Welcome to the first of many ongoing updates from the growing AoIRL collective. Label updates are in alphabetical order, featuring news this month from A Strangely Isolated Place, Buried Treasure, Castles In Space, DiN, Plant43, Subexotic Records and Woodford Halse. New releases, upcoming, discount codes + more…
A Strangely Isolated Place
NEW: ASIPV040 Quiet Places / Volume 2
Dennis White, Charlie May, and Dave Gardner return with their second outing as Quiet Places, expanding upon their deep and suitably hypnotic long-form compositions across four continuous sides of wax. Now available on marbled 2LP + digital.
UPCOMING: ASIPV042 Mary Yalex / Fantasy Zone
Announced as part of her isolatedmix, German musician Mary Yalex is set to release her new album, Fantasy Zone in August. Expect intense analogue atmospherics and deep world-building.
UPCOMING: ASIPV038X OKRAA / 1994 (Versions)
After his 2022 LP ‘1994’ (below) OKRAA has realized a new Live version of his album and will be making the new edits available as Name Your Price on Bandcamp on August 4th.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The second half of 2023 looks set to be very busy as we finally get into a groove with our new pressing plant (pun intended). Some great records are lined up from both new and familiar label faces. We’re also starting to add a decent collection of new merch, slipmats and vinyl bundles to our webstore.
Buried Treasure
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Happy Day!
Use the summer sale discount code bt20 to get 20% off anything in the label store including the Children Of The Stones soundtrack LP co-released with Trunk + recent albums by Howlround, Revbjelde & Language Field. Physical orders over £50 will also receive a free Buried Treasure tote bag.
Castles In Space
NEW: Mount Vernon Arts Lab - Deltic Vespers
“Deltic Vespers” is the anthology collection of early works from Drew Mulholand’s Mount Vernon Arts Lab. Compiled from Drew’s long-lost cassettes, this 19-track album collects the unreleased early experiments from MVAL’s formative period. A brilliantly disordered assemblage of lo-fi garage and early electronic, it probably has more guitars on it than any other Castles in Space album!
UPCOMING:
It’s another busy month ahead as we see the first single from The Mistys land on the 9th. “Markers” is the first track from their CiS album, “Detached Engagement”. The duo are playing at The Social in London on 10h August - Tickets are available here.
18th August sees the release of a major new album from Twilight Sequence. “Outline of Nature” started as Matthew J. Saunders’ experiment in building a modular synthesizer system and ended up as a voltage-controlled outpouring of love for the natural world. Sylvan-born and pastoral-powered, sap-blooded and lightning-charged, this album grew out of the damp fluorescent corners of the woods, each note and sound, a fractal extension of their seedling sounds. The album is housed in beautiful artwork from Zeke Clough who utilises a multitude of coloured inks to further explore the connections between forest and technology.
Finally, with a limited 12” EP “Building A New Town”, Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan moves the timeline back five years to 1974 to focus on “A New Dawn for North Cheshire” and sets the “Solid Foundations” for the whole WRNTDP project. The EP is released on 25.08 on a stunning coloured vinyl pressing with beautiful, evocative artwork from Gordon. A new edition of the debut LP “Interim Report, March 1979” is coming later in the year.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
It’s an incredibly busy period for the label as we have expanded the team and are in the process of setting up our publishing company, Signal to Noise.
We’ve also finalised the bill for Levitation in November. Demdike Stare have been added as special guests and the full line is now confirmed as Demdike Stare / ISAN / Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan / The Mistys / A'Bear / Jo Johnson / Polypores / Subphotic / Field Lines Cartographer / James Adrian Brown / Stone Anthem / Lo Five / Kinbrae / Paul Cousins / Apta / Twilight Sequence. Tickets are available here.
Finally, anyone subscribing to the Castles in Space Dubstack between now and 5th August will be sent a random download code from the CiS back catalogue. Bonus beats.
DiN Records
NEW: DiN80 | Various Artists | iNDEX08
Release date 21st July 2023 | Limited to 500 copies CD in slimline cardboard wallet
iNDEX08 is the eighth DiN compilation album and includes two tracks each from the titles DiN71 - 79. The artists on show this time are Polypores, Scanner, Ian Boddy, d’Voxx, Parallel Worlds, Surface 10, Node and Lyonel Bauchet as well as a collaboration between Ian Boddy & Erik Wøllo.
As with the previous seven DiN samplers label boss Ian Boddy has mixed and cross-faded the 18 tracks into a continuous ambient mix that not only showcases the albums featured on the release but presents an exciting and varied title in its own right. It also highlights the varied and intriguing music that the DiN label offers on its releases from deep analogue synth grooves through vibrantly melodic instrumentals to powerful, epic ambient atmospheres. An intoxicating mix of the old and new beautifully presented in a slimline cardboard wallet with an extra flap which just adds to the value and collectibility of this release.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
With a total release catalogue now of 118 titles the DiN label is continuing to innovate and evolve as it heads toward 2024 when it will celebrate 25 years of releasing quality instrumental electronic and ambient synth music.
