Tomorrowland

Nick Brackney and Steve Baker started playing together as Tomorrowland after the demise of Brackney's previous group Children's Ice Cream. At that point in time, around 1996, the Detroit metropolitan area was fertile ground for bands playing with the spatial and electronic aspects of music. Labels like Burnt Hair and Mind Expansion were documenting the scene and releases by Windy & Carl and Fuxa drew the attention of the outside world.

After releasing the 'Futurist' single on the Burnt Hair label and a single on the Japanese Motorway label, Tomorrowland sent kranky some demo recordings (which later ended up on the Darla label as the Stereoscopic Soundwaves EP). We helped them get an eight track tape deck and the duo recorded their debut long player, Sequence of the Negative Space Changes, which was released in fall 1998. As Nick Brackney told Mass Transfer magazine;

"the sounds are purely abstract. They don't tell a story or present an image of who we are. It's not about that... We are machinelike/robotic but are more organic than electronic. It's 90% guitars, sometimes with a little bit of synthesizer, organ, Fender Rhodes, audiometer or percussion."

Victoria Segal said that Tomorrowland "share Labradford's Satie-like luminescence" in NME and Tomas Palermo noted in XLR8R that "their sound is entirely beatless but not without vibrations and transparent rhythms.

And a review in the Nov. 1998 issue of The Wire said that

"Tomorrowland are the sound of Flying Saucer Attack in a toyshop. Sweet, swirling touchdown organ tones and afternoon meshes of blurred guitar creat blanket breezes of soft, eerily lit electronics. 'Sunspot' is the distant peal of ice cream vans hears as a hazily phased waltz. The benign buzz it leaves in your head is beautifully nostalgic."

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