Antarctica - 23:03

Before Antarctica became a cornerstone of late-90s American electronica-shoegaze, there was 23:03. Fronted by Eric Richter, previously of the beloved Denver emo band Christie Front Drive, the New York group used this three-song EP to sketch out an entirely new sound: guitars dissolved into texture, drum machines sitting alongside live kits, and human voices half-buried in a warm electronic haze.

Originally released on CD by File 13 Records in 1998, 23:03 was the first thing Antarctica ever recorded, and it plays like a band discovering its own vocabulary in real time. The three tracks pull together shoegaze's blurred beauty, the widescreen drift of space rock, and the pulse of late-90s electronica into something that still sounds ahead of its moment. It set the template for the sprawling 1999 debut album 81:03 that followed, but there is a lean, exploratory charm here that makes the EP essential in its own right.

For fans who only know the band through 81:03, this is the origin point, the sound of a group leaving guitar rock behind and stepping into the machines. For everyone else, it is a lost slice of the era when indie musicians started treating the studio itself as an instrument.

This vinyl edition brings 23:03 to the format for the first time, remastered from the original tapes by Collin Jordan at The Boiler Room in Chicago. A long-overdue reissue of a small, quietly influential record.