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By John Koch-Northrup, on May 27th, 2016 I’ve thought a long time about whether to take a break from Relaxed Machinery. The time has come. I need to recharge my batteries. rM will be on hiatus for the rest of 2016.
We launched rM in January 2010 with a Steve Brand release… and it’s fitting that we close this phase of Relaxed Machinery with another Steve Brand release – The Path of the Heart.
55 Album Releases. An amazing array of artists from around the world. Support from a wide variety of radio hosts, reviewers, podcasters, and fans. How could I ask for more? This has been a wonderful six years.
Relaxed Machinery has been co-run this entire time by Steve Brand – and I’d love for you to support his music going forward at http://steve-brand.bandcamp.com
Geoff Small joined rM shortly after launch, and has done so much for the label. He relaunched earthMANTRA and it’s already a stellar label again. http://music.earthmantra.com/
Thanks also to Joel Sutton, who’s been maintaining this site for years now. He’s the best.
Thanks to everyone that ever listened. Please support the artists wherever they release.
John Koch-Northrup
By John Koch-Northrup, on May 14th, 2016
By John Koch-Northrup, on March 3rd, 2016 We are so thrilled to once again have a our new album premiered on SomaFM Drone Zone! SomaFM has been such a huge help to us over the years.
This Friday, March 4 at Noon Pacific Time on http://somafm.com/dronezone/
A quick way to find out what time it is in your part of the world is to type into google: “noon pacific time in Barcelona” and put your city there.
Result: 12:00 PM Thursday, Pacific Time (PT) is 9:00 PM Thursday, in Barcelona, Spain
Dani is back with his 2nd release on Relaxed Machinery: Kloob – Solid Foundations. It’s an excellent album of ambient music with Dani focusing in on his favorite topics of interest: metaphysics, attraction, emotions management, extraterrestrial life, astral projection and personal development.
By John Koch-Northrup, on September 30th, 2015 
We’re thrilled here at Relaxed Machinery (rM) to present a new album from Steve Brand – Songs From Unknown Territory! The album is released on Steve’s Pioneer Light label.
We’ll be listening to the album on Soma FM Drone Zone on Friday, Oct 2, at 5 pm Pacific Time.
http://somafm.com/dronezone/
We’ll also be chatting during the show on hipchat. Two ways to chat…
Sign up for Relaxed Machinery Chat: Relaxed Machinery Hipchat Signup
Or as a guest: Guest Access to Chat
Important (but annoying!) – last time we were overrun by spammers and trolls via guest chat and I had to disable it. Please sign up as a member for the chat and that way you won’t get dropped from chat if by some off chance it happens again. We’ve had the chat for about 6 months and that’s the first time. I hope it doesn’t repeat!
…
More about Steve
Steve has been co-running rM since the beginning. His ideas and influence are all over the label. We wouldn’t be rM without the combined ideas of Steve, Geoff Small, and me (John Koch-Northrup).
More about Songs From Unknown Territory
 The first sketches for “Unknown Territory…” were originally begun in 09.11.11, parallel to several other projects. At the time, I had the intuitive sense that large changes were about to occur, although I had no real idea of the who-what-where-how of it all. This group of songs is imbued with that sense of mystery, uneasy anticipation, anxious discovery, hope, longing and even nostalgia for the once familiar. While creating these pieces, I had the mental picture of vast landscapes, long-abandoned homesteads leaning on hillsides, rough roads dwindling to foot trails finally leading to uninhabited vistas, ancient handmade maps indicating the edge of the known world portraying vaguely rendered mythical landscapes and inhabitants of the regions beyond. I would say a story is told in the unfolding of the tracks, from the darkly anthemic opening of “Song From Unknown Territories,” followed by the mid-section, “Some Are Things Of Substance, Some Are Not” expressing the longing for familiar faces and shores, ending with the closing scenes of “Beyond The Edge Of A Flat Earth.”
Composed entirely of pads, bells, whistles and voices, “…Unknown Territory” times in at about 75 minutes and will be released on CDr in a full color bi-fold digipack and as hi-res downloads.
https://steve-brand.bandcamp.com/album/songs-from-unknown-territory
—-
 Track List:
song from unknown territory 11:22
when i’ve left behind all that i was 12:12
some are things of substance, some are not 14:57
the pause just before the great exhalation 12:12
beyond the edge of a flat earth 12:12
—-
“song from unknown territory”
how fortunate am i
orange sliver moon
window seat with rabbit
cricket just outside my window
making faces at birds
glow from the trees
cicada mustache
images of the best life
ever
terribly intimate things
i choose to share with the world
(via social media)
i was never good at pretending
that I didn’t know things I know
in order to console others
lace curtains
crumbled down old place
window looking out on holler
coins in a jar buried at the foot of the tree
leaving old homes behind
there out in the scrub
among the brambles and cocklebur
beyond the edge of a flat earth
frontier
two wild cats jump my fence and play
finally
leaving the hive
how fortunate am i
released 25 September 2015
By John Koch-Northrup, on September 17th, 2015 listen: http://somafm.com/dronezone
chat: https://www.hipchat.com/guuRXlakU
Join us tomorrow for the premiere of the new album by Massergy – A Novel Sense of Calm on SomaFM Drone Zone! http://somafm.com/dronezone
There will be a live chat during the premiere with Massergy there to answer questions. It’s always a great time! Details for the chat will be on the label website: http://relaxedmachinery.com
You can listen to the album today if you’d like! https://massergy.bandcamp.com/album/a-novel-sense-of-calm
…
Massergy’s new ambient album is a tribute to the passing of his younger brother. He recorded this album:
+ entirely outdoors in a nature preserve
+ at night with just a headlamp
+ no sequencing, no software, no post-effects
+ the only in-studio changes were volume levels
This is passion. This is dedication. In the outdoors, Massergy can reach that ‘zone’ musicians strive for. This album was recorded year round – he mentioned he was bundled up like a mountain climber in the winter and barely dressed during the summer months.
