Historical Loss Part 1 (digressions)

When you get older, almost as a rule, you tend to look back on your life and the decades that passed you by. Some of this is nostalgia (which is a hell of a drug) but other remembrances occur because there has been enough time and distance to fully understand those times. I think it is fairly common for people to look back on major life events (like parenting) to better understand (and perhaps judge?) those years. Additionally, you will discover happenings were less important than you thought they were.

I want to focus on a particular time period in experimental music: 2007-2012. Time is always a bit hazy when you look back on it, so +/- 1-2 years. An important aspect of this time, was that I was living in the bay area. Important because it shifted my musical focus. From IDM to a strange amalgamation of elements from IDM/Techno , folk music, psychedelic rock, ambient and pure experimentalism. My introduction to this kind of music came via Aquarius Records (which I have written elsewhere on this site). I don't quite remember, which artist/band hooked me but my gut tells me it had to be something from the Jeweled Antler Collective.

I believe the best way to understand/appreciate this music is to examine one of the labels that championed these sounds, Digitalis Recordings. Along with a selection of their releases. Another reason I chose to use Digitalis as my vehicle of explanation is this quote from their discogs page:

"Thankful that this label was able to document this particular time period of music or it would probably be forgotten." - 6RX

After I read this, it struck me how important/special this time was. Both for me personally (musically speaking) and for the wider experimental music genre. I would hazard to bet a lot of this music is not known today but there are still reverberations that are still felt and that should at least be highlighted (which these articles will attempt to do). Additionally, my eyes opened to the potential of historical loss. Important music and important artists will be forgotten unless the historical record is kept alive in some form or another (and to complicate things, not everything needs to be kept alive but who would be the arbiter?). It is tricky problem and one this article will not attempt to solve. Instead, the hope is this article will serve as a springboard for others to look into the music and in turn they introduce other folks. Keeping it alive. Of course, this assumes that anyone other than myself reads this lol

Digitalis Recordings

Before I get into what this label was and its history, I want to set the scene and how I came to the label. This was a strange time (2007-2012) for electronic/experimental music. Electronica and its promise of being the next big thing, fizzled. MP3 sharing was the status quo, all you can eat streaming services emerged while genres started to fracture. The old online sources started to dry up, as discussions etc moved to other avenues that were not mailing lists (like the IDM mailing list on Hyperreal – looks like the last update was in 2004). For reasons that I cannot explain, the old guard of IDM started to lose their appeal. Folks like Autechre, Muziq, Orb etc...

At least that is what happened to me but eventually I came back around to these artists. But during this time, I had to get out of my comfort zone and further expand my definition of experimental music, so that I could continue to look for oblivion (though I didn't know it at the time). This was right about the time I moved to the Bay Area and suddenly Aquarius Records was within driving distance. I have written elsewhere on this site about Aquarius and their importance to not only me but to the overall experimental genre.

I would like to say that I was at Aquarius every chance I could get but the truth of the matter was that it was an hour away through heavy traffic and more importantly I did not have the spare income. So, I had to keep my purchases to a minimum and target only the essentials. None the less, I was an avid reader of Aquarius Records weekly update emails. It is within these emails, I discovered an emerging direction in electronic/folk/experimental/ambient music.

Undoubtedly, the first band that hooked me on this sound had to be Thuja. If the Jewled Antler Collective had a "uniform sound" then Thuja represented it. This is the kind of music that does not give up its secrets easily and it is unlike anything you have ever heard. You have to put in the effort. Thuja is best described as timeless abstract LSD soaked ambient anchored to field recordings/nature through a beautiful distorted lens. I discovered them through the list and immediately starting digging into their history. Everything felt foreign and almost out of my grasp. This was an approach and a type of music I had not considered before.

End Part 1

In the next part, I will dive into Digitalis and their continuing influence.

Photo by Daniel De Los Santos, the Trollstigen Trail, Breckenridge, Colorado.