mmd

It has come time to share with the world my 2002 album Smargaid Maerd. Follow the link to see the updated artwork and extra lyrics. I’ll briefly explain the story and thinking behind each of the songs, but first a little background to the situation:

2002 was a time of software transition for me. Since 1996 I had become very comfortable with using Fast Tracker 2 to compose the songs I wanted to make. But by this time the sonic limitations of FT2 were becoming painfully obvious. It was noisy, it didn’t employ a full stereo field, it had timing issues, and you had to render fancy effects like reverberation in other programs. My needs were outgrowing FT2, so I began looking around a bit. An early version of Fruity Loops presented itself as an interesting way of sequencing simple blocks of music but run them through live effects (DSP or VST effects). This was a whole new world to me, and one that was a little daunting – how does one control all these options and sounds? Initial experimentations with any new tools usually involve some ‘going overboard’, and most of the results are captured here in this album.

The paradoxical trouble with Fruity Loops was that it never offered the same detailed musical control that FT2 had, but it did offer this whole new sonic world. I found I was a craft master at FT2, whereas Fruity felt like playing with kids lego. Fruity really channelled my new music into simplistic techno quickly – ordinary mechanical beats with uninspiring percussive sounds. Where the juice was for me was playing with effects to create large and sometimes distorted ambiences – dreamy atmospheres that I could never ever achieve in FT2. So many of the ‘results’ were disappointing in their rhythmical and structural quality, but exciting in their atmospheric and emotional quality.

There were other more specific music influences being injected at this point in time. A similar sort of approach was being evolved with the ‘live band’ I was in at the time – Pneumatic Bell (which I will have to blog about later). We had an interesting combination of heavy progressive rock grooves juxtaposed with repetitive echo-reverberated soundscapes. This idea translated instantly into my own composition, save for the progressiveness of the band’s drumming. Other obvious influences at the time were Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol 1, Silo’s Instar, Underworld (mkII), Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, Simon Floth (Fable), Distance, The Cure’s Pornography, Moby’s Play The B Sides, and Fennesz with Endless Summer. These and many more sounds were going into the melting pot of ideas.

Another influence was dreams. At the time a few of us were heavily into David Lynch’s films. Lynch makes proto-surrealist dramas that explore the struggle to solve issues through our subconscious at odds with the nightmare of oppressive American culture. This ’solving problems through dreaming’ theme was appealing, and generally syncronised with my intuitive feelings at the time. There was a lot of happy positive energy in 2001 going on into 2002, deriving simple joys out of the flow of nature like the wind through the trees or rain. Switching off ‘over thinking’ was a welcome change for a university student, and more attempts were made to flow with intuition, to feel some sort of essential animist love, to seize the moment. This applied to the songs being made. Think less, just write. Fruity’s simplicity allowed for fast composition. I could get myself into a relaxed state, often late at night, and be on the edge of sleep where different emotions and logic were coming through. This is why the songs are referred to as being ‘dream diagrams’ – they’re as close as I could get to jamming intuitively with electronic composition. Of course, in Lynchian style, I borrowed one of his language motifs and made many of the sounds and ideas backwards. Hence Smargaid Maerd is a subconscious reversal of dream diagrams.

It is a good document of the feel and energy of that time. Most of the tracks were made in the Block 5 Tutor’s Flat in Mary White College, looking west. Enjoying new freedoms, new responsibilities, but just before a heavier time in 2003 when the gnawing insanity of teaching decided to make it’s presence felt… An innocent time.

To this day I’m still slightly unsatisfied with the collection, and see it mostly as an experiment with new ideas and software. It perhaps runs too long. However, some of my friends have received it surprisingly well, especially fans of minimal electronica. For me the standouts and the the ones that still make me very excited are Moor Der Eht and West. A commercial record it is not. Most of the ideas attempted here were later fleshed out and solidified a year later during the writing of 2 Smargaid Maerd.

On with the songs! They are free to download!

1. Approximately 300m From Martin’s Song – This song came about via an association with Martin Kidd. Martin had written a neat little ditty song called “I Like Cheese” that had a simple uplifting feel to it. As far as I could tell Martin saw it nothing more than a joke, but I thought I could counter that and do an ‘arty’ remix. I took his track, hand-sliced it up into millions of bits, reversed it, and blurred it so it ended up being a big glitchy-cloud sound. To make the song more my own I added new sounds. In the centre is a pitch-shifted bass-jam of my electric 6-string, heavily distorted. It rolls around a melancholic phrase, probably being the most organic sounding element on the whole record. On the left and right are heavily effected sounds made from wah and microphone feedback, occasionally whistling and phasing like wind. Thematically I was interested in the conceptual possibility of looking at a song as if in a state of dreaming. The picture is fuzzy, and weirdly emotional. It’s at a ‘distance’ from the original, so the title jokingly refers to that as if it were scientific analysis.

