In the past I’ve made separate threads when I do a release, but I’ve decided instead to make a central topic in which I can post my projects as I upload them to keep things neat. Expect things on the dub, techno and drone continuum.
This is my complete most recent project, Versions and Vestiges, which contains remakes and recontextualisations of my work over December and January, with the last two Vestiges pieces being my recent experiments with accidental sampling and treating recordings as oscillators. I have made visuals to go along with them as well, learning some new things in the process, and they are found in the below playlist.
Here is a compilation of electronic music featuring one of my tracks, Pebbles. It’s excellent, check it out:
Thanks Tchu, glad you liked it. I’m starting to develop some instinct for getting where I want to go with my setup, and adding a 404 MK2 last year was the final piece of puzzle for getting the textures and atmospheres I want to explore.
I hope I can take the visuals here on this piece as a starting point for the next, and build a bit of knowledge around what works and what doesn’t. I’m an idiot when it comes to the visual arts generally, so it’s a lot of trial and error.
Versions Side D finished today, and that covers the last of the Jamuary material. The next sides will be a little slower to come, and will be 95% all new material.
Another Vestiges, further developing the process started in Side A and much more successful in my opinion. I guess one of the pitfalls of doing something like this where I add over time rather than sit on for a while is you have less opportunity to change your mind about things.
I used the 404 as an interface on my PC and scouted around the frequencies on certain stations to find points where the sound was interesting and grabbed some sections. In then variously created samples that merged sections of the recordings, some of them were stretched and pitched.
I then ran those sounds looped through my Analog Keys, using the sound as an oscillator, using the filters and sequencer to shape the audio in different ways to create drum hits and sounds that shifted and changed with each pass of the sequencer. On some parts those sequences were just recorded out. For other bits I samples certain sections, or some individual hits, and then sequenced them with a Digitakt.
Other sounds come from a Digitone, and everything is tracked into Live.
Yeah some bits I streamed straight through, but most of it was sampled and then manipulated on the 404, some things ending up as 10 minute long samples, some as little as 10 seconds.
I’m hoping in the future to set up an ‘instrument’ which I can use to provide access to something like 4 different ever changing sound sources going into a mixer which I can tap into live at any time, maybe with some cheap radio receivers, youtube nature cam streams, EM sniffers, things like that. I like the idea of being able to capture and sculpt sound live, reacting to the changes in the moment.
Yeah an Octatrack is on the wishlist for that exact reason, plus things like the custom LFO and the flexible routing. I’ve sort of pushed it down the priority list for the moment due to some other needs in my new setup which I’m currently in the process of putting together, but I think it’s inevitable.
