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viewing 1 To 22 of 22 items
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AI 033LP
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Berlin based sound artist Sa Pa delivers AI-33, titled Atmospheric Fragments. Originally intended as a soundtrack to accompany ten short experimental films as part of a physical exhibition in 2020 curated by Manon Bernard, Atmospheric Fragments was alternatively premiered online as a digital showroom -- with its music performed and recorded both live and independently in 2021. Atmospheric Fragments was conceived as a collaborative audio-visual project, positing the viewer inside a sonic boom of introspective parenthesis and offering a place for internal dialogues under the circumstances of a largely unknown and rapidly changing modern world. Sa Pa's work presents a fresh sonic reinterpretation of urban landscapes, skylines, and modern environments, procuring from its source material a whole new kaleidoscopic world of its own. The record consists of two mixes -- "Studio" and "Live" -- which demonstrate a deep explorational study of our everyday surroundings, plunging the listener into a realm of heightened sense experience and microscopic detail. Where the "Studio" mix embodies the precision and management of the studio workspace and is more ambient in nature, such intricacies are exchanged for a larger, livelier sound stage and alternative sonic material in the "Live" mix. A nebulous ocean of shifting spaces and effervescent textures, Sa Pa augments and modulates field recordings into a fluid and ever-evolving narrative. Seen through a viewfinder of deep and immersive observation, new transients, momentary artefacts and poetry in motion begin to reveal itself. In a world caught in momentary stasis, Atmospheric Fragments is a forensic inquiry into our perceptive environment, with its augmented lens placing us on the cusp of the ungraspable.
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2LP
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AI 031LP
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The debut release from a new collaboration between Samuel van Dijk (Netherlands) and Rasmus Hedlund (Finland). Both key proponents to the scene in Northern Europe, they come together with mutual understanding and a common vision to sound. Dialog acts as a conversational exchange that sees the interplay of dynamic frequencies, evocative imagery and contemporary sonic art. Spread across four sides, the album as a whole exists as a kind of metaphysical process, eternally growing and contracting -- change is the only constant, marked by a continuous progression of sound and space. Expansive, deep, and at moments arresting, Dialog unfolds with sweeping soundscapes and shimmers with tactile sonic details. A chasmic rift of scintillating drone structures, each layer exposes a series of ever-deeper shades. In a play of dynamic dualities, the pair harnesses both earthly materials as well as access to more ethereal dimensions in the music. Side A begins with sub-terrestrial ruptures, gestating in a process of constant elemental changes. Rattling hits sputter amongst a state of nascent chaos, yet continues to be maintained in self-regulating stasis. Side B sets a more introspective tone, whispering with ghostly artifacts and bubbling synth lines, before building into a driving energy of layered field recordings and mechanistic timbres. The essence of form continues to be contested, until it subsides into momentary calm on side C. A cleansing period of soft drones float into the space and the pace slows, washing away remnants of past. The journey continues with side D's conclusion -- a solemn contour that reaches its internal extent, to then finally return to its source.
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AI 032LP
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AI-32 signals the arrival of The Fifth World Recordings, by Son of Chi (Hanyo van Oosterom) and long-term collaborator Arthur Flink. A tribute to the late Jon Hassell, who passed away in 2021, the album connects a deep running thread that goes back to the source of Chi project. Carrying on from where Hassell left off, the album takes inspiration and references from his Fourth World music concept and the ancient Hopi tradition of Native America. Illuminating the subliminal space of the arising Fifth World, Son of Chi pays respects to an inimitable force in contemporary music. Hassell's Dream Theory in Malaya forms a touchstone to Hanyo van Oosterom's musical journey, which soundtracked long, deep and reflective periods living in the cave of the Kallikatsou (Patmos, Greece) back in the early '80s. This period resulted in Hanyo's track as Chi -- "Hopi" -- in 1984. Hanyo met Hassell shortly after in 1987 at his "The Surgeon in the Nightsky" concert in Rotterdam -- it wasn't until twenty years later that Hanyo invited him for two magic nights of "Instant Composing Sessions" with the Numoonlab Orchestra (with a host of other artists) at the LantarenVenster, the very same stage where Hassell had performed in 1987 and also where Chi did their first live performance. Dreamful, mysterious, prophetic, the Fifth World Recordings features the quiet yet elaborate sound of Chi awash with rich instrumentation, field recordings, and old stories by the firelight. Sketches were created with drones, loops, and soundscapes, with which Arthur Flink (also a member of the Numoonlab Orchestra) jammed on trumpet. Channeling Hassell's idiosyncratic style, floating melodies, and lyrical improvisations are parsed into the mix, where Hanyo has processed and manipulated the recordings, also referencing Hassell's exotic scales and unique harmonics. Additionally, the wah Bamboo flute at the closing piece is an homage to the works of Chi co-founder Jacobus Derwort (1952-2019). For this piece Hanyo used his first bamboo flute he made at the cave of the Kallikatsou in 1984. Arthur Flink answers in counterpoint with the wah trumpet, almost like the intuitive communication of the nightbirds...