2. The Postmodern Blues – This is the only track on Smargaid Maerd that has been made entirely in Fast Tracker 2, so it has a slightly different sonic character to the rest of the songs. The most obviously difference is the beat complexity, and generally it feels more organised. The tune was built up out of a guitar riff that was dependent on echo creating rhythm behind it – I just translated this into the tracker with the buzz-bass. The tink sound is a recording of my water glass that sat on the desk. Most of the song was composed in a temporary large room with and a beautiful view of the university deer-park (while listening to lots of Moby and enjoying the wind blast warm air through the trees). There were meant to be more words with this song that didn’t get recorded, the only ones the spoken ones in the bridge. It’s somewhat fitting, ironically and academically that these words were not included:

The rules state that we cannot talk of this

I’m not going to mention that the patterns have deceived us
Or how the answers are illusion. I’m not going to mention
That everything we’ve worked for means nothing at all, or
That everything we believe in is flawed. I’m not going to mention
How it drives me insane that we can’t find meaning because
There is none to find. I can’t tell you how much this
Bothers me. Instead I will tell you that all I want to do is sing.
La la la la la.

3. Airport – Airport is the first of the pure Fruity tracks, and a loose play on Eno’s idea of ‘ambient’. It was a sheer joy making something that sounded so big! Additionally, after years of making fairly dark and heavy music it was a good change to make something that sounded uplifting. Nothing to it really, just a slow building groove, with rising melodic ambience, until the heavy open high hat drives it home. I can’t remember at all how I got those little zings going in the ambient pad – just an unexpected side-effect perhaps!

4. Beauty – This is a real favourite and never grows tiresome for me. I wanted to play with the idea of a really slow fade in. The trouble with slow fade ins is that you tend to forget it’s fading in as you get lost in the groove. And this is pure electro-groove. Ambient shimmering and cold echoes make up the background. The centre piece is a weird synth I made using a gate to cut it out if the sound became too thin – so I really had to mash the keys to keep it going! The long evolving note structure is a round of a MIDI-jam (the first one I’ve ever recorded). Again, instead of playing classic-lead melody, I made the melody more like cloud, more like emotional atmosphere. For me, this comes very close to nailing the intuitive beauty and energy at the time, the flow of those moments. Hence the title. The then it cuts! Awake from the dream!

5. Moor Der Eht – A title reversal of ‘The Red Room’ is a reference to Lynch’s dream-room in the Twin Peaks story. It’s a strange place that dreamers go to find clues for what they’re working on. Both sensual and nightmarish the Red Room has a little man in there that has a funny way of speaking. It is backwards forwards. The speaker’s dialogue is learnt backwards and then performed in such a way. Then the recording is reversed so the dialogue comes out ‘normal’ again, but as a result it sounds mighty strange. I used this technique to perform the dreamy spoken-word in this song, the slipping into sleep but retaining a lucid sense that reality is still there, which says:

I’ve gone
Slipped down that hole
I’m never coming back
Driving deeper
Caught the corner of reality
Got a firm grip
Held on tight
Pulled it all with me
Dragging it all down
Spearing downward
Down
Down
Down.

This song, like many at this time, was initially completely composed on piano. In Mary White College I was lucky enough to have access to three separate pianos and nice rooms to play them in. To maximise simplicity, Moor Der Eht was made on the black keys. Another mechanism that helps the ‘forever rising’ feel of this piece is that the chord sequence is 5, instead of the ubiquitous 4. The simple beat still totally excites me, as does the blistering distorted ambience making for intense energy and atmosphere. One of my favourite songs of all time. Took 3 days. After years it still makes complete sense, and it represents a positive energy that is a subtle personal ideal.

