Mikkel Rev / The Art of Levitation (ASIPV039)

Many of you may know I am a big fan of trance music. The Portals feature alongside todos is probably a big giveaway, but I grew up on the stuff. So it’s a very proud moment to have a record on ASIP that definitely… goes there. Amongst the variety of approaches and styles on this record, Mikkel has truly conjured up some magical moments, and whilst it may not all be high-energy euphoria, it’s definitely all euphoria.

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Norwegian producer Mikkel Rev debuts on A Strangely Isolated Place with his most accomplished album to date; traversing nostalgic chillout, slow-burning downtempo, and euphoric trance, in a similar approach to the diverse styles found within the early pioneering electronic ambient albums of the ‘90s. 

As part of the growing label collective Ute Records, Mikkel Rev can often be found entertaining uninhibited ravers amongst the forests of Norway, where he and his label mates are spearheading one of the many so-called Trance revivals. Just as comfortable releasing high-energy 140bpm electronic music alongside Filip Storsveen as Omformer, or creating expansive space-ambient pieces on the flip for the Sinensis label, The Art of Levitation is the perfect gateway into the diverse array of electronic music to emerge from the world of Mikkel Rev. 

Moving through various energies and BPMs, The Art of Levitation is clearly vivid in approach and concept, based on track titles and art alone. In a similar parallel to the main room and the chillout room often found at raves, the album invites you to take a journey through both over time. Touching on moments of early electronic ambient, to begin with, it soon evolves into a blissful beat-driven progressive chapter, culminating in a nostalgic nod to the very best moments Trance music has to offer. The ending can be found in the back room, as the journey finally tails in to a more emotional point of reflection. 

The Art of Levitation is a mirror to the feelings created, the friends made, the dance floor antics witnessed, and nostalgic moments earned, by everyone who experienced the spectrum of energy and euphoria electronic music can offer during those special times.

The Art of Levitation is available on March 20th, on Gatefold orange 2LP, plus digital. Featuring artwork photography by Wendy Carroll and mastered by Andreas Lupo Lubich.

See the release page to listen and for links to buy.

Max Würden / Landmark (ASIPV036)

We are very pleased to welcome back Germany’s Max Würden, and his second album on the label, Landmark.

Following his beloved ‘Format’ in 2019 - “the absolute masterpiece deserves to award Würden a place among the likes of Eno, Laraaji, Jenssen, Budd and Roach” by Igloo Mag, Landmark picks up his abstract ambient atmospheres and intricate sound design once more. One '“for the heads”, as I might say, as Max’s music is hard to describe without over-generalizing as an ‘ambient’ album. Max’s music just hits differently and comes from a place of authenticity, without trends or gimmicks.

Landmark sees Max Würden combine and integrate various external forces into his usual studio production process. Inspired by many paintings of powerful landscapes found in thrift stores throughout his hometown of Cologne, Max set out to bring various elements together as one whole over time - allowing an organic process of experimentation and collage. 

Short phrases of music and field recordings that weren’t originally meant for each other were realized in isolation, such as sounds from his Klangkiste (sound box) built by Max himself, guitars, an old out-of-tune Schimmel piano, and samples of early jazz and classical music. These separate elements eventually, over time, connected and came together as Landmark - a recognizable moment and formation. 

The collage of elements found throughout ‘Landmark’, expresses a number of different vantage points from which to gaze and focus your attention. From the more storied and instrumental-based ‘Reprise’ and ‘Range’, to the wide-scape visions of ‘Summiteer’, or the off-world portrayals in ‘Stereo A’ and ‘Stereo B’. Max can be found depicting a montage of intricately detailed moments that invite you to stand and ponder their storied creation, be it emerging from found sound, synthesizers, guitars, samples, or simply his own production sorcery. 

Landmark is available on gatefold 2LP gold vinyl and digital, mastered by Rafael Anton Iirsarri and featuring original photography by Max Würden, and artwork by Noah M / Keep Adding. There is also be a very special limited framed painting edition (10), created by Max, available to purchase.