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2LP
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AI 029LP
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Son of Chi returns to Astral Industries, alongside Spanish artist Clara Brea, for the collaborative release of AI-29. A product of fate, chance experiments, but most of all, sensitive artistry -- The Wetland Remixes exists as a confluence of two kindred musical spirits, a wayfaring epic that draws together a rich archive of ecological field recordings, live instrumentation, and higher inspirations. Ahead of Hanyo's concert at Calma (Madrid) at the end of 2019, the curators organized a special dinner and arranged the meeting of Clara and Hanyo. As Hanyo recalls, "It was like stereochemistry. There was an instant match and understanding, and basically we decided in a split second to exchange recordings and to collaborate on future live and studio experiments." The auspicious meeting of the two ignited a remote exchange of materials and ideas, as the world descended into a series of pandemic-related lockdowns. The first of said recordings included the stems of Clara's Wetland Project -- a site-specific audiovisual project originally produced for Eufonic Festival (Spain), using field recordings from the Ebro Delta nature reserve (one of the most threatened regions of climate change on the Iberian Peninsula). From this initial impetus, Hanyo began working on the first sketches of the album back in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Just like their meeting in Madrid, the project developed naturally and spontaneously with extraordinary ease. Later, Hanyo started adding field recordings from the Magic Cave and Wetlands of the "Kallikatsou" (Patmos, Greece) as well as organic and acoustic overdubs, featuring bass, drums, percussion, guitars, oud, piano, Hammond organ, Wurlitzer, flutes, bells, and mouth harp. In the distance, the sound of birds peek through the effervescent wash of the wetland soundscapes. The pass of running water flows deeper into a land full of secrets never told. On the strike of dusk, the silhouettes of shapely trunks and foliage melt slowly into the impenetrable darkness. As darkness passes, light emerges, with exquisite moments of tranquility that seemingly emerge from nothingness. Beneath the shimmering veneer of textures, wildlife, and melodies, one may hear the deeper references of The Wetland Remixes. With credit to Clara's input, for Hanyo the album process became a kind of refuge, and ultimately inspired the return to the core of abstract sound -- what the Sufis call "Saut-i Sarmad." Such references allude to the spiritual quality embedded in the music -- the autonomous process of self-expression, the great mystery. Deep, luscious mind trips as per the classic Chi sound, The Wetland Remixes beautifully correlates the interconnecting dots of geography, ecology, and mythology's forgotten lore.
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2LP
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AI 030LP
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Emerging from a thick spiraling haze is the debut album from Mystic AM, a new project from Rod Modell and label founder Ario Farahani. Conceived as an immersive fictional soundtrack piece, the release tells the story of a traveler, some centuries ago, and the rather intense metaphysical experience he unexpectedly stumbles into whilst taking shelter on a hot desert night at Zein-o-Din Caravanserai, near Yazd in Persia. Dusk envelopes the vast barren landscape as the protagonist enters the ribat, treasures of woven silks, ornaments, and exotic spices glint under the flickering oil lamps, swirls of perfumed vapor dance mesmerizingly in the darkness. As the music unfolds the events of the passing day quickly melt away, and the unsuspecting traveler is plunged into an otherworldly dimension. Utilizing an extensive collection of old Iranian records as source material, the album is an intoxicating mise-en-scéne of whispering melodies, undulating rhythms, and atmospheric sound details. An active buyer of old Iranian music, Ario began extracting and editing samples from the records acquired during frequent trips to Iran over recent years -- during which the mood and flavor of the project began to crystallize. Once handed over to Rod for further processing and arrangement, the album took its final shape -- an endless tapestry of sights, sounds, and memories that fade mysteriously into the night's reveries. Textures seep into one another in washes of color, and hallmarks of classical Persian sounds filter through -- the slow stroll of the scintillating runs of santoor, and solitary lines drifting out of the kamancheh. Bridging the realms of the real and the imaginary, the collaboration signals the first contribution to Mystic AM's enigmatic concept.