6. Pneumatic Bell – A cover of a Simon Floth (Fable) song. It’s not a patch at all on Simon’s orignal four track recording, full of spooky ambient noise and magical distortion. Out of all the tracks on the album this one I am most unhappy with, and at several stages thought of removing it completely. However, it remains here in it’s full ugly and weak form for you to enjoy. It’s layered ambience still fits in well with the rest of the work at the time, but it is held back by stiff drums, and weak vocals. At the time I wasn’t the most confident or skilled vocalist, but I made matters worse by recording this take while having a cold! Thus you get a rather blocked up delivery. The lyrics are an interesting philosophical take on alienation and the unnecessary noise of modern living. A little like the words of Postmodern Blues, this seems a little out of place with the dream theme of the rest of the record, but is a strong reflection of what we were thinking and feeling at the time.

7. Happy Song – Edited down from a larger live session, Happy Song is a transition piece of pure experimental noise. It’s built largely out of the side-effects of phasers pushed too hard, only later to be cut and reverberated in a strange industrial soup. The title is a little ironic (like a lot of my previously dark sarcastic works), given that no noise like this could have a happy character to it. But in being a live performance, it was nothing but intuition: and intuition at that time was a happy thing!

8. On The Edge Of Sleep – Floating down through some sort of dream scape I sometimes wonder if this song should have been longer. Like a dream it’s just a moment, a short focus. Nail on the head.

9. Kjop Kjop was an experiment in putting together clichés in an odd way. Over-compressed like a bad radio station broadcast lies some epic commercial trance music. In almost absurd juxtaposition is a rough live bluesy guitar jam, with at times no connection to the backing or style. The two slowly come together, but not enough to join worlds. Dreams can be like that sometimes: you’re riding in a car and there’s a whale looking at you.

10. Coils – A friend with a healthy imagination explained to me one day that Coils sounds like people pulling a lot of masking tape off boxes in room! That wasn’t the intention at the time, but much like Kjop it was to create odd spaces that didn’t belong with each other. The tape sound, beat and bass are all stuck in a boomy small room, while the dream piano floats epic and large on the outside somewhere. And yet another dream scene that floats away prematurely.

11. O Week – Composed on piano first during the university’s “O Week” (orientation week) this didn’t translate as well as I hoped it would into Fruity. One of the high percussive elements was a sample of my scissors snipping. Overall, another short repetitive groove slides into a windy landscape. Private and contemplative. Representing thinking about subtle moods and energies away from the crowd.

12. Spy Music – And then we drift into Spy Music. At the time Simon or someone commented that the 7/8 riff sounded like spy music (for some reason), and it hence stuck. Again the song could have been longer, but instead ecstatically blows itself out in the murk of heavy filtering prematurely. An abrupt fade wakes the dreamer…

13. Optimism – This is one of the first tracks I attempted to do in Fruity. Much like an earlier song called Gradiva, I was specifically aiming for the most uplifting dance song possible. In the end it doesn’t quite get there because of the crazy bass phrasing, but it does positively add to the euphoric ambience thesis.

14. Funn – Funn is a nonsense title, as it is nonsense music. Quite possibly the most rude percussion track I’ve ever made. I get visions of ecstatic bean bag creatures bouncing around having fun like some sort of acid cartoon. Ambience comes in on cue and we’re dreaming again. And then another silly abrupt fade out to awake again. At this point I probably should mention that it was and still is a habit of mine to siesta in the mid afternoon for a short while. Because of the lighter sleep I have grown very used to being awoken out of a dream and remembering it, or having a dream continuing while needing to be awake.

15. The Red Room – This is an edited reversal of Moor Der Eht, keeping in theme with the Lynchian dream reversals. Most of the percussion was taken out to emphasise the ambience and descent of the chords. You can also hear on the left the original performance of the vocal track – me trying to say the words backwards.

16. West – I’ve always felt that this song had an urban-hiphop feel to it, particularly with the heavy beats. But that’s as far as the similarity goes. Quickly composed, West is a tribute to witnessing many beautiful New England sunsets from my crude studio in Block 5. There is a strong Distance element to this track. I like this song a lot, but there isn’t much to say about it. Just another groovy dream scape.

17. Suburban Buddhism (Mechanical Automatism) – Like Optimism, this is one of the very early Fruity tracks. Most of it was composed on holiday at my parents place in suburban Taree. Derived out of quiet Sunday afternoons with empty streets and decaying architecture, this track mines that vibe. The quiet holds the magic, prompts internal imagination. And it is also sad. This is Buddhist nirvana but not a healthy one – one made from sitting in suburban boxes, mindlessly watching TV, not active, not social. A different dream state.

