FM4, one of Austria’s biggest alternative radio stations, kindly decided to feature me on their home page and also wrote a bit about As The Snow Fell.
Here is a translation kindly provided by Bernhard at Laridae. Also thanks goes out to my flat mate Jess for the initial translation when I first read it!
Netlabelism
It was an article by my fm4 collegue Trishes that drew my attention on the
netlabel phenomenon.
I was all in for it, once i jumped on the then popular mono/tonik netlabel
train.
ADSL was old hat then already, so i was ready to download everything that
was so easily available through the net.
When out of the hype and the chaos in styles and qualities a specific
netlabel sound emerged, a derivat of dubhouse/minimal/ambient, things got
boring (exceptions like thinner.cc just proved the rule).
the anarchy was tamed and the sound got too homogenous.
(note: maybe there is a link to the enormous success of [ableton] live,
which enabled everyone to produce dubhouse. the famous/infamous ping-pong
delay virtually made tracks by itself).
so, i lost my focus on netlabels , my attention was more on
conventional/commercial vinyl releases by ordinary labels (oh! there’s a
seed for another story in there!) - and my doubts, that something decent
could grow out of “freeware” music.
now, i am starting to get curious again.
the production quality has made huge improvements, and even though most of
it is still “laptop music”, more and more analogue or even human vocals are
being used.
More and more time and passion is dedicated to production, and this idealism
creates attention and pleasure in listening in me - me, the music utopia
aficionado.
This time I want to present a release on LARIDAE, catalog number 037:
Iambic² - as the snow fell
Iambic2
My keyboard doesn’t allow the proper spelling of the artist name, it should
be iambic [square] - a typical phenomenon of the netlabel guild, to use
unpronouncable artist names to refuce commercialism and don’t commit to
stardom from the very first moment on.
British Guy Andrews hides behind the incomputable number and his sound is
not bulky at all.
“As the snow fell” is the 37th release on the laridae netlabel, the second
by Andrews on this platform, and like many other pieces of art based on
internet distribution, it’s all about dark ambient, foggy walls of sound.
What makes this album so different to most other releases in this genre are
the occasional streaks of sunlight, or, to put it even better - my attempts
to describe that Guy also sings or adds analogue instruments, like drums or
a guitar.
This may sound cynical, and it’s not new at all, but it fits perfectly into
the sound aesthetics of the total art work, and lifts it onto a level that
does more than underline the relevance of contemporary internet music.
Laridae describes itself trying to “offer a wide range of styles, everything
from idm/indietronics to rock/industrial”, and presents itself as
“counterpart to the other 95% of netlabels, that just release dub house
stuff”.
Iambic² makes a wonderful impression of what this manifest could mean.
P.S.
The package is one of the important things for music products, and that is
especially true for netlables.
So I want to pay respect to the artwork department.
Herwig Holzman has used photographs from Julia Töglhofer to design a
wonderful cover - so this download is also a visual delight.
Link to article: http://fm4.orf.at/schoenswetter/221748/main
