more electronica

something i made in a day and a bit. i got a cd-r of samples of pretty much every drum machine ever invented, so that was my starting point. i made a bunch of them into drum kits for ableton live and thought i'd start with an oberheim dmz, so that's what the drum sounds are made with. yesterday, i was listening to public enemy's 'fear of a black planet', one of the all time truly great albums. it's so heavy and dense, so that's where the rhythm ideas started from - kind of a heavy funk/break kind of thing. then i got a track from a great new album from a group called emptyset, which is kind of noisy, ambient techno with dark bass - very minimal. i cut a handful of samples from it and then set them to trigger by playing them on a keyboard. i added a twisted up miles davis snippet (from his 'bitches brew' album) which kind of adds excited texture to the whole thing (it was a bit clinical without it and not quite heavy enough). another miles blast was put in later with a delay to accent the rhythm. it was originally a straight 4/4 thing, but then i added an extra beat per cycle, and moved the kicks and snares around a bit, so now it's actually in 9/4, while the emptyset bits stay in 4/4. this (hopefully) gives the whole thing a disoriented feeling.

the track is called 9/4-120 - the time signature and bpm of the track. of course, play it loud with lots of bottom end.

some electronic music.

i got a new behringer input/output thing for bec's macbook today, to overcome the problem that the new macbooks only have one port for microphone and headphone. you have to switch between the two, which means you can't record and listen at the same time. this, of course, makes recording live instruments in time impossible. hence the little behringer box, which works perfectly.

anyway, in the absence of the ability to record acoustically, i've been working on some completely midi/synth based things for the last week or so. here they are. neither is titled yet - i think there's a possibility that some sort of vocals could go into them. in any event, they're probably not tracks for the full live context, but should work for dj-ing type things. but i don't know, maybe we could twist them into 4 people twiddling knobs of some sort.

i've also had the idea over the last couple of days of maybe putting out an ep on 3" cd-r, using old floppy discs as the packaging. i tried one out yesterday and, with a cd dot in the middle of one side, the 3" disc sits perfectly. it would probably best suit electronically inclined music - so maybe these could be the basis?

so, they're all completely electronic, except for the last section of the first one, which demostrates that the behringer in/out box is working. the second is also significant in that the main drum sounds all come from samples from blake's cheap old yamaha keyboard.

oh, and some decent bottom end on your listening system is probably required for them to sound any good.

on the bridge blog

there's a write-up bout the 20th project on a new blog run by the the bridge presenters on fbi. they asked if we might be interested in posting a track on it, so i sent 'the unravelling man'. so if you head over to the on the bridge blog you can read and listen.

20th july, 2009

The 20th Project is when artists write and record an entirely new piece of music in a single day (the 20th of the month) without any preparation beforehand or editing afterwards. For more information on the 20th Project, visit Cabinet Pin.
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released july, 2009

Don't know if anyone can tell, but Telafonica in general was going through a bit of a The Middle East phase around this time! I also wanted to do something in a new time signature, so 7/4 it was. It's one guitar riff that has things built onto it over the course of 5 minutes. The percussion also was important - everything is in 7/4 technically, but accents are all different for each percussive things, breaking it up into 3/4+4/4, 4/4+3/4, 2/4+2/4+2/4+1/4 etc depending on what you listen to. Bec wrote the words, some of which I didn't quite get to fit naturally on first draft, but that can be fixed later.

The actual 20th disc that the track finished up on includes the following tracks:

1. 20-50/11-40at1602 - Cloudy
2. Stairwells For Ears - Future Conduit
3. It's A Conundrum - Vlayman
4. Walking With The Dinosaurs - WRC
5. Egg - Bag
6. Driving Into The Sun - Cloudy
7. Denaturalization - Merankorii
8. For You - +Ko+Ko+
9. Increasing - The Desks
10. The Wrong Address - Telafonica

20th june, 2009

for more details on the 20th Project visit Cabinet Pin.
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released jun, 2009

Blake had given me a bunch of chords and some little riffs. The chords were kind of 60s garage-y type things. i'd always thought it would be fun to try and mash the 60s' definition of garage (the rock sense) with the late 90s' definition of garage (the dance sense), so basically, this was the attempt to do so. i think it has potential, though it feels a bit obvious at the moment (but then, 60s and 90s garage are both pretty obvious, straight up kinds of things).

Bec's lyrics were, as is usual, inspired by recent musings and readings. I like them quite a bit. Maybe not quite the delivery - which feels pitched maybe a semi-tone or two above my cofort range!

