A Strangely Isolated Place (ASIP): Releases

*FULL PREVIEW*. The second of Kit's tracks to be remixed is the experimental beauty 'Three Dotted Monk'. What starts off as miniature clicks in the original, progresses into a euphoric electronica track riddled with field recordings and sharp beats. Norge takes a similar progressive approach, focusing on the driving nature of the original and adding Guentner'esque dubby ambience. These young stars of electronic music have a bright future ahead of them!

Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri.

Available as part of the Uncharted Places compilation: http://astrangelyisolatedplace.bandcamp.com/album/uncharted-places

Uncharted Places: Kit - Three Dotted Monk (Norge Remix)

More info, full EP and HQ download: asip.me/ASIP028

There’s always private pleasure in seeing beauty where others don’t. Sometimes it’s just a case of the personal outweighing the spectacular but in a part of the world as vast and stunning as Yorkshire, the abundance of scenery makes finding that place an infinitely easier coincidence. Ilkley or ‘Heather Spa’ is one such place for 36 aka Dennis Huddleston. A moorland area on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, it’s served as both a place of escape and inspiration.

“It’s a place I’ve visited many times at various stages of my life,” he begins, “coming from Bradford, which has had its fair share of social and economic problems over the years, Ilkley provided an escape from the city and is somewhere me and my friends spent many days and nights. It isn't the largest, nor the most beautiful countryside in England, but it has an undeniable charm that’s felt by everyone who’s visited.”

You feel that connection throughout ‘Heather Spa’. It’s one of familiarity and rejuvenation with the exhale of the strings evoking happiness and a gazing contentment. ‘Heather Spa (Burning)’ is just as poised and gentle with its slow, weaving melodies and whilst it’s more clouded and subdued, it leaves a determinedly resonant impression.

“There was a huge fire in 2006 which destroyed vast areas of the moorland,” Dennis explains. “I had visited it only a few days prior and the lush green land was replaced by charred cinders, completely decimating the landscape. It was quite a sight to behold and there was an undeniable melancholy in the air. Reseeding efforts and the tough will of nature has reversed most of the damage and Ilkley Moor is alive once again.”

The initial inspiration for the ‘Shadow Play’ album, this final instalment of ‘Heather Spa’ marks the culmination of Dennis’ personal trilogy, and helps the ‘Heather Spa EP’ feel like a very natural conclusion to a journey of transition, progression and redemption.

"It's come full-circle in a way,” Dennis muses, “Heather Spa as a concept was the catalyst for my latest album 'Shadow Play' and you can see three distinct yet fully-connected chapters on what is a single story; the inception with Heather Spa, the realisation with Shadow Play, and finally with this EP for the ASIP Places Series, an epilogue. I think they're some of the most emotional pieces of music I've worked on and I hope you enjoy taking this final journey with me, right back at the place where it started."

ASIP028 36 - Dangerous Days

ASIP028 36 - Heather Spa (Burning)

Song of the Highest Tower. Inspired by a poem by Arthur Rimbaud. 

Oisive jeunesse 
A tout asservie, 
Par délicatesse 
J'ai perdu ma vie. 
Ah ! Que le temps vienne 
Où les coeurs s'éprennent. 

Je me suis dit : laisse, 
Et qu'on ne te voie : 
Et sans la promesse 
De plus hautes joies. 
Que rien ne t'arrête, 
Auguste retraite. 

J'ai tant fait patience 
Qu'à jamais j'oublie 
[...] 

Oisive jeunesse 
A tout asservie, 
Par délicatesse 
J'ai perdu ma vie. 
Ah ! Que le temps vienne 
Où les coeurs s'éprennent.

All tracks written and produced by Pasquale Riviezzo 

Artwork photo titled "la città che muore" by Bruno _pek_ asip.me/1g3IWBR

Download on Bandcamp

ASIP029 Halo - Song Of The Highest Tower

"When the gate of clouds opens wide, rain starts falling on the inner lands. And an harmony of choirs and voices lifts up, like children, a pure melody of oscillating bells plays inside us. Intensely. Airy. Ethereal. Nature awakening. Deeply immersed in silences and noises." 

