"This DVD is a joint effort between the european Thinner and the Canadian Epsilonlab Netlabels and is a resumee for the special partnership between both Labels. It all started back in 2002 when Thinner was a young project publishing mp3s in the internet for free and Epsilonlab was tied to CD releases.
What started as a loose chat about track exchanges developed into the first Thinner visit in Montréal and Québéc City early 2003 and continued with an extended schedule and more compact line up in early 2004 when Thinner also hit the clubs in Toronto, Ottawa and last but not least Detroit. Nowadays Epsilonlab counts 21 MP3 releases while Thinner (including the releases of the Autoplate sublabel) offers about 125 releases of free MP3s.
This partnership now leads into a conceptual audiovisual effort.
The DVD features music that can be described as dub-inspired, ambient, rhythmic, tech-house, electro and occasionally hypnotic or spellbinding. As for visuals, an original unifying concept guided VJs as they produced each of the video clips: the presence of the same dancer/actor throughout, the use of a specific color, and a series of keywords. Based on these keywords, Montreal poet and linguist DesSavage created subtitles. A rarity, the subtitle options are in fact a complementary artwork set in relation to the DVD's audiovisual content. DesSavage explored two distinct concepts for the French and English versions.
Martin Bélanger, a Montréal-based choreographer, dancer and performer, generously offered his time to play the DVD's main protagonist. This project was produced under the artistic direction of Les Passagers, recipients of the grand prize for best digital animation at the recent Grafika awards for their video-clip, "Miss", which is included on the DVD.
DVD Features ò 11 Thinner/Epsilonlab Tracks seamlessly mixed by DJ Eloi Brunelle, visualized by various Epsilonlab VJs ò Bilingual (FR/ENG) subtitles for metaphysical karaoke ò 15 minutes portrait of the heads behind this DVD ò Artist Biographys ò Concept excerpt" (From the Thinner's release page)

"To gain insight into Off The Sky's (Jason Corder) current work we cast a ray through "Caustic Light EP". A new release on autoplate after his "Studies of Form in Transit" [APL014] and "The Transitions" [APL027] (under his old moniker Color By Numbers). This EP grew up evolutionary to what it is now - a collection of four tracks whose atmosphere is created by guitar particles and floating ambient scapes.
When asked what the story behind this "caustic light" concept was, Jason responded, "While the songs evolved, textures and subtleties were molded around a pre-existing idea surrounding caustic light play. The constant random patterns of light at the bottom of a pool or from light cutting through crystals and dancing on a table in prismic fashion always caught my childhood imagination leaving a strange, sentimentaly charged residue. The memories of these caustics has been translated with guitar notes being chopped into granulated shards of sound. The guitar always will, be an instrument that has an illuminus tone to it - especially the higher notes and the picked harmonics like those in 'through time stained windows'. Also the sign wave seems a perfectly synonymous paralell to steady beams of lights...
So lately dreams have been a prevelent activity for me. An awareness point has been reached in REM of being cognative enough to notice a low, constant dancing of light surrounding objects. There is always a soft, elusive ring flooding my peripheral dream window similar to an effect used to simulate memory floods in an old film called 'Dark City'.
This effect in a recent lucid dream, birthed an idea for a poem. All of the titles of each track of the EP are all sucessive lines from this short poem which is titled 'requiem inconnu'. It is an ambiguous story from the last moment memories of an old man as his soul escapes.
her soft circumference, dripping lightly, diffuses... like caustic light bending backwards through time stained windows
The old man, an unknown, lonely hermit, remembers back, like in a dream, to a watery memory of a prevalent past lover. In his time stained mind's eye, her form bends and flips around like caustic light crawling on coral beneath an abstract ocean. This is his last vision of love lost and love gained again at last through the bridge of his eternal memory.
So each song title essentialy stands on its own but also the whole of all the titles make up a pertinant paragraph of poetry that coincides with the core concept for the album - a track title poem."
