New Periphery releases / Thomas Ronkin, Radiant Mind, etc.

[darren bergstein]

Periphery / www.otperiphery.com
> sounds rescued from the edges & otherwise

Announcing the next four new and upcoming Periphery editions, continuing our series of releasing provocative, exciting works from artists operating across the electronic music spectrum, housed in the label's now-established, collectable (and limited to 50 copies) silver porthole tins.

NOW AVAILABLE:

> Thomas Ronkin Precursors (OTP6012)

Periphery is very pleased to present the third release by legendary American synthesist Thomas Ronkin, containing archival recordings made between 1984 and 1986 on Roland, Sequential Circuits, and Crumar synthesizers and sequencers.

A 'cult' figure among electronic music aficionados, Ronkin still remains one of the unsung US practitioners mining seams forged by Teutonic forebears Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Manuel Gottsching/Ashra, et al. At the time of the recording of the works to be found here, "classic" electronic music as a genre was on the cusp of being wholly subsumed into dance-based culture, and what few categorical analogs then existed (Steve Roach, the aforementioned German sequencer mavens and their ilk) were keen to hammer out their own unique directions regardless of trends or topicality. Fortunately, the industry's ebb & tide dictates that what goes around comes around — today, thanks to a whole generation re-embracing 80s sonic trajectories, the decade that gave simultaneous birth to John Carpenter, Giorgio Moroder, John Foxx, TD's Hollywood soundtracks, and minimal wave synth-pop, Ronkin's transcendent music is cause for celebration, and never been more timely.

Using then state-of-the-art drum machines, synths, and sequencers, Ronkin works the minimalist/maximalist dynamic to exhilarating effect. Whether your tastes gravitate towards the bygone eras of classic Schulze, Roach, Steve Reich, and David Borden's Mother Mallard, or the contemporary skeins fomented by Oneohtrix Point Never, Pulse Emitter, Emeralds, Skaters, etc., Precursors remains just as dazzling now as when it was first forged nearly three decades ago.

UPCOMING:

> Radiant Mind (OTP7012) / May • Next month will see the debut by the mysterious US artist known as Radiant Mind. Produced and engineered (and with sonic contributions made) by Steve Roach, Radiant Mind's first offering is a blast of refreshing nocturnal air amid the tried-and-tested ambient landscape, proffering a kaleidoscopic sonic terrain that reveals an inner space music offset by fluttering beats and strangely unfurling atmospherics.

> Erdem Helvacioglu & Bruce Tovsky (OTP8012) / June • New collaboration between Turkish experimental genre-hopper and multi-media artist Erdem Helvacioglu (with releases on Sub Rosa, Innova, and Sargasso) and Brooklyn, NY contextualizer Bruce Tovsky, featuring two prickly longform works fusing free sampledelia, trumpet, acoustics, and urbanized electronica into a colorful, polyglot stew.

> Thin Air (OTP9012) / July • Thin Air is Steve Bowman, mainstay on the Philadelphia electronic music scene, half of duo Delicate Monster, whose racks of keyboards make sounds as much in debt to classical music sensibilities as classical synthetic ones, though the end result is hardly what you expect. Rippling arpeggios occasionally spill out over curiously alien topographies — think DeBussey, Satie, or Prokofiev interpreted by Morton Subtonick, Louis & Bebe Barron, and Edgar Froese.

All current Periphery editions, including our first three digipak releases by The Electric Golem, Richard Lainhart, and the Home Patterning compilation, can be previewed & purchased via the Periphery Bandcamp page:

www.otperiphery.com

Further news & editions to be announced soon.