18. Approximately 300m Inside Martin’s Song – Track 1 backwards.

So there you have it. Enjoy it in it’s entirety. Let me know what you think, and if your dreaming matches to anything here. Dream on.

Back around the turn of the century Trax In Space was a popular community for tracking scene musicians to share their source files and mp3s of their songs. As with many parts of the second generation scene the website died and was almost forgotten about. Now a curious rebirth is taking place. I already have my profile up, which you can see here.

It seems that the venture is now much more serious than before. The lack of personal story and various heavy legalisms tend to suggest big bucks involved. Quote:

However, by submitting the User Submissions to TiS, you hereby grant TiS a worldwide, non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the TiS Website and TiS’s (and its successor’s) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the TiS Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the TiS Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service. The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the TiS Website.

This can be taken as harmless precautionary fluff on their part. But it certainly has little to do with artistry, innovation, and providing a friendly community; than it does have to do with commercialism. We will watch…

A ‘closing down party’ of sorts saw 50 plus ‘alternative creatures’ migrate to the Artspace to spook away the bad spirits with their own costumes and antics. Naturally, with Iain organising parts of the gig, Bas[sic] aka L graciously provided the soundsystem and Stanton virtual DJ setup.

I had the duty of covering for L between sets, and it was good fun. It was difficult operating gear and software I’ve never used before, as well as selecting tunes completely from L’s unfamiliar funky playlists. In parts I held it together well enough, and we had many happy dancing people. Party DJing is not really for me, and I was not willing to placate the drunk dancer’s requests for ‘more 80s retro please’. I am, on the other hand, grateful for the opportunity to learn.

The decorations and lighting were superb, and it is a shame the space will no longer be used for arts. The following are some images, including some evidence of a communal painting in progress:

Exhibit A shows my studio computer with it’s corrupt innards hanging out. This time the PSU failed, again. Upon Scott’s consultation different brand replacement PSU and Motherboard has been ordered. I don’t want to sound like a hardware moaner, but these are both the third PSU and mobo for this machine so far, and it’s only one and a half years old. Poor baby. Some more downtime, and I’ll be up and running, hopefully for good, next week. It’s making the idea of a MacBookPro as a future investment seem all the more attractive. But not now! HECS debt looms!

In the meantime I have a mega amount of things to catch up on… And I get to play with my new keys.

A recent long weekend excursion to outback Queensland saw the genesis of some interesting ideas and possibilities. But first, the story of Cunnamulla:

Following an urge to travel west, myself and and a companion adventurer set out for Cunnamulla looking to explore. Cunnamulla of recent years has been the focus of mixed attention and a famous independent film (see here and here and here). Having seen the film in 2000, and having already seen similar towns in outback NSW, I was curious to see if the negative myth held up, or indeed that Cunnamulla was like any other outback Australia town with it’s fair share of problems and endearing character. To add to this, before we set out on the road trip we were advised by friends and colleagues here on the east coast and city that Cunnamulla was a “no no”, boring, hostile, and as uninviting as the rest of the outback. All the more reason to go.

The long distance road trip was full of the usual delights of the changing epic landscape, to the dramas of avoiding animals around dusk. We were weary travellers by the time we rolled into the night-time of Cunnamulla, looking to find a spot at the caravan park. We met some nice helpful park owners that said the park was full because of a golf tournament! They helpfully advised that we go to the Warrego Hotel (one of the two pubs in town) to see if we could get a room, also stating that the food was great there and Mick was the chef). The Warrego was a classic outback pub, full of male dominated Aussie drinking noise. The bar tender awkwardly fixes us a room, not entirely fussy about the bookkeeping aspect. We ask about food. We’re told to try Mick’s amazing cooking. Checking the menu it didn’t looking that encouraging for vegetarian requirements, so we decided to have a look around town to see what alternative grub could be acquired.

The town is small, so around the corner we found all the shops and a racket of kids going on. Kids out at night usually makes people think of danger, and here or the city I would agree. But the source of the excitement was a “youth function” on at a cafe. I got a little harmless jovial banter regarding my height, but nothing malicious at all. The friendly owners let us know the shop is shut for food, but we can try the take-out or the servo down the road. Take-out was no-go grease-o-rama, so we tried the servo. Servo was much the same and we were starting to get vocal about how hungry we were and that we needed decent food! Fortunately, after suggesting fish (?), the servo people were quick to point out that we should try Mick at The Warrego as he was a chef with reputation. Feeling the finality of the situation we resolved to take the warm advice and challenge this Mick character to something vegetable that wasn’t listed on the menu.

