The Fax Label

So i found this treasure on the internet: EVERY FAX LABEL RELEASE EVER.

This is my problem, this treasure its very very very heavy .. so i ask you WATMM what are your favourites Fax label release, help me choose from this very long catalogue.

From Within Series

Air Series

Shades of Orion series

that usually keeps me occupied.

Shades of Orion is so fucking good

Right now im getting From Within,Broadway,Dreamfish and Hemisphere.

There is so much stuff on that label, i don't think i will ever get to listen to all of it in my lifetime.

Pete Namlook VS Jonah Sharp - Alien Community : The first time i realized that it was not against the rules to make a 1 hour long techno song

Tetsu Inoue - World Receiver (my favorite ambient album of all time)

not on FAx, but very Faxish with the regular players

Tetsu Inoue & Jonah Sharp Instant Replay

All Tetsu Inoue

Dreamfish 1&2

S.H.A.D.O. 1&2

Outland

Alien Community 1&2

Sea Biscuit

Wechselspannung 1&2

From Within

Coeur Atomique

Jet Chamber series

​Exploring the Psychedelic Landscape

Namlook X

Russian Spring

Been wanting to get into the Fax releases for a while now, missed them all in the 90's, but never knew where to start, so the recommendations above seem a good place.

Anyway, I found Beatport have a load of releases that aren't at any other digital seller (Bleep, Bandcamp etc), although I hate that site and find it very difficult to search for albums, everything is set up for tracks.

I recently completed a run through of FAX's '90s stuff (not a tremendous fan of much of the stuff from this century - Namlook got quite into minimal techno type stuff, but I prefer the more organic feel of the earlier material) and these were my highlights:

Air I+II

Silence I+II

Dreamfish I+II

From Within

Sad World II

Spacetime Continuum - Sea Biscuit

Alien Community II

Namlook V

Wechselspannung

Outland I + II

Bill Laswell - Outer Dark

Jet Chamber II

Dark Side of the Moog V-VIII

HIA/Namlook - SHADO I+II

Peter Benisch - Waiting for Snow

Jochem Paap - Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598 I+II

Psychonavigation IV

What surprised me is how IDM-ish a lot of it is. From the handful of releases I knew I was expecting some downtempo type stuff, but there are plenty of Artificial Intelligence-era Warp beats in there.

  On 5/9/2017 at 12:37 PM, purlieu said:

I recently completed a run through of FAX's '90s stuff (not a tremendous fan of much of the stuff from this century - Namlook got quite into minimal techno type stuff, but I prefer the more organic feel of the earlier material) and these were my highlights:

 

Air I+II

Silence I+II

Dreamfish I+II

 

From Within

Sad World II

Spacetime Continuum - Sea Biscuit

Alien Community II

Namlook V

Wechselspannung

Outland I + II

Bill Laswell - Outer Dark

Jet Chamber II

Dark Side of the Moog V-VIII

HIA/Namlook - SHADO I+II

Peter Benisch - Waiting for Snow

Jochem Paap - Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598 I+II

Psychonavigation IV

 

What surprised me is how IDM-ish a lot of it is. From the handful of releases I knew I was expecting some downtempo type stuff, but there are plenty of Artificial Intelligence-era Warp beats in there.

How did you listen to all these, just stream through Youtube etc or did you already own them? Would love a proper digital release of everything on Bandcamp, how likely that is with Pete no longer with us, I don't know.

For some reason I always think of Fax releases just being long beatless ambient tracks but there seems to be a great variety on there. I like Sea Biscuit and am quite tempted to buy the reissue of that on Bandcamp, I forget the was originally a Fax release. 

I love these albums the most, I think:

• Air
• A Day In the Park
• Dreamfish
• The Fires of Ork
• From Within
• The MS-Series
• Outland
• Phonehead
• Psychonavigation
• The Putney
• Re:sonate
• Sferics
• Shades of Orion
• Silence 5
• Waiting for Snow
• Xangadix
• Xangadix 2
• Zenith

From Within seems to be on everyones list, have just bought that.

There's a fair amount of stuff similar to the Artificial Intelligence series out there on labels like ART, Rephlex, Apollo, GPR and New Electronica (off the top of my head). For example The 7th Plain, which was Luke Slater on GPR, was fantastic ambient techno. Check out Chronicles, which came out last year, which was a sort of "best of" with some unreleased tracks. Maybe you already know of these?

Sea Biscuit is classic, I got to see Jonah play that out live

I'm up for any album recommendations, thanks!  Out of those, I know the Apollo sublabel of R&S, whose File Under Ambient compilation switched me on to David Morley, who I'm digging these days.  DiN's another good label.  But yeah, I'd love to know of more.  I'll check those others out, thanks!

  On 5/9/2017 at 12:58 PM, BUNKUM said:

 

How did you listen to all these, just stream through Youtube etc or did you already own them? Would love a proper digital release of everything on Bandcamp, how likely that is with Pete no longer with us, I don't know.

 

For some reason I always think of Fax releases just being long beatless ambient tracks but there seems to be a great variety on there. I like Sea Biscuit and am quite tempted to buy the reissue of that on Bandcamp, I forget the was originally a Fax release. 

 

I grabbed most of them from Soulseek, although there are a fair few on Bandcamp these days - Fires of Ork, all of Lorenzo Montana's stuff, a bunch more. After his death it appears the right reverted to the original artists (and in the case of collabs, the collaborating artists appear to have been granted rights to re-release). Nobody really knows what's going on with Pete's estate, it seems to be quite complicated.