All tracks written and produced by Pasquale Riviezzo 

Artwork photo titled "la città che muore" by Bruno _pek_ asip.me/1g3IWBR

ASIP029 Halo - Cloud Gate

"A sequence of places. Indefinite. A continuous flow of emotions that paints a landscape in the air. Here are new colors, new notes. And new atmospheres. It’s all about atmosphere. Intimate. And I cannot define boundaries, or limits. So wide, but so real. Like the fields that unfold while we’re moving, our travel. And they are reflected in our eyes like morning dew in a mirror".

All tracks written and produced by Pasquale Riviezzo 

Artwork photo titled "la città che muore" by Bruno _pek_ asip.me/1g3IWBR

ASIP029 Halo - The Inner Realm

"Departure is how the act of moving from one place to another begins. This is a station of passage, an abandoned station you see through the window while you’re travelling to another town. It’s an isolated place, vanishing in the mist, where few voices are heard and a train is passing by. All is immersed in the ambience of a particular Autumn day; a soft rain starts pouring down while all our feelings are flowing freely."

All tracks written and produced by Pasquale Riviezzo 

Artwork photo titled "la città che muore" by Bruno _pek_ asip.me/1g3IWBR

ASIP029 Halo - An Isolated Railway

'Heaval' refers to a hill on the on the Isle of Barra which is also its highest point. I’ve never been able to see as far and wide as that before so I tried to capture the expanse and exposure of being at the top, surrounded by ocean. The climactic part reminds me of arriving at the final gradient and just feeling very appreciative, very small, and very alive. 

Dextro - Heaval

Every spring I try to spend some time in the south of Spain. If you enter the Andalusian plain from the seaside, you have to drive a long way up through the mountains. But when you arrive, you enter a beautiful, dream-like, inspiring landscape.

Marsen Jules - Andalucia

I composed "Tour De Pyrénées” after a trip through them in 2012. The tour lasted five days and nights and I saw some unbelievable, beautiful ‘lost places’. The music represents the ups and downs of driving the car through the mountain pass, the voices of the people, and the landscape. 

Bjorn Rohde - Tour De Pyrénées

Walking down from the highest point on the subtropical island of La Gomera, the Alto de Garajonay, I entered the valley of El Cedro, where thousands of blackbirds covered the mountain ranges with canonical hymns. I sat down, closed my eyes and dissipated into this masterpiece of nature. What remained was this everlasting symphony of life: the uni-verse, the One Song.

Horizontal Excursions -  Garajonay

I have quite a romanticised vision of London; it's hectic and vibrant, but also physically and mentally draining. It’s a city of opposites, both beautiful and ugly, exhilarating yet frustrating. It leaves me with an almost guilty sense of relief when I leave, giving my brain a chance to process my time there. 

36 - London

‘Home’ is inspired by a walk on Kalathas beach during a December sunset. All the different elements reflect the harmony and openness but there’s a tree that has always stood out to me. It’s been there forever and we’ve established an unspoken understanding: we both find a purpose in solitude. 

Dalot - Home

I have always been fascinated by rain and a wet city scene in Zurich, Switzerland inspired me. It’s incredible how rain affects the view of a landscape; the soft mist just rising in the distance; the entire place suddenly taking on shades of blue and grey; the moving, undefined clouds in the sky. That entire place feels frozen in time, like a photo, a portrait.

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"With “Rain Says” we have an exquisite combination of strings, piano, and synths, which are bolstered by field recordings of rain, which are arranged in such a way as to faintly imply percussion. The explorations of dissonance and arrhythmic patterns coupled with beautiful melody and complementary string sections creates an interesting counterpoint, ripe with tension, which is relieved when the rain takes over again. A simply gorgeous track." - Igloo Magazine

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Double transparent blue vinyl + digital 
Catalogue number: ASIPV002
http://astrangelyisolatedplace.bandcamp.com/

Europe

Buy Digital/Vinyl

Halo -  Rain Says

Track 1 from Markus Guentner's 3-track Places Series EP. 
http://soundcloud.com/astrangelyisolatedplace/sets/asip014-markus-guentner/

On ‘Saint’, Markus fondly recalls his childhood growing up by a church, resplendent with the wind-chime tinkle of bells and a floating backdrop. But behind the iridescent melody, it feels like there’s a darker force.

