Kode9 has shared details of a new "sci-fi sonic fiction" piece, called Astro-Darien.
Set for release on Hyperdub’s sub-label Flatlines, Astro-Darien is billed as "a 26-minute sonic fiction about the break-up of Britain narrated by synthetic Scottish voices and framed as an eponymous video game." Set to be made available in digital formats and on 10-inch vinyl, the piece marks the second vinyl release on Flatlines after Mark Fisher and Justin Barton’s audio essay On Vanishing Land, which launched the label in 2019.
A press release about Astro-Darien reveals that "the loose plot follows a game designer from a fictional games company called TrancestarNorth 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."
The piece was initially debuted in June 2021 as a three-screen audiovisual installation at London’s Corsica Studios, before being presented in October of that year at Paris’ INA-GRM. Kode9’s recent album, Escapology, also formed part of the project, being billed as an instrumental, rhythmic take on the overall story’s ideas. A live audiovisual set based on the Astro-Darien game universe will also be debuted at Kraków’s Unsound festival next month.
Flatlines will release Astro-Darien on November 11, 2022.
