Hello guys, we’re back with another cosmic installment of the Astrophonica story. Following on from the release of our album, “Retrospect – A Decade Of Fracture & Neptune”, we return with our second single of the year, headed by Fracture’s ‘Bad Habit’ b/w Fracture & Neptune’s ‘Music Y’all’ and finished off with a nice digital exclusive to the new Astrophonica store, ‘Play That Record’ by Fracture. Available to order now, shipping Monday 28th November.
Available now on vinyl and digital from your favourite stores including www.surus.co.uk/astrophonica where the MP3 release ships free with vinyl purchase.
According to my friends, some of my Bad Habits are ‘my sarcasm’, ‘touching their computer screen when I point at things’ and ‘sometimes wearing a hat when cooking in the kitchen (?!)’. I have many more but I’m gonna keep them to myself for now as this is about you not me…
Share your worst Bad Habit on the Astrophonica Facebook wall and I’ll send this test press with one off painting by Emilski to the one that gets the most likes by Friday 18th November.
Can we get a big round of applause and a good luck cheer for Emilski & Nick Duggins, the creators of the music vid for Fracture & Neptune’s Customtone, who are off to Croatia today to attend the international animation festival, Supertoon.
The video has been nominated in the Animated Music Video category along with big hitters such as U2, Coldplay and The Who. We are seriously happy as the guys put in so much work for the video and really deserve this. Let’s hope we can take on the big guns!
‘Good evening Planet Earth, citizens of Earth origin or any other planet in the solar system, good evening Planet Earth…
Welcome to the GRAM June 2011 Podcast with Fracture & Neptune of Astrophonica. Within this transmission you can expect to hear recordings of the highest sonic quality and from each end of the spectrum. Keeping it cosmic as ever, Fracture & Neptune take you through a musical journey of some of their favourite tracks from past, present & future…’
We at Astrophonica are extremely excited to announce the release of Customtone / Brain Freeze, as taken from the Retrospect – A Decade Of Fracture & Neptune LP. Full release is 27th June through ST Holdings but as ever, we do have some advance copies for sale over in the shop right now. Remember that Brain Freeze is available only on vinyl, so that means no digital release. The reason we are so excited is that this is the most special vinyl release on the label so far. Why is it so special? Let me tell you…
Designed by Nick Duggins & Emilski, each sleeve has been individually hand printed and numbered. A relief of the artwork was created using the solar plate method which involves the exposing of an image onto a light sensitive plate. Once exposed, you are left with a relief of the image which is then inked up by hand using a roller. Each sleeve was laid on top of the freshly inked plate and then put through a press. This means that each sleeve is completely unique in it’s appearance.
The printing took place over an entire weekend at Astrophonica HQ by Emilski & Fracture. We totally pushed ourselves to the limit with this one, probably managing about 8 hours sleep in 3 days and a load of junk food. At times it was a very surreal experience but are very happy with how it has all turned out, you really are getting a piece of hearts with this one. So here it is…
To celebrate the release of ‘Retrospect – A Decade Of Fracture & Neptune’ we have a very special limited vinyl release featuring two brand new tracks. ‘Customtone ft Martin Fieber’ and ‘Brain Freeze ft Chewie’. Brain Freeze will never be released digitally so we are giving something back to the vinyl heads with this one.
The sleeve art will be hand printed and individually hand numbered numbered by Emilski. If you saw the artwork for the special test presses of The Limit, then you will know Emilski is amazing and that these will be very special.
The vinyl release has been limited to a run of 500 with each of the sleeves lovingly printed by our very own hands and I can tell you now it took a whole weekend to do and Emilski still has ink under his fingernails! They look amazing, like nothing you’ve seen before and we are giving you the chance to win number 001 out of 500! A unique collectors item to say the least….
Prize:
No.1 of a 500 Limited Edition 12? ‘Customtone’ b/w ‘Brain Freeze’ in hand printed sleeves by Emilski. (‘Brain Freeze’ will be a vinyl release ONLY) How to enter?
Simply follow this link to the Astrophonica facebook page and get your name on the wall! A winner will be drawn at random on the 20th June 2011.
Hi guys, it’s here! Fracture & Neptune – Retrospect ‘A Decade Of Fracture & Neptune’ is now available to buy from your favourite store. Below are details on the various format of this release.
Full album: 30th May
iTunes album with bonus material: 6th June
Customtone / Brain Freeze Limited sampler 12″: 20th June
‘Retrospect – A Decade Of Fracture & Neptune’ is an 18 track, digital LP that brings together the classic, always cosmic, Fracture & Neptune sound from the year 2000 right up to the current date. Some released faves, some unreleased, some brand new and some unheard tracks from the vaults! All wonderfully remastered by Bob Macc and sounding better than ever. Release date is 30th May so BUY IT NOW from 7Digital,Juno,Boomkat,Digital-Tunes or find it at your favourite digital store
Along with the standard album release will be a special iTunes version of the album for which we have included the skills of many other artists and creatives to bring you a multimedia package including bonus tracks, the official Customtone music video, documentaries featuring Martin Fieber and Fracture & Neptune digging in their favourite record shop and a super slick pdf booklet including liner notes giving you an insight to each track and images and artwork by Emilksi & Nick Duggins. One of the bonus tracks is ‘Detached’ by Fracture which we get asked about a lot, so we included it for you. Pre order it now from Itunes
To celebrate the release of ‘Retrospect – A Decade Of Fracture & Neptune’ we have a very special limited vinyl release featuring two brand new tracks. ‘Customtone ft Martin Fieber’ and ‘Brain Freeze ft Chewie’. Brain Freeze will never be released digitally so we are giving something back to the vinyl heads with this one.