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2LP
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AI 028LP
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AI-28 arrives as a double-12" reissue of an album titled Lucid Dreams. Formerly released in 1996 as a CD on the now defunct UK imprint em:t, the album now becomes available for the first time on vinyl. Produced collaboratively by Chris Allen, David Thompson (both co-founders of em:t), plus label affiliates Tom Smyth and Will Joss, the record features outlier academic and philosopher Celia Green narrating passages of her classic book Lucid Dreams (published in 1968), seamlessly embellished with atmospheric soundscapes throughout. Brooding amorphously on the cusp of the unknown, the music captures the quintessentially mysterious quality of dreams and dreaming. Layer by layer, the listener is submerged deep into the subconscious stream. The record curls and unwinds with bewildering influence whilst exploring key themes of Green's studies, with topics covering hallucinatory states, apparitions, out of body experiences, and extrasensory perception. The collaborative handling of samples and sound material comes together powerfully to create a piece that is both artistically theatrical in flavor and sumptuously immersive -- a true documentary for the ears and imagination.
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3LP
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AI 027LP
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2022 repress. Following the arrival of their debut album Alterazione (AI 019LP, 2020), LF58 (F. Scorcucchi and G. Tillieci) are back on Astral Industries with a special trove of outer-space explorations. Recorded one evening back in April 2019 as a live performance at Rome's Brancaleone, the eponymously titled album offers a sprawling journey across the pan-dimensional ether. Spread across six sides of vinyl, the performance includes fully improvised material as well as choice selections from Simone Giudice, Jonas Kopp, Nuel, Birds of Prey, Rapoon, Steve Roach and Adham Shaikh. There is no doubt that the unique energy and circumstances of the evening contribute to a certain atmosphere present in the music. With seemingly no beginning nor end, the session emerges in suspension; an electric ocean of infinite deepness. Gleaming across the patter of galaxies on a wide black backdrop, its myriad vistas are projected like transitioning scenes of an unending story. The gentle tide brings with it specks of cosmic debris and mysterious signals. Soon, quiet drones are overtaken by ripples of solar flare and percussive clamors. Forms melt like liquid, a ball of amorphous plasma pulsating with ecstatic radiance. Prying open universe within universe, Live at Brancaleone has a vastness that cannot really be contained. 180 gram black vinyl; includes flyer and LF58 sticker.
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AI 026LP
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Multicast Dynamics returns to Astral Industries for AI-26, this time collaborating with Sid Hille, the German born, Finland based instrumentalist and composer. Metamorphosis transmutes both artists' unique styles into a synergistic blend of transportive storytelling, a delicate dance of light and dark. Divided into two parts, Metamorphosis originates from a live performance recorded at Temppeliaukio church in Helsinki on March 2nd, 2019. The material was then edited, where Hille's soothing keyboard work and haunting passages on the theremin, combine with processed textures and desolate sonic backdrops from Dijk. In this voyage beyond space and time, the subtle dialogue reveals new and perhaps unexpected dimensions in their creative arsenal, finding fresh new boundaries and enriching the palette of both performers. Encounters of sweet fleeting moments of lyricism emerge amidst the chilling outback, in which we're given some final consolation between the long lines of cavernous rifts and deep space tundra.
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AI 025LP
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As one chapter closes, another opens. Following the passing of group member J.Derwort in 2019, Hanyo van Oosterom's legacy work brings about the next evolution of the Chi project: Son of Chi. AI-25 sees subtle developments in the sound and expansion of tonal vocabulary, whilst retaining the organic instrumentation and rapturous dreamtime narratives. Flourishes of piano float elegantly with poise, and long-drawn flutes breathe life into the shifting landscape. Shadows play in the thick vegetal overgrowth; the air is heavy with the scent of age-old evocations. Speakers drift in-and-out of undulating reverie, forgotten transmissions from the repository of consciousness. Against the wide backdrop of the harsh and wild unknown, a feeling of peace resides within. Night and day gradually collapse into one another, as loops of lapping textures glisten quietly with mystical beauty.
