Anodize prides itself on the artistic value inherent in the physical object, what it represents historically and literally to the aural and visual mediums simultaneously vanishing into the digital ether.
News of a new venture from Darren Bergstein, formerly editor of now defunct e|i magazine (and i/e before it), long-time electronic music mover’n’shaker, now man at the centre of Periphery, from which Anodize is sprung. Like its parent, Anodize peddles pukka electronic (and otherwise) product, but differs crucially in format and aesthetic: each release is a manufactured CD housed in rectangular eponymous silver-hinged tin with an art insert, limited to 300 copies. Trailed as ‘a locus for tactile visual audio, cutting across genre boundaries, actualizing imagistic sounds…,’ it allows Bergstein, physical sound carrier-lover and digital download-denier (see here), to give expression to his predilections and peeves: ‘Anodize prides itself on the artistic value inherent in the physical object, what it represents historically and literally to the aural and visual mediums simultaneously vanishing into the digital ether.’
Spring brought the first Anodize release—Gregory Kyryluk’s new project, Within Reason, with Transient Broadcasts, lately igloo-reviewed. It conjoins Berlin trajectories—from 70s school to 90s dub-tech sub-streams, filtering kindred ambient techno voices (cf. Vladislav Delay and Gas) through his own Alpha Wave Movement prism, ‘seizing a myriad of influences (Eno, early era Tangerine Dream, 90s post-techno beat culture, fourth-world semiotics) to navigate the opaque membranes separating analog church from digital state,’ so goes the promo.
June brings a fresh release, Lee Norris and Michael Gainford (Mick Chillage) following up their FAX debut with Autumn of Communion 2, a work blending minimal and maximal zones of abstract sound, FAX-like in feel, with more than a little hark-back to the heyday of early 90s experimental IDM/environmental space music hybrids, and some of the classic Namlook-mediated albums of that period. And, having bestrode three decades of electronic sub-genres—as Metamatics, Norken and Nacht Plank, Norris pursues another communion—this with Cornish ambienteer, Matt Hillier, whose distinctive spin on psy-chill as Ishq (chiefly, among many others) has beguiled us since the first blooms of his Orchid over a decade ago, the two moving towards issue of their Ishqamatics album, due, appositely, in Autumn.
All titles are available now (or pre-orderable) from Anodize.
