Arcane, England

News: Well look at this. I was cleaning up some older posts, figuring this one would get archived, and look who's back in action? Well it's not like Lawler ever went away, but he's back to issuing honest to goodness CDs again! Hooray. More on that below. In any case, Moon represents Arcane's 5th proper release and came out in April of 2017. In addition, he/they have just released a live CD called E-Day 2017, so that counts as 6 now. I need to investigate further apparently...

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Location: Lancashire area

Overview: Arcane is an extension of one Paul Lawler, and are one of many UK collectives/artists playing in the retro Tangerine Dream mode. Of the titles I heard, which are only the first 2, they are certainly in the top tier within the genre. Arcane started by screwing around with some backstory of being a mysterious lost German band. It was tongue in cheek for sure, but probably unnecessary as well. If you're a fan of bands like Radio Massacre International, AirSculpture, and Free System Projekt album, then Arcane is yet another group to add to your list.

UMR notes

I preserved some notes (below) that I put down about this "download/CD-R" only business. Perhaps I was a bit pissy, but dammit it's time to get serious here folks. Nice to see that my words are often echoed by others.

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For those that know me, or have read the FAQ on my sister CD Reissue Wish List, I refuse to buy downloads. Why would I buy something that is a worthless asset? Keep pressing the CDs or LPs guys, or your customer base will completely dwindle to a handful of people that pay for crappy sound quality with no physical product to own and display. Some offer them as CD-R's as well. Once again, an inferior worthless format. Either do it right, or don't bother at all. This customer is perfectly willing to stop buying new music if that's all the options I'm given. I'm not alone in these thoughts. I hope the small vendors/labels are paying attention here. The majors can do whatever they want - it's not likely I'll find what I'm looking for there anyway.

Here's a comment I received from a reader named Mike way back when (2011): "Not ... alone ... at all. It's actually pretty amazing how much trouble one has to go through to get a lot of this modern sequencer music, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

And take RMI for an example. Fairly tough to get before they signed to Cuneiform and Wayside started carrying everything. And now Wayside's showing "Last few copies" on Emissaries.

So anyone want to start a label? :D"