13.
Aquarian Foundation – Aquarian Foundation cassette
One more! I’m going to do a tape by the Aquarian Foundation guys. They’re a Canadian crew – the first release on their label was a 12” by Cloudface.
I turned up for my first show in Canada ever, in Vancouver, and I was picked up by a guy called Jordan and a guy called Chris in this old cadillac that I think had belonged to Chris’ grandfather. They were super nice, and instantly made me feel very welcome. They plied me with tapes immediately, three or four tapes of stuff they were working on, and took me to see their studio space where about twenty or thirty of their friends all worked on music and art, all sharing equipment and gear and ideas. It felt like a real community. Floating Points played for them as well and had a similarly nice experience. We both felt as though it was only a matter of time before people started to pay attention to what it was they were doing, and I think we both considered the idea of doing stuff with them on our respective labels, but in the end felt they had such a strong aesthetic and identity already that it didn’t seem necessary.
Again, this takes me back to such a specific place – to Vancouver. I remember staying in this kind of hipstery hotel – the show was in the basement – and they had a really crap old tape player in the room, so I was able to listen to the tapes they’d given me as soon as I got in. After the long flight it felt surreal, really memorable. The tape is bonkers, there’s so much different stuff on it, but knowing them and how they work, and experiencing their club night and hearing their DJing, it makes perfect sense.
I went [to Vancouver] as I was starting to feel a bit down about music in London. I was thinking a lot about whether the fragmentation of the scene in London was a good thing or not. On the one hand, was it liberating, and do you just forge the connections you want to make and it doesn’t have to be tied to place? Or on the other hand, does it just mean that everything was meaningless or directionless or unfocused? But then I arrived in Vancouver and instantly saw something that was going on that was local, but really wide-reaching; something that was inspired by tons of different stuff but still felt like it had it had a home.
