Suborned by the 1990s acid reflux of perpetual Grateful Dead tours and the nascent techno-fest comestibles market, Northern Machine struck out to produce a follow-up to the first collab between Patrick Gillis and Bill Warford, 1995's "Surge Zone". How to make an anti-"New Age" album incorporating non-western instrumenation with electronic sounds which would satisfy neither the dance crowd nor the twee yoga studio and wannabe self-help cult leader spiritual fauxpropriations of the time? A long-form, immersive compositional approach which regarded the "cosmic evil" fiction of H.P. Lovecraft as reportage rather than fantasy was in order. Of course.

It was recorded on 8 track analogue tape in 1995 - 1996 in an acoustically untreated basement with no climate control (dubbed "Meat Locker Studios"), with mixing completed in January 1997. Said mixing was guided by hand-drawn multiple page "cue sheets" to direct four hands over a sixteen channel mixer harnessed to more than a dozen efx processors, with no automation. That was the easy part, the recording period being marked by many weeks of option paralysis to find "just that right thing" among the heap of acoustic instruments, vague concepts, and then-worthless analogue synths.

In September 2000, it became the first Northern Machine and HC3 release issued exclusively on compact disc after more than three years of fruitless efforts to interest labels and distributors (hence the title). During that time were recorded the beginnings of what became the very different next album, "Staalhertz".

"A versatile palette of electronics are employed to generate these densely seething sonic regions. Guitar and percussives come into play too. Harmonies exist on this 69 minute CD, but they lurk in the shadow of minimalism and attempt to conceal their own evolution with ambience. While their growth might be slow, the music is hardly tedious.

Patterns emerge in the drifting soundscapes, lazily swimming past with pulsating effect. These undulating textural streams create further patterns in their fusion.

There is some vocal presence, but it is incidental and hardly a focal point in the mix. Mainly, the sounds are gritty electronics put to ambient use, producing a state of industrial meditation that can be as jarring as it is simultaneously mesmerizing." - Matt Howarth, Sonic Curiosity