See the release page for all links to listen and buy

2022 Label Compilation (mixed by todos)

Our annual showcase of individual tracks from ASIP's 2022 label releases and a special continuous DJ mix of this year's music from todos.

After providing 2021's compilation mix, our esteemed journeyman, todos takes the reigns again to interpret this year's label releases. Containing at least one track from each of our releases along with many snippets and samples from others, todos weaves a tapestry that somehow manages to traverse ASIP's potentially most varied year to date.

From the intricate world-building sounds of Gadi Sassoon, Deepchild and Strïe; to the dramatic synthesizers born from Scanner and OKRAA; the granulated textures of Viul & Benoît Pioulard; the delicate keys of ASC; and Illuvia's illustrative DnB footprint; this year's mix seemed impossible to weave together, but todos tied it together in style.

Available as Name Your Price on Bandcamp

Full todos Continuous Mix tracklist:

01. Gadi Sassoon - ‘Sintetico’ edit /Illuvia - ‘Blue Rays’ edit
02. Deepchild - ‘The Singing Feat. Holly+ / ASC - ‘Third Act’ edit / Scanner -’Nuorp’ edit
03. ASC - ‘Fifth Act’
04. Illuvia - ‘Eagle Vision’ /Gadi Sassoon - ‘Bionico’ edit
05. Deepchild - ‘Dreams Within Dreams’
06. Gadi Sassoon - ‘Sintetico’
07. Strië - Aeroplane Flying’ / Strië - ‘Vogel Wolke’ edit / Deepchild - ‘Now It Is Me Being Breathed The Veil Breaks’ edit
08. Illuvia - Naissance’ / Scanner - ’The Earthbound Fox’ edit
09. OKRAA - ‘Heartless’
10. Viul & Benoît Pioulard - ‘Performance’
11. ASC - ‘Third Act’ / Gadi Sassoon - ‘Collision Suite’ edit
12. Gadi Sassoon - ‘Life On A Tidally Locked Planet’ / Illuvia - ‘Sea Of Vapour’ edit
13. Illuvia - ‘Chiara Springs’

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Listen to all of these releases and find out more on our releases page.

todos on Soundcloud

Mixed version MP3

Earth House Hold / How Deep Is Your Devotion (ASIP040)

I fell in love with the very first Earth House Hold album (When Love Lived). And since picking it up with Brock and pestering him for a demo one day, I never expected an Earth House Hold album on ASIP all those years ago. But given our mutual love for house music, it made complete sense.

Today, we get to hear the full spectrum of influences on this alias from Brock. From the defined beats and chopped samples in the first album to the expansive vocals in the second, acid basslines in the third, and deconstructed atmospheres in this, the last Earth House Hold album.

This was never meant to be an all-encompassing collection of all Earth House Hold music (it isn’t). Listening to this project across the (now) four albums, is a lesson in deconstruction, and conceptually, shows how the album styles have evolved over the years. It’s remained one of the most exciting aspects of the alias for me, as Brock continually found new angles to explore and new influences to unearth. Each EHH album is unique and represents a very specific moment in time, a memory, a shed of sunrise through a cracked basement window to him, and to me. It’s easy to say a project is personal, but given our mutual love for house music and how this project has grown over the years, this one hits differently.

The album title summarises this release perfectly. Earth House Hold got off to a slow start, and many people didn’t enjoy this new approach from Brock. But today, ten years later, this is the perfect non-question to the many people who obsess over this alias. It’s not even worth asking…

Available today to preorder on 4XCD sleeve (to fit right into your vinyl shelves) or an extensive digital album containing all 4 albums mastered/remastered by Brock, along with artwork from the OG Peter Skwiot Smith.

Listen/buy

Deepchild / Mycological Patterns (ASIP038)

Out today, we are excited to present a new album by Deepchild on A Strangely Isolated Place.

