Although many a vibe has shifted since the days of dubbing NNF001 one at a time on the floor of a Koreatown bachelor apartment in February of 2004, using stolen photocopies and tie-dyeing J-cards with wine, the label’s essential premise has not. Then, as now, the vision was to elevate and enshrine outsiders, foragers, hidden gems, and hybrid sounds on cheap tapes or affordable records, to be savored and shared in the here and now. 399 catalog titles later, the center still holds.
To toast the label’s 20th anniversary and 400th release, we commissioned a gold roll call of alumni and affiliates: Alley Of The Sun. Named in homage to the Malibu mystic music fountainhead, skewed through a smoggy sideways lens, the 16-song, 90-minute, double LP suite spans every shade of NNF’s Pacific palette: rainforest ceremony, skyway motorik, Tascam rapture, silhouette shoegaze, basement vapor, astral ascension, jazz shadows, 5th world tropics, lucid dream drone, desert quests, prophecy electronics, ritual wreckage.
Equal parts snapshot, tapestry, and time capsule, the compilation reflects the breadth of NNF’s two-decade exploration and evolution, from simple soil to a sea of dunes. True undergrounds have no set sound or fixed polarity, only flashes of transient magic and forking paths, to be cherished and championed for as long as the candle lasts.
Tracklist
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#1 Wind Chimes Voices
By X.Y.R.
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#2 Journey In Search Of The Holy Gray
By Frunk29
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#4 HEADLIGHTS IN REARVIEW
By NEW MEXICAN STARGAZERS
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#5 On Love
By White Poppy
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#6 Cold City
By Essential Key
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#7 Mirage of Ocean
By UNKNOWN ME
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#8 V50 tone transfer
By Magnétophonique
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#10 Silver wings and a drop of blood
By Andra Ljos
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#11 Side Quest
By Wave Temples
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#12 Evening Sky People (Yaman Dream)
By Golden Hallway Music
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#13 VI: La Corniche
By Vague Imaginaires
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#14 Bleached Skull in the Desert Moonlight
By Filthy Huns
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#15 Flesh Tectonics
By Severed+Said
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