Astral Industries 9128.live Takeover April 4th/5th/6th

*Now updated with Mixes that were posted online after the event*

Our good friends at Astral Industries were set to throw a weekend of music at Cafe OTO in London recently, but had to cancel due to the Coronavirus situation. Instead, we’ve teamed up to present a similar weekend over on our radio station, 9128.live.

During the event, we’ll be asking for a small donation of anything you can spare, to be split between Astral Industries (to help recoup the thousands lost on the cancellation), the artists involved and the South London Refugee Association, who provide expert advice, specialist services and effective support (made even harder given the current situation) to refugees, asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants in South London.

See 9128.live for the full schedule and to tune in.

Lineup + details:

Exclusive material:

The Chi Factory premiere new material and future releases on Astral Industries.

Deepchord presents 2hrs of previously unheard ambient works, as well as a 1hr live mix of Immersions, including the previously unheard Immersions III & IV.
A first full play of LF58’s forthcoming album on Astral Industries - Alterazione - out on Monday.

Craig Tattersall, aka The Humble Bee, premieres an hour of new music.

Get a sneak preview of Waveform Transmission’s next LP, V 3.0-3.9.

Wolfgang Voigt presents an hour of music from his unreleased ‘Konstrakt’ project.

Live sets:

Enjoy previously unheard exclusive live mixes from Ligovskoï and Sa Pa.

Listen to a 90 minute live mix from Menion comprising of solely his own productions.

A first airing of Multicast Dynamics’ live set at FOMO Club, Białystok last month.

Sonmi451 digs into past, present and future tracks in a one hour exclusive live mix.

An hour of Tape Loop Orchestra’s own productions, including fresh, unheard material.

Wanderwelle share a specially made one-hour live set, including a track from their forthcoming album.

DJ recordings:

Check out 90 min cuts from both Ario and Guillam’s DJ sets at the Astral Industries takeover of Haimney Gallery in Barcelona back in November 2018.

A first listen back to Chris SSG’s mix from Kizen Records x Astral Industries in Hong Kong in December 2018. 

Claudio PRC dives deep for 2hrs at Ambient Bar x Vurt, Seoul back in September 2019.

An exclusive first play of LF58’s marathon live set at Brancaleone, Rome.

DJ mixes:

Anthony Linell (including an exclusive unreleased track of his own), ASIP (including eight forthcoming tracks on A Strangely Isolated Place), Azim Fathi, Djilogue, Eight Fold Way, F-on, George Sova, Grant Aaron, hems, HVL, islas, Koen Hoets,  Koshin, Lynne, o.utlier, Refracted, Romi, SUNA & Unjin.

Mixes posted after the event:

Now available: Olga Wojciechowska / Unseen Traces EP

Olga Wojciechowska presents a new piano-focused EP ready for this, the 88th day of 2020, and perhaps more appropriately, as music for our times.

Including two tracks that were previously written for dance pieces and one new composition, these softer acoustic productions don't often find their way on to Olga's full-length albums, so instead are presented here for Piano Day 2020 and as a musical remedy for the listener.

Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri and featuring artwork by Marco Vannini, who provided the lovely art for Olga’s 2019 LP, Infinite Distances.

Available now on Bandcamp as a digital download.

““I hope this music will soothe your nerves and bring you some kind of enlightenment that we are drowning in it all together, here and now, as one organism.Let’s start working on rebuilding what we haven’t lost.Silence will not protect you.Speak up,be creative,be kind,..your flock will not let you fall” ”

— Olga Wojciechowska

Now available: Merrin Karras / Northwest Passage

After debuting a live version of the album Saturday night during our 9128.live weekend programming, I hope many of you know the brilliance you’re in for by now... We’re extremely excited to present Northwest Passage as Brendan’s second album under his Merrin Karras alias.

See the release page for more details, and links to listen and buy. Also, don’t miss the amazing video by Jan Goldfuß for the closing track Dominions, below.

Lastly, a big thank you to Rafael Anton Irisarri on mastering, Lupo Lubich for never giving up with that press, our plant for multiple rounds of test presses and Jack Hardwicke for that amazing artwork!

The majority of vinyl will be available at Juno.co.uk, with a few copies remaining direct on Bandcamp.

Release page

Preorder: Merrin Karras / Northwest Passage

We’re very excited to see Brendan’s Merrin Karras alias back on the label with a new album titled Northwest Passage. It’s been quite the journey in itself to get this one out there, but we’re very proud of the end result, with stunning artwork by Jack Hardwicke.

Head over to the release page for full details and links to preorder.

Watch the video for album-ender ‘Dominions’ below courtesy of Inverted Audio.

And lastly, catch Brendan playing two live shows this month, in both London at our label showcase on March 21st and in Berlin the week after. See our events page for more details.

Liner notes now available in ASIP vinyl releases

Remember the days when you’d sit with a CD, or record in hand, studying the artwork and digging deep into the liner notes, credits and any other accompanying detail to do with the record? Now, the majority of people are getting to the point where an album or track is played within a playlist, often on their phone, without seeing any accreditation at all - not even a label name is visible unless on the artwork, let alone the people who were behind the creation of the record. Today’s consumption of music is fast-paced and shallow, and it’s why ASIP focuses on physical objects and the presentation of music.

We’ve always preferred to create gatefold records for this reason, giving even more focus to the artwork and making it a piece to study and hold, and where possible I’ve always tried to encourage artists to add any text or elaborate on their record, but that isn’t always easy or wanted.

Moving forward, however, we’ve created a new way to inject more context and story behind the record. Each release, starting from ASIPV022 (also including ASIPV021 & ASIPV018 which were delayed) will have a separate piece of thick-stock paper with printed liner notes. It will be placed into one of the sleeves (outside of the poly-sleeve). These liner notes will come from the label’s perspective.

Why the label’s perspective? Because it offers consistency and is in my hands to create instead of hoping other artists are OK to contribute - more often than not, they want to focus on the music!

Each liner note will consist of four sections which, by chance (or not…) make up the ASIP acronym.

A - Art - the story behind the artwork, why it was chosen, what was the brief etc.

S - Story - how artist and label came together, was it a demo, how did they meet etc.

I - Insight - an interesting, or deeper detail about the release or artist you might not otherwise have found out.

P - Press - I thought it would be interesting to document the actual press of a record (manufacturing) where possible. Sometimes this might be very boring (with a successful press) but others might express some added pain, adventure and learnings.

If you find yourself wanting to post any of these physical liner notes online, I’d like to very kindly ask you not to. So you won’t find them online with any of my doing at least. They are meant to be received and read by the listener with the record in hand. I have an ambition that one day I can pull them all together and document each release in a book or something to help chronicle the label.

Now, going against exactly what I just said… but (blurred a little), below, you’ll find a sample of what to expect.