen. As with all Portals features, I try to focus on a mix to bring the idea to life and a jump-off/entry point for the artists included. This was harder to mix than a regular DJ set, because of the inherent energy of Power Ambient music. Used consistently in a mix, at some point you're going to get burnt out and it will start to fade into the background just like listening to white noise. In my experience, Ambient tracks with force or energy are best used interspersed in sets to make people lean in and grab their attention, or as part of other styles to continue a certain level of energy (I’ve heard this type of music as an interlude in more heavy beat-driven sets for example). It can also work great as a live show where the listener knows what they are getting into already, of course (earplugs at the ready).

As a 1hr+ mix, I, therefore, had to be considerate of the energy and flow and tried to create a few distinct chapters with peaks and troughs and an easy onramp at the beginning.

I encourage you to use the links below to jump off into each artist’s universe on Bandcamp. Despite it being a relatively well-known list of musicians when it comes to the Ambient enthusiasts, I’ve tried to give a good snapshot of artists that might push into this style within some of their works, especially if any of this music is new to you.

RIP to two influential producers included in this mix, Cesar (Mount Shrine) and one of the greatest noise/experimental artists of our time, Mika Vainio.

Listen on Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Youtube (below), Spotify or the ASIP Podcast.

astrangelyisolatedplace · Portals Episode 11: Power Ambient

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Tracklist:

01. James Murray - Second Sight (Home Normal)
02. Ameeva - Die Wellen (9128.live)
03. Faru - Mirror of Consciousness (Self released)
04. Sciama - Subsumed (Auxiliary)
05. Joachim Spieth - Akasha (Affin)
06. Abul Mogard - Against a White Cloud (Self released)
07. Leandro Fresco & Rafael Anton Irisarri - Baja dos Singlos (A Strangely Isolated Place)
08. Mount Shrine - Foggy Deck (Cryo Chamber)
09. Araceae - Gleaming Embers (Faint Music)
10. Markus Guentner - Cavus (A Strangely Isolated Place)
11. r beny - vestigial (Self released)
12. Caterina Barbieri - TCCTF (Important Records)
13. Christina Giannone - Realms II (Past Inside The Present)
14. Christina Vantzou - Glissando for Bodies and Machines in Space (Kranky)
15. Pechblende - Shackles of Time (Auxiliary)
16. Tim Hecker - Hatred of Music II (Kranky)
17. Bana Hafar - Intersecting Voids (Self released)
18. FRKTL - Scene I: Terra Nullius (Self released)
19. KMRU & Aho Ssan - Resurgence (Edit) (Subtext Recordings)
20. Mika Vainio - Kytkenta (Connection) (Touch)
21. Rafael Anton Irisarri - Arduous Clarity (Dais)
22. Mika Vainio - Unessa (Sleep) (Touch)

Also….

ASIP on Rinse France - Ed Isar invite A Strangely Isolated Place

A big thanks to Ed Isar for inviting me to contribute a mix to his Rinse FM show. Ed is behind the Musique Pour La Danse label (recently reissuing Coil and rEAGENZ albums amongst others), as well as the brilliant Tursiops label.

Below is the text sent along to accompany the show and introduce the rough idea behind it.

I'm a father to two young boys, so finding time to dedicate to a vinyl mix is tough, but I found myself inspired to get behind the decks late one evening and see what would happen. My only intention was that I wanted to include a couple of upcoming releases (test presses) from the label somehow but they are almost the outliers in the set style-wise., so I had to work around them a little. It ended up quite dark, very deep, and pitch-bent, with a few good crackles for good measure and moments I am sure people will be familiar with.

Listen to the mix below or on Soundcloud, with Ed taking the reigns for the first half and some lovely vibes to set up my darker piece!

Rinse France · Ed Isar invite A Strangely Isolated Place - 10 Juin 2022

Download (ASIP mix only)

Tracklist:

01. Enkai Ohakosh - Unknown
02. Avont - Non-Brio Interlude [Residence Records] (2021)
03. Off And Gone - Uncle Mike’s Beard [Isla] (1994)
04. Unreleased (A Strangely Isolated Place)
05. 3.11 - Reduktion [PRS] (2021)
06. J.S Zeiter - Untitled [Expanding Vision] (2022)
07. Flying Fish Ambience - Monuments in Easter Island [Hospital Productions] (2021)
08. Joachim Spieth - Hyde [Affin] (2021)
09. Muziekkamer – Op Zee [Stroom] (2021)
10. Anatolian Weapons – An Afterthought [Dispari] (2021)
11. Tomas Jirku - Entropy8 [Silent Season] (2020)
12. The KLF - Last Train To Trancentral (Mu D. Vari-Speed Version) [Arista] (1991)
13. Being - Space Again [Firecracker Recordings] (2021)
14. James Bernard - UW07 (A Strangely Isolated Place) (2021)
15. Unreleased (A Strangely Isolated Place)

