isolatedmix 104 - Optic Echo

I feel a sense of nostalgia for this isolatedmix, for several reasons:

Firstly, Mike Jedlicka (Optic Echo) and I go back for some time now after initially meeting in Portland (Oregon) amongst the amazing ambient scene at the time. We would often find ourselves at the same shows in what is a small city, and both of us would make the trip up to Seattle for Rafael Anton Irisarri’s Substrata Festival (with one such memory being a field recording trip where I must’ve been the only one not knowing what the hell I was doing at the time).

Second, the artwork chosen by Mike for the captures the heart of Oregon, a place I still admire and go back to often. The shot of the Colombia River Gorge is synonymous with the good feelings of summer hikes amongst nature’s finest and ending the day at a brewery.

And lastly, the mix. Not only is Mike an avid-vinyl enthusiast, spinning vinyl-only for his Optic Echo Presents radio show mixes and applauded end of year lists, but his isolatedmix continues this theme with what I can only describe as some essential ASIP-loved vinyl. Many of the artists featured in the mix evoke memories of early ASIP blog days; such as Night Sequels, 36, Eluvium, and of course Wanderwelle all contributing isolatedmixes in the past at the very least - the tracklist strikes at the heart of the ASIP ethos.

Enough of my sentimental musings. To go into a bit more detail with Mike and his mix, I sent over a few questions:

Hi Mike, let’s start with how some people here may know you - making some great year-end mixes and hosting them with our friends at Headphone Commute - how do you go about choosing your favorite vinyl of the year?

Hi Ryan, we miss you here in Portland!

I have been trying to be mindful of new artists and non-mainstream records that I have enjoyed / been intrigued by over the year. I start by compiling a list of possible albums, usually 50+ records. It's helpful that I can look over my OEP playlists to see if I missed anything. In December I whittle it down a bit, pull all the records, and sort them into genres. I start experimenting with them, mapping out the mix around mid Dec. I'm usually receiving records till late December that I want to give a good listen, so I usually don't record the mix till the very end of the year or on NYD. I am thankful for Mike of Headphone Commute for giving me the opportunity every year!

Like me you now have a little one running (crawling?) about the house. How has having a child impacted your music life? Are you still buying as many records!?

It has been a monumental change in my life when he joined our family, and mostly positive. I had to restructure my priorities, as I haven't written my own music in a couple years. But I've kept up with my weekly 2-hour radio show on XRAY. I also attended way less live shows (pre-COVID-19) after he was born.

I had to slim down on buying physical records (my wife may disagree) by maybe 20%, which I really needed to do and probably should do more. I don't have nearly as much money to throw around.

As I mentioned above, I still miss the Portland ambient scene from a few years back. How has it changed over recent years?

I feel that I have not had my finger on the PDX ambient music pulse for the past 2-5 years as I used to, so I'd be better at telling my story. I was deep in it back when I threw the Aleatoric monthly starting ~2007. That merged into different monthlies with Coco Madrid and side shows with Tim Westcott (wndfrm) at Leaven and different churches around town. I've learned through experience to choose different venues (art studios, churches, community spots, outdoor events, etc.) instead of bars for ambient gigs, as people would listen more instead of talking while drinking.

My last show that I curated was Marcus Fischer, Simon Scott (of Slowdive), and Rafael Anton Irisarri. Tim had a contact that could get large venue speakers for a decent price, and we got a great deal for a nice Meyer system with a HUGE sub. That led to getting shut down by the police ... for an ambient gig. Perfect way to throw in the towel.

After that I chose to pull back and just do support work for different ambient events, and I'm pretty good at working the door. I really dropped off the map by ... I want to say 2017.

I know Beacon Sound was a staple Portland record store, and is unfortunately shutting down, but I’ve seen quite a few new shops pop-up since I left, do you still dig locally? What’s your go to now?

I loved BeaconSound so much, its closing was terrible news but understandable in this time. They had (in my opinion) the best selection in town and Andrew is a wonderful human. His store was the last show I attended, a few weeks before COVID hit the US. I have been taking the quarantine seriously, which means I get most of my vinyl currently from Bandcamp.