Yeah, for a long time I was under the impression that FAX was either long beatless ambient stuff, or dubby/ethnic-tinged ambient stuff, but there's drum'n'bass, modern classical, techno, trance, some properly avant-garde weird shit, plus a fair bit of that early IDM sounding stuff too. Sea Biscuit is a fantastic record, although the new reissue is on Psychonavigation who have come into a bit of trouble with FAX releases before - Peter Benisch had to get lawyers out to stop one reissue, and they also put out a reissue of a Tetsu Inoue record, despite Inoue being missing and not having spoken to his closest friends in many years - so I'd probably steer clear of the label. 

Of possible interest to those who don't know, Ear/Rational who worked with Pete and did US distro for FAX put out a compilation in tribute after he did, and ended up starting up a new label. They've put out a few things that were lined up for FAX but never got issued, as well as continuing some of the series that were on the label (Thomas P. Heckmann's Lost Tales, Autumn of Communion, etc.), plus other new stuff. It's called Carpe Sonum and is definitely worth a look, as it's the closest thing to continuing the legacy that we're likely to get.

  On 5/9/2017 at 6:38 PM, ZoeB said:

I'm up for any album recommendations, thanks!  Out of those, I know the Apollo sublabel of R&S, whose File Under Ambient compilation switched me on to David Morley, who I'm digging these days.  DiN's another good label.  But yeah, I'd love to know of more.  I'll check those others out, thanks!

Off the top of my head:

Higher Intelligence Agency - Colourform

Omnicron - Acrocosm

Drum Komputer - Alphabet Flasher

SETI - SETI

Air Liquide - Nephology

  On 5/9/2017 at 8:29 PM, purlieu said:

 

  On 5/9/2017 at 12:58 PM, BUNKUM said:

 

 

 

How did you listen to all these, just stream through Youtube etc or did you already own them? Would love a proper digital release of everything on Bandcamp, how likely that is with Pete no longer with us, I don't know.

 

For some reason I always think of Fax releases just being long beatless ambient tracks but there seems to be a great variety on there. I like Sea Biscuit and am quite tempted to buy the reissue of that on Bandcamp, I forget the was originally a Fax release.

 

I grabbed most of them from Soulseek, although there are a fair few on Bandcamp these days - Fires of Ork, all of Lorenzo Montana's stuff, a bunch more. After his death it appears the right reverted to the original artists (and in the case of collabs, the collaborating artists appear to have been granted rights to re-release). Nobody really knows what's going on with Pete's estate, it seems to be quite complicated.

 

Yeah, for a long time I was under the impression that FAX was either long beatless ambient stuff, or dubby/ethnic-tinged ambient stuff, but there's drum'n'bass, modern classical, techno, trance, some properly avant-garde weird shit, plus a fair bit of that early IDM sounding stuff too. Sea Biscuit is a fantastic record, although the new reissue is on Psychonavigation who have come into a bit of trouble with FAX releases before - Peter Benisch had to get lawyers out to stop one reissue, and they also put out a reissue of a Tetsu Inoue record, despite Inoue being missing and not having spoken to his closest friends in many years - so I'd probably steer clear of the label.

 

Of possible interest to those who don't know, Ear/Rational who worked with Pete and did US distro for FAX put out a compilation in tribute after he did, and ended up starting up a new label. They've put out a few things that were lined up for FAX but never got issued, as well as continuing some of the series that were on the label (Thomas P. Heckmann's Lost Tales, Autumn of Communion, etc.), plus other new stuff. It's called Carpe Sonum and is definitely worth a look, as it's the closest thing to continuing the legacy that we're likely to get.

Wow, cheers, plenty there to check out. That also reminded me I have the fantastic Polydeuces by Autumn of Communtion which is Fax related.

Feel like I've heard warnings about Psychonavigation before on here, something to do with Neo Ouija?

Lee (Metamatics) who runs Neo Ouija and ...txt has given Keith, the guy who runs Psychonav, a few public tellings off for his shitty behaviour on Discogs and the like. In retaliation, Keith changed his Discogs username to neoouija1 or something, then set up a fake Neo Ouija website http://www.neoouijarecords.com - which he's now changed to a "fansite" of his own musical project. 

There have been a lot of other issues involving the label too - I don't want to get into too much detail because sadly I'm one of the artists involved - but a couple of minutes on the label page on Discogs should enlighten you a little at least. Martin who runs Touched has spoken out about him which was probably a huge bit of negative press, and recently the label's Bandcamp and official sites both went offline all together - supposedly they're only taking CD orders through Facebook now? God knows.

Here's a screencap of his Discogs profile when he was pretending to be Neo Ouija. 

I read a fair bit of the Fax group forum thread on Discogs last night, and then I saw the Sea Biscuit reissue has disappeared, glad I didn't pre-order it now.

Yes, it's pretty grim reading really.

Bump...

...cause I just discovered this gem of an album (thanks to the fine folks in the AGE - Orion Years thread).

Deep acidic ambient techno. Five parts in total. First two on Fax and the rest on Carpe Sonum (a rather excellent label continuing on with Pete’s legacy).

https://thomaspheckmann.bandcamp.com/album/the-lost-tales-vol-i

https://carpesonum.bandcamp.com
 

  On 2/25/2012 at 6:18 AM, YO303 said:

So i found this treasure on the internet: EVERY FAX LABEL RELEASE EVER.

 

This is my problem, this treasure its very very very heavy .. so i ask you WATMM what are your favourites Fax label release, help me choose from this very long catalogue.

Anything with Namlook

Resurrecting this here to seek reccos specifically from the Namlook / Move D collaborations. I've heard and loved Sexoid, There! Space & Time, and Jambient (Koolfang). Any other standouts?

Namlook & Move D - Wired