Download the 3-track EP here http://asip.me/ASIP014
http://asip.me/PlacesSeries

Download EP

ASIP014 Markus Guentner - Saint

Track 2 from Markus Guentner's 3-track Places Series EP. 
http://soundcloud.com/astrangelyisolatedplace/sets/asip014-markus-guentner/

‘Dockside’ is a tribute to one of Markus’ favourite locations. Inspired by the neon-lit drives around his hometown, it’s a wistful, climactic journey that contrasts the natural beauty of the sunrise with the heavy machinery of the harbour. The blissful result of striking a balance between the right time, and the right place.

Download the 3-track EP here http://asip.me/ASIP014

http://asip.me/PlacesSeries

ASIP014 Markus Guentner - Dockside

Track 3 from Markus Guentner's 3-track Places Series EP.
http://soundcloud.com/astrangelyisolatedplace/sets/asip014-markus-guentner/

‘Talking Clouds’ completes the homespun trinity. Slow-built around a subdued angels’ chorus and a growing sense of anticipation, after a long night drive and the cold bite of the AM hours, there’s a simple contentment in the patient wait for dawn to colour the sky.

Download the 3-track EP here http://asip.me/ASIP014

http://asip.me/PlacesSeries

ASIP014 Markus Guentner - Talking Clouds

A little ambient piece I wrote yesterday afternoon.. Sorry not to have so much time for composing music until July, but I really wanted to share something with you in a little free time from my studying.

I always thought of ambient music as a way to effectively depict soundscapes with notes and musical colors (frequencies, tones, silences).

I’ll listen to this with closed eyes and I’ll see sounds painting a landscape in the imaginary space. Like emerging from the deepness of your thoughts, and sorrounding you with its presence, because it's you who has been creating it. Music conceals places in its notes.

I called that place "The wastelands", a distant landscape brought back to our time for a little moment, as it were while the wind blew in the cloudy sky and the sun set over the horizon of the open fields.

Just like a dream, at the end you open your eyes and there's no trace left, if not a subtle sensation of having been there, somewhere, sometime...

http://haloproject.co.uk
http://facebook.com/halosphere
http://twitter.com/halotwtr

Download

Halo - 3.The Wastelands

A sunny day at the beach can be a wonderful thing but a wind and rain swept endeavour across the shifting sands rewards just as richly. Surrounded by the elements, for ‘Black Day, Silver Sea’ Igor basked in the wild, monochrome splendour of the Black Sea. 

“In the spring of 2012, I travelled to the Caucasus…the Black Sea. It was a sunny day and I was looking for a place to shoot a video with my doll.” Igor explains.  “I always shoot the video in high places and when I came to the beach there was a storm. The sea sparkled like molten silver and the sky was black as coal and I thought that the stratosphere was suddenly getting low.”

There’s a constriction to ‘Black Day, Silver Sea’ as it slow burns to impending turmoil. Black in name, and equally dark in spirit, the threat lies in the contrasting beauty of the melting tar sky bleeding into the silver of the sea. It’s a toneless outlook underpinned by clean melodies left to seep and linger; the gentle resonance of the piano line; the wash of the strings; the clean clarity of the foot-step percussion perfectly combine to malevolent effect, the perpetual rhythm of the waves ebbing into a horizon of the vast and unknown..

An understated apocalypse that creeps on, if the sky and the stars do fall, let their accelerated descent be as magnificent as this.

http://asip.me/ASIP018

http://asip.me/PlacesSeries

ASIP018 Parks - Black Day, Silver Sea

*FULL PREVIEW*. When Uncharted Places was conceived, the one remix that came to my mind as an ideal beginning, was from the very first Places Series release by Kit. 'Girl Walking on the Beach Wearing A Skirt' was probably my favourite from Kit's release, and it's long, drawn out guitar plucks and subtle field recordings reflected a Markus Guentner remix playground. Markus obliged and as expected, delivered another out-of-this-world production.

Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri.

Available as part of the Uncharted Places compilation
http://astrangelyisolatedplace.bandcamp.com/album/uncharted-places

A Strangely Isolated Place (ASIP): Releases

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