The Circular Ruins & Mystified – Fantastic Journey [Cold Spring]

In the North American cities of Ontario, in Canada, and St. Louis, in the United States, live two artists who have been committed for many years to the experimental and minimalist sound textures of musical genres based on ambient, noise, field recordings, electronica or sound art, and who also both seem to lead parallel lives as far as their musical projects are concerned.

Thomas Park (Mystified) is well known for his work since 2005 on his netlabel Treetrunk, for having shared musical works with artists of the stature of Rafael Flores and, above all, for having published on labels such as Toksynna and also on Industrial Complexx. Anthony Paul Kerby, who embodies The Circular Ruins, releases music under different aliases such as Nunc Stans, Fictions and Poetics and Lammergeyer, and runs DataObscura, a record project that was originally created as an ally of the Dutch label Databloem and has been operating independently since 2008.

Both producers coincide in many creative and artistic aspects, and both have teamed up to release a concept album that pays homage to various pioneering science fiction writers such as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells or Edgar Rice Burroughs. The result is Fantastic Journey, a 7-track album conceived for mental recreation, deepening and experiencing the futuristic visions of these precursors of today’s science fiction. Ambient synthesised music, dronescapes and melodies that take you into the artificial landscapes that these writers devised with their stories.

Cold Spring rescues this album originally published in 2013 to release it in CD format.