The sleeve art will be hand printed and individually hand numbered numbered by Emilski. If you saw the artwork for the special test presses of The Limit, then you will know Emilski is amazing and that these will be very special. The vinyl release has been limited to a run of 500 with each of the sleeves lovingly printed by our very own hands and I can tell you now it took a whole weekend to do and Emilski still has ink under his fingernails! They look amazing, like nothing you’ve seen before and we are giving you the chance to win number 001 out of 500! A unique collectors item to say the least….
Prize:
No.1 of a 500 Limited Edition 12″ ‘Customtone’ b/w ‘Brain Freeze’ in hand printed sleeves by Emilski. (‘Brain Freeze’ will be a vinyl release ONLY) How to enter?
Simply follow this link to the Astrophonica facebook page and get your name on the wall! A winner will be drawn at random on the 20th June 2011.
Andy Westbury is a record collector and digging enthusiast from London, England. He has a shop called Eldica Vinyl in Dalston, East London. This is a short film about record shops, digging for breaks and samples and how old sleeve design still influences today’s record labels.
In part two of two mini documentaries Fracture and Neptune take you to their favourite record shop and unearth some beats and bobs. Their album ‘Retrospect – A Decade of Fracture & Neptune’ is released on Astrophonica on 30th May 2011
More info on the album here wp.me/pW1Pu-bL facebook.com/Astrophonica facebook.com/pages/Eldica/376105503800
For more information, live dates, biography or interview Q&A’s on Fracture & Neptune / Astrophonica contact This Is Reprise on (0)20 7729 0686 or erin@thisisreprise.com
For DJ bookings please contact tom@gramagency.co.uk
Filmed & Edited by Louis Ellison
Good evening music producers of Earth. Producers of Earth origin or any other planet in the solar system. Good evening Planet Earth… Are you looking for that classic cosmic sound to your music? Are you wondering how you to make such extraterrestrial bass lines from tunes like The Limit or Hull Breach? Then look no further than Fracture’s Cosmic Drum & Bass sample pack for loopmasters.
I set out to make this sample pack with a very clear vision. I wanted create a pack which married the classic gritty sounds of vintage Drum & Bass with today’s contemporary sound and crystal clear high end production. This ethos and cross pollination of techniques is something that runs very strong in Fracture & Neptune productions and is the building blocks of our label, Astrophonica.
To do this I used a mixture of classic hardware gear including the E-Mu e6400 Sampler (what many people consider as the cornerstone of the 90′s Drum & Bass sound) and high end software such as Logic Pro to bring it all up to date. I wanted to create a sample pack that people will come back to in years to come, not just a collection of loops I already had lying around. Therefore, every loop and sound has been worked on specially for this pack and let me tell you it was often hard work stopping myself turning them into full tunes for my label!
Inside this pack you will find beats, bass lines, synth lines, guitar loops, fx loops and a whole load of one shot samples too. I’ve also included some construction kits which are full loops including all the elements you need to start a track. Lots of the samples have some wonderful hardware processing on them including valve compression and Z-plane filtering from the E-Mu sampler all EQd and tweaked to fit in to your modern day studio set up.
To buy, get more information on formats and to hear demo loops click here
Wow can you believe it, we’ve been at it for about 11 years now! To celebrate this we have put together our first ever long player, a retrospective of our career so far…
‘Retrospect – A Decade Of Fracture & Neptune’ is an 18 track, digital LP that brings together the classic, always cosmic, Fracture & Neptune sound from the year 2000 right up to the current date. Some released faves, some unreleased, some brand new and some unheard tracks from the vaults! All wonderfully remastered by Bob Macc and sounding better than ever. Release date 30th May 2011.
To celebrate the release of ‘Retrospect – A Decade Of Fracture & Neptune’ we have a very special limited vinyl release featuring two brand new tracks. The sleeve art for this release will be hand printed and individually numbered by Emilski. If you saw the artwork for the special test presses of The Limit, then you will know Emilski is amazing and that these will be very, very special. Keep your eyes peeled end of May 2011
Customtone picks up where our 2006 track Ventura (Med School) left off, with distant ghostly slide guitar courtesy of steel string veteran Martin Fieber and emotive song structure. It has become a firm personal favourite of ours and encapsulates the Fracture & Neptune sound perfectly… Tone to the bone!
On the flip side we find Fracture teaming up with the mysterious Chewie to create a paranoid and murky stepper entited Brain Freeze. With trade mark Astrophonica mid range moans and neck snap beats this one will sit in the collection nicely next to the label’s previous 4 releases.
Art and design are a massive part of the Astrophonica ethos and to commemorate the release of Customtone resident artists Emilski & Nick Duggins have created a quite simply breathtaking video for the track. Described as a psychedelic journey into the Astrophonica universe, Headtop have crafted a pencil and ink drawn stop frame animation that combines classic and contemporary animation techniques.
The result? think Hans Richter on acid, art deco astrology and comic book constellations, so rich in detail we reckon you’ll be hitting the replay button again and again. Watch this space…
Now we feel old… But here’s to another 10 years!
For more information, live dates, biography or interview Q&A’s on Fracture & Neptune / Astrophonica contact This Is Reprise on (0)20 7729 0686 or erin@thisisreprise.com
