Martin Dot shared with me some history, background, and philosophy of his RAIN netlabel along with some details of several of my favorite RAIN releases. All text within quotes is Martin’s and were taken from a series of email conversations.
RAIN is a netlabel based in Poland whose origins, which go back over five years ago, began with a passion: “My passion is sound. I have always been wondering why is it so that I perceive sounds so much differently than most of the people I know.” Martin’s interest in ambient and ambient-related sounds began with Brian Eno’s “Ambient 4: On Land”. As Martin put it, “His idea of ambient was the right thing.” In addition to Brian Eno, other important influences for Martin include Harold Budd, Pete Namlook, Vidna Obmana, Thomas Koner, Terre Thaemlitz, Lull, Kenji Kawai, Yoko Kanno, Aube, Kenneth Kirschner, Steve Roden, and Origami Arktika. Shortly after this Martin began creating music on his own and, a few years later, he discovered a means of spreading his sounds - the netlabels - and the RAIN netlabel was born.
Originally, the purpose of the label was to promote Martin’s music, but now RAIN is under the USEI Records banner. USEI is a Japanese term that means “the sound of rain”. It is a “multimedia semi-organization for spreading and promoting various ambient-related art by various artists.” At the present USEI focuses mainly on sound art, and Martin is adamant when he says that USEI is “ a group of people doing what we love” and that it has “no organized structure” being “completely virtual.”
The other person behind USEI is Umisetsu. She is a visual artist who operates Hanahime studio, which is her project for various kinds of graphical works. Martin often collaborates with Umisetsu who he says has the ability to transform her passion for visual objects into sound objects. They have three collaborations available: “Wired EP” [rain004], “Flowers EP” [rain005], and “Factory EP” [rain009]. When they collaborate, it’s Umisetsu who creates the sounds/loops that are then expanded and sometimes edited by Martin in order to create an individual track or a complete album.
At the moment, USEI is focused on RAIN and releases music not only by Martin Dot but by other know and unknown artists including Brian Grainger (Milieu), Y-nlSo (Polish musician, photographer), and R. Kujawa (Polish piano and accordion player). RAIN has no stringent rules regarding the music it releases - “Its enough for us if we like it and if it fits our vision.” Martin says: “We consider the idea of ambient to be present also in literature and visual arts.” With this in mind, future plans include the possibility of expanding USEI beyond the netlabel to some type of project involving literature and maybe even some CD releases.
As of the time of this writing, there are thirteen virtual albums available for download. All albums are housed at the Internet Archive and are accessible via the USEI Records website. All releases can be streamed. Although Martin isn’t fond of putting genre labels on music, these thirteen albums encompass a wide range of sounds and overlapping styles, including: experimental, ambient, drone, noise, glitch, atmospheric soundscapes, IDM, and field recordings. Although I would encourage taking the time to become familiar with all of the RAIN releases, there are four that I would personally like to recommend.
“Metro" (Martin Dot) [rain013] is a collection of eight ambient “impressions” - “a work of the deepest concern” about the character of things that are constant and of the character of things that are changeable.
“The Ambient Tapes”(Brian Grainger) [rain012] contains three beautiful meditative ambient soundscapes along with one rather disturbing excursion into the realm of dark ambient. Soothing drones and processed field recordings are present.
“Four Ways of Redemption”(Martin Dot) [rain010] is a four-track, almost five-hour long album of dark soundscapes. “It’s music of the highest delicacy. It asks for attention in order to reveal its subtlety of form.“ For each track several tapes, each with a length of about seven minutes, were prepared. They were played in a random fashion, looped, and allowed to interact with each other. Each time they looped the interaction was different because the length of tape was different.
“Open Sky”(Martin Dot) [rain008] is an almost hour long “one-go improvisation” composed with minimal instruments and sounds. It’s a variable and immense, cinematic soundscape that flows with real sounds of the environment. “It’s best to listen to it on a sunny day, with some clouds occupying the sky.”
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