About 3 months back Alex Strain, a breakcore composer from Sydney contacted me about mixing one of his tunes. Fascinated with the alien complexity of the beats I accidentally heard a dub style bass-line in my head that seemed to go with the beats. I built the bass into the altered mix and sent it back to Alex. He liked the vibe and suggested that we do a co-op and finish the song together. He fleshed out the first section of the song and sent it to me for my attention. We roughly planned to have Alex do the first and last sections while I do the middle.

With motives I'm still unclear about, I decided to hand back my additions in the form of something that would be difficult for Alex to work with. His breakcore had no easy musical linkage with the epic dreamy dub I provided, some six to seven minutes of it. He took to the challenge impressively, changing tack with the song structure and weaving the breakcore around the dub themes. I took the mix back and did some final polishing as well as adding some vocals. The vocal process was easier than ever due to the synchronised recording feature of the new version of Renoise (specifically 1.8 beta 5).

The mastering process was also an evolution as well. I was lucky enough to have Simon's attention on the song. He recommended some tools and approaches to mastering the sound which I've currently taken to and found good results.

The end product is a rather ambitious 9 minute piece detailing the meeting points of dub and breakcore. It's no easy marriage, but hopefully we make a good case for flexibility in sonic presentation. The lessons learnt here will be beneficial for future projects. The song can be obtained here:

Alex Strain + mr_mark_dollin - Phoebe

Recent focus on composing has gone up a few notches - I've got 2 new non-lyric demos I'm experimenting with; a certain introductory Requiem For Subordination track is sounding evolved; plus a conclusive Paradox track is going through the motions of revealing what degree of 'country-esq' colouring is appropriate. The new version of Renoise is opening creative doors.

An aside: here is an interesting article about the live music scene and where it's headed - http://fusionanomaly.net/automagickdj.html