Other record stores I enjoy in town (assuming they are still open due to the pandemic) are Exiled, Little Axe, and Clinton Street. I really miss record diving :(

Your isolatedmix sticks to your theme of vinyl only - what was the thinking behind the mix?

I did not have a theme per se, but I leaned more on the tempo / structured side of things, longer mixes, a few more classics, and less experimental music than my normal Optic Echo Presents mixes. I hold your isolatedmix series in high regard, so I took my time to get you something that I was happy with, while not playing it safe.

You've written some extensive mix notes detailing your transitions too - do you always do this? Why do you feel it’s important to highlight the technical aspect of a mix?

The notes were for you personally since I thought you might be interested, although I don't mind you sharing publicly. I preplan all of my OEP sets in this way, which takes way more time but will consistently give me the quality of mixes that I desire. It also makes it easier to live mix my FM broadcast (we are currently pre-recording shows due to COVID-19) or record at home, so the transitions come out to my expectations. I have an excel database that I've updated since my college downtempo DJ days 20 years ago of every (tempo driven) record that I own, so I am able to search for a specific BPM when I'm coming up with ideas to beat matching records.

Listen on Soundcloud, Mixcloud, or the ASIP Podcast.

astrangelyisolatedplace · isolatedmix 104 - Optic Echo

Download

Tracklist:

01. The Orb- Orbvs Terrarvm  c1.1
02. Pinkcourtesyphone- Sentimental Something  b1
03. W Tang- Instrumentals  b1
04. Night Sequels- Children of the Night Make Music  c2
05. 36- Dream Tempest  b
06. Lucy Gooch- Rushing  a2
07. Eluvium- Life Through Bombardment vol2  f1.2
08. William S Burroughs- Break Through in Grey Room  b4
09. Wanderwelle- A State of Decrepitude  a3
10. Future Sound of London- Lifeforms  b3
11. Clickits- Moteer 001  b4
12. Orla Wren- Butterfly Wings Make  a4
13. Ceeys & Constant Presence- Thesis 17  a1
14. Hildur Gudnadóttir- Chernobyl  a1
15. Four Tet- Sixteen Oceans  a4
16. Tom Scott- Hilldrop  b1
17. Dakota Suite (Hauschka remix)- The Night Just Keeps Coming In  a4

Optic Echo’s Mix notes:
The Orb- Orbvs Terrarvm c 1.1

Pinkcourtesyphone- Sentimental Something b1 na // -low, start w/ O, O out bef beat

W Tang- Instrumentals b1 90 // in ½ through P, start v low vol slow up but keep lower, play slow w/ WT EQs (keep low)

Night Sequels- Children of the Night… c2 90 // -mid, mix (+1.9) in WT end 20-25s, WT – mids end 7s

36- Dream Tempest b2 90 // mix in NS end 45s, keep mix lower vol

Lucy Gooch- Rushing a2 63 // @45, in on beat 5-10s bef 36 end lull, in at lower vol, don’t play last ½ 36 end lull

Eluvium- LTB vol 2 f1.2 na // -mid, f1.2=mid static 45-60s bef 2nd ½ pads, in LG end 1/3rd–¼th, mids in slow LG end 10s

William S Burroughs- Break Through in…b4 na // in r after LG out (3TT 3-7s bef LG out), keep at lower vol

Wanderwelle- A State of Decrepitude a3 na // -mid, in E 1/3rd through, take out E mids 1/3rd through W (keep out till W end 20-30s)

FSOL- Lifeforms b3 na-120 // in E at end lull, start 20s b2 end at lower vol

Clickits- Moteer 001 b4 120 // @45, -mid, mix (+1) 4 beats in F end beat only part (end 40s), mids in F beat out, F -mids ½ end 15s + lower vol

Orla Wren- Butterfly Wings Make a4 60 // mix (+0.5) in C end 30s

Ceeys & Constant Presence- Thesis 17 a1 100 // in at OW beat out (end 15s)

Hildur Gudnadóttir- Chernobyl a1 100 // mix (+0.5) in CCP ½ through, play w/ eqs, H fluctuates a bit

