NRV001 / Slag Heap

Aggborough - Slag Heap

Aggborough and Ashworth

 Slag Heap EP

Released 19th November 2015 via No Real Value

No Real Value is a new concept-based record label commissioning electronic music artists to create club music from a series of field recordings.

The label's ethos is to explore the value of sound when associated with a particular time, event or location through the context of underground electronic music. The inaugural release, Slag Heap comes as a collaborative 12” between London-based producer and live act Aggborough and rising talent Ashworth. Together, the pair present an enticing and focused vision of mystic techno.

The set of field recordings for this first release were gathered by artists William Richard Green and Morgan O’Donovan, as they documented the Slag Heaps in the slate mines of Snowdonia, as part of an exhibition they presented at the tank.tv space in 2014. The recordings were initially played in the gallery space in their unprocessed format, and the artwork is made up of photographs from the Slag Heap exhibition.

Aggborough and Ashworth took the raw audio back to their music studios and each made a track. The A-side, from Aggborough, is a trip down the murky rabbit hole, fusing techno and euphoric, unpredictable synths with elegance and intensity. Ashworth unearthed different potential in the source material, creating an impressive slab of acid-flecked techno which throbs with percussive energy. The track moves you physically and intuitively, with charred atmosphere only making it more hypnotic.

Borrowing depth and energy from the purest of sources to create immersive techno soundscapes, “Slag Heap” is a truly magnetic listen that never loses its collective coherence.