Isan

Robin Saville and Antony Ryan operate as ISAN, crafting tracks built around unadorned beats, song forms touched by pop sensibilities, and melodies delivered through unwavering analog hardware. The pair, rooted in Reading, England, surfaced from the electronica scene during the mid-1990s, an era when Autechre and Aphex Twin pushed post-techno toward greater abstraction and fragmentation. Rather than following that path, ISAN aligned with Solvent, B. Fleischmann, Sweden's Pluxus, and the Krautrock-electronica hybrids To Rococo Rot by favoring sounds that felt approachable, inviting, and warm. Their relaxed aesthetic took shape on the 1998 debut Beautronics, reached fuller expression on 2001's Lucky Cat, and kept them a consistent presence on Berlin's Morr Music across the next twenty years.

Echoing contemporaries, ISAN drew—perhaps unconsciously—from the electronic explorations of the 1970s and 1980s by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Jean-Michel Jarre, early new wave acts, and Brian Eno. Early appearances on hybrid imprints such as Static Caravan, Liquefaction Empire, and Foundary, including several limited-edition and scarce 7"s, quickly drew listeners from outside purely underground circles. Following the full-length Beautronics in 1998 and the 1999 mini-album Digitalis, their visibility increased after supplying a remix of Seefeel's "When Face Was Face" for Warp's tenth-anniversary collection Remixes. They later joined Morr Music, which the duo would describe as their "spiritual home," and delivered Salamander there at the close of 1999. The studio album Lucky Cat arrived in 2001, while 2002's Clockwork Menagerie gathered material from singles, splits, and compilations. Meet Next Life followed in 2004 and Plans Drawn in Pencil in 2006; that same year a 7" presented their versions of Erik Satie's Trois Gymnopedies.

Saville stayed in England while Ryan established himself in Sweden, yet the two kept touring and working together. A wider interval preceded the 2010 follow-up Glow in the Dark Safari Set, though the same warm analog melodies persisted throughout. In 2016 ISAN placed two pieces on Rough Imaginary, a four-way split CD alongside A New Line (Related), R Elizabeth, and Paco Sala for the Home Normal label. Their eighth studio album, Glass Bird Movement, came out on Morr Music later that year. The delicate, shimmering Lamenting Machine surfaced in 2019. For 2020 they issued Nothing Picked and Placed Nowhere, a single 77-minute piece issued as part of an annual effort to support Médecins Sans Frontières.