Fault Radio Label Spotlight: Inner Islands
Inner Islands, a record label passed down from owner to owner and location to location, now settling in Oakland with Sean Conrad at the helm, celebrating their 10 year anniversary in 2020.
If you’re a normal human being, you’re probably in need of a break these days. Demand for music that sounds good at home or couchbound seems to be at a peak, and even before the pandemic, ambient music was enjoying both a rediscovery and renaissance, with sought-after classics getting reissued left and right, modern masterpieces arriving with regularity, and a renewed interest in New Age music that had been bubbling for years earlier. Enter Inner Islands, a record label passed down from owner to owner and location to location, now settling in Oakland with Sean Conrad at the helm, celebrating their 10 year anniversary in 2020.
Originally founded by Braden J. McKenna in Salt Lake City circa 2010 and brought with him to Portland, Oregon soon after, Inner Islands started life as a vehicle for a split 7” release from his own WYLD WYZRDZ project & fellow Utahan Stag Hare. Upon meeting Conrad, the three friends would immediately create River Spirit Dragon, the label’s second release, one that encapsulates the label’s ethos of meditative, environmental, minimal music, heavily textured, rich with spatial depth and quietude and the close friendships that inspire their collaborations.
Anyone of a certain age can remember when the burgeoning spiritual/metaphysical movement calling itself New Age became mainstream, and any record store employee will remember when the name of the music associated with the movement rhymed with ‘sewage’, such was the derogatory attitude towards labels like Windham Hill, whose releases sold in the thousands as the quality dropped to appeal to the lowest common denominator. As Sean Conrad takes the reins of the label in 2014, he adds his own twist to curation and seemingly adapts a subtle New Age philosophy to its releases. Field recordings mix with drone meditations, exotic instrumentation (echoing such US musicians as David Casper) and as the label progresses, a quiet chill that seems intended for sleep and self-reflection, eschewing the prodigious musicality of the Windham Hill catalog for something far more inward-looking and tactile.
While some of the label’s output matches the naivete of the more ambient Krautrock albums of the 70s & 80s with nature sounds and, earlier on, an affinity towards electronica, its later releases eschew any modern chill-out-isms for something altogether more organic, human and personal. Conrad, McKenna and Zara Biggs-Garrick, aka Willow, each appear under a number of different aliases. Conrad’s projects include Channelers, Ashan & gkfoes vjgoaf, McKenna as softest and Kaliska and Biggs-Garrick as Sabriel’s Orb in addition to her Stag Hare moniker. In recent years the label has opened up to include more artists outside the core, including Hear Hums, Ki Oni, Pittsburgh’s Mike Tamburo/Crown of Eternity, Inner Travels, and Kenji Kihara, each of which fits the label’s vibe like a puzzle piece.
2020 saw Inner Islands drop six new releases thus far, including wonderful albums from Ashan, Channelers, softest & Sabriel’s Orb, mostly released digitally with the odd cassette version, including the upcoming self-titled album by Path of the Sun. Since the pandemic doesn’t really have an end in sight, Inner Islands seem to be taking advantage of the downtime, both to release more new music and to find a new audience among a homebound, stressed-out populace. As Conrad told us recently, “I find most of the music on the label very grounding - it can help me get in touch with my body and calm my nerves.” Sounds like just what the doctor ordered.
Favorite Releases:
