Merck Fragments

Just quick heads up to you all that the new Merck / Narita Mailorder is live and kicking. Finally have a proper shipping and cart system. Also, the new Anders Ilar & Fredrik Hedvall cd entitled “Melt” on Narita is finally released (and available from the new mailorder!). Also some repressed and domestically priced versions of the Arctic Hospital - Citystream CD on Narita as well. Please go check out the new mailorder and grab a copy of those Narita discs if you haven’t already. You owe it to yourself if you are any kind of techno enthusiast. Not to blow my own horn, but that Arctic Hospital disc is one of the most listenable techno albums in my collection (along with Signer - Low Light Dreams, that shit is AMAZINGLY good).

New Merck / Narita Mailorder + New Narita CD available

ps. gonna have to do a post about listenable techno albums down the road.

Last year I quietly put out a little 7″ soon after the demise of Merck (pretty much only available in our mailorder). Its by a group of guys from Wisconsin, one of which (Eric Bray) has released music with me on my Narita label under the guise of Arctic Hospital. Now that being said, the music really has nothing to do with the Arctic Hospital sound in any similar way, other than the excellent technicality of the production. All the tracks on their debut album were arranged/produced by him, with the instruments, etc. played by the rest of the group. This album came out only in Japan, so you probably were more likely to hear about the 7″, than the album. The ultimate point of this is that I released the 7″ cause the music is great. Musically it is the kind of stuff you would expect to read about in The Wire, or hear as the soundtrack to a great independent film, or that you may hear on a label with the likes of Helios or Deaf Center. It is best filed under Post Rock Shoegazer Ambient, and as usual on here, I highly recommend you check it out. Especially if you think that the Lateduster and Aurora 2 CDs on Merck put in a blender would sound nice (figuratively, not literally).

Discogs Link

Disclosure: More music by some friends. But on the realness, this is probably the most underrated release to ever come out of Miami. Probably because its vaguely IDM, and was released on a ‘hip-hop’ label. Its a perfect collection of 26 minutes of music, 5 tracks (forget the remixes, they’re inferior) by 3 smart and unique guys from Miami. It really is a densely emotive, fringey IDM, downtempo masterpiece. Who knows if you can still buy it anywhere, as I’m sure this release is probably last priority to Counterflow nowadays (who never quite had their shit together), but I highly recommend any Merck fans check this out, as its really gold. It also has some lovely art by Miami’s own AS1 as well (see Otto Von Shirach covers, or early Rawkus stuff).

Discogs Album Link