London based audio visual collective Old Apparatus have started their own label, Sullen Tone, with their first EP 'Derren' dropping in July. With two releases on dubstep pioneer Mala’s Deep Medi label under their belt, and - in contrast - a tape of improvised electro-acoustic music for Berlin-based The Tapeworm, the group formed Sullen Tone to provide a home for Old Apparatus to elaborate and expand on their vision and allow the listener to be drawn even further into their compellingly beautiful yet destructive dystopian world.

The ‘Derren’ EP is a prologue to a trilogy of EP releases from the collective’s individual members over the next six months. These will fully realise the creative vision they started with their previous records. Old Apparatus first garnered attention and praise with their self-titled debut EP on Deep Medi with two sides of abstract experimental bass driven music, submerged in swirls and fragments of otherworldly static and interference, taking soundsystem music as its jump off point to explore unknown worlds.

Like all Old Apparatus work, the physical record was beautifully created by the collective’s own artist in a screen printed sleeve which made it stand out as a collectable item to cherish. Their second release ‘Zebulon’, took folk vocals that would not have sounded out of place in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and put them in a bassy twilight setting. In contrast, on the B side UK rapper Mowgli dropped tunnel vision insights.

Their third release was a live electro acoustic improvised performance for the Berlin based cassette tape label The Tapeworm, recorded in their East London home with members playing various instruments. The ‘Derren’ EP opens with the space flight of ‘Zimmer’ a glide through Vangelis-like synths and watery submerged steel drums. The catchy ‘Derren’ leads in with light syncopated drums, a repeating folky guitar figure and a ghostly male voice singing in and out of static and warm synths. The chilly, intense ‘Dealow’ works delayed metallic drums and kicks against wasp like synth tones and a pitch shifting female vocal over a deep sub bass.

Bodah ends the EP, taking it back to where we started, with naive melodic tones and glass like hand drums that melt away as the track stretches out into a cavernous, cosmic drone, filled with intense dark drama, before landing the listener back on earth.