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Download mp3: Uneasy

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During an atmospheric rainy evening a few months ago Alex Strain messaged me saying he was in the mood for jamming melody. He sent me a little snippet of reflective notes, moving freely through quiet and dark introspection. It got suggested immediately that we should stay up late swapping the tune, each taking a turn to write more of it in collaboration. So for the following five hours we did exactly that.

After about 8 swaps we had formed a little structure that worked on it’s own. Throughout I added some bass and background synths to swirl around Alex’s Wurlitzer jam. No drums were needed, we just kept it as free flowing as possible. Alex added the first spoken sample, a noisey gltiched transmission of a dark dream, so I decided to mirror a similar contribution at the end of the bridge which is equally dreamy. Introspections of a character in a film that doesn’t exist, this is the uneasy moment.

I’m particularly fond of the end build, which was derived out of repeating Alex’s last phrase over and over, ramping the dynamics. It came time to retire the swapping, and in the following days a few edits were done to tidy up (including some rendering-down tricks with the reversal sound in the bridge). And then for a long time it sat on our hard drives, forgotten as we got on with other projects. Until now.

This masted version is one of a series of songs in collaboration with Alex. This began with Phoebe, and will continue with other tracks like ‘The 4th’. We’re aiming for a body of work, much like an album, that documents these sonic meeting places which neither of us can achieve just on our own. Many of the synths and techniques are similar across all this work. Uneasy serves as a possible transition piece.

I’ve mastered this track as a dark cinematic piece, so it requires slightly different listening to regular pop or beat-driven music. Again you may need to bring the volume up to dive into the ripples and eddies of the listening experience.

Download mp3: Nullarbor

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In late 2005 Mum donated a gift in the form of Aajinta’s album “Harmonic Spheres”. A combo of cello (Michelle John), didgeridoo + clarinet (Jason Day), and harmonic-throat singing (Dean Frenkel), it’s an album of sonorous, ambient and dreamy music. It has been the soundtrack to many early morning work sessions at the Pinktank due to it’s relaxing clarity.

One track in particular keep nagging me: the beautifully vast ‘It Pays To Buy Good Tea’. The song is a slow builder of major key warmth and drone – not at all suggestive of speedy excitement. But, I kept hearing something in the music that wasn’t there. In my head I was hearing a fast and flurrying rhythm, pounding with rave-synths and rising dub-harmonics. These ‘ghost elements’ kept bugging me to bring them to life somehow.

It all began when I was doing a live DJ mixing session using ‘It Pays To Buy Good Tea’ as an arc-layer (while other beat-song were playing). I had rigged up the song (via Energy XT) to play through an transverb octaver and then a heap of glitch, reverb and delay. So as the song peaked out, trails of sonic glistening would whisp off behind it. Luckily, I got a good recording of this effect, and exported the whole sound into Renoise for further experimentation.

I played around with some of the ideas I had in my head, finding a fast beat and bass line that suited the energy and pace I could personally infer from the original track. I decided to go for a dirty earthy approach to the sound – so everything is intermingled just a little with tube distortion and not at all bright like most sheeny electronica of this pace. It then took a while just doing minor edits on an off for the last year or so to give the final song its current build and variety.

Aajinta’s dreamy melody coupled with the driving earthy rhythm+bass evoke certain memories that mangle with some sort of personal fantasy. It reminds me of the vast emptiness of the Nullarbor Plain, but instead of dry heat there is a squall ripping across the landscape, flying along at incredible speed and dumping heavy rain and bolts of lightening. This is what the energy suggests to me, so goodness knows what it might suggest to you.

A note on the mastering: I’ve tried to keep this as delicate and expressive as possible. Some listeners will find this to be too weak and deep compared to run of the mill audio that people are flooded with these days. The volume control on your system was designed for this purpose! Pump it up and let the whole thing speak properly.

Finally the dust is settling on a very busy period, so busy to the extent that participating in this blog and regular web antics has been a difficulty. Work has simmered down to acceptable gentle levels, and personal life has done much the same opening doors to time for regular practice, composition and mixing. And releases. This I am looking forward to!

In what has felt like a blink of an eye I have moved residence! The Pink Tank is no more. My studio and all my junk (much of which has been thrown or recycled this time) hasn’t gone too far as I’ve remained in Armidale. I am now located at Galloway Street. I shall get some images up soon, but for now you can take my word that it is a lovely leafy and quiet area on South Hill. The space is a little larger than the flat, being a big old house with odd rooms and shrouded back yard. I’ve already spent time setting up the studio, placing important sound absorbing material up in the room and placing the speakers in the best possible position for audio bliss. The results have been impressive! I think I’m getting a better sound than the Pink Tank: a clearer stereo image, and much clearer and deeper sub. It’s a joy to work on music in there.

Some regular coaching with Ruth Strutt has me feeling a lot more confident in singing technique. We’re working specifically on ironing out old bad habits of constriction, and exploring the possibilities of the baritone part of my voice. For the first time ever I’ve really enjoyed singing low and resonant, opting for an octave down when I used to opt for an octave up. Ruth is also getting a sense for how high I can go, which can be up to a G#6 (or 5?) in full body voice, and even higher using a proper blend technique (mixing body with falsetto). I’m still slowly working toward doing vocal recordings for my songs (for which there are many to do), but this now feels easier than ever. There are a few outstanding recordings that need doing for Alex Strain and Beatslaughter that are motivating me as goals.

I’ve a new toy: which I’ve dubbed Loopzilla. This a Boss RC-50, brand new. It effectively means that I can do away with the studio-computer as a tool for live guitar looping (so no more lugging fragile computer bits to venues). I can layer and loop audio on the fly, very similar to the tape-loop Frippertronics approach. I’ve already recorded some interesting melodic textures using this device, which seem to spill out of my hands intuitively in layers and overdubs. I’m keen to test it out in a live situation, mostly likely with Iain MacKay with his electro/acoustic drums. And there will be no doubt more additions to a growing library of delicate ambient guitar pieces, possibly evolving into a separate release project.

Speaking of Iain, we’re working on a little film project. He’s put together a rough montage of abstract time-lapse imagery. I shall be viewing this and deriving some sort of soundtrack applicable to the visuals that he can further edit into some sort of cohesive work. Think psychedelic gardens…