16th March 2011
Relaxed Machinery : it’s a brilliant name for a netlabel presenting “organic ambient and techno music from scratch with only the purest of ingredients”.
John Koch-Northrup, label curator/coordinator, prefers to call it an ‘artist collective’, with a different business model: the artists ‘self-release’ their album, all profit is theirs, but the collective opens up distribution channels that are normally quite difficult to reach for a DIY-release: such as digital distribution via all major channels (by CD Baby), and CDR distribution by Hypnos.
Relaxed Machinery celebrates its first year of existence with a beautiful compilation featuring all (thirteen) label artists, including Max Corbacho, Steve Brand, Benjamin Dauer, Bob Ohrum, I’ve Lost, Ishq (and seven more).
“Thirteen global artists bring their own unique perspectives and life experiences to sleepMODE. With the album at just over two hours, each artist had free rein to use as much track length as needed to evoke the feelings and emotions they wished to express for this project. The music ranges from ambient soundscapes, electro-acoustic, to modern minimalism; using synths, guitar, bass, field recordings, and processing.”
Apart from demonstrating a great new ‘business model’, where artists stay in control, Relaxed Machinery’s “SleepMode” offers a lot of interesting sounds, and thus is a great introduction to this relaxed netlabel.
Source – http://www.vancooten.com/blog/?e=371