Australian producer Rick Bull aka Deepchild has a rich catalog of varying techno-leaning productions, appearing on labels such as Affin and Trapez and local Australian outlets since the early 00’s. His most recent, Fathersong came on the ineffable Mille Plateaux; a shimmering post-dub vista, rich in granular textures, inspired by the modern contemporaries.

Mycological Patterns arrives as a post-script to Fathersong, with a more playful approach and an homage to Rick’s love of mushrooms. Utilizing midi clips to generate chordal movement and reharmonize material he has long been obsessed with (such as old vocal recordings, vinyl rips and Peter Gabriel acapellas), Mycological Patterns plays out like a mixtape on purpose; a sketchbook of styles documenting the shifting abstract microcosms the album is titled after.

It’s an album that reminds Rick about the importance of play, especially after grieving the recent loss of his father. Featuring two tracks utilizing Holly Herndon’s AI project ‘Holly+’, the idea of experimentation and letting go spawned perfect anomalies. It was the ‘dithering artifacts, glitches and moments where the AI code revealed its underlying humanity’ that completed the concept Rick originally set out to create.

Mastered by Jay Hodgson at Jedi Mastering and featuring artwork photography by Christopher Landin, Mycological Patterns will be available as a digital download and on all streaming platforms from November 4th 2022.

Buy on Bandcamp

Streaming links

Many people may know you for your techno-inclined productions. What inspired this recent move into more textural/ambient pieces?

Deepchild: I’ve always loved techno, both for its titular ‘functionality’ and the way my experience as a DJ has one of compositing works in context, written by friends and colleagues as a kind of ‘micro-history’, telling a story of place and relationships in particular communal space.

Bridges between Berlin, Detroit, London. For so long, this ‘ecology of place’ felt like a driving force as a ‘techno guy’, but feels increasingly atomised to me in a digital universe. I left London 3 years ago, and Berlin in 2016 after long stints based there. Somehow, this very physical departure from ‘club ground zero’ to the coastline of Sydney, Australia, made the experience of writing for these spaces feel a little dissociative. Not always, but rather more in recent years.

Moreover though, relocating to Australia in 2019 due to my father’s ill health set in train a kind of musical liberation which has certainly changed the flavor of music I’ve been writing of late. After dad died, I decided that it was time to ‘try easier’ and stop ‘grinding’ (this notice of ‘grinding’ and ‘hustling’ is so abhorrent to me) and allow myself to rediscover music beyond the ‘techno industrial complex’. To sift through the ashes of it all. My wife and I joke that dad gave a ‘transmission’ to me to stop and allow some things to be born again with courage - and leaning into fresh musical climes was part of this for me. I adore so much from the ambient and contemporary classical cannon, but it’s taken a while to explore this as a composer.

Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Rod Modell, Arooj Aftab, Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, Vladislav Delay, Sleeparchive, Lawrence English, William Basinski, bvdub and The Caretaker all shepherded me through this recent moment…

What’s remained pivotal and surprising to me has been email correspondence from people like Lawrence English, William Basinski and Brock  (as well as old friend Joachim Speith from Affin), all of whom have been so deeply encouraging. This, I must say, is a radical departure from much of my experience of techno-politic, which has sometimes felt a little cannibalistic. Labels like ASIP are wonderful examples of an alternative ‘conversation’ to me, and I’m just so touched to be involved. There’s no mention of Beatport charts, for a start, which is refreshing.

Your recent album on Mille Plateaux, how did it come about and how would you describe this album?

Fathersong was written as a requiem for my father, who died from Dementia related causes 2 years ago. It’s a product both of magic and accident, as well as some degree of intentionality (certainly in spirit). When I listen to it, I think of my father - and ultimately, this was all I wanted to achieve.

After dad died, it felt important that I use the opportunity to ‘stop’ for a while - to take stock of my life, to mark his legacy, to allow for the fullness of grief to reveal its blessing.
I suppose this notion is pretty orthodox in a typical religious sense - an intentional year of mourning, of grieving, of marking a departure. For me, this initially took the form of journaling, of framing up some of his paintings, and of exploring a kind of gentle, musical ‘free-association’, underpinned by lots and lots of therapy.

