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A Strangely Isolated Place, indeed?

Written by James Knapman on

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To be the victim of four terrible vinyl runs coming back from a pressing plant for a single release seems like carelessness. Lav & Purl’s beautiful ambient album A State of Becoming was worth the wait, but one Ryan Griffin’s A Strangely Isolated Place label really shouldn’t have had to endure. For almost the exact same thing to happen the same label on their very next release, replete with similarly shoddy packaging seems like simply not giving a rat’s ass.

To be the victim of four terrible vinyl runs coming back from a pressing plant for a single release seems like carelessness. Lav & Purl’s beautiful ambient album A State of Becoming was worth the wait, but one Ryan Griffin’s A Strangely Isolated Place label really shouldn’t have had to endure. For almost the exact same thing to happen the same label on their very next release, replete with similarly shoddy packaging seems like simply not giving a rat’s ass.

And yet here the label sit, three months after the digital release of Leandro Fresco & Rafael Anton Irisarri’s frostbitten ambient opus La Equidistancia, and the vinyl edition still hasn’t surfaced.

Both Griffin and Irisarri—responsible for the mastering of countless albums including most of ASIP’s releases—know from quality, as their prior output ably attests, but if you think for one second that this is the result of some sort of snobbishly perfectionist attitude, just read the state of affairs via Irisarri’s own Twitter or Facebook channels for details and you’ll find you’re mistaken.

To release inferior quality vinyl products would be damaging to the label’s image, an affront to the pride they take in their releases, disappointing for consumers and a disservice to the artists whose music graces them. Why should anyone have to accept this kind of careless, tenth-rate drivel from a plant that—knowing full well it is working beyond capacity—should simply have the balls to say they can’t fulfill the order, rather than swiping independent label’s money? You know… the very labels that kept them afloat before the majors swept in to cynically capitalize on a format resurgence by reissuing boat-loads of utter garbage that nobody asked for or wanted?

To deliver the premium product they continually promise, A Strangely Isolated Place are to repress the album at a different plant, having been refused a full refund for the botch job. To help offset losses they are releasing the appositely titled, three-track companion EP, La Espera (The Wait) by Leandro Fresco & Rafael Anton Irisarri.

If you pre-ordered the album from the label already, you’ll find a code waiting for you. If you didn’t, why not support a passionate independent label by heading over to A Strangely Isolated Place’s Bandcamp page and purchasing a copy. Unlike the cockroach that uploaded it to a locker site just hours after it went live?

ASIP are also running an eBay auction for a pack of test-pressings of every vinyl release to date, to a similar end.

The independents deserve better than this.

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Leandro Fresco & Rafael Anton Irisarri :: La Equidistancia (A Strangely Isolated Place) V/A :: Full Circle (A Strangely Isolated Place) ASC :: Original Soundtrack (A Strangely Isolated Place) Viul & Benoît Pioulard :: Konec (A Strangely Isolated Place) Earth House Hold :: Never Forget Us (A Strangely Isolated Place)

A product of good old eighties Britain, screwed up by school, shat out by university and infuriated by anything corporate, I have never studied music, played an instrument beyond learning and then quickly forgetting the piano, rarely go to gigs and hold no particular interest in music hardware. It probably shows. But ever since my first exposure to late eighties popular music, a very simple and straightforward passion has remained a pure constant: that there is nothing more sublime in this life than simply sitting and listening… to music in particular. It was the late and dearly beloved BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel who irrevocably changed my life for the better, savagely demolishing the walls obscuring the wondrous and rapidly evolving proliferation of music that was really out there. Since then this music has constantly and inescapably shaped my life. My early attempts to persuade friends and family that this was what truly inventive, inspired music could sound like largely fell on deaf ears, and I quickly tired of the imitation bleep noises and amusing quips about the record or CD player being broken. Since then I have written for igloomag.com in an attempt to persuade you, the readers, not to make my early, blinkered mistakes, but instead to brave the waters of the ever deepening oceans of musical possibilities that exist out there. You wouldn’t want your life to be boring or humdrum, so why should the music you listen to be?