Off Key – 2nd Edition
Anyone even remotely interested in ambient, electronic, contemporary experimental and modern classical music will problaby have come across the Fluid Radio website.
Fluid Radio is in fact a lot of online things…it’s a website reviewing essential releases, it’s an online radio channel (two channels, in fact: with a custom made iPhone/iPod App to play them).
It has it’s own musical label (Fluid Audio, the label that has released 5 titles until now, all sold out immediately and legendary hand-packed).
A host of well-known artists (let’s say the “giants” of the ambient-electronic niche) have submitted handcrafted mixes of their own work or compilations of their favourite tracks to be published on the Fluid-Radio mixcloud Channel.
In other words – Fluid Radio has rapidly become the legendary starting point to explore contemporary indie-electronic music.
Fluid Audio/Radio is mainly curated by Daniel Crossley, who must have an impressive network of musical relations. Also, the amount of hours in a single day is obviously not the same as mine, regarding the love and care that goes in the packaging of his releases.
For example: the recent Hummingbird release ‘Our Fearful Symmetry’ came packed in a beautiful cover also containing a pine cone, lots of cloves, a sealed envelope containing liner notes, and another sealed envelope containing a photographic polaroid slide pressed between to pieces of glass from the 1940’s…
The kind of release you don’t want to open to play it (that’s why I ordered two).
(By the way: I will not review the music, because it was sold out in one day and will not be released for digital download – so I guess there’s no need for any further attention since all releases have found their home).