Octal Industries

Dub techno project Octal Industries produces a fully immersive take on the classic icy but warm Icelandic sound pioneered by artists like Yagya and Exos, as on its 2019 album Our Seasons. Octal Industries began as a duo comprising Icelandic IDM star Jónas Þór Guðmundsson (aka Ruxpin) and Californian acid house legend Michael Sickinger. Their first release, in 2004, was the "Automatik" EP on Sickinger's Transistor Rhythm label; two years later they released a split single with Deepchord, "Arrival"/"Departure," which went on to become a treasured collectible among fans of the genre. That year the trio teamed up under the name Spectral Network to record the triple-12" "Defragment," before Guðmundsson and Sickinger went their separate ways owing to geographic distance and their commitments to their other projects. In 2011, Octal Industries re-formed at the behest of French label Entropy, for which they recorded an album, the 12"/CD set Himinglæva/Meeting of the Waves. Released in 2013, it had a lush, reverberating ambient sound. Over the rest of that decade they released a string of EPs on labels like Thule, Rawax, Taped Artifact, Solid Groove, and Nilla, almost all in collaboration with Guðmundsson's fellow Icelander Ohm (Bjarnar Jónsson); only 2019's "Julia Sets," on Kontakt, did not feature him. At some point Sickinger left, and Octal Industries became the sole work of Guðmundsson. In 2019 he recorded the project's second album, Our Seasons, the first release on the newly formed Vertex Records, a collaboration between the labels Verdant and Exalt. Our Seasons marked a return to a more "classic," icy but warm Icelandic dub techno sound. ~ John D. Buchanan