With this EP Jason creates a bridge to his upcoming release 'it is impossible to say just what i mean' due out on Stilll records in Belgium this September (www.stilll.org)." (From the Autoplate's release page)

"Initially the motivation behind our new compilation was to build a sequel to the 2003 'Silent Season Dub' compilation - to blend warm ambient with minimal dub concepts. But during the phasis of collecting tracks we figured that this compilation will turn out more experimental, more rough than than the reference. So we decided to put things into a new context, that would either underline the variety of concepts but also stand for each artists own formular of sound: 'Crossways'.
Herein, electronic music with rather minimal rhythmpatterns are crossed with spheric ambience, in different moods, different slopes and different colours. The listener is able to find warm ambient pieces like 'Warm Night Lullaby' by Transient or more dubbed out ambience with Zen Savauges 'Sunken Streetlights'. You can lose yourself in the organic cycles of Boris Heizmann's 'Azure' or drift along with 'Scrap of Truth' by Selffish. But If you feel like enjoying some darker felt material then you'd like to explore the realms of Sgnl_Fltr's chamber dub in 'All Form' by or listening to the crickets resting in Kenneth Kirschner's 'June 8, 2003 (excerpt)'. Generally said, if you're interested in the contemporary minimal electronics of 2005 you'll definately find the one or other piece within this compilation that will suit you fine.
As the music crosses the flash artwork of this releases does so, too - if you reload the page you'll figure changing background pictures of the cover artwork. The pictures were taken in several countries where Joerg (Digitalverein) has performed in a Thinner context. Note that this compilation is split into 3 parts, each part about 60 minutes of length. If you want to enjoy the compilation mixed then you can download the Crossways Mix by Selffish." (From the Thinner's release page)

"The new album by 'color by numbers' (Jason Corder) aptly titled "The Transitions", represents an epochal evolution in the life of author Jason Corder from isolational observations translated through sound to beautiful, techni-colored day-dreamings mingled with childlike curiosities.
Through the two year long production span of "The Transitions", Jason underwent a shifting period in his music and life. Through this phase he embraced his roots, solidified a musical philosophy, and began collaborating closely with a community of artists and musicians. So the album is themed around his personal transition into a new paradigm of production coupled with his move out to the California coast.
The inspiration in transition truly stands out by the naked use of instruments such as bells, violins, a melodica, a Wurlitzer baby grand, a dulcima, an Ethiopian tamtam, and even a homemade percussion set - "I set up a pots-and-pans drum kit in my kitchen one time - hanging all the utensils from strings. It was like being a crazy kid again ... I guess that's the point anyway." Crediting 'Jason Corder & Friends' as being the authors of the songs displays the new non-isolate production environ behind "The Transitions" - "For many of the songs I would sit down with my guitar and start noodling out a melody into the mic. Then I would get other musicians to come over to my studio and jam along with me. I would record the whole session and later go back to edit away. On other songs, my friends and I would sit around and talk about all the ideas we wanted to put into a track. Though I think I prefer the more chaotic method of just sitting down and feeling out a sketch from thin air".
The big difference from his Off the Sky project, is the vast use of guitar melody married with other instrumentations. Jason states: "I have actually been playing guitar much longer than producing electronic music. I used to have this fantasy of being a rock star guitar player when I was a kid but I couldn't ever figure out how to keep a band glued together; so I practiced guitar like crazy - alone. After a while I completely burnt out on playing guitar by myself and started writing weird music via laptop which is where the dubbed out sound of Off The Sky began. I think a lot of that cold textural novelty came from too much social isolation and from me trying to produce strictly from within a midi realm of 1's and 0's. I still love to make that kind of music but I almost burnt out on doing that at one point. Fortunatly I learned to evolve past that boxed-in, tunnel-vision state of mind which in turn helped me realize that by bouncing my ideas off other artists my musical growth would stem exponentially - and it has imporoved my Off the Sky sound and helped define the sound that is 'color by numbers'. So in the last couple years I got my head out of the sand, picked my acoustic guitar back up, and up-started a local post rock band which ended up being a huge catalyst to me letting my roots (guitar) come out and play in my songs. It has just ended up feeling more honest to work this way..."