isolatedmix 118 - Pan American

Our latest isolatedmix comes from Mark Nelson, who as Pan•American, or as part of Labradford or even Anjou, has garnered relative cult status amongst the ambient and experimental lifers and tape community. Forming a big part of the Kranky label history from its very first release, Mark recently returned with a new album after a three-year hiatus, and the mature, refined instrumentalism on The Patience Fader is a subtle reminder of the quality Mark has retained over the years - quite an achievement, given his first Pan•American record on Kranky goes back to 1997. I took the chance to send over some questions to Mark to shed some light on the new record and the music that exists in his life right now, alongside his tasteful and electic isolatedmix.

Hi Mark, where are you right now and what have you been listening to lately?

I'm at home in Evanston IL-just north of Chicago. Drinking coffee after work and listening to the water running through the filter of our pet turtle's tank and the music of Mette Henriette. If you're not familiar with her she's a Norwegian composer and saxophone player who put out a  record on ECM a couple of years ago it’s so beautiful-one of those records I only let me listen to occasionally because I don't want to become too familiar with it. worried the magic might lessen-but magic never really does.

Last few days I've been listening to lots of the music that made it onto the mix-Mike Cooper, African Head Charge, Ulla, my friend Robert Donne's incredible track Touch my Camera Through the Fence, Takagi Masakatsu.  The most recent music that I've really liked are the 3 cd comp by Fubutsushi on Cached Media and my friend Francis Harris' beautiful new record Thresholds that I was lucky enough to contribute to.

Running a label myself, and given you had the honor of being the very first release on Kranky, with Labradford, I’m interested in the details of how that very first album and relationship came about?

It's hard to believe but back then you could put out a 7" single-maybe 300 copies-and be pretty confident all the key distributors, zines, record store buyers and radio stations would find out about it and boost it up if they liked it.  Joel and Bruce worked at Cargo-an independent distributor based in Chicago.  Our single came across Joel's desk and he felt good enough about it to set in motion the plan he'd been forming to start a label.  I remember my friend Andrew who put the single out told me a guy from Cargo was going to call me and I stayed close to the (landline) phone for the next couple days.  Joel called, we talked and the rest has unfolded very naturally. A blend of luck and trying to manifest something in the world around the music.

“Romantic minimalism” is used in the text for your new album The Patience Fader, and it’s an apt term for the delicate, perhaps even more ‘focused’ approach on this one. Do you think there is a clear connection between the effects of the past year and the type of music it inspires? Was that the case here?

Yes-absolutely in my case.   Both from within and without.  Not consciously of course, but Patience Fader was made during the summer and fall of 2020, so  Covid,  Trumpism, BLM/George Floyd protests were all in full flight.  At the same time, my father was dying in a hospice in Virginia that we couldn't visit because of Covid.  In some respects, emotions were very simple for me in this time. Right and wrong, life and death joy and sorrow seemed very plainly mapped out.

The album features some smaller ‘vignette’ type tracks, which I personally love. What was your intention behind these as part of the greater album flow? Is there a hidden narrative?

Not a narrative really, no. I would say there's a theme of Roots throughout the record and trying to find different ways to approach what roots and being grounded can mean. So guitar and harmonica as the instruments used speak literally to the basic grounding of American music. The field recording of a summer afternoon and slamming screen door on Baitshop is evocative to me of childhood.  There's even a song called Grounded.  We were all literally grounded by Covid and I was searching for a  sense of Grounding amidst the unraveling.

It seems like you come from the ‘instrumental first’ school of ambient music (as I sometimes like to put it), integrating your instruments as source material, especially on your latest. What does the process for creating a PA album usually look like?

It tends to come out of the daily practice of playing. I like practicing and trying to be "better" as a guitar player.  Sometimes it can even feel like if I get an idea I need to dig into, it interrupts just simple, repetitive practice that in some ways I enjoy more. I think I've gotten pretty good at recognizing when an idea needs to be followed through and I do feel like I have an obligation to not let it go.  Although in the end, most don't make it.  Eventually, I tend to establish something that feels like the first song for an album and the last song, and that's when I know that something new is really emerging.

The Lapsteel / Pedal steel was perhaps brought to ‘ambient fame’ by the KLF’s Chill Out, especially to those who run in more general ‘ambient’ music terms. And I definitely get a similar vibe to that album with The Patience Fader. …“the ghost of rust belts and dust bowls looming in a horizon of deepening dusk.” as the press text puts it. As a foreigner in the US, I’ve always wondered about this romanticism and never really experienced it outside of trips to the desert here in the west. How does this come to life for you personally? Is it something you seek out?

