{"title":"Flatlines","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"on-vanishing-land","title":"On Vanishing Land","description":"\u003cp\u003eHyperdub launch new sub-label Flatlines for the release of \u003ci\u003eOn Vanishing Land\u003c\/i\u003e, an audio-essay by Justin Barton and the late Mark Fisher. \u003ci\u003eOn Vanishing Land\u003c\/i\u003e evokes a walk along the Suffolk coastline in 2006, from Felixstowe container port (\"a nerve ganglion of capitalism\") to the Anglo-Saxon burial ground at Sutton Hoo. A walk under immense skies, through zones of deep time, and within sunlit, liminal terrains, into the eerie. Everywhere there are charged atmospheres, shadowy incursions, enigmatic departures. A derelict radar base, coastal heathland, drifting thistledown, towers of overgrown shipping containers - music haunted by wider levels of reality, narrations about rarely visited zones and potentials, voices of dreams and stories. This music includes newly-composed tracks by John Foxx, Gazelle Twin, Baron Mordant, Raime, Pete Wiseman, Farmers of Vega, Skjolbrot, Eerie Anglia, Ekoplekz and Dolly Dolly. Alongside these are glimpsed views toward M.R.James’s \u003ci\u003eOh Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad\u003c\/i\u003e (1904), Joan Lindsay’s \u003ci\u003ePicnic at Hanging Rock \u003c\/i\u003e(1967), and Brian Eno’s \u003ci\u003eOn Land\u003c\/i\u003e (1982). Beyond the surface of the day something becomes visible, a way forward, an escape-path from capitalist reality. \u003ci\u003eOn Vanishing Land\u003c\/i\u003e is about following the lines of terrains and dreams. It is about a micropolitics of escape, of disappearance. A micropolitics of waking the faculties. \u003ci\u003eOn Vanishing Land\u003c\/i\u003e was initially part of an exhibition commissioned by The Otolith Collective and The Showroom in London, and after \u003ci\u003eLondonunderlondon\u003c\/i\u003e (2005) it was the second audio-work collaboration by Justin Barton and Mark Fisher. The LP cover features photos taken by Mark Fisher, and a short essay by Justin Barton. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Flatlines","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50498441019723,"sku":"1067894","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/72f0b389-d315-4209-8e5a-eccc224a8bf8_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727748210"},{"product_id":"astro-darien","title":"Astro-Darien","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eAstro-Darien\u003c\/i\u003e is a 26-minute sonic fiction about the break-up of Britain, narrated by synthetic Scottish voices and framed as an eponymous video game. It is the second release on Hyperdub sub-label Flatlines; a dark green 10” in triple gatefold sleeve, with artwork by Kode9’s long-time collaborators Lawrence Lek and Optigram, presented as a limited edition of 500 copies. From a Caledonian heart of darkness to a supernova Scotia? The documentary fiction spirals between the role of the catastrophic Darien Scheme in the late 17th century in the founding of the UK, when Scotland failed to colonise part of present-day Panama, and the contemporary disintegration of the Union. In a somewhat wild extrapolation of the race to become the Scotland’s first vertical satellite launch station currently playing out between Sutherland Space Port and the Shetland Space Centre, independence is speculatively framed as an exercise of escapology, a jailbreak and exodus to an orbital space habitat, with all the risks and dangers that entails.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe loose plot follows a game designer from the fictional ‘Trancestar North' company who, in attempting to lift the dark spell cast by Darien, models a counter-future by ingesting cosmism, the history of racial capitalism and the demise of Empire into T-Divine, the geopolitics simulator of the game engine. She follows the Brexit algorithm as it runs to its logical conclusion.Initially conceived as an audio essay for diffusion on François Bayle’s 50-speaker Acousmonium for INA-GRM in Paris in March 2020, but subsequently postponed by the pandemic, ‘Astro-Darien’ first surfaced as a three-screen A\/V installation on the dance floor of Corsica Studios in June 2021, finally reaching the Acousmonium the following October. In July 2022, an instrumental rhythmic version entitled ‘Escapology’ was released on Hyperdub. A live A\/V set relating to the ‘Astro-Darien’ game universe will debut at Unsound Festival in October 2022.