Chronicles 1

A-TON is a new edition and platform of Berghain's in-house imprint Ostgut Ton, focusing on ambient, archive and alternative music, differing from the club-focused records on the main label. Chronicles I marks the start of a series from Luke Slater's The 7th Plain moniker, with remastered, previously released and unheard archive material. First published on General Production Recordings between 1993 and 1996, Slater's The 7th Plain pushed the further burgeoning genre of ambient music towards it's boundaries by not limiting itself to mostly beat-less synth pads, but by including propulsive beat progressions, nuanced rhythms and subtle melodies. Luke Slater pioneered the UK's electronic landscape as Translucent, 4 Slots For Bill, Planetary Assault Systems, The 7th Plain, Clementine, and later as L.B. Dub Corp, by partly focusing on, partly bypassing the traditional, puristic values of techno. The 7th Plain's extra-mundane music dodged classification, as heard on the albums The 4 Cornered Room (1994) and My Yellow Wise Rug (1994) - emotional, eerie and escapist music, at the time of release forward thinking records that in retrospect managed to overcome time. Originally recorded at Slater's Spacestation , now all newly mastered for A-TON, Chronicles I depicts the futurist aesthetic and musical agenda of the '90s in a contemporary context, without nostalgia but confidence of it's timelessness. With seven original musical pieces and a previously unreleased Ken Ishii remix, The 7th Plain sounds as spirited and relevant as ever. While Boundaries (taken from My Yellow Wise Rug), Grace and Surface Bound (from The 4 Cornered Room) should be familiar to Slater aficionados, The Super 8, T Funk States, Slip 7 Sideways and Chords Are Dirty are previously unheard like the aforementioned remix of Ishii's Extra. Chronicles I sees The 7th Plain expand the warmth and bleakness of analog synthesizer music to the digital age.