brisk

Thanks guys. Really happy to have this out in the world, finally. Something I've wanted to make for many, many years, but could never find a way to do it Some Justice until now.

The label is based in Japan and shipping costs from there are very expensive now, at least internationally. Boomkat will almost certainly be cheaper/less hassle.

Awesome. Where's the announcement? Also, I believe RSD 2021 is delayed to June this year.

Thanks guys. It was a great livestream. Really enjoyed it! The chat went so fast, I had trouble keeping up with it all haha. Congrats to the people who got a copy of the smoke vinyl.. I think they sold out in about 2 minutes... Anyway, the black vinyl is unlimited and is available to order now, for Monday shipping: USA: https://pitp.bandcamp.com/album/the-other-side-of-darkness UK/EU/ROTW: https://www.juno.co.uk/products/36-awakened-the-other-side-of-darkness/812635-01/ The 2xCD version is also available to pre-order now (shipping begins in March for this) USA: https://pitp.bandcamp.com/album/the-other-side-of-darkness UK/EU/ROTW: https://3six.bandcamp.com/merch/the-other-side-of-darkness-2xcd-expanded-edition

Oh and there are some *brand new* Influx remixes on The Other Side of Darkness remix LPs (yes, plural) which come for free with the main album. I think it's his first completely new material under this alias since the 90s. They're great trax too!

Yep! He re-recorded the DAT's I believe and plans to have it all fully remastered. They sound really nice.

BTW, James is sitting on an absolute treasure trove of Influx/Cybertrax stuff from the early 90s. Literal albums worth of unreleased material and completely re-mixed versions of the Rising High records. It's incredible stuff. Hopefully he finds a label willing to release it all as a boxset, cos it needs to be heard. Oh and here's the limited edition transparent smoke vinyl (only 100 copies of this were made, because the plant is having severe difficulties sourcing transparent vinyl now) The main run itself will be black.

Awakened Souls are James Bernard and his wife, Cynthia Bernard (who records solo as marine eyes) James is a bit of a legend. He used to make techno/trance/idm type stuff in the early 90s. He had some really great tunes like these: He was also around for the 1994 ambient heyday, when he released the classic Atmospherics More recently, we've shared a label on A Strangely Isolated Place and that's where we first started talking to each other. He and his wife's Awakened Souls project is really lush. They wrote a song called Paint The Sky which I reckon was probably the best thing I heard last year. Just an incredibly emotional tune https://awakenedsouls.bandcamp.com/track/paint-the-sky This is actually 3 albums in one. It has the main album (full collab), a 36 remix album and a James Bernard/marine eyes remix album too. About 2.5 hours in total.

What's the solution though? Round up all the poc's and force them to make ambient music? It's a niche genre already and I know that Zach/Isaac (the guys who run the label) try very hard to get a diverse lineup, particularly when it comes to getting women's music released physically. You can certainly argue the reasons why it's a genre dominated by white men, but speaking for myself (who personally knows many of the most renowned ambient artists) it's a very welcoming, friendly community and there's certainly no gatekeeping involved. Beyond that, it's not like we're some monolith entity. The actual sound changes massively between all the artists on the label, each bringing their own unique experiences to the table. Dismissing artists cos of their skin colour? I'm sure there's a word for that.

Tales Of Ephidrina was a relatively unknown/non-mainstream album, at least compared to the Virgin FSOL albums in the 90s. I think the only ones who really knew/cared about the AA name were the hardcore fans, which I assume is why the boys decided to use that name rather than their much more popular FSOL alias. I think *all* USA copies of The Isness were released as FSOL though, presumably to help sell more copies. That undoubtedly caused a much bigger shitstorm among their fans, as the internet as a whole was a much smaller place in the very early 00s and misinformation was even worse than it is today. Most people (including myself) still bought their music in stores. Imagine being an FSOL fan who was patiently waiting for the follow-up to Dead Cities and you pop FSOL - The Isness CD in for the first time... It's no wonder the fans got confused/angry heh. It's a shame really, as I doubt anyone would really have cared much had the FSOL association been completely removed from the album and have it marketed purely as its own thing. Blame the marketing team I suppose.

Didn't those initial copies of The Isness have an FSOL sticker on the front? I think that's what probably confused/annoyed their fanbase the most, as they were expecting one thing and got something *very* different entirely.

I genuinely thought this was the album. Turns out it's a companion/prelude EP. And this EP also had a remix 12" that was released BEFORE the EP even dropped? Yeah, this whole thing is a little convoluted for sure, heh.

I genuinely thought it said "I'm the Obi-Wan" when I first heard it

The issue in the video is pretty much something that plagues all the digital distro services and is an unfortunate side-effect of having the entire process automated (or with very few human eyes/ears involved as possible). There's little stopping copyright trolls from doing this, other than sending DMCA's or making sure you have all your music distributed yourself, to prevent others doing it. Relying on Distrokid's customer service (which fucking sucks) to help is going to be a loooooooong battle, as this guy found out, but honestly, this could happen to any distro broker, not exclusive to Distrokid. Anyway, I have used Distrokid since late 2016 and don't really recommend them to other people any more. They're fine if you just want to have your music on the major music platforms, but as I said, their customer service is atrocious, they have automation rules that prevent you from uploading your music if it doesn't adhere to ultra-strict naming schemes dictated to by Spotify, Apple Music etc.. (good luck if you have tracks like Part 1, Part 2 etc..) and they also had a period about a year ago where they were nearly 2 months late with Spotify payments. Oh and the guy in charge is a bit of an idiot, who literally tried promoting the idea of payola (an illegal practice of paying playlist makers to feature your music on their playlists) until he got shamed into deleting it on his Twitter page a day later. He does stupid shit like this a lot and comes across as a bit of a greasy twat.

Has the vinyl actually shipped yet for anyone? I keep seeing Mark retweeting Bleep's updates saying "shipping now" but I've got no dispatch notices as of yet.