2020 ASIP Label Showcase (Mixed Edition + CD)

After our successful 2019 edition, our annual label retrospective has now evolved in tradition to include a mixed edition available on CD (and of course digital).

Featuring one track from each of our 2020 releases, the digital download is now available alongside the CD, with the latter featuring a few additional tracks that aren’t available individually.

The artwork is always a personal choice for this compilation - and reflects my year in some way or another. This time, it features screen-grabs from a film that not only visually felt relevant, but captured the notion of everyone being inside - wishing to be somewhere else. I won’t say which film it was incase I get into issues, but lets just say it’s a heart-warming film about a man who did everything he could to escape reality and get in contact with others.

A big thank you to all of the artists for a brilliant year, and to you, for listening and supporting our music.

We also have a limited set of download cards available to purchase with this release - a perfect gift to introduce someone to the label maybe!

Available on Bandcamp.

ASIP artist playlist: Other Strangely Isolated Places

You may or may not already be a subscriber to the ASIP Currents.fm page where we post goodies every now and then, but either way you can access this playlist featuring music by ASIP artists that appears on other labels, other monikers, etc. Check it out and hit play from the top - moving from experimental and ambient through to more electronic realms from the ASIP artist crew, new and old.

Visit or subscribe to ASIP on Currents.fm

Video: Merrin Karras - Dominions (By Jan Goldfuß)

Official video for the album-closing track ‘Dominions’ taken from Merrin Karras’s 2020 album ‘Northwest Passage’ out on A Strangely Isolated Place.

Video by Jan Goldfuß. https://cargocollective.com/goldfuss
Video originally premiered on Inverted Audio.

Merrin Karras / Silent Planet (ASIP033)

Following his 2020 LP Northwest Passage, Brendan returns with another set of majestic synthesizer-based music.

Conceived and composed in two days, Silent Planet is Brendan's first attempt at a fully continuous piece of music. Normally, albums under his Merrin Karras guise take many months, if not years, to put together:

"I wanted to challenge myself to create a mini-album in a short amount of time, not to think too much about it, but just to let it flow and see what happened. Everything was created in one project, but it's comprised of six distinct sections. Several motifs and elements are re-used at various points throughout the work. It's also the first time that I've used percussion elements in a Merrin Karras work.”

The mood spans from brooding to almost Balearic at points, with strong elements of Berlin School and Space Music, classic Trance, and Ambient all intertwined.

Silent Planet is available as ‘name your price’ on Bandcamp, with all sales going directly to Brendan.

Artwork by Noah M / Keep Adding.

Merrin Karras Needle Exchange Mix + album breakdown

On the back of his new album ‘Northwest Passage’, Brendan has prepared a new mix for Self Titled Magazine for their Needle Exchange series. Expect influences from across the synth-spectrum rich with Brendan’s signature sound.

Visit Self Titled for a track-by-track breakdown of the new album by Brendan too.

Merrin Karras’ new album is now available.

Tracklist

1. Subheim – Berlin
2. Steve Roach – See Things
3. Hollan Holmes – The Farthest Fringes
4. Lucette Bourdin – Through the Keyhole
5. Mick Chillage – Faxology
6. The Ghostwriters – Slow Blue in Horizontal
7. Michael Hoenig – Departure from the Northern Wasteland
8. Lightwave – Cités Analogues
9. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Suzanne Ciani – Closed Circuit
10. Max Würden – Format
11. Merrin Karras – Dominions