The Foundry P.O. Box 8284 Berkeley CA 94707-8284
info@foundrysite.com
In 1997 The Foundry entered the musical arena, issuing the first three CDs; eM's Djinn, Eclectronica, and The Apiary's Descent. In early 1998 Rhomb's Hidden Topographies was added to the catalogue. Reaction was positive, with reviews appearing in The Wire, Option, Outburn, and online in the Vital Newsletter from Staalplaat and the Amazing Sounds website. In early 1998 Stephen Fruitman commented, "on the strength of these four CDs released in just over a year's time, The Foundry label has quickly established itself as a label worth keeping a very close eye on."
Further releases followed in 1999 and 2000, including another full length title from eM; The Foundry's Mote; and a series of three inch CDs under the Archipelago imprint featuring a variety of Bay Area artists. These releases have featured a various styles of electronic music, from electro-acoustic to experimental, from musique concrete to keyboard spawned synthesis. Foundry music crosses many boundaries, combines many approaches and has been called many things. Visit our audio index, reviews index and sounds section to help form your own impressions of what we are doing.
THE FOUNDRY ORIGINALLY CAME TO LIFE in 1985 as an imprint under which I published my own chapbooks, but has since grown to include my musical endeavours and collaborative projects. 2001 sees the first Foundry CDs featuring solely the work of other artists. Our current batch of releases included, The Foundry has now issued 20 chapbooks and 11 CDs, as well as being involved in projects with The Archipelago collective and the painter/installation artist Charles Browning. The work has garnered critical praise (see review index here) and airplay throughout Europe, Australia, the US and Canada.
The Foundry name cropped up sometime in the early 1980s. I was working on a fictitious record label catalog (as a portfolio piece) and one of the releases I created was called Where We Build Our World by The Foundry. The name stuck in my head, and when I started to put together chapbooks, in 1985, I decided to use The Foundry as my imprint. When I began assembling cassettes of my musical projects (circa 1995) it seemed like an appropriate name for a label.
The word foundry captured my imagination because of it's many shades of meaning and its implications. There are different varieties of foundry, for machine parts, horseshoes, or even type (I was doing a lot of typesetting in those days... in fact the eM monicker was suggested by the em space, a unit of measurement). I also thought of the foundry as a place you rolled up your sleeves and worked with your hands, a technique I still try to employ even though most of my work is now done on computers. Foundries have also had a pivotal role in developing technology, as a place where machine parts were made and refined, for instance, and this seemed like an amusing connection to the "machine music" I was creating. There is also an implicit alchemical reference since the heart of a foundry is the furnace, a device central to many alchemical transformative processes. I see my Foundry as a place where machines and technology are used as tools to perform magical operations, where emotions and intuition interface with science and knowledge in an attempt to create a new world communicated via sound, image and words.
So here we are in a new century and with a handful of new projects reaching fruition, a very exciting time for me. Part of what we're trying to accomplish with all this nonsense is communication, so please do drop a line with any thoughts, comments or questions you have, the contact is appreciated!
M. Bentley 7.1.2001