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Flatlines","offers":[{"title":"Green 10\"","offer_id":50504423375179,"sku":"1167551","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/09c003ab-22b0-4890-b669-6b2629a9ba8c_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727805197"},{"product_id":"a-war-of-decibels","title":"A War of Decibels","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe fourth release on Flatlines is \u003ci\u003eA War Of Decibels\u003c\/i\u003e, a 43 minute audio essay by Berlin-based artist Nik\nNowak. Nowak is most well-known for his large-scale sound installations, especially \u003ci\u003ePanzer\u003c\/i\u003e (2011) and the\n\u003ci\u003eMantis\u003c\/i\u003e (2019), dramatic and beautifully constructed sound systems installed on tracked vehicles which have\nhosted a range of DJs over the years such as Dj Rashad and DJ Spinn, Scratcha DVA, Ikonika and Kode9.\n\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe audio essay builds on the themes of his 2020 interdisciplinary installation Schizo Sonics (KINDL–Center\nfor Contemporary Art, Berlin) which explores acoustic proxy wars spanning from Germany through Jamaica\nto Korea during the (first) Cold War and their contemporary manifestations. The piece is cut on two 180-\ngram vinyl records—one yellow, one black with an etched side, and delves into the sound of ideological\ndivision across four episodes, blending narrative elements with original historical recordings, including those\nfrom the so-called Loudspeaker War waged sonically from 1961 to 1965 at the border between East and West\nGermany, across the Berlin Wall. The work featuring Nowak’s sound design, scripted and narrated by Jessica\nEdwards (fka Ms.Haptic, backing vocalist on Kode9’s album ‘ Memories of the Future’ and voice of Audint’s\n‘Martial Hauntology’ project) and oblique interventions from artist former Big Dada artist Infinite Livez.\n\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe accompanying 88-page book (in English and German), designed by Verena Gerlach, features 129 images,\nincluding installation views, collages, further artwork, and photographs of related live performances staged\nat Halle am Berghain in 2019 and the KINDL–Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin, in 2021.\n\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Flatlines","offers":[{"title":"Yellow LPx2","offer_id":50519311614283,"sku":"2226360","price":69.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/AWOD_Nik_Nowak_1__83da4cfa_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727969470"},{"product_id":"by-the-north-sea","title":"By the North Sea","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe third release on Flatlines, Hyperdub’s sub label for audio essays and sonic fiction, is \u003ci\u003eBy the North Sea\u003c\/i\u003e by Robin\nMackay, philosopher and founder of the UK publisher Urbanomic.\n\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe project is a sonic exploration of the perplexities of time, disappearance, and loss, channelled through the fictions\nof H.P. Lovecraft, the speculative mythos of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (Ccru), and the ghost of Dunwich -\na once prosperous English trading city now lost almost wholly to the sea.\n\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDescribed by Mackay as a “radio play afflicted by ontological rot”, the audio essay interweaves field recordings,\nrecovered video footage, voice performance, and original music. The voices of Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, actors\nPeter Marinker and Phyllida Nash, Angus Carlyle, Lisa Blanning, diver Stuart Bacon, and Morgan Caines of Dunwich\nMuseum, loop and twist around Mackay’s narration in a dense, multi-levelled sonic hyperstition that lends itself to\nrepeated listening.\n\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMackay began writing \u003ci\u003eBy the North Sea\u003c\/i\u003e in 2017 in the week immediately following the death of Mark Fisher, returning\nto the archives of a project that he and Mark had embarked upon in 2001, with the themes of the original ‘Dunwich\nProject’ taking on a new character in the wake of Fisher’s death, and becoming a device for asking questions about\nfinality, about things that could now never happen, about the possibility of continuing, and about a distanced\nfriendship marked by depressive absences and constantly deferred promises to spend time together.\n\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe CD comes housed in a 48-page hardback casebound sleeve containing the text and images from the audio essay.\n\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Flatlines","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50532622795083,"sku":"2212614","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/FLAT003_packshot_x1400_2e935765_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728125642"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/flatlines.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}