Altered Zones

Decades ago in blog years, in March 2009, a Brooklyn-based synth duo called Infinity Window released an LP of sprawling drone compositions on Arbor. The record was called Artificial Midnight, and it seemed more like a dreamy, consonance-friendly incarnation of New England noise than anything so tag-worthy as "hypnagogic pop"-- probably because nobody was throwing the term around back then. In an interview with Visitation Rites, Dan Lopatin said that he and Taylor Richardson were "putting krautrock in a fog-- like taking the vibe of prog and divorcing it from all the bullshit wankery and cliche." He also remembered a time when they brought their rig to a house party in Boston, and got an entire room full of young people "slow-moshing to drone." Before Dan was making headlines as Oneohtrix Point Never and one-half of the production duo Ford & Lopatin, and Taylor (Human Teenager, Purple Haze) had teamed with Gary War to found the psych label Fixed Identity, there was a time when some of us were pretty excited about the quiet storm the two synth dudes were brewing. To mark Arbor's recent re-pressing of Artificial Midnight, Taylor has asked us to share "Field of Vision," an 8-minute odyssey from IW's 2009 limited edition split tape with Treetops, which he says is the best piece of music he ever made with Dan. --Emilie Friedlander, Altered Zones

MP3: Infinity Window: "Field Of Vision"

Artificial Midnight re-issue is out now on Arbor and available via BoomKat