The actual 20th disc that the track finished up on includes the following tracks:

1. Lactose - The Love Explosion
2. Chicken Snr - Bag
3. Dropping Bombs - 44Hertz
4. Something About A Man Who Walked into the Ocean and Never came back - Something About a Leaf
5. What Are You Gonna Do? - +ko+ko+
6. And She Whined - Vlayman
7. Words - WRC
8. Scarecrow in the Melon Patch - Telafonica
9. Solar Cycle (Revolution One) - Merankorii
10. Lie Detector - The Desks
11. Regular Task - Fisheads of Fun
12. XTL - Audiotape Audiotape
13. This is not Art - 44Hertz
14. Sketches for Galactic Domestic (parts 1&2) - Ryan of Nerf

20th - may, 2009

for more details on the 20th Project visit Cabinet Pin.
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released may, 2009

Bec wrote the words from this based on an idea initially inspired by postcard type posters of nice scenery with 'inspirational' text plastered around the staffrooms where we work. by the time the music got finished, they had been edited down to the hook heard here. Musically, there's a lot of The Knife in there, and a structure inspired by Sherlock's Daughter's technique of just having a single vocal hook over a whole song, with musical interludes in place of verses. From memory, there's an Underworld sample in there as well, but it's been time stretched quite a bit. The extended outro came at Blake's request and worked well, I think, in giving the whole thing a good wind down so that it didn't feel like it just ended after 5 or so minutes of fairly intense noise.

I had the pleasure of making the sleeves for the CD this time around. I used a photo Bec took at one of our rehearsals as the basis, then just laid the text 'May 20th 2009' in cmy, each colour in a different position. The actual CD contains the following tracks:

1. Cabinet Pin Theme Reprise - THE HEAVY METAL EXPERIENCE INCIDENT
2. Thundermaker - SON OF EVIL GENIUS
3. Number 2 - 44HERTZ
4. Now - THE DESKS
5. No Escape For The Confined - TELAFONICA
6. Won't You Come Back Again - LEAF LIGHT FEATHER
7. Still They Come - RAINBOAT
8. The Game - WRC
9. For The 20th Time - VLAYMAN
10. Bamboo - 44HERTZ
11. Piracy II - MERANKORII
12. Milk Is The Daughter - LITTLE CHOP OF HORRORS feat. MS STICKY LIPS

20th April, 2009

for more details on the 20th Project visit Cabinet Pin.
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released april, 2009

the 20th april was a pretty hectic day - it was also the submission deadline for the australia council's soundclash grant, so i was frantically working on that, meaning this track didn't get developed anywhere near as far as i'd hoped it might. blake and i started out by agreeing on a key and a tempo and started working separately. after a little while blake e-mailed me the main guitar riff and i had been working on the rhythm track. with the guitar riff setting up the mood, i played some piano and then worked with the lyrics bec had written. it all came together reasonably quickly. we had hoped to add some stuff with our new toy glockenspiel and other things but, in the end, the time just wasn't there. so here it is, as is. it might get worked on in the future.

as to the actual 20th CD-R that came about from everyone else's contributions, the track listing looks like this:

1. COMMUNITY MUSK - A Song For Your Mixtape
2. BAGLEY - 111111111111
3. RAINBOAT - Dark Force
4. TELAFONICA Monday Wednesday Sunday
5. MERANKORII A Danca das Rosas
6. THE LOST EYES Makin' This House a Home
7. VLAYMAN Liquor is Quicker
8. CLOUDY - MOWE pardner
9. 44HERTZ - Narcissists Mirror
10. RYAN OF NERF Jupiter (is fucking cool)
11. LOVELETTING - They All Say
12. FRONTEIRS IN PHOTOGRAPHY - That Way Is This Way
13. THE DESKS - All
14. 44HERTZ - Massive
15. FISHEADS OF FUN - Hey!

time to move the nest

here's the results of wednesday and thursday's work on time to move the nest - it's gone from a sketch into a song fairly well, i think. after playing around with a bunch of different synth sounds i think a fairly straight piano suits best for what eliza is playing, though this is a synthesised piano here, it would be best to record a real piano doing it, and the whole thing in real time, instead of patched together as it is here.

i'm imagining some glockenspeil to double the piano part in the second verse, and also more voices over the ending. (what do coldplay NOT do - we need some of that). the toy piano just didn't sound right, so it's not there at the moment (except for the ending).

the intro room noises are a part of what is there at the moment - i would imagine we'd change the length of it to suit wherever it sits with other songs, though i'm liking the idea of letting it play out for a fair while, building a subliminal rhythm, before the actual song starts.

any other suggestions/ideas?

twister

this is the version of the severed heads track twister that we've been putting together over the last month or so. it would be good to get a few opinions on whether or not its ready to be submitted for consideration for the severed heads tribute album that clan analogue are putting together. my feeling is that it is finished, but then perhaps i'm too close to it as well. if anyone is interested, the original version (and lots of other stuff as well) can be downloaded free and legally from the severed heads website

time and distance

for more details on the 20th Project visit Cabinet Pin.
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released january, 2009

this is the track i put together for the 20th project this month. i'd been reading january's wire magazine (of course) and was inspired to try and push a few sounds in obtuse directions. so basically, it's one piano recording, played right through in real time, and one drum loop. the piano is in 3/4 and the drums in 4/4, though the piano is in half time. they kind of flail in and out of time - well, not actually out of time, just the accents move in and out of phase, hopefully creating some sort of tension. the rest of the sounds are those two bits of audio being processed - bit crushed, distortion, delays etc.

i also got to do the artwork for the compilation. for this one, i used an old ubd sydney street directory, which i've had sitting around waiting to be used for something. i took pages out of it which had not too much info - from the edges of sydney - and pasted them onto regular pieces of paper, just to make them a bit sturdier. i then photocopied all the info onto them, cut them out and sewed the sides up. done.