Ignoring “how” it was recorded… the album itself is beautiful and to my ears… stunning. Massergy is new to Relaxed Machinery and I’m so happy we brought him on board!
By John Koch-Northrup, on August 13th, 2015 Tune into SomaFM Drone Zone this Friday at Noon Pacific to hear the brand new Relaxed Machinery Release:
Markus Reuter & Zero Ohms – From Worlds Unseen A Light Yet Streams A Sound Replete
listen: http://somafm.com/dronezone
chat: https://www.hipchat.com/guuRXlakU
By John Koch-Northrup, on August 13th, 2015 Our newest release on Relaxed Machinery is from Markus Reuter and Zero Ohms called “From Worlds Unseen A Light Yet Streams A Sound Replete”
I sent a few questions to the two of them to answer some things I was personally curious about. Zero Ohms answered first and then Markus filled in a couple gaps.
This was informal and fun. Tune in Friday, Aug 14 to hear the album in full and chat with both of them.
For more info on the album go to Relaxed Machinery.
John: How did you two meet and start working together?
Zero Ohms: I had admired Markus’s ‘Trepanation’ CD, and we were Lotuspike labelmates. We met at a marriage celebration of his cousin and a house-sitting client of mine. We talked for a hour, and ended up agreeing to work on an album. “The Sun Is Just The Sun, But The Stars They Call The Heavens” was the result of this brief meeting. Three of four years later, Markus emailed me proposing a new project.
John: What was working on this album like – the process – how tracks develop – working long distance – etc.
Zero Ohms Well, this marks my tenth (I think) long-distance collaboration. High-speed computer connections and the ability to transfer large files make the process quicker these days. My performances were recorded live, with little or no editing.
Markus Reuter: For this album, which is our second, the process was relatively straight forward. I sent Richard two sets of 5 live performances each, to which he recorded his parts. The 2nd set of pieces made the cut, and I then mixed our tracks meticulously. Mastering engineer Lee Fletcher put on the final touches.
John: Such an interesting title and great Kubrick quote – how do those influence the album
Zero Ohms: The title stems from Markus’s and my musings about the source of original music. It doesn’t seem to emanate from this world or even this dimension, seems to travel hand-in-hand with Light, and seems self-contained, with ‘all the trimmings’ at times. I love Stanley Kubrick’s films, and his capacity to tell a story! I ran across this quote in a documentary about his film making technique, directed, I think, by Kubrick’s daughter. The sound creates a new world, and we must illuminate it with our own Light.
John: Richard – no flutes? Really???? I just now noticed it’s not in the credits.
Zero Ohms: No, no flutes this time, only wind-controlled synths. (WX-5, a venerable JV-1010, and Camel Alchemy.
John: Markus – what is a recursive accumulation device?
Markus Reuter: It’s a new way of using looping devices in series and within a feedback loop that I started exploring in 2014. It’s not a kind of traditional looping, because no “repetition” is ever the same. The audio gets re-arranged in a complex pattern that is incomprehesible to human consciousness. But it feels great and organic and flowing. Just the right thing for this deliberately beautiful and mostly very consonant sounding album.
By John Koch-Northrup, on August 6th, 2015
By John Koch-Northrup, on July 9th, 2015
Join us on Friday! We are presenting our new Relaxed Machinery release by Chris Russell – Blur. On SomaFM Drone Zone. Join us in chat during the show – Chris and a bunch of friends and fans will be there.
To listen go to http://somafm.com/dronezone/
To chat during the show you have two options to join the chat room which will have many artists and friends.
1) Sign up as a member!
https://www.hipchat.com/invite/327827/14eec50e25c44b3ce08a0ab737379c7d
2) Sign in as a guest!
The catch with being a guess is our chat will “ding” every time someone posts. It’ll be irritating if you are chatting on the same computer you are listening to the Soma FM stream. I’m sorry, I can’t turn it off – and this was the best way to have a solid group chat that allows non-members to jump in and chat.
https://www.hipchat.com/guuRXlakU
Already a member – join in the chat: https://relaxedmachinery.hipchat.com/chat
By John Koch-Northrup, on July 3rd, 2015
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