Four Tet- Sixteen Oceans a4 98 // -mid, mix (+2) v low vol 10s through CCP end 60s lull, FT mids & vol in at beat only 2nd part

Tom Scott- Hilldrop b1 na // in FT end 30-40s

Dakota Suite- The Night Just… a4 na// in 1/3rd-½ through TS

Optic Echo | Mixcloud | Twitter | Radio/Podcast

Optic Echo Presents – Best Vinyl of 2015

Mike Jedlicka's Optic Echo radio show consistently serves up some of the best ambient, experimental and modern classical vinyl-only selections. In this special edition, Mike has curated some of his favorite vinyl of the year specially prepared for Headphone Commute.

As you would expect from a weekly show trying to summarize a years worth of wax purchases, it was no doubt an arduous task narrowing it downvand the result is a lovely journey through the many styles Mike covers on his show.

Mike's included some of my favorite vinyl of the year too, namely Night Sequels, 36, wndfrm, Benoit Poulard and Inventions, all sitting proudly in my best of 2015 lists. And a big thanks to Mike for also selecting Arovane & Hior Chronik's release.

Check out the Optic Echo Mixcloud page for all of the previous shows and Headphone Commute for full details and all download options.

Download.

Tracklist:
Mountains – Parallel Two – You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever
Kreng – Bargaining- The Summoner
Night Sequels – Siamese Summer – Children of the Night Make Music
Jon Hopkins – I Remember (Nils Frahm Dub Interrupt Remix) – I Remember 10”
Four Tet – Morning Side – Morning / Evening
Max Richter – Space 11 (Invisible Pages Over)- From Sleep
Shuttle358 – Can You Prove I Was Born?
Andrew Weathers – We Will Never See A Cloud Again – Fuck Everybody, You Can do Anything
VA (Marcus Fischer) – Field Works: Progue’s Run
Rival Consoles – Ghosting – Howl
Pye Corner Audio – Quasar II – Stars Shine Like Eyes 10”
Benoit Poulard – Whose Palms Create – Sonnet
36 – Sky Fire – Pulse Dive
wndfrm – Monopole – Formal Variant EP
Christina Vantzou – Stereoscope – No. 3
T.Raumschmiere – 007 – T.Raumschmiere
Inventions – Wolfkids – Maze of Woods
Nils Frahm – Our Own Roof – Music For The Motion Picture Victoria
Arovane & Hior Chronik – Scale – In-between [BUY]
Valet – Transformation – Nature
Anduin – Last Days of Montrose House 10”
Helm – I Exist In A Fog – Olympic Mess
Kamran Sadeghi – The Right Direction is Left
Lawrence English – Antarctica – Viento
Olafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm – Three – Loon
Celer – Distant Misgivings – Jima

isolatedmix 56 - Night Sequels: Listen To The Ni-Fi

Throughout my seven years writing and curating on ASIP, every now and then I stumble across an artist that introduces me to a new music style and opens up an entire rabbit hole of discovery. It's why I love doing this; maybe it's a self-preservation thing; a perpetual cycle of discovery and education; but it's artists like Nick Huntington and his aliases that keep me searching.

You may know Nick as one half Freescha - that warm, analogue, bubbly electronica duo (alongside Michael McGroarty) I've talked about for years on here, responsible for superb albums such as Kids Fill The Floor, and Head Warlock Double Stare, which contains one of my favorite electronica tracks (an example of just how much I enjoy Freescha). Talking of favorites, Nick also released music as Christmas Lights, the only album to stem from that name so far, but an absolutely beautiful piece for anyone into warm, downtempo synthesizer focused music.

Nick is also behind, Attacknine, alongside Erik Alwill, a California based label born to release Freescha music, that's ultimately gone on to be an extremely well-respected underground electronica outfit including artists such as Casino Versus Japan.