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AI 024LP
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Another uncovering arrives from Astral Industries by the name of The Humble Bee. The alias of industrious, multi-talented UK artist Craig Tattersall, The Humble Bee's A Miscellany For the Quiet Hours was the inaugural release on Tattersall's now discontinued Cotton Goods imprint. This beautifully intimate work resurfaces after more than a decade since its initial release, now available on vinyl for the first time. Constructed entirely of tape loops, fragile tapestries of forgotten artifacts canter with teetering rhythmic pulses. Melodic counterpoints drift in soft bucolic reverie, as hazy recollections of undefined pasts seep out in blurs of nostalgic color. The album is imbued with a close tactile quality, lovingly crafted as a result of both manned and unmanned decay experiments. Undeniably tender yet willfully introspective, something speaks immediately of those magic sonic moments, illuminated by the quiver of late-night candlelight.
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AI 023LP
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Originally released on CD in 1999, Astral Industries present the first vinyl issue of Monolake's much-loved Gobi, licensed from Imbalance Computer Music. Set to the backdrop of the Gobi Desert in eastern Asia, two shimmering vistas plunge the listener into a vast and deeply hypnotic nocturnal soundscape. The perennial hiss and rattle of insects float along the fresh night air in soft waves. The desert thrives with quiet activity as a westerly wind skitters across moonlit dunes, granulated folds dancing like sheets of thin silk. Tectonic plates murmur beneath the shower of stars overhead, their millennial cycles whispering of aeons past. Vividly textured and enticingly synthetic in its sound design, Gobi succeeds as a stunning piece of minimalism.
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2LP
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AI 022LP
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Limited restock. Long-time Astral Industries associate Wolfgang Voigt returns to the London label with his next album, Rückverzaberung Exhibition. The Exhibition reimagines the concept with renewed purpose, opening the gates to deliver an arresting 60-minute journey into the underworld. Dense soundscapes mutate with alchemic fluidity, unravelling with vast symphonic counterpoints and synesthetic textures. Intoxicating in its Mephistolean dissonances and ambitious sonic structure, the sprawling Rückverzauberung itself becomes a nebulous organism shrouded in the seeping mist of the unknown.
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AI 021LP
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For Astral Industries 21st release, Italian duo The Abyss Within Us enters the fold. The project, consisting of Claudio Porceddu (Claudio PRC) and Stefano Ferrari (menion), combines lush ambient textures with beguiling mysticism. Originally performed in Ankali, Prague, the rich and expansive Life in a Circle constitutes a two-part journey deep into darker, farther places. Chasmic frequencies hark back to an ancient ritualism, punctuated by uplifting moments breathing with elegiac grandeur.
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2LP
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AI 014LP
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2019 release. Dots written by Atom TM. Recorded 1994 at "Sel I/S/C", Frankfurt/M. Under exclusive license from the AtomTM_Audio_Archive. Original artwork by Theo Ellsworth. Mastered by Noel Summerville and Uwe Schmidt. 180 gram vinyl.
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AI 011LP
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2018 release. This record was created for the Space Age Lounge, a technomystical chill room in Goa, India. Written and mixed by Kim Cascone. Personnel: Steve Roach - didgeridoo; Don Falcone - synthesizer.
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AI 019LP
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Alterazione presents a critical statement -- distinguished by its technical execution and breathtaking artistry. The album itself is a cathedral of sound, each cavernous chamber an exploration of space and consciousness. Presented in four movements (one track per side), altogether they extend as a transportive experience of evolution for the listener. "Iniziazione" -- a steady departure that unfurls like the opening of a portal; a process of molecular transfiguration commences. Panoramic landscapes begin to stretch wide, glistening with an exotic beauty, before the shamanic incantations of "Rituale" draws things deeper. Pulsating rotations push through the next phase of transformation, now drenched in hyperspace white-noise. The procedure continues through the quiet ethereal orbit of "Metamorfosi", before finishing with the three-part "Evocazione/Contatto/Risveglio"; uplifting synth motifs drive forward with optimism, before fading back into the great expanse. Alterazione is both cerebral and meditative, and one cannot help but be pulled at the core by its potency.
