★Castles in Space
Phases of This and Other Moons
"This album features just one synthesizer - a Buchla 208C Easel Command, processed with various effects pedals. It enabled a minimalist approach, focusing purely on tone and atmosphere. Something about the raw sound of this amazing instrument led to thoughts of moons in our solar system: there's something utterly otherworldly and yet oddly familiar about the sound of the Easel - it often sounds more organic than electronic and is simultanously beautiful and mysterious, huge and delicate. Working…
Detached Engagement
The collection of songs that make up ‘Detached Engagement’ are our most personal and emotionally revealing tracks. Recorded over a period of emotional turbulence where we lost loved ones and uncertainty seemed the only constant. Our studio became a hide away, a place of refuge where we could direct our energies into a creative act of understanding and hope. We reconfigured our subversive pop to fit our present situation, the distortion was dialled back, the gauzy tape worn ambiguity was replaced…
The Flow Across Borders
*2023 stock* Ali O’May and Frazer Brown met in early 2018 while performing with their respective bands at an Electronic Music Open Mic (EMOM) gig in Edinburgh. With obvious common interests, further discussions lead a few months later to Ali passing Frazer a USB drive filled with stems recorded directly from Ali’s vast modular system. Across August and September 2019, Frazer used about a dozen of those stems as the foundation for a set of tracks, building them into fully realised pieces across a…
Deltic Vespers
"My favourite memories are the odd ones. Sharing Larry Grayson’s old dressing room, author Lawrence Norfolk telling a journalist that the Mount Vernon Arts Lab was one of his go to bands when writing, organising the first concert of electronic music in a nuclear command bunker in 1998, playing shows with Silver Apples, Add N to (x), Stereolab, Broadcast, Sonic Boom, Project D.A.R.K.
Recording with Adrian from Portishead, Norman from Teenage Fanclub, Isobel Campbell, Coil, appearing on telly with…
Outline of Nature
“Outline of Nature” is the debut album by Twilight Sequence (aka Matthew J Saunders) following the release of a 12” EP and 7” single on Castles in Space, and an EP on his own Bandcamp page. “Outline of Nature” started as an experiment in building a modular synthesizer system and ended up as a voltage controlled outpouring of love for the natural world. Sylvan-born and pastoral-powered, sap-blooded and lightning-charged, this album grew out of the damp florescent corners of the woods, each note a…
Districts, Roads, Open Space
Much sought reisuee in clear & black smoke coloured vinyl.
Moonbuilding Sprung 2023
Tip! Tip! Tip! Having successfully navigated the difficult second issue, Moonbuilding returns with a dazzling Issue 3. Edited by former Electronic Sound commissioning editor Neil Mason and published by Colin Morrison’s Castles In Space label the new (Spring Has) Sprung issue stars the unstoppable Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan, who also provide an exclusive CD of previously unreleased tracks. As well as a truly bumper chat with Warrington-Runcorn big chief Gordon Chapman-Fox, we pr…
Contagion Vapors
Tip! “Contagion Vapors” was recorded between May 2020 and March 2021, in tandem with “Transgressive Transmissions”. Both albums have been released by Castles in Space, however they feature completely different sonic energies. Caught up in the first wave of pandemic doom/gloom which resulted in a bizarre creative bloom for Patrick, both albums have unique sounds anchored in the immense Patrick R Pärk/Kösmonaut discographies. This one is definitely a Kösmonaut record, however. Patrick’s ”Contagion…
The Nation’s Most Central Location
The fourth Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan album, "The Nation's Most Central Location", sees Gordon Chapman-Fox (the man behind Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan) explore the north-south divide and reflect on 40 years of broken 'levelling up' promises.
With eight tracks across 40 minutes, the album offers Gordon's usual mix of mournful remorse and upbeat optimism. By now, however, there’s an underlying anger which burns through tracks such as London's Moving Our Way and A…
Vanishing Artefacts
This debut album is the work of London based producer, sound artist and composer, Paul Cousins. Paul works with meticulously maintained reel to reel tape machines to transform and alter his electronic compositions. His prepared tape loops form the basis of ‘Vanishing Artefacts’ 12 intricate compositions. The original ideas processed through 1/4” tape become a hazy facsimile of their former state as tape is manipulated and effected to mould something new.
