enh

Mr Frankie - Sunday Morning Session (ASIP tribute mix)

Mr Frankie has been kind enough to put together an ASIP tribute mix, featuring tracks from The Places Series alongside more recent releases such as Europe and Arovane & Hior Chronik.

You can pick up any of these releases, most of them for free, over on the releases page.

Download.

 

Tracklist:

01. 36 - Heather Spa
02. Yeter - Dart 3
03. Benjamin Dauer - Eight And Forty
04. Textural Being - Vantage Points
05. Enh - Roke
06. Ex Confusion - Before We Begin
07. Levi Patel - Dissociation (Extended)
08. Norge - 165 Minutes With You
09. Halo - The Inner Realm
10. Kit - Girl Walking On The Beach Wearing A Skirt
11. Mig Dfoe - Mares
12. Nobuto Suda - Nobody Levee
13. Dalot - Home
14. Arovane & Hior Chronik - A Day, November 2013
15. Yagya - The North Shore


 

Passing by: Markus Guentner, Odd Shapes, Audioglider, enh, Sonae and Mr Frankie

A few treats from ASIP regulars in this Passing By feature.

Markus Guentner – Our Home

A little gem released by Markus Guentner a few weeks back now; not to be missed and a free download. Dark, subdued and industrial with a reverberating bassline. Download on Soundcloud.

 
 

Odd Shapes – Ice Cream Cathedral’s ‘The Ranger’ remix

A superb EP all-round by Ice Cream Cathedral and a rare remix by Odd Shapes. You’d probably expect Asger to take the drums on this piece to another level, going by his remix duties on Uncharted Places, but instead he opts for a stripped back version, letting the beautiful vocal swirl and the melody shine. The Debut LP will be released March 4th through Oh!My Collective (ohm014).

 
 

Audioglider – Mixtape 14 (mix)

Audioglider always manages to come up with these mix tapes at the right time of my life, and as you’d expect from Roberto, it’s a dreamy, melodic and a perfect companion to lazy, hazy days. Featuring a bunch of great tracks from enh, Message To Bears, Bass Kittens and XSpance – the latter of which has a rather good album called ‘Night Echoes‘ up on Bandcamp. Download the mix on Soundcloud.

 
 

enh – So Zero (mix)

Continuing the ASIP contingent, enh‘s also been busy preparing his latest mix and it’s packed full of ASIP related goodies. From Roger Martinez’s Horizontal Excursions to Parks, Stray Theories, and Markus Guentner remixes from Uncharted Places. I can’t be biased all the time, but this one’s bound to be good with this lot involved! Download on Soundcloud.

 
 

Sonae – Winter (mix)

You may remember many moons ago, it was through Sonae’s mixtapes that she came to release her Places Series EP on ASIP. The mixes are quite the legend round these parts and we’ve been void of them for far too long now. Sonia’s back, with tracks from Loscil, Fieldhead, Jon Hopkins, Apparat and Peter Broderick. Play on Mixcloud.

 
 

Mr.Frankie – After The Bliss (mix)

I found myself enveloped in this mix by Mr Frankie – a beautiful blend of textures, dub and deep voids of techno. Some superb track choices including: DFRNT, Edanticonf, Voices from the Lake, Minilogue and Adam Michalak.

 
 

Image – Suddenly The Trees Are Giving Way (@astrangelyisolatedplace)

enh – Body of Blue

Even without a listen, this is a special album for me already. Ian Handsley was responsible for the second release on The Places Series, with ‘Roke‘, a powerful depiction of its namesake storm off the coast of Japan, reflecting the impact it had on his fragile B&B. This track was a definition on Ian’s talent and since that release i’ve witnessed his library of productions grow, to what is now a full CD release on Gterma.

If Roke was your first introduction into Ian Handsley‘s work then ‘Body of Blue’ will maybe surprise you a little. You could have been forgiven for thinking Ian would become a master-mind of dark, atmospheric ambient, live sound effects and in short, a parallel of someone like Biosphere. I’m sure he still has that side of him locked away somewhere, but Body of Blue is a slightly different upbeat and melodic collection of music.

Artist albums tend to either be one of two things for me; a pre-defined journey of accompanying sounds, or a collection of potentially differing music that defines an artist’s taste. No-one approach is better than the other in my mind. Take John Beltran’s recent ‘Amazing Things‘ – one of my favourite albums this year which spans a perfect horizon of electronic music. Then compare that to Boards of Canada’s latest – an intentional, complex subliminal journey.

On first listen, ‘Body of Blue’ is the former, a collection of some beautiful electronic music that spans atmospheric ambient, to synth-laden euphoria. The title track is a great example of what to expect; a slow, progressive echo of euphoric chords that never quite peaks – an intro that leaves you wanting more.

In ‘Nanmadol’, Ian adopts a silky distant female vocal that brings Balearic elements and subtle drum programming to an otherwise stripped back album. The albums simplicity is defined in Cicadarama – one of my favourites, probably because it hits home with my ‘trance’ routes – epic strings and an addictive looping melody, like ‘Body of Blue’ – another tantalising teaser that deserves to just grow and grow.

On second listen, you start to feel Ian’s inspiration for this collection. The clue is of course in the title track, and when you start to associate this inspiration with the tracks in hand, a vivid depiction of Ian’s view out to coast comes to mind.

Take the Markus Guentner style ‘Shipping’. What starts as a distant fuzz out of sight on the horizon quickly transports into an ever-approaching mass of power. In ‘Contact’, the slow reverberating synths struggle to touch the long-awaited shore and the degrading vocal glimmers with a failed hope of reaching it’s final destination. In ‘Fighting Against Your Lungs’, Ian takes what is normally a view above the horizon, to the depths of the blue – floating, with a drenched atmosphere and glimmers of light through an otherwise muddled unknown.

After explaining how I felt after listening to this a few times, I may have ruined that moment of wonder for you…I hope not. But at first, Body of Blue was for me, a collection of great music, but with the above in mind and my decision made on what Ian wanted to portray with this album, I can’t get enough of it.

Everyone’s perception of music is different, but that’s where most of my inspiration for the title ‘A Strangely Isolated Place’ comes from. Music that transports you to wherever you want to go, with no-one else’s point-of-view to ruin your own. ‘Body of Blue’ embodies this ethos.

Available on enh’s Bandcamp for a very fair price, or you can also purchase the CD with a 16-page booklet here.

 
 

ASIP002 enh - Roke

 

Living in an old B&B in a tiny village on the Pacific Coast of Japan sounds pretty idyllic; the perfect place to create music to a backdrop of natural coastal beauty and the nostalgic romanticism of a building with a million stories. But as ‘Roke’ displays, it’s an existence that’s balanced with the regular threat of something wild, uncontrollable and destructive. 

Born from finding a semblance of beauty in terror, it’s the literal calm following the typhoon after which it is named. Combining a live recording of the house’s, creaking, defiant resistance, the droning ambience and the windswept elements create a track that’s both beautiful and unsettling. The structure’s stresses and moans add the familiarity of feeling safe as nature rages outside but here, there’s only ominous comfort. 

Wracked with an unobtrusive power, ‘Roke’ is the wide-eyed contrast between the vexing aftermath and the trepidation that the worst is yet to come. Gripping to the end, it’s the tense triumph of potentially losing everything but the relief of finding shelter when you need it most. (Words by Reef Younis).