2020 in Review // Mix by Submarine Broadcasting Company

For the beauty.

The Submarine Broadcasting Company is an independent net label specializing in ambient and experimental music, art rock and post-rock.

In the distant past (2017, but seems longer) we released One String Inspiration, a compilation of original pieces made using home made instruments, with sales going to the Syria Relief organisation. This was followed by Post:Soc, Exhibition and Klang. Many of the contributors to these projects became our resident artists and include Alan Morse Davies, Stringmodulator, Beltism, t.r. hand, Manipulant, GOATS, the Glove of Bones, Manipulant and many more.

More guest mixes and playlists in our archives.

Tracklist

Cloud Diameter – ‘Parallax Error’ – from ‘Cloud Diameter 2’

“Parallax Error,” the opening invocation from Cloud Diameter 2, creeps in with the warm, breathy sound of a tenor sax jamming along with a modular synth, like Ethio Jazz mystic Getachew Mekuria playing along with an AI in Yayoi Kusama’s The Infinity Room. Or John Coltrane‘s Meditations played out in some Virtual Plaza in the Uncanny Valley.

Except it’s not. In fact, there’s not one acoustic instrument to be found over Cloud Diameter 2‘s slight 30 minute runtime. Instead, each of its minimalist machine jazz meditations is summoned from nothing, using only VSTs and DAWs. – forestpunk

Greg Nieuwsma –  ‘Where The Restless Balloon Animals Float’ –  from ‘Rabbit Hole Variations’

US-born, Krakow-based musician Greg Nieuwsma’s last album, Travel Log Radio, seemed to perfectly embody the disquieting feeling of early lockdown. Assembled from field recordings made in locations around the world, Travel Log Radio showed how suddenly things that we had taken for granted (perhaps) – the ability to freely go wherever you want in the world and the satiability of wanderlust that freedom of movement allowed – had been taken away from us. It was a haunting, uncomfortable listen in some ways; poignant and wistful in others. – Mat Smith / Gated Canal

Flavigula – ‘Dobruszka a její Vepřík’ – from ‘Jēmaraz’

Jēmaraz is an album incorporating ambient krautrock soundscapes, samples and live instrumentation that will delight fans of progressive and art rock. Each composition on Jēmaraz creates colorful, heady landscapes that are simultaneously dark and light, disorienting and hopeful. – Merch.is

Corticem – ‘Saturn The Dandy Brute’ – from ‘Planetarium’

Corticem are an experimental rock trio based in Krakow, Poland formed by former members of Sawak. After losing their rehearsal/recording space, the trio quickly took action and recorded sessions to tape using whatever they could hastily pack up around them: a theremin-like feedback loop from a cigarette pack-sized amp held up to the guitar pickup, multi-tracked bowed cymbals, a single mic on a drum kit running through a broken amp, reversed drums, the walls, anything. The resulting work is a modern kosmische classic that sounds as if it were from another planet. – Merch.is

See also: In Memory of John Peel | syndae podcast

Mac Blackout – ‘Wandering Spheres’ –  from ‘Love Profess’ (Trouble in Mind)

One of the surprises of the tail-end of this year is this album from Mac Blackout. I shouldn’t be too surprised given that his album is out on Trouble in Mind Records. The label’s been batting 1000 for a few years now, and it goes without saying that nearly anything on there is worth listening to. And Love Profess, out on Friday, is no exception. – A Pessimist is Never Disappointed

Hidria Space Horse – ‘Whisperer Of Secrets’

With stunning artwork and songs which haunt the memory for days and even weeks after you played the album, Hidria Spacefolk are a band for people who like their music to take them on a voyage of discovery. Don’t expect predictability or easy hooks – this is music to challenge and excite the senses. – Sonic Abuse

Iyari – ‘Hozro’ – from ‘Hozro’

According to the blurbage (I can’t claim to spend all that much time on research when my primary objective is to report a critical and sometimes emotional response to a release, and band and PR invest a lot of time in their explications, so why not?) ‘Hozro’, is a native American Dineh word that means living being conscious about the beauty, the magic and the mystery of the universe to which we belong.

I’ve been struggling to find much hozro myself in recent months, confined to a diminished space, rarely seeing or speaking to anyone outside my immediate household and inundated with reports of the shitshow that is western governments, so ,maybe I need this album right now. – Aural Aggravation

qualchan.  – ‘kin.’ – from ‘heavylightdreams’ (Holojamz)

qualchan. is a native american multi-disciplinary artist residing deep in the heart of cascadia. they describe their work as a reimagining of americana filtered through the tropes of new age, focusing primarily on living through the anthropocene. they call this wave now age, & are the only member of this school. They have released through Strategic Tape Reserve, Hotham Sound, No Problema and many others.

Matt Macfarlane lives in seattle. He draws cartoons and releases music as mattlikestapes. This is his first split album and first release with a label. Thanks to qualchan. for reaching out to collab and to holojamz for seeing the vision”

Manipulant – ‘I am Free (Glove of Bones Ali Dub)’ –  from ‘Almost Elegant’

I’m very much a fan of Manipulant’s work. Perhaps best of all, it’s not my usual music, but I deeply appreciate it because it always shows me new worlds that unfold with fearlessness, creativity, and edge. Here, as usual, each track taken individually is its own universe, yet the album still absolutely holds together as a whole. Now that’s art.”
— Aaron Stewart, keepsmealive

Incentive – ‘synaptic episode’ –  from ‘Presence’

What starts out as ambient noise morphs in to something quite euphoric in a kosmiche industrial kinda way. I could happily dance to this as the sun rises… – Dave Barnard / Inhale the Heavy

Twelve – ‘Inverter’ – from ‘December 2020’
HYPERWUMP – ‘Gas Addicts’ –  from ‘Cosmic Swirly Thang’ (Black Box Recordings)
Cousin Silas & the Glove of Bones – ‘Oxalá of the White Sky’ –  from ‘Kafou in Avalonia’
Binaural Space – ‘Birds of Prey Circling the Field’ –  from ‘Boyhood’
Daragh Black Hynes – ‘Tessellations’ –  from ‘Relative States Volume I’
playman54 – ‘chamber four (memory banks corrupted) – from ‘Chambers (A Life Raw)’