Lots has been going on behind-the-scenes, so let me start with a quick
update. Five finished songs for the new Manitou album are in the wings,
and I'll be looking at releasing those now that the new Disco Antenna EP
is complete. I've also been hard at work with the band No More Cries, arranging keyboard parts for their songs, and working with other local artists at Wild Bill's Studio.
Side B, as the title suggests, is the follow-up to Side A, the Disco Antenna release from last year. In due course both releases will be combined into a full album.
1. Disco from the Stars (suite) is a song that dates back to 2010, when Disco Antenna first became an entity. It was my attempt to write something in the disco style after Jimmy, my collaborator, and I had begun work on his song, 'There To Remind Me.' It existed as a rough demo for a long time, for which Jimmy provided some vocal ideas that eventually became 'Superstitious.' When I came up with a proper chorus for the track I decided the Superstitious vocals weren't really going to work. It wasn't until last year, and the success of the segue format of Side A, that the idea of making the two songs into one came about. There was just one problem ... it was such an ambitious undertaking that it was going to take extra time. But for me, it was worth it. We released 'Superstitious' as a single last year. I've since done some tweaking to the mix for this 18-minute 'suite.'
2. Prayer (suite). When searching the archive of Jimmy's material for another song to include on the EP, 'Prayer' jumped out at me. I'd actually suggested it would make good Disco Antenna material in an old e-mail. Unfortunately, between that e-mail and its rediscovery, Jimmy discovered he'd lost the vocals in a hard-drive crash. But all was not lost: he had the backing track and the original Orion session. It also provided him with an opportunity to write new lyrics for the verses. The demo was something like four minutes, maximum, and it wasn't my intention to stretch it out to 10 while adding my parts. I had, in the back of my mind, the idea to keep each EP under the maximum 24-minute running-time of half a vinyl LP. In this case, I had to go where the music led me.
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Instrumentation-wise, these songs include the usual Disco Antenna kit: Synapse Orion, Novation K-Station, Orchestra Silver, Roland HS-60, Ticky Clav, Crumar Performer, our patented secret mix of drum sounds, bass guitar, and tambourine. A Yamaha TG-33 guest-stars on Superstitious, and a Yamaha FB-01 guest-stars on Prayer. Oh, and there's some Minimoog V for good measure.
While I was working on Radioatomic, I had a few offshoot ideas that further explored the radio theme, to the point of incorporating snippets of distorted radio transmissions into them. This was the loose concept behind 'Transmissions.' The project has since morphed into a home for 'orphaned' experiments that came about from tinkering in the studio. I foresee a series of EP's of this nature, with a full album as soon as there's enough material. For now, you can grab Transmissions Part I here, or stream from the player below:
Bandcamp Player:
1. Microbes - Testing some new equipment gave rise to this Frankenstein's Monster of a track. I never quite knew where I was going with it from one minute to the next. While searching for a title, I found an old educational film about bacteria; a monologue from which tied everything together.
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Equipment: Korg SQ-1 sequencer and MS-20 Mini
(wobbly 'bassline,' panned left, and pink noise 'footsteps', panned
center), iVCS3 soft synth (bubbly swamp noises, panned center) Korg
Monotribe (space drum-thing sequence, panned right), Curtis for iPad
granular synthesizer (pterodactyl sounds), GMedia M-Tron (choir), various field recordings.
2. Echo of the Telegraph - The Korg MS-20 synthesizer is equipped with CV (Control Voltage), and can be patched in such a way that it effectively plays itself. The usefulness of this is very limited, of course, but it leaves your hands free to shape the sound while it's blooping merrily away. One such improvisation forms the backbone of this track. To that I added TAL U-No-LX (melody), Crumar Performer (strings), cymbal, and synthesized percussion.
3. Trans Earache Express - Of the many recordings of trains I've made, I had one striking passage I wanted to build a song around. I called upon the Korg Monotribe to provide bass accompaniment (recorded live), and added a little percussion.
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4. Ghost Box - In 2013 I worked on a soundtrack that could be described as steampunk-meets-chorale. I think it's one of the best things I've done, so I hope I'll be able to release it someday. This song shares some of the sonic characteristics and overall mood, with the exception of vocals and snippets of radio recordings. A 'ghost box,' in case you're wondering, is a radio wired to constantly cycle through frequencies in the hope that spirits will vocalise through it.
