Hmmm... here's me having started these with intent to be all RadioSilence and quite minimal. This was overtaken by the sudden urge to tweak. Then, when all the, in some cases quite intricate fiddling around had reached the point where I was reminded of the line in PF's Shine On about the consequences of piling on many more layers, I decided it was done. Well, with the exception of the 4th track Phat Pixie, which is definitely more jammy. The immersive Atmos sound is also responsible for the sundry bits of weirdness going on. 2 steps of improvements really. It's now working within ProTools, having been assimilated by the Borg Collective at Avid. Poor thing. So this is the first set of works actively constructed within Atmos from scratch, with Fabfilter Pro-R2, an Atmos reverb aka a sub repurposed as a space station. Except it's a bit better than that. I tried Eventide's Atmos Blackhole first but didn't like it. It sounded muddy. The Fabfilter one is infinitely better as it does Blackhole reverb but with near crystal clarity, does all the other reverbs you want too. It sounds decently immersive, enhancing that "wrap-round" horseshoe immersion Atmos brings anyway and making centre-placed drums sound, well a little like they're in the middle of an area of sound rather than simply panned centre in stereo. It is a bit different and sounds most prominent on headphones. It's perfectly safe though; I haven't yet succeeded in dematerialising anything or inventing UAP propulsion via a phonon singularity-emitting metamaterial. Nah, it's not that good and anyway what do you expect from yer annual subscription?! A targeting neutrino beam which trashes nukes? It might be in the pro bundle I'm not sure. Things have come a long way since The Beatles and backwards tape y'know.
Siroc
Title track.You should know me by now, a nice word like that just gets tagged onto whichever track I'm doing at the time that needs a nice word as its title. There is little hint of warm eastern wind in this except for the farty aftermath of the spinach and chickpeas I put in the curry I remember eating around that time. It is a goodly long piece woven around the meanderings of it's initial ambient track. My B2600 continues to play a prominent role, although I have diversified that by using long samples from it as the sound for the ambient backdrop. You hear it again in the lead line.. you'll know when ;-) Aside from that it's hard to tell what's being used on what in the mix, because it doesn't really matter what synths I use, I program my established style of sounds anyway, so my overall sound kinda remains about the same irrespective of the gear in most cases. Siroc has a fairly large church organ (in a box) on it too. I got it out, pumped it up for half a hour, patched up a few leaks and there ya go, as good as new!
Condor Stratos
Nice piece, even if the title sounds like aftershave from the 1970s. Heh.. titles. They's trouble they is. Anyway, the music is again chilled and not inclined to get insanely loud throughout all its various bits and bobs. I really got carried away with flange on this one. I mean, a bit of flange is good for the soul, but this might add some icing on top! Apparently if you try using that word with Midjourney AI the art thingy, it red boxes you and tells you not to do it again or else. Probably a bit of a folk music fan then.
FoldSpace
Absorbing piece, just as twisty and up & downy as the others. All these pieces like go somewhere, get big in the middle and then come back down again. Now you know why I'm not a music academic ;-) Understating things a bit perhaps, as there's quite a bit of detail and textural niceness which did involve much tweaking, a bit more than usual I think. They're all quite complex in the tweakery department.
Phat Pixie
As I mentioned, I left this one sounding a bit more jammy and less tweaky. It's just all these things going on interchanging prominence in the mix. I don't know if that's clever or not, coming as it does from one of The Walking Half-Dead; I mean... duh.. synth... switch on.. hmm sound nice.. me like...! I suppose what you get from me at least sometimes, is something akin to "stream of consciousness" music. A time-honoured predecessor of live streaming on the internet, itself based on the ancestral preternatural practise of hitting one's victims' skulls with a leg bone and arranging them into a nice order to send lovely echoes around the cave to chill out your housemates after a long day outside dismembering anything you aced with a spear.
Or maybe not. I wouldn't ask me about stuff like that! :-)
credits
released March 30, 2024
24bit files as ever. Produced in accordance with the Cat Alignment System, which is to say that when at least 2 cats are in loaf mode and aligned to the music with their eyes closed, it shall be deemed "adequately chilled" :-)
This album is utterly brilliant and is my new go-to as far as electronic music as a whole. I despair that I will find nothing else that will evoke the same emotions. It is hypnotic, intriguing and vivifying all at once. I have no idea how that was pulled off! BGE