Syrup House
Tip! Haunted Bedrooms established the Jilk sound with a clash of cascading chamber instruments meeting brittle electronics and experimental noise. Frequently quiet and emotional but also edged with spikes and sharp teeth. On Syrup House, however, the collective dig out a much smoother and sweeter sound. And while ‘expect the unexpected’ should still be your guiding principle, here you can dive deep into luscious droning textures and swelling orchestration which sits alongside the warmth of analo…
There Is Space Under Your Seat
*200 copies limited edition* James Adrian Brown is a British-born songwriter and former lead guitarist from the alternative rock band Pulled Apart By Horses. After studying art for six years in Leeds (UK), Brown set up his own independent record label in the city and would soon begin carving out a career as a professional musician. After achieving chart success, touring the world and releasing four critically acclaimed studio albums with PABH, James has begun paving a pathway into the world of i…
This Vibrating Earth
Tip! “Everything we know, from the stars and planets through to the fundamental, sub-atomic particles that make up all matter, is vibrating - oscillating at its own frequency. The known universe is a symphony. Ancient scientists and cosmologists such as Pythagoras, and later Kepler, postulated 'the music of the spheres' and they were right.
“It is theorised that at some point in the far, far distant future, we may reach a state of maximum entropy - the 'heat death' of the universe. All this move…
Praedormitium
"Praedormitium" is the third part of a loose trilogy of albums that Polypores (Stephen James Buckley) has recorded for Castles in Space. Following in the garlanded pathways of "Flora" (2019) and the universally acclaimed "Azure" (2020), the expectations for "Praedormitium" are running extremely high. Stephen continues the odyssey he started on "Flora" and refined on "Azure" to deliver an album not only full of his usual depth and invention, but built to exist within that enclave of melody and op…
A Hello To A Goodbye
Tip! *300 copies limited edition* A Hello To A Goodbye was finished during the first throes of the covid lockdown of 2020 in Canada: whatever its initial genesis (a beginning long since forgotten) the results reflect the emotional terminus of that recording process – a person alone, terrified and waiting for the end. Recorded mostly with period hardware, this isolated paranoid landscape is mined with what-ifs and never-mores, a profound distrust of fellow humans, and is a belated goodbye to a na…
Frog Bones & Noodles
Frog Bones is the original Frogman music that Dean sent to his mate, Supreme Vagabond Craftsman, over which to write a story over in 2015. It was predominantly composed with an EMS Synthi AKS and an Oberheim Two Voice synthesizer, plus some crunky Watkins Copicat tape echo. Much of it didn't make the final album cut. This version has been slightly edited down to a reasonable length.
Noodles is a selection of short jams and demo ideas that were/are to be the basis of a new solo project. But Dean …
Moonbuilding Autumn Collection
The first issue of Moonbuilding, which touched down back in May, was one of those finger in the wind, run it up the flagpole and see who salutes sort of projects. The A5, 48-page full-colour title, put together by former Electronic Sound commissioning editor Neil Mason and published by Colin Morrison’s Castles In Space label, went down rather well. There seemed to be a fair bit of saluting and lots of kind words. In fact, the debut issue came within a whisker of selling out. So Neil and Colin th…
Frogman
Tip! "Bloody spooky though. I hope the place don't fill up with goggle eyed weirdos now, wandering around and muttering."In 2015 I edited various pieces of music I had written on an EMS Synthi and a tape echo, into one hour long piece. I didn't know what to do with it. I knew Will (Goddard) from his Supreme Vagabond Craftsman records. I liked his writing style, always a bit twisted. I also knew that he wouldn't be put off by my atonal discordant Synthi burblings. So I asked him to write a sci-fi…
People & Industry
Tip! ** CD version, includes two bonus tracks ** Gordon Chapman-Fox returns to Castles in Space with a second volume of stately electronica from his Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan project.“The album picks up where the first left off, really. Musically", explains Gordon. "People & Industry" was recorded back to back with "Interim Report, March 1979". There is a progression in the sound, but it's definitely cut from the same cloth as the first album. It still very much exists in this…
Infinite You
Tip! "Infinite You" is a much-awaited longer release from Kayla Painter marking the first ever vinyl release from the producer. Joining forces with the label Castles in Space, the EP joins a catalogue of well regarded and pivotal electronic releases on the label. Castles in Space, operating since 2015, have established themselves as key players on the electronic music scene, releasing forward-thinking electronic music taking pride in the story behind the music through beautiful analogue products…