I'm a big fan of Chill Out-but I think Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois got there first on Apollo! Also, the Paris Texas soundtrack and Ry Cooder's slide playing cemented some of those connections that I guess now verge on cliche. Funny enough I'm a bit of an outsider here as well-my Father was a US diplomat and I didn't live in the US until I was a teenager.  I've always looked for a way in I guess, and music-rock n roll, country, blues, jazz seemed like a kind of skeleton key. A key to a series of doors that open and close constantly and I seem to remain disoriented.  I certainly returned to these roots (literal and figurative) in music for an explanation or comfort as Trump set fire to whatever remained of the Better Angels of what (for some reason) is referred to as the American Experiment. Mixed results.

You speak of the notion of “lighthouse music,” radiance cast from a stable vantage point, sending “a signal to help others through rocks and dangerous currents.” My perception and ‘unromanticizing’ of this after listening to the album, is that you have tried to create very clear, and comforting music, something that will cut through easier and not need too much thought for it to work. I love this overall sentiment - could you expand upon it in your own words?

It's an effort to be uncluttered and go straight for the heart. The beauty in country music is the same effort or effect.  It's ok if it's a formula to an extent that's comforting! The songs on my record share a very similar structure and palette to one another-I really wanted to create a world that would be very quickly recognized-meaning the boundaries would be clear right away-and the work could be done within those boundaries.  There's certainly much to recommend pushing beyond known boundaries and limits-for me though it's where known elements within a world blur, overlap, merge, surrender and change like water that's what I'm interested in! New possibilities come from new combinations, and new layering of familiar material. Hybrid forms, mutations.  I think what we're looking for is here-it's just up to us to make it visible.

~

astrangelyisolatedplace · isolatedmix 118 - Pan•American

Listen on Soundcloud, Mixcloud, or the ASIP Podcast.

Download

Tracklist:

01. Willie Nelson- Sad Songs and Waltzes
02. Ulla - New Poem
03. Michael Grigoni - Little Cliffs
04. Sosena Gebre Eyesus - Seqelew Eyalu
05. Maurizio - MO7A (edit)
06. Mike Cooper - After Rain
07. African Head Charge - Bazarre
08. Takagi Masakatsu - Uter 1
09. Mary Lattimore - We Just Found Out She Died
10. Loren Connors - Blues #5
11. Robert Donne - Touch My Camera Through the Fence
12. Lokai - Histoire DS

Pan•American: Website | Bandcamp | Soundcloud | Discogs

Portals: Energostatic (For Ukraine)

To help continue the much-needed support for the people of Ukraine, we have produced a compilation from one of our favorite Ukrainian-based netlabels, Energostatic Records. Released as part of our Portals deep dive series, the feature includes a remaster of specifically curated tracks, in both individual and mix form. These tracks are available on the ASIP Bandcamp page as Name Your Price, with all proceeds going to Save The Children and their specific activities supporting Ukraine at this time. A big thank you to label owner Marian for allowing this project to happen as he deals with life in Kyiv right now, the artists for their participation, and Rafael Anton Irisarri for kindly providing his mastering services. Also, an advanced thank you to all those who listen and support at this very important time.

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‘Netlabels’ are essentially extinct in today’s music landscape by definition. Of course, there are still labels that just focus on digital releases, but Netlabels came about during a time when there were little to no platforms monetizing digital releases. Digital distributors were reserved for big or established labels as the streaming era ramped up. And Bandcamp didn’t exist.

Netlabels were the next logical step after the file-sharing era (Soulseek et al), where instead of P2P servers and software, artists and label began to push their own agendas online, making files available freely on the internet, often under a Creative Commons license and many through a myriad of MP3 blogs that powered this exciting period. It was also, somewhere at this point in time, coincidentally, that the very first iteration of ASIP was also born, diving deep into MP3 blogs and following various Netlabels religiously. Finding a Netlabel’s basic website or archive.org page was the Bandcamp profile of its day.

Energostatic was pretty late to the ‘Netlabel game’. Their first release didn’t arrive until 2010 when many Netlabels were either fizzing out already or converting to more modern release methods. But Energostatic’s ethos and approach to providing music against a strict aesthetic, for free, made them a torchbearer for the dying art of sharing music online through small yet beloved corners of the internet. As ASIP began in 2008, Energostatic was one of the many Netlabels I followed, and as curators of dub techno in various forms, they operated within another small yet burgeoning scene it seems, given dub-techno as a genre also seems to have dwindled in popularity in recent years.

The writing was perhaps, on the cards for Energostatic, as Marian ceased operations of the label in 2017. But with 49 releases, there was (and still is) a big chunk of music to dig into, which for anybody new to the label, could become a little overwhelming to discover, especially since that number includes several compilations with 20+ tracks each, and many of the artists don’t seem to be very active anymore.

