Mick Chillage and Lee Norris come together as Autumn Of Communion. Between them, their music stretches into the deepest roots of modern ambient music.
Lee Norris' monikers range from the cult 90's electronica of Metamatics and Norken, through to the beautiful tones of The Angling Loser - a collective of ambient artists that also includes Porya Hatami and Will Bolton. Lee's also helming the ...txt label, which has played home to many AOC releases and just recently, a monumental boxset that features the entire AOC discography. ...txt has also presented us with some brilliant albums by Sage Taylor (aka Textural Being) (Raintime) and the more psychedelic ambient sound of Ishq (2016's Fhorm being a fave of mine), as well as becoming home to many of Mick Chillage's productions.
The label and indeed AOC's sound is no doubt influenced by the legendary FAX label, which also presented Autumn Of Communion's most seminal piece to date, their 2012 self-titled masterpiece. The album was perhaps overshadowed by the unfortunate passing of FAX founder Pete Namlook in 2012, but you can think of no better home, or higher praise for the duo. Mick, is no stranger to this high praise either, with one of the most revered albums on the FAX label, FAXology in 2011, followed by releases on FAX-dedicated output, Carpe Sonum.
The web of productions between them both runs deep into some of the genre's best rabbit-holes. Just last week, I was in a record shop in Bellingham WA, at a random second-hand record store. I got talking to the owner about the type of records and artists I was on the hunt for and he said, "I just bought something new last week from Databloem". Sure enough he went on to play a CD and out comes Mick Chillage's 2016 album, Paths. It's the type of music that breaks down boundaries and epitomizes the true early 90's ambient sound and arguably, Autumn Of Communion is the purest distillation of their combined works.
For isolatedmix 79, the duo wade through some of the genre's finest producers, both old and new. Track-by-track, it's a who's-who of ambient music, but the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts - this AOC mix channels the very essence of pure ambient music and the many inspirations behind AOC.
Tracklist:
01. William Basinski - 92982.1
02. Tangerine Dream - Sequent C
03. Ryuichi Sakamoto - Fullmoon
04. David Sylvian - The Healing Place
05. Billow Observatory - Plum
06. Tetsu Inoue - Elevator Drops
07. Dots - Dense
08. Cluster & Eno - Für Luise
09. Autumn Of Communion - Streams Pt4
10. Jochem Paap - Dx-Snth
11. Harold Budd & Robin Guthrie - Twilight
Autumn Of Communion: Bandcamp | Discogs
Artwork/image by Ricardo Gomez Angel
