Loading, hang tight!
Loading, hang tight!
project
In late 2006 I started a netlabel called Archaic Horizon with the mission of freely releasing music of artists located throughout the world whose music was a diverse mix of electronic, experimental, and ambient genres. This in itself was nothing revolutionary — at the time there were many netlabels to model from: Earstroke, Rope Swing Cities, Two left hands on two right arms, Earlabs and Kahvi.
Maybe more challenging was my limited web developer experience but I was able to hack together a rough website and then toss it on to a shared Dreamhost web server through FTP. It was a manual, laborious process and prone to my own user error. However, over the years — with help from others who shared the mission — it would evolve and grow to become a well respected addition to the netlabel community.
Spanning roughly 10 active years Archaic Horizon would publish 58 unique releases. With many popular ones and some distinct standouts it’s unfair to call more attention to one over the other — however if we take the most visited of all time from the Internet Archive statistics we’d get the following:
The site would also go through 3 major redesigns. The first would evolve it from being a manually managed set of HTML files to a proper web application with a unique design. The second would add new features like a music player and improved UX of browsing the catalog but also new branding elements. The logotype and mark were made to feel ancient and alien, a confusion between distant future or past.
The final redesign was done in 2025 to revive Archaic Horizon after being offline for many years. Focusing primarily on the music and vibes the site is simple and intuitive to use for both mobile and desktop.
Even though the label is now inactive, I will personally attempt to keep some version of it online for years to come as a tribute to all the amazing work that was published. And if it should fall offline again, be hopeful that the Internet Archive remains committed to their mission of archiving and preserving the internet as you can find the entire collection of music on their platform.
Have a listen! If you don’t know where to start try Electricwest’s Divine de Vice, a personal favorite.