1. Northern Snow - MERANKORII
2. Tweaking the Cortex - IAIN & ROSS DALRYMPLE
3. Surface of Objects - FISHEADS OF FUN
4. Fries - VLAYMAN
5. Hearing Words As Only Shadows - FRONTEIRS IN PHOTOGRAPHY
6. No, Really, It's Nothing - COMMUNITY MUSK
7. Victory March - A MACHINE FOR FINDING THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
8. Time and Distance - TELAFONICA
9. San Choi Bow Wow - THE LOST EYES
10. Who Knows Where? - FRONTEIRS IN PHOTOGRAPHY
11. 43 to 44 - SUPERACTION80
12. January - THE DESKS
13. Slicer - CLOUDY
14. Should Children Wear Black? - FRONTEIRS IN PHOTOGRAPHY
15. Sunday - STEPHANIE WALDRON
16. Oh Benny (A Satirical Take on our Attitude Towards Benny's Room) - THE LOST EYES

don't speak for me

this is the track bec and i put together for the 20th project a couple of weeks ago. i'm particularly pleased with the main rhythm loop which is me stamping and clapping while standing in front of the inbuilt mic of my laptop. and the new toy piano makes its first appearance in a recording. this is the version that will be on the compilation, but it has since changed a little - the chord structure after the final chorus is completely different to give it a sense of movement rather than just repeating what was already before, with added melodica. and blake will add some cornet as well. it's fairly inspired by early 80s new wave minimalist things like the flying lizards, bow wow wow and the plastics.

the thickness of white

how bizarre that you should post that plato quote, blake. i finished this off yesterday which is something i started on a couple of weeks ago. well, it's not necessarily finished, but it's presentable. i finally caught up with ricardo villalobos and luciano about 5 years after the rest of the (minimal techno) world, so they've been a fairly obvious inspiration here. the main idea is that, when not much happens, everything that does happen takes on much greater weight. you notice tiny shifts in sound which you wouldn't notice if everything was constantly changing as it does in the average 'song' song. so here it is (hopefully the full version will be accessable in the next few hours - until then it's only a 30 second preview, which pretty much defeats the point entirely).

the bass, which is the only melodic/harmonic element, is quite subliminal - you won't hear it on computer speakers, but it's mixed to sit well through a decent system.

oh, and the title is a reference to a series of rauschenberg paintings of the 1950s which were explorations of all white.

another name

this is a remix of 'japan bell disco' created by luminarsi, otherwise known as andrew maxam, and all round great guy. we'll be playing with him next sunday at the excelsior. he can also be heard on fbi radio every week at 10pm. he told me he'd been working on a remix of this a few months back. he asked me if i had any of the master tracks which, i assume, don't actually exist anymore since it was all done on the playstation. so he just took bits from the final,mastered track from the solid gold ii compilation. he deliberately gave it a brand new name as i told him about the history of misnomers given to the track on that cd (it is listed on that cd as 'paris bell' on the back and 'japan bell' on the inside, both of which, of course, are incorrect. so he made up yet another variation and went with it!

near foregone conclusions

here's something i worked on a couple of weeks ago. it's barely there at all, basically a bass line and a beat, though the aim is to keep it fairly minimal. i discovered (via the ever trusty wire magazine) a finnish phenomenon called skwee which i have found to be quite likeable, so that's kind of the starting point for the track. i've passed it on to eliza to see if she can perhaps produced something vocal to sit on it. there's obviously much more work to do, but it's a start.



as an amusing aside, i tried to load this into imeem yesterday and the first attempt didn't work. today, when i checked it out at imeem, it says that both versions worked and are available. however, when i tried to get to the second upload i did yesterday, the school's internet filter blocked it and gave me the following message:

>... has been denied for the following reason:
>
>Weighted phrase limit exceeded.
>
>Categories:
>
>Pornography (Japanese)

you will probably need to play the track backwards to hear any of the porn, though.

the separation

so, this is possibly just to test out the new imeem system, but this version hasn't yet been posted, so here it is. this is the most recent version, edited and mixed by blake - perhaps he can add anything i miss. there's new guitar bits, and the backing has stripped down to give everything more space.