Recycled Plastics

I like electronic music but I don’t listen to a ton of it. I’m trying to collect a bunch of chiptune music I used to have, I’m a huge fan of Amon Tobin and thanks to the game Hotline Miami I have a small collection of house music, but I don’t really know electronic music like I think I know post-rock or progressive metal. That leaves me in a weird spot for this “review”, which is more of an introduction to a label, Recycled Plastics. Recycled Plastics is a downtempo sublabel run by Milieu Music, run by Brian Granger, a man with a collection of ambient music so large he needs three different Bandcamp pages and three different artist names to collect it all under. You could listen to his stuff for years and not sift through it all.

I’ll have to talk about Brian himself another time because Recycled Plastics isn’t simply another ground for him to launch his massive ambient skill upon, though he does have a few releases under at least two of his names. It’s a well cataloged selection of downtempo artists with over 40 albums on the label itself, most of them available for free. While a lot of the artists only have a single album released, you’ll see some repeating names like The Jaffa Kid, Axs and Mr. Acid. I think the people who come back for more on Recycled Plastics put out some of the best albums the label has to offer. There are also a few stand out single albums like Grey Deer’s Constance Dubs. Of all the albums I’ve checked out on Plastics, that’s probably my favorite one because, outside of the soft beats that accompany downtempo, it has more akin to ambient music. A select handful of the albums have limited CD versions available for purchase which I guess is for the more higher profile albums or personal releases from Brian himself.

I said I like but don’t really know electronic music that well, but Recycled Plastics is a label I can get behind because it knows what kind of music it wants to release, puts a lot of it out for free and downtempo is the kind of chill, almost ambient affair that helps me sleep at night or doesn’t distract me while I’m in class and keeps the anxiety at bay. Because of the large collection of free music, I’m basically going to tell anyone with a passing interest to check out Recycled Plastics. If you want to check out Brian Granger’s other ambient efforts, he has a Bandcamp page under his own name, as Coppice Halifax and as Milieu Music.