★Astral Industries
The Kallikatsou Recordings
180g vinyl, 2024 repress. "I’ve never met Rod Modell (Deepchord) in person, but we have met through music. He found an obscure cassette of Chi music (from ’86), sent it to Astral Industries and paved the way for the release (30 years later) of ‘The Original Recordings’ in 2016. Since then, we’ve exchanged ideas and good music. I sent Rod a preview of ‘The Kallikatsou Recordings’ - he really liked it - and here came the idea for a remix of ‘Lanterns’. I started working on some random, lo-fi sampl…
Live Recordings
AI-36 comes from Ear to Ear - the debut collaboration between label regular Samuel van Dijk (Multicast Dynamics) and Ukrainian artist Yevgen Chebotarenko. Taken from a series of live recording sessions, the album explores in four parts a markedly darker realm of soundscape music. A cornucopia of abstract morphing scenes and heady synesthesia, the album brims with rich sonic detail and evocative gestures. Deftly blending organic sound textures with an experimental austerity, ‘Live Recordings’ dis…
Spirit Medicine
AI-34 arrives from Toki Fuko. Known previously for his contributions of deep and hypnotic techno, he presents on Astral Industries further development of his sound in this long-form work. A two-part sojourn into vibrant organic soundscapes and liminal sonic archaeologies, ‘Spirit Medicine’ is an ethereal yet human-centric venture into the realms of consciousness.
Soft chimes mark the opening, making way for expansive pads and the emergence of a bristling jungle panorama. Solitary flute melodies …
The Fifth World Recordings
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 …
The Transition Recordings
*2023 stock* Astral Industries’ fave Hanyo van Oosterom (The Chi Factory) re-enters the label’s orbit in duo with fellow dutch ether explorer Radboud Mens for a minimalist but lush ambient trip. Following the 2019 death of The Chi Factory’s J. Derwort, ‘The Transition Recordings’ see Hanyo continue to expand the group’s legacy, looping in explorative sound artist and producer Radboud Mens to assist in unfurling his vision of diaphanous pads threaded with silvery solo piano keys, murmuring ether …
Atmospheric Fragments
Submerged, resonant ambient deep dives by Sa Pa, full of diffractive slosh and captivating shadowplay that builds on examples found on that ace LP for Mana.
Cardamom & Laudanum
Tip! Emerging from a thick spiralling 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 traveller, 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 th…
Dialog
AI-31 sees 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 cont…
V 3.0-3.9
*2022 stock. In process of stocking.* Mysterious productino unit Waveform Transmission make their third release, and the second for Astral Industries, in impeccable style — utterly immersive, a realy work of art from front to back.
There's real storytelling at work on this rather splendid double vinyl score, whether it's in hints of tropical birdsong, the fluid motion of rhythms built from water, or the waves of breezy synths that seem to blow past (or through) your ears. Everything feels like…
Rückverzauberung Exhibition
*2022 stock. In process of stocking.* Long-time AI associate Wolfgang Voigt returns to the London label with his next album – Rückverzauberung 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 spr…
Metamorphosis
*2022 stock. In process of stocking.* 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…
Live at Brancaleone
*2022 stock. In process of stocking.* Following the arrival of their debut album ‘Alterazione’, 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 …
Lucid Dreams
*In process of stocking.* 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),…
The Wetland Remixes
*In process of stocking.* 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 ‘Avalovara listening club’ (Madrid) at the e…
Bamboo Music
Stemming from Jacobus Derwort’s 1987 solo debut tape ‘Bamboo’, this expanded and reshuffled compilation of ‘Bamboo Music’ celebrates more than 30 years of J. Derwort’s deeply focussed yet dilated and richly spirited recordings which have come to define an etheric strand of late ‘80s ambient pursuits. Pairing his gentle, breezy gestures with spongiform layers of subbass, colourful canopies of bird calls and trickling, fluid electronics, the recordings speak to a bucolic and blessed conception of …