Plant43 Recordings
NEW: PLANT43 - REFLECTION|REACTION TRILOGY
Reflection | Reaction is a trilogy of EP’s written by Plant43 over the course of winter 2022/23, the first in the series marking the 10th release and third anniversary for the artist’s Plant43 Recordings label. Over the course of twelve tracks and over an hour of new music Emile Facey takes the listener on an emotional journey through the frosty depths of winter and into the warm sunlight of spring. All three parts of the trilogy will be on different coloured limited edition vinyl (300). Bandcamp orders Include PDF A4 high resolution poster artwork by Emile Facey.
'Fierce Machines' races out of the blocks with edgy hits and celestial chords over a dynamic electro rhyth. 'Silent Core' then dials things back to a more empty and atmospheric sound with zippy leads and rueful chord work. 'Dark Veneer' is a busy mix of tightly sequenced melodic patterns over a jittery groove and 'Life In The Pod' is a clean, crisp, shiny metallic trip.’ JUNO
Digital and limited edition vinyl (250. Available to order directly from the label via Bandcamp and distributed by Juno Records.
Part One - released 19th June
Part Two - released 24th July
Part Three - release date 21st August
Trilogy bundles also available here.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Plant43 Recordings label owner Emile Facey sat down for an in-depth interview with Cacophonous Bling’s stalwart electronic music blogger Paul Corey to talk about all things electro and beyond.
Kosovo-based event promoter and podcast Hapësira host Plant43 for an hour-long deep electro/techno journey for their long standing mix series:
Plant43’s electro rework of Doltz’s beautiful ambient work ‘Sayu’ is now available from Osaka-based ambient cassette specialists Muzan Editions alongside an array of excellent remixes from the likes of Mareena & JakoJako and Raster-Noton’s AOKI takamasa:
Subexotic Records
NEW: THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION Foster Neville
"splendid ambient album.. disquieting vintage weirdness" Bob Fischer (Electronic Sound)
The Edge of Destruction is the debut album from Durham-based artist Foster Neville. 19th-century German poetry, the theories of Prince Matila Costiesco Ghyka, and fellow Northerner Basil Bunting’s long poem ‘Briggflatts’, together with the architecture of Le Corbusier (especially the Modulor), are the reference points for the techniques employed on this extraordinary double album.
SUBEX00126 / SUBEX00127
Limited edition black double vinyl / Digital / Friday 23 JUNE
UPCOMING: ATOM BRIGADE Atom Brigade
Atom Brigade is the debut album from an online 'super group' consisting of Martin Jensen (aka The Home Current), Rupert Lally, Amanda Jay (aka Star Madman) & Oliver Cherer (aka Gilroy Mere, Dollboy & many more). Gloriously assured, Atom Brigade is a zeitgeist conjuration of 80's post-punk electro-pop; achingly cool, dead-pan & freshly baked.
SUBEX00128 / SUBEX00129
Limited edition black vinyl / Digital / Friday 11 AUGUST
UPCOMING: REKOMBINANT A Bridge Between Us
The album A Bridge Between Us is an extensive collaborative dialogue between Italian composer/producer Alfonso Montagnese, and a selection of nineteen artists from across Europe that he has come to know over two decades of music making. As in his previous Subexotic outing (the warmly-received A Scream From Outer Space with Black Sonar & Audio Obscura), Montangnese shows once again why he is such a master of musical collaboration. Rich passages of soaring beauty; gloriously joyful interludes; and bewildering plot twists all retain a coherent emotional thread as we journey ever deeper into this expertly curated double LP.
SUBEX00132 / SUBEX00133
Limited edition black double vinyl / Digital / Friday 11 AUGUST
Woodford Halse
NEW: WF 71 Limnia by Moscow Youth Cult
The duo - Jon Dix and Dan O’Donnell-Smith - became fascinated with the online folklore of the Backrooms creepypasta: the endless liminal space of auto-generated offices bathed in fluorescence. If someone enters this space it is possible for them to ‘noclip’ out of reality into unknown areas.
NEW: WF 74 Fading Light by Violet Mist
A beautifully crafted album of tape-saturated ambient techno. At Joseph’s request, this will be the first Woodford Halse cassette not to feature die-cut windows or our trademark cigarette card. The austere ‘blueprint’ style packaging perfectly complements the minimalist nature of the music contained within.
NEW: PCT 14 Elsewhere by Ogle
Italian master of the Buchla Easel Command, Giulio Fontana returns to Preston Capes for a second album of experimental electronica.
UPCOMING: WF 70 Mundus Imaginalis by Giants of Discovery
"In the Universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors."~ William Blake
AoIRL Spotify Playlist
If you haven’t already dived into some of the Bandcamp links mentioned, here’s the AoIRL tasting menu.
Lots of tremendous releases there!... looking forward to giving them all a listen