Lessons from therapy seemed to suggest that generally having less to prove or account for were the ones worth embracing, and the album process was very much a literal exploration of this.

It may sound ridiculous, but much of the album was composed from exploring generative software tools between extended sessions playing the XBox first-person shooter game “Doom”, or overlooking the ocean. Dad’s illness was informed by a life of overwork and exhaustion, so I’ve felt like honoring him involved challenging these notions with my own strategies.

Essentially, I became interested in the value both of anger, self-soothing and roleplay (and playing Doom is a fascinating exploration into this) which are often precluded by our culture’s resistance to acknowledging mortality, and supplanting this with distraction and virtue-signaling. Xbox and ambient music are two valuable tools in my arsenal. As a music producer and sound designer, I’m fortunate that my creative impulse is generally always ‘there’, but sometimes unsure of what form to take. Framed in the light of grief, I decided to experiment with the idea of ‘surrendering the burden of authorship’ in honor of my dad, and explore a little more play in my process again.

Fathersong was composed from composite layers of through-written parts and ideas. A hard-drive laden with renders, spliced and mixed in a way which made sense whilst in the moment- but, crucially, written in a manner which enabled me to distance myself from the ‘burden’ of feeling like I’d written any of it. There are plenty of my original patches in there (if you purchase the Arturia Pigments software you’ll likely hear a few in there!), but I love this idea of a shared cultural commons of ideas, so I’ve explored a heavy quotient of generative tools written by others.

Grief, magic, accident, cracked software - no one has a monopoly on these.

Conceptually, Fathersong is framed as a reflection on the mystery of the moments (seconds, days, years?) between physical death and transfiguration (literal or metaphorical) to whatever happens next after death.

Mille Plateaux have released some iconic albums over the years, what’s your fave from the catalog?

This is almost impossible to pick, but every single Vladislav Delay and Luomo release was profoundly impactful to me. Let’s go with Anima, for now - as a musical artifact and conceptual album (a single track!) it remains divine. Sasu’s work somehow fuses naturalistic and synthetic worlds like few artists Ive heard. He’s a singular voice for Mille Plateaux.

What inspired you to create Mycological Patterns? How would you describe the evolution of this compared to Fathersong?

Mycological Patterns reads as an extension, and perhaps a post-script to Fathersong. It’s the most ‘playful’ work I’ve created, and a quiet homage to my love of mushrooms. It’s a reflection on the literal decay and rebirth which fungi facilitate. It’s an album which reminds me about play and its importance (I keep hearing John Cage’s beautiful laugh intermingled with the fading voice of my father here).

The album itself was a deeper dive into processes explored in Fathersong. One ‘oblique strategy’ I really wanted to explore here, was to make use of as many freely available commercial midi clips (mostly from RnB and HipHop websites) to generate chordal movement, as well as to reharmonize material I have long been obsessed by (1960s choral recordings, old vinyl rips, Peter Gabriel acapellas) whilst exploring (rather gratuitously) some polyrhythmic tropes from Steve Reich. I’m just so fascinated by the idea of allowing music to ‘write itself’ through curation and curiosity, rather than pre-decided narrative; and I learn as much these days from a Drake record as I do from a Steve Reich experiment. Throw it all against the wall and see what sticks.

The older I become the more I realise how incredibly indebted to the work of individuals like these I am - and, along with my father, I feel like I’m living in a moment where revisiting the spirit of these outliers feels so important to me. It feels like a ripe moment to reflect on being sewn into a bigger story where I don’t need to bear any more ‘authorship’ than necessary. The world probably needs more silence than anything else, and I think it’s ‘silence’ I’m always trying to explore with music.

You use Holly Herndon’s AI project Holly+ in two tracks on this album, can you elaborate on this brilliant project?

Holly (and her partner Mat Dryhurst) are inspiring figures to me exploring the interface AI, ethics and arts discourse.