The poor confused aforementioned bar tender said that Mick was busy with a large order but could take requests. We ask for vegetables, preferably with some taste or curry added – at this point we would have been thankful for anything. We got a confused look, but this meal was ultra cheap. Offered a free cup of tea we sat down and allowed some warmth to heal our weariness. A reasonable wait yielded an amazing surprise! What wondrous food! This was simply one of the best meals I’ve ever had in my life, not only from the surprise and anticipation, but also from the sheer tasty combo of eggplant, olive oil, herbs, spices, veg, and importantly tarragon. While gorging on this treat, the man himself, Mick, came out to see if we liked his cooking. We lumped praise.

Mick starting chatting to us about our trip, Cunnamulla, and his time in recently owning The Warrego and trying to improve it. He said many things to dispel ‘the negative myth’, and in particular ongoing effort to bring the community together move beyond issues of race. Then the conversation turned to music. I asked does Cunnamulla get much in the way of live music? “Only the didjerido…” Not even live country music? “Not since Slim passed away – he used to come out here regularly…” Mick went on to explain they courted a particular popular country singer who was passing through, but declined the invitation due to lacking the ‘requisite’ $900+ demanded of The Warrego to ‘cover costs’. So they get no live music.

He probably guessed by the way we looked odd that we were serious music people ourselves. I told him roughly what I do and he found it interesting. I told him it’s been a long vague idea of mine to come out to places like Cunnamulla and play live. He said the community would really support that and ‘give it a go’, also offering The Warrego, of course, as a base. Nice.

Later on this sparked a whole train of creative thought. How to do something like that? What approach would suit balancing the intension of entertainment and consciousness expansion? Clearly there is a mission to interrupt these people with new sounds that the never thought possible. But also it is important to provide, altruistically, a positive event to genuine warm friendly people who miss out on such experience. Counter issues naturally weigh into this: equipment management and care; the unpredictable nightmares of alcohol; best turning the travel distance into an efficient operation; and so on. The positives are many, including doing something much more ‘Australian’ than worrying about placating the over-saturated short attention-spans of the globalised masses of the East Coast and cities.

Given other current dramas, plans and the need to properly plan such live music projects, any excursion west of such a nature isn’t likely to happen quickly. But, Cunnamulla, as well as other outback towns such as Wyandra, Charleville and Roma, left us with a strong positive and lasting impression. The people out there are much less pretentious, down to earth, and less selfish than their eastern cousins. People have central Australia all wrong and I’m reminded of the words by Midnight Oil: “In every home a Big Mac, and no one goes out back, that’s that.” …Despite my obvious personality difference to that culture I felt at home out there. Taking soundscapes, arcing, or even my own art-pop songs out there to play live is now a cemented goal. Go west.

Oh, and by the way, we didn’t find the Cunnamulla Feller:

Cunnamulla Feller – Slim Dusty
—
Now I’m a scrubber runner and a breaker too,
I live on damper and wallaby stew.
I’ve got a big cattle dog with a stag hound cross,
I never saw the scrubber we couldn’t toss.

‘Cause I’m the feller from Cunnamulla,
yes, I’m the Cunnamulla feller.

Now, once when I was drovin’ on the cattle trails,
I met a little girl, her name was Ada Vale.
I said marry me, Ada, and I’ll be the feller,
and we’ll settle down in Augathella.

I’ll be the feller, at Augathella,
yes, I’ll be the Augathella, feller.

Oh well, she said her daddy’s name was Charlie Ville,
she had a lot of kiddies and a lot of bills.
So I grabbed my horse that was nice and handy,
and I never stopped ’til I reached Dirranbandi.

I was the dandy, at Dirranbandi,
yes, I was the Dirranbandi dandy.

Now in my moleskin trousers and my Williams boots,
aboard an outlaw as he leaves the shoots,
in my gooseneck spurs I rig their fiery hides,
and the girls all shoutin’ around the ringside.

Oh he’s the feller from Cunnamulla,
yes, he’s the Cunnamulla feller. Last time now !

Now, I’ve done a little fightin’ in the western bars,
done a little lovin’ ‘neath the moon and stars.
I wear bright clothes and shirts full of colour,
and the girls know me as that certain feller.

Yes, he’s the feller from Cunnamulla, yes, he’s the Cunnamulla feller.
Oh, he’s the Cunnamulla feller, yes, he’s the Cunnamella feller.
—