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About ICR

Integrated Circuit Records & Integrated Circuit Studio… the name seemed like a good idea over 25 years ago but it was soon realised it was too much of a mouthful & we were left with ICR & IC Studio. Much better.

The first release, ICR 001, was a record, the compilation LP ‘We couldn’t agree on a title’. Again that seemed like a good idea at the time... The next few releases were cassettes (remember them?) promoting the dubious ‘musical’ career of one Colin Potter. The studio moved from a bedroom into an outbuilding & became a modest 4-track. It was the dawn of the DIY era, anti-music, the tape underground, call it what you will. It grew, a little bit, more cassettes & the odd record were released & ICR became ICR Distribution promoting other fellow-travellers from near & far.

The studio became an 8-track, bigger & better & became known as a safe & sensible place for ‘unusual’ sound producers to go. The arrival of 2 small babies however, meant that something had to give, they’re being only 24 hours in the day. So sadly, ICR Distribution was put on ice. The studio meanwhile continued to improve, becoming 16 track, gathering many unusual sound making & processing devices & not being afraid to use them. Several years passed & the studio found itself no longer in a small village in Yorkshire but in a converted Victorian water tower in Lancashire. After a period of re-adjustment, an even better studio was fashioned. The 2 small babies had grown up, CDs & CDRs were suddenly a lot less costly to produce & ICR Distribution reared its head again. As before, it started small but grew much faster this time due to the power of the internet.

And here we are today. Older but possibly not much wiser. Still persisting with doing things our way. That’s the way we like it. We hope you do too.

Colin Potter

Colin Potter is a sound engineer and musician. He has been involved in the field of electronic and experimental music for over thirty years. Based at his own IC studio, he has recorded, produced and distributed a wide array of projects. He has gained a reputation for innovative mixing and sound processing, working with artists such as Current 93, Fovea Hex, Ora, Organum, Monos, Andrew Chalk, Jonathan Coleclough and, most notably, with Steven Stapleton on many albums by the renowned Nurse With Wound. Several solo works have been released, as well as many collaborations. In the late Nineties, a desire to return to live performance has led to appearances at the Beyond Music festival in Los Angeles, 7Hz in San Francisco, the Liverpool Biennial, the Termite festival in Leeds, the Earational festival in Holland, the Donau festival in Austria, Brainwaves in Boston, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Ether festival at London South Bank, Villette Sonique in Paris, Resonator festival in Preston, REC festival in Reggio Emilia, Radar festival in Mexico City, Settembre Musica in Turin, the AvantGarde festival in Hamburg and numerous concerts in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Moscow, Berlin, Munster, Warsaw, Wroclav, Kracow, Gdansk, Paris, Venice, Ghent, Brno, Vienna, Porto, Barcelona, Brighton, Bristol, Nottingham, Edinburgh and London.

Further information on Colin Potter releases can be found here. We cannot however vouch for its accuracy.