But it's Nick's more recent, strobe filled, colorful, outer-space themed soundtrack alias Night Sequels that's jumped aboard the isolatedmix rocket. Nick just released teasers and pre-orders for his debut album, The Children Of the Night Make Music, and it's a warm summers evening jam through a spectrum of psychedelic light. It's Freescha on acid, which is sure to be nothing short of astounding if you know and enjoy Freescha. And now, we're lucky enough to get a taste of the hallucinogenic drones, dream-drifting vocals and never-ending filtered warp-holes with Nick's isolatedmix. Featuring music he outright enjoys and previously unreleased Night Sequels tracks and remixes, isolatedmix 56 is another very special addition to the series, with Nick also taking the time to talk us through his selections in glorious detail below.

Never has the artwork been truer to the music in this mix too - take a seat in a dark room, whilst the kaleidoscope of color from the outside world and a small breeze, seeps through the dusty windows. As Nick quotes, "turn out the lights, touch your volume knob, and turn it up". 

Download.

Tracklist:

01. Jerry Goldsmith - Outland Main Titles
02. Claudio Gizzi - Old Age For Dracula
03. Queen - In The Space Capsule (Love Theme)
04. Steve Moore - 248 Years
05. Philip D'Aram - La Valse Grinçante
06. Gary Numan - Down In The Park (Night Sequels Tweak)
07. Night Sequels - All Cats Are Grey (Previously Unreleased)
08. Night Sequels - Mainstreet Meltdown (Previously Unreleased)
09. Black Moth Super Rainbow - Psychic Love Damage (Night Sequels Remix Mk. II) (Previously Unreleased)
10. Brian Grainger - Swamp Bike (Re-synthesized by Night Sequels) (Previously Unreleased)
11. The Beach Boys - Feel Flows (Night Sequels Treatment)
12. Night Sequels -  Star Car Bizarre (Previously Unreleased)
13. Valentyn Silvestrov - Der Bote
14. Tones On Tail - Rain
15. Schubert - Trio in E-flat (Drenched)

You can pre-order Night Sequels' new album here, containing the usual brilliant Attack Nine colored vinyl + tshirt combos.

Tracknotes:

Jerry Goldsmith - Outland Main titles
What can I say, he's amazing.  One of my favorite composers, perfectly capturing the vast isolation of space.

Claudio Gizzi - Old Age For Dracula
From Paul Morrissey's Blood For Dracula. Mike and I (Freescha) are big fans.  The whole score is great, as well as his score for Flesh For Frankenstein.  Incidentally, they've just been reissued on vinyl by Dagored. 
 
Queen - In The Space Capsule (Love Theme)
There is no Freescha without Flash Gordon.  I remember sitting in the theater watching this movie as a little kid, and in particular this scene.  The beautifully eerie synths, billowing clouds of colors, and subtly erotic staging left a big impression on me.  Dream Zone 101.

Steve Moore - 248 Years
I stumbled across this record a few years ago.  Somewhere, this is the music to a New Age of my fantasies.  From the album "Primitive Neural Pathways". Steve Moore Bandcamp.

Philip D'Aram - La Valse Grinçante
From Jean Rollin's film "Fascination".  I was watching this movie on repeat around the time of recording Freescha's "Kids Fill The Floor".  I was in love with the music.  It haunted my nights in the Fall of 2000.

Gary Numan - Down In The Park (Night Sequels Tweak)
The Ruler.

Night Sequels - All Cats Are Grey (Cure cover, Previously Unreleased)
Still my favorite Cure song of all time.

Night Sequels - Mainstreet Meltdown (Previously Unreleased)
A Bob Seger cover.  I remember being a little kid, in the back of some friend's car, their parents driving us home at night, and hearing Bob Seger's "Main Street" come on the radio.  I seem to hear this song on the radio more now than I did then. It was always a treat when it would come on.  I thought the guitar lead was so dreamy, and perfectly captured this feeling of sadness-happiness-yearning.  I've been addicted to this feeling in music since I can remember. 

