Cosmic Death by R.Y.N.

"The beginning of R.Y.N. was when I met Dean Glaister at a Chillingham Arms (Newcastle upon Tyne) gig early on in 2003 and offered him my joint. I didn't know him but I knew he had some affiliation to underground music. It turned out he did a noise project called Romance and owned dozens of effects pedals. We met up and fucked around recording stuff through amplifiers before switching directly into a PC.

We didn't have much of a clue about Ambient or Drone music beyond Eno, Troum and James Plotkin. In fact, pretty much every time we recorded the only thing we ' to was grindcore or fast hardcore. The acronym R.Y.N. (Respect Your Neighbour) was influenced by Japanese hardcore eg. G.I.S.M, S.O.B, R.U.G. et al (the poster included is directly inspired by Sakevi's collage style for G.I.S.M.)

We were usually more inspired by things we didn't like than things we did though. That never really changed in the 8 years of our activity. I suppose this would account for the experimentation unhindered by any direct influences.

The setup was usually a guitar or a digital recorder into our trusted rack mounted delay unit and various effects pedals. I'd also managed to acquire a guitar synth unit which worked by attaching a MIDI pickup to the guitar bridge. The sounds it generated with an eBow were quite unique. These assorted signals were tweaked into a mixer which hooked up to the PC that recorded into Cool Edit Pro. The sounds were then heavily processed, arranged and mixed down often crashing the computer. This caused countless headaches at the time. These earliest recordings were released years later as the 'Cosmic Birth' CD (Turgid Animal, 2008).

The first actual release came after sending a demo cdr to many labels without any response. Almost out of the blue Stefan from Drone records said he wanted material for a 7" which was released in 2005. We'd waited 2 years so to be asked was a total validation of what we were doing. Field recordings were the source sounds used here, something we would return to again.

The following year Martin (Unrest Productions) was in touch with us about doing a full length album.
Between 05-07 'Astral Death' had been recorded after several catastrophic computer crashes. The damaged audio (and whole 2 year project really) was saved after detailed mastering jobs by James Plotkin. The following seems like long forgotten process but the album was sent back and forth on burned cdrs. This was before the quick and easy file transfer of today. After all the problems the CD was eventually released in 2008. The source sounds were all derived from manipulated guitar/bass.

The next 2 track LP was recorded in this same year (Summer, 2008) and released in 2010 by the American label Equation Records who have also put out records by Troum, Organum, TNB, Nadja, Bass Communion etc.
'Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy' was made by strictly using field recordings and the label's interest was another surprise for us. From what I recall the label owner said he loved Lustmord and always wanted to release something like 'Where the Black Stars Hang'. I hope he got something along those lines?

The final R.Y.N. recording session was in 2011 when we both agreed to stop the project. It was becoming increasingly difficult chasing ideas for the sound we wanted. The process of taking years to record material we were happy with didn't appeal to either of us anymore. In 2020 a posthumous collection of miscellaneous tracks (from 2003 to 2011) was kindly released by Opal tapes.

This new double tape set on CN is the only time the album's 'Astral Death' & 'Cosmic Birth' have been available digitally and on cassette. The package has newly designed artwork and also contains an 11x11" poster. The tapes are made from recycled materials as is all the paper stock used. The masters were taken from the original James Plotkin mastering jobs done in 20072008."

- Pete Burn 2021

North East, UK drone / void ambient duo active from 2003 to 2011