And in light of the transition from a life of isolation to enjoying the beauty of love and new found relationships, Jason feels strongly that the melodies in his songs best describe these personal changes. "I wrote most of my older work for myself and nobody else which is why those tracks, although laden with craftsmanship and thought, feel a tad devoid of some personal feeling for me. These days my life has been saturated with both love and day-dreaming and I think that has made my recent music much more honest and endearing than ever." And in spite of being as productive as ever in his musical coming of age, Jason yet plans his next epoch. "I'm going to score films while living out here in California; it's a dream I've always had. But I guess at this point the point for me is to ultimately have fun with writing these songs and see where that ends up taking me. I'd like to eventually perform an ambient off the sky set streamed live from a high altitude airplain floating in the low gravity of the upper atmosphere... so I guess the sky is the limit" - and truly put, indeed it is!
Jason would like to thank a few of the key musicians that contributed their melodies and ideas throughout the making of this album:
Chris Worland : guitar Lina Tharsing : vocals Clint Colburn : pots and pans Andrew English : bells Ticean Bennet : Etheopian tam tam Matt Yerington : trumpets" (From the Autoplate's release page)

"After Thinner's summer holidays we welcome the next batch of Thinner releases with a remix compilation for Benfays versatile warm summer breezed ambient/lounge/ dubhouse album "One Touch Button Music". Since Benfay is a long time Thinner artist and had presented a playful and decent album in April, we felt it would become an exciting experience to ask our artists for their point of view on his tracks.
This result "One Touch Button Remixes" is a compilation that features reinterpretations of the most wanted Thinner artists, moving in between the multiple genres of modern relaxed electronic music the original album had provided.
Mikkel Metal, recently showing up with a new 12" on Kompakt, opens up with a sticky chemical interlude of "Elfenblond", that loses the downbeats and creates glueing lava textures out of the sensitive original sounds. Thinner's Joerg Schuster, aka Digitalverein, prepared an exotic melange of the mellow ingredients "Segelflieger" provided, utilizing tricky dub beats instead of the linear programming of the original, while Joerg, being Lufth, did a deeply filtered mix with stargazing dub chords and lush snaredrums.
The easy-listening "Allein Unter Den Arkaden" received a concentrated transition by krill.minima, keeping the mellow emotionality of the original by directing the attention to the fragile riding cymbals and carefully placed fading melody dots.
Paul Keeley felt inspired enough to do two totally different remixes for "The Carribean Bar" - proving the diversity of the original material. His "Wet Coast Mix" is a shallow and soothing downbeat jam, while the "Starlight" mix features the clicky midnight deephouse spheres we use to get seduced by Paul.
The fairytale "Jack And Jill" seemed to be perfect source material for Thinner's latvian lounge specialist Selffish, whose reinterpretation turned out more dashing and windy in relation to Benfays work.
The steamy "Oak" received a Pheek treatment, whose beats are more earthy, with clever shifting beats and rattling percussions, while "Blüten-Konfetti" got reworked by TPolar, whose splatter houze bonus beats are foreground shaking, with the original pads fading over in the background .
Jason Corder, with his recent Thinner album in the backpack, did a stunning microhouse cut of "Flussbett", with californic filter sweeps and easy dubs. And our old friend from Switzerland, Niels Jensen, gave the subtle "Bluestone" his unique uplifting, yet carefully arranged pattern twist that shine through his hardware production skills.
The remixes by Dennis DeSantis and Mateo Murphy turned out floorfilling, concrete and late night essential tools with pounding hit potential. Enjoy!" (From the Thinner's release page)