To help support the people of Ukraine during this time in a small way, I reached out to label founder Marian to see if he would like to raise money through a compilation that spotlighted some of my favorite music from the label’s era. Marian had previously released as part of our early Places Series, as Marc Atmost, where he created a track based on some of his early memories in Ukraine (an unsettling and poignant listen under today’s circumstances). Today, Marian is on the ground in Kyiv, doing what he can to survive and support his community.

The majority of the Energostatic catalog is still available for free on Bandcamp, should you wish to explore it yourself. Ranging from Space Ambient to drone; dub-techno and DnB; it became a bittersweet task to sift through the hundreds of tracks and pull together this compilation for a good cause. With the owner and label based in Ukraine (if Netlabels were to even have a ‘base’ of course), the majority of the artists on the label were friends of Marian, so a good majority were Ukraine and Russia-based and a part of local music scenes in each country.

The compilation begins with one of the most gentle tracks you will find across the entire Energostatic catalog. Russian artist KaLGaN made a few appearances over the years, but was better known for his work as 110ml - responsible for the very first artist release on the label (Scratch me / Scratch you) and also included further on in the compilation with his 110ml track, Lights In Window.

Stellardrone (Lithuania), is one of the more well-known artists to be supported by Energostatic, and even made an appearance on the ASIP Full Circle compilation/LP a few years back, highlighting his importance in the evolution of my own musical journey. Edgaras’ music has always remained free on the internet and encaptures some of the finest Space ambient music in recent years. The piece included in the compilation, ‘Light Years’ is perhaps one of his darker, more sincere pieces amongst a stand-out catalog which has unfortunately not seen much activity in recent years

Textural Being (USA) (see isolatedmix29 also) is another artist who I have admired for a long time, and related to the above compilation was in my shortlist for inclusion on Full Circle. The track I had in mind at the time, however, didn’t quite fit the rest of the compilation. Serendipitously, Sept is my all-time favorite track by Sage Taylor / Textural Being, (amongst yet another expansive artist output) so it feels great to present this to a wider audience today.

Marc Atmost (Ukraine), as mentioned above, is the founder of Energostatic, and appears consistently across the label over the years through various guises and musical styles ranging from straight-up dub techno to DnB. This track, Deity is one of my favorites from his consistent output, capturing the very essence of spacious, melodic dub techno.

Olexa, (Ukraine) was a less prolific artist over the years with just one EP and several compilation appearances on Energostatic, but captured the deep dub techno sound aesthetic of the label to perfection.

Gapfield (USA), is a project from US-based Devin Underwood and Jacob Newman. Devin creates some amazing music across a variety of styles and aliases (such as Drexon Field - another fun project I love) and has made several appearances on the Energostatic label, most notably with a solid, straight-up dub-techno album as Specta Ciera (see isolatedmix19). Between Devin and Jacob, they can be found on some amazing ambient labels over the years, such as Carpe Sonum, Neotantra, dataObscura and Bludhoney Records. Their Gapfield project, is definitely one that may have flown under the radar amongst their solid output.

Technicolour’s (UK) ‘Permafrost’, has always been a stand-out track for me on Energostatic and his only appearance on the label. I included it in many of my DJ mixes years ago, and it broke the mold in the label’s beginnings with its Autonomic sound and rampant amen breaks, whilst remaining true to the deep and introspective atmosphere the label ended up pushing. But it wasn’t until seeking permission to include this track did I come to realize that Technicolour, aka Peter Rogers, was in fact, Wardown, who released one of my favorite Drum'n bass albums of 2020 on Blu Mar Ten’s label.

Permafrost could be the apex of compilation, but the journey needed a minute to breathe after that kind of energy, which is where Ayqix’s (Argentina) Raymi (Coldest Version) came into play. The Buenos Aires musician provides an airy respite towards the end of the compilation before the energetic finale, very much reminiscent of the early minimal techno days of Traum Schallplatten.

Closing out the compilation, Enformig, was a Ukrainian Techno producer based in Kharkov who unfortunately died in 2019. His appearances on the label were always met with such high praise and support on social media from Marc, especially for his hardware-driven live sets. This track is perhaps, one of his finest moments from the Energostatic catalog and provides a momentous, energetic and liberating closing chapter to the compilation.

Energostatic’s label motto was "Reach, resist, research”. Label owner Marian didn’t have the time or capacity to answer any of my questions related to its meaning on top of his urgent life on the ground in Kyiv, but I couldn’t help relate this motto to a higher meaning and reminder as I thought about his and many other people’s lives in Ukraine.

Thank you for reading, listening and reflecting.

Support the compilation on Bandcamp with all proceeds going to Save The Children and their Ukraine efforts.

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Podcast link.