With versality, skills, and a delectable sense of transcendental escapism, every musical contribution brings tone textures, patterns, timbral experimentations, harmonic progressions, and processed sound motifs to ravish your ears.
Atmospheric journeying cinematic experiences
I discovered the sound production of Ian Boddy (British musician and composer) many years ago when I was managing/leading musical entries for a progressive rock webzine. At this time I mostly identified him as a dignified successor of Berlin Kosmische musik (mainly Innovative Communication materials), Time Blake, and as an 80s pioneering creative wizard in analog electronic music next to Mark Shreeve and many others. With its masterfully blend of space and smooth layers of synths, I’ve always considered Phoenix to be for great Britain what Head-Visions by Bernd Kistenmacher is for teutonic 80s space-ambient renewal; or Prophecy by Bernard Xolotl and Cyrille Verdeaux is for French astral electronic navigations.
After historical years of sparkling seances of long-form meditation in analog moods, Ian Boddy founded the indie and challenging electronic music label DiN in the late 90s; providing a new home for deep/liminal space sound artists and innovative musicians in atmospheric journeying cinematic experiences. A great amount of releases has been published for your delight. The DiN catalog can easily satisfy nostalgic listeners of retro-sounding electronic music with spaced-out components as well as those into vibrant modern-day ambient with slight incursions into beat-orientated chill out layers, IDM, ambient/microhouse, and downtempo excursions. Over the years I reviewed around ten DiN albums—mainly from Ian Boddy—but also from a few fellow sound artists who surround him in this fruitfully creative odyssey, including one of my favorites to this date Sepulchre.
A colossal compilation ::
25 years of DiN is a colossal compilation gathering around cohesive musical identities, many distinctive artists and notorious projects of the space-ambient galaxy—featuring Robert Rich, Scanner, Chris Carter, and many others. With versality, skills, and a delectable sense of transcendental escapism, every musical contribution brings tone textures, patterns, timbral experimentations, harmonic progressions, and processed sound motifs to ravish your ears. With pleasure, we jump from elastic-micro kinetic synthesized excursions to hauntingly new-age blooming chordal spacyness. All artists involved in this brilliant compilation operate a synthesis between typical analog synth polyphonic movements and digital technics. Continuously pleasant emotional thrills are counterbalanced with relaxing moods and ascending spacey sounding rituals.
Fans of analog electronic music with a retro transmission, and those who appreciate adventurous experimentations in minimal-pulsating sonic soundscapes, won’t be disappointed. A convincing work to celebrate and summarize many years spent on the creative DiN sci-fi electronic wizardry path.
25 Years of DiN is available on DiN. [Bandcamp]