Holly has moved from being a ‘berlin club kid’ to exploring terrain on the more vibrant conceptual fringes of the musical / choral form, and remains crucially invested in questions relating to authorship and ethics. I love her work with the human voice, and love even more her lack of inherent cynicism when it comes to emergent technology; she’s one of those humans at the coalface of ‘reclaiming the future’ with intelligence and joy, so I’ve followed her work (and podcast!) for some time now.

Holly+ is a piece of wonderful ‘audio deepfake’ software from Holly; a browser-based algorithmic rendering of her voice, where users can upload and reprocess their own audio. Like so much emergent AI technology (I’m thinking specifically of apps like Dal-E Mini here), the brilliance of software like Holly+ is largely in its anomaly - in the dithering artifacts, glitches and moments where the code reveals the ‘fingerprints’ of its underlying humanity. It’s so compelling to me, and a generous invitation to artistic collaboration and conversation from Holly.

Can you describe how you went about creating those two tracks specifically for anybody else looking to do something with the AI tool?

My process with most of the material I compose at the moment is pretty straightforward. I’ll have a big ‘toolkit’ of disparate paths to explore, and literally batch-render elements through / within set parameters.

In the case of Holly+, I actually uploaded and re-synthesised some acapella material from other singers (in some cases who’s voices were already autotuned) to create a hybrid ‘supra-voice’, along with some drum and pad renders - an entire field of ideas, most of which didn’t feature in finished works. In this case, Holly+ has featured as much as a textural device as a melodic one, and it’s the ‘dithering’ artifacts Ive fallen heavily for here. Holly+ has an mp3 larynx, it would seem. I love her spectral overtones and the idea of this entity creating new, strange, composite entities through metabolizing existing work. I suppose, in a way, Holly+ is mycological.

You created a mixed version of this initially, what is the significance or inspiration of this approach? 

Writing in ‘mixed format’ continues to be central to my process these days. Primarily because most of the work I write is contextual and experiential rather than broadcast based. I’ve come from a club background where the magic of the form, for me, has been related to the positioning of how an original track might be placed in context of others a dj selects, so I still love writing in this way

Music exists in the context of tradition and experience, and whilst Western delivery has mandated the notion of a ‘single’, it’s not a particularly compelling one to me - I’m far more enamored by the idea of an audio ‘ecosystem’.

Similarly, and in part as a rally against the tyranny of short-form algorithmic convention, I’m interested in writing works that explore a degree of more extended immersion. In this sense, I’m still enamored by artists like Burial whose single ‘tracks’ are not only popular and accessible but also might veer across tempos, form, and tonality in a single edit; they require patience and enough relaxed attention to really enjoy. I’m pretty committed to ‘slowing down’ these days, and writing in a mixed format is a way to suggest this experience.

What can we expect from Deepchild in the future?

There are certainly more forays into generative and ambient work on the cards, and I’d love to begin to translate these into more live performance opportunities. I’m pretty active on the Wavepaths forums, too, and composing music for psychedelic therapy and/or medical interventions feels like a vital space to explore. Similarly, I’ve enjoyed listening to lullabies of late, and feel like there’s far more scope for composing for ‘children’ than conventional wisdom suggests. I work a fair bit with young people in both academic and incarceration forums, and I’d quite like to write a children’s album at some stage. It’s a long way from playing Berghain in a sense, but it’s also not too long an arc to draw. We all need to rediscover both rest and play.

At the moment I’m in the middle of a uni teaching term, and I’ve actually been trying to experiment with writing very linear, eroded, loopy techno again during lunch hour and before class - a counterpoint to textural ambient work; all very time-constrained, too.
Basically, whatever disrupts a process that feels too established (eg turning up to the studio every day and making the same thing) feels creatively energising to me.

I’m releasing a full-length album under a secret alias next month which is an exercise in composing under a totally fabricated ‘entity’, and trying to be disciplined enough to maintain anonymity. I feel like the act of publishing a work changes the way we hear the work, and the act of actively disrupting our attachment to outcome or identity can help us make more compelling, ‘authentic’ music. It sounds paradoxical, but it’s true for me.

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