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AI 016LP
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2019 release. Written and produced by Shorelights (Rod Modell and Walter Wasacz). Executive produced by Ario Farahani. Artwork by Theo Ellsworth.
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AI 020LP
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657274656e207465682077646c726f206f662077666
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Original artwork by Theo Ellsworth. Mastered by Noel Summerville. 2x12", 180 gram vinyl; gatefold sleeve.
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AI 015LP
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2021 restock. "I had the honor of remixing all of the Bamboo tapes that J. Derwort ever recorded. Most of my mixes were approved by the master himself during the last days of his life in Oliva, Spain. For 'Eleven', I sampled from his last live performance at Jazzcafe Dizzy in Rotterdam on February 11th, 2018. He died on the day of the release of our latest Chi Factory album, The Mantra Recordings, on February 11th, 2019. We will miss him, life will not be the same. Farewell soul brother!" -- Hanyo van Oosterom.
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AI 005LP
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2016 release. Jacobus Derwort started exploring sonic soundscapes listening to his short-wave world receiver at the age of 12. There he would hear music from Africa, China, Japan, Indonesia, South America, and beyond. He started playing guitar, piano, percussion, and saxophone. He met Hanyo van Oosterom in 1978 and they started the legendary cult rock band, The Jones. Derwort was playing the sax, van Oosterom the drums. They started conducting sound experiments in Hanyo's small cellar in the Dutch village of Krimpen aan den IJssel. In the early '80s they made their first cassette, The Kallikatsou. Hanyo started the ambient collective CHI in 1983. Jacobus was the first musician to join CHI. Together, they went to the magic rock "The Kallikatsou" on the island of Patmos, Greece. Here, Hanyo had stayed for months in a cave for some deep soul-searching. He heard the sound of CHI in the silence of the night like a message from out of space. Being together at the Kallikatsou they shaped the foundation of CHI, making handmade flutes from local bamboo and conducting field recordings of water, crickets, owls, goats, wind, etc... Back home they asked Willem Cramer to join CHI, and later Michel Banabila. They released a legendary ambient cassette, The Original Recordings, in 1983 which soon became a collector's item. CHI stopped in 1987. Willem Cramer and Michel Banabila started the world music collective East Meets West in 1989. Hanyo and Jacobus kept recording ambient soundscapes. Jacobus was working on his Bamboo recordings. Hanyo recorded the first tracks for The Kallikatsou Experience. Neither album was ever released. They returned a few times together to The Kallikatsou, but there the history seems to end... until decades later when Astral Industries located them after a long search, inspired by Rod Modell (Deepchord). The result was the vinyl release of The Original Recordings in February 2016. This inspired Hanyo and Jacobus to work on an old plan: remixing the old bamboo recordings. Most tracks were made in the eighties before and after CHI. Original tape recordings using mainly analog sounds, percussion, samples and (of course) bamboo flutes and manipulated clarinets. Hanyo added some new recordings and remixed the old tapes in his Numoonlab Studio in Rotterdam. The result was The Bamboo Recordings, a timeless collection of ambient soundscapes. The Chi Factory is the next step of CHI into the future. It will involve many future ambient collaborations.
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2LP
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AI 012LP
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2019 release. Dedicated to the life and work of Robert Lax (1915-2000), the American poet who lived on Patmos, Greece, as a self-exiled hermit since the '60s. Jack Kerouac called Lax "one of the great original voices of our times, a Pilgrim in search of beautiful innocence." The Chi Factory would like to give special thanks to his good Patmian friends Ulf Knaus and Nikos Eliou, who showed them his house on Patmos (everything is still the same since he left) and also his favorite old wooden door (see leaflet). His great minimalistic poetry became a source of inspiration for The Mantra Recordings. His life on Patmos was far away from public attention -- quiet and always surrounded by the skies, seas, cats and birds. Lax was a real dreamcatcher. The Chi Factory is the next step of CHI, formed by Hanyo van Oosterom and Jacobus Derwort.
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2LP
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AI 002LP
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2015 release. Then it was time for the man himself, Wolfgang Voigt. This, to put it simply, was a masterclass in ambient music. The sounds, beautiful; the transitions; perfect; the experience, unforgettable. The sound emanating from his quite simple set up filled up the church completely, in a room lit only by a few candles, his music shone through and brought everything to life. Everyone and everything became one with the music, moving with its ups and downs, delighting in its near perfection.
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