Black Moth Super Rainbow - Psychic Love Damage (Night Sequels Remix Mk. II) (Previously Unreleased)
In 2013 Tom (aka TOBACCO) from Black Moth Super Rainbow asked if I'd like to remix a track off of their album Cobra Juicy for a remix album*.  I chose Psychic Love Damage, and you can currently hear the remix on Soundcloud.  I liked how the remix turned out, and thought for this mix, it might be interesting to try and do a remix of the remix.  Turns out, it's not interesting.  BUT this alternate remix did come out of that attempt, and I like this one too. *(release date of this album still unknown)

Brian Grainger - Swamp Bike (Re-synthesized by Night Sequels)
A previously unreleased remix.  I have a few incarnations of this, but this one works best for this ASIP mix I think.  The original version of "Swamp Bike" is on Brian Grainger's awesome  "Highschool Guitar", and was also released as a digital single.

The Beach Boys - Feel Flows (Night Sequels Treatment)
As awesome as Brian Wilson is, Dennis and Carl were just as great in their own right. "Feel Flows" was written by the late greats Carl Wilson and Jack Rieley, with Carl singing, and it's a great example of classic Beach Boys piano bass work that I hear pop up in my own playing from time to time..  

My dad played a lot of Beach Boys when I was a kid.  He had all sorts of rarities on reel-to-reel tapes, bootleg vinyl (if my memory serves), and cassettes.  This was long before a lot of this stuff became available in box sets.  There were no CDs yet.  The only way to hear this stuff was to find a friend of a friend of a friend who knew a guy that heard of another guy that knew someone who had some unreleased Beach Boys session recordings.

So I may have heard this song when I was a tyke.  But the first time it made an impression on me and turned me on to a whole era of the Beach Boys that was, for the time (and possibly still is), forgotten, was in the Summer of 1995, when it came on the radio late one night.  It blew my mind, and I immediately had to know who it was, but the DJ never said.  I had a feeling it was the Beach Boys because the voice sounded familiar and the way the bass notes moved around on the piano, I thought the odds were pretty good it was them.  But since I had no idea what it was called, I didn't have a recording of it, and I didn't know the lyrics, it became very difficult to track down.  What made it harder (I would later learn) was that in '95, the albums from this era of The Beach Boys were all out of print on CD and very hard to find, so when I would listen to their CDs at used record shops, this song would never turn up on any of the them.  So I started scouring Salvation Armys and Goodwills, buying any Beach Boys vinyl that I hadn't come across on CD.  I started to doubt that it was even the Beach Boys.  Maybe some other band that sounded similar?  Who could that be?

And then eventually, after months and months of searching through The San Fernando Valley, I found a ratty ass copy of "Surf's Up".  
And Low.
And Behold.
When I flipped it to the B-Side.
There it was in all it's the glory.  The song I'd been looking for.  The feeling of elation when those sweet sweet sounds came out of my speakers I'll never forget.
And thats's my Beach Boys story.
Here it is for you with a little treatment from me, but it's pretty spacey and flange-y even without it.
I hope you dig as much as I do.

Night Sequels -  Star Car Bizarre (Previously Unreleased)
A little jammy I put together that also mixed well coming out of The Beach Boys.

Valentyn Silvestrov - Der Bote
From "Der Bote - Elegies For Piano " by Alexi Lubimov. Things like this make me sad that one day I will never hear it again.

Tones On Tail - Rain
If there is no Freescha without Flash Gordon, I think I speak for Mike and myself when I say there is definitely no Freescha (or Night Sequels) without Tones On Tail.  When Mike and I met in high school, Tones On Tail were an endless source of inspiration for us. They have the perfect sound palette: a balance of weirdness and pop, cool synth sounds and strange guitars. 

Fridays after school, Mike and I would usually drown in the pool during a water polo game, then go to his house and jam in his family's band room for hours, miking  everything through delay pedals, and playing "A Forest" and "Bela Lugosi's Dead" nonstop for hours.  Then we'd crash out, usually listening to Tones On Tail's "Rain".  I remember lying on the floor listening to this, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling and thinking how cool it would be to be able to record music like this. 
There's still nothing that sounds like them.

Schubert - Trio in E-flat (Drenched)
A recording from the 1983 film "The Hunger". This film had a big impact on me.  I love everything about it.  Impeccable style. Neon classical.  And the Bauhaus segment in the beginning was a life changing moment, it was that impactful on my musical and visual sensibilities. A nice place to end this set.