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5. Lost Transmission - Written around the same time as Ghost Box. I took a lengthy recording of a transistor radio tuned so that the signal stuttered, and played it back at half-speed through a digital emulation of tape delay. I then came up with something complimentary on the Roland HS-60.
My intention was to release the Radioatomic album tonight, to coincide with my birthday. But the booklet and liner notes aren't quite finished. Thankfully, the seventh single from the album was ready to go, so here it is: Radium Smile.
Radium Smile is inspired by the plight of the 'Radium Girls', who unwittingly poisoned themselves working for the Radium Dial Company in the early 1900's. Though the lyrics are tongue-in-cheek, I like to think this pays tribute to them in some small way. Musically, it's one of the poppiest from the new album (insasmuch as I write that sort of thing!). Unusually, the lyrics were written first. Once I had an idea of how I was going to sing it, I programmed a bass arpeggio on the K-Station. That synth provides most of the sounds and melodies. The Roland HS-60 makes a brief appearance on the chorus, and string chords from the Crumar Performer give what is a fairly bare-bones track a bit of meat. All percussion is either created from scratch or sourced from found sounds, with the exception of tom-toms from the Boss DR-550. Most of the sounds had already been added by the time the Korg MS-20 Mini arrived, but I managed to sneak it in on a bit of percussion before the mix-down. AnalogX SayIt provides the computer voice.
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I hope to release the album before the end of the month. Stay tuned!
The second in my series of free singles is Isotopes For All Parts 1&2. These two tracks date from earlier in the recording sessions than Electro Magnetic, and are a little more indicative of what to expect from the rest of the album.
Bandcamp player:
Isotopes For All - Part 1 was inspired in part by the works of Atomic Shadow. (If you haven't already, I urge you to give him a listen. He has a new album out called City of Chrome and Glass, which is very good). Further inspiration, including the monologue heard in the track, came from a 1953 educational(?) film called A Is For Atom. The naive and alarming nature of the film, juxtaposed as it is with the cute Disney-esque animation, prompted me to re-purpose it in a way that highlights the more disturbing elements of 1950's atomic-age thinking.
Snippets of the soundtrack were copied to cassette tape and the pitch modified manually with my Marantz PMD201 tape recorder. To my mind this further enhanced both the disturbing and comical nature of the monologue. Forming the basis of the music is some quirky synthesized percussion, rendered using the TAL U-No-LX softsynth. Weaving in and out of the track is a bassline constructed on the Korg Monotribe, and an arpeggio from the K-Station. In between the narrated sections, the Roland HS-60 adds some interesting sounds and the K-Station provides a second bassline.
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Isotopes For All - Part 2 evolved out of a desire to see how the music would sound with a more conventional beat. It was initially a three-minute recording (this became the 'single edit') of Monotribe bassline and K-Station arpeggio with parameters such as filter-cutoff manipulated in real-time, to which the instrumental parts and drums were added. An early version used the Monotribe's analogue drum sounds, but I found they muddied the mix. An 808 kit from the Boss DR-550 left room in the mix for some phased strings courtesy of the Crumar Performer run through a Small Stone phaser.
After receiving the demo, my friend Jimmy sent me an extended mix of the track he'd put together for fun. I liked it so much that I decided to make a longer version myself, and that's how it ended up two-and-a-half minutes longer. By this time the bass patch on the Monotribe (which has no patch memory) was long-since gone. I came close to replicating it, but it didn't have quite the edge of the original, so I used a mix of the original recording and the new.
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96.1Mhz, an experimental 'atmosphere' was included on the e.p. to break up the two different versions of Isotopes Part 2. It consists of a recording of radio interference augmented by sound effects from the Korg Monotribe.
Leading up to the release of my new album, I'll be releasing a series of free two-track singles. The first of these is Electro Magnetic/Nibiru. It will be available for free on my Bandcamp page until the next single is released (at least two weeks).
Bandcamp player:
Electro Magnetic was inspired by the knowledge that electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs) are buzzing around us almost constantly in our technological society. Far from being gloom-and-doom, however, Electro Magnetic is an upbeat electropop song with minimal vocals and a focus on synthesized percussion and electronic rhythms. I came up with the idea when I was walking in the woods, and recorded some hand-percussion into my digital recorder so I'd remember it. It was later re-created in the studio. The sounds were created on Novation K-Station and Roland HS-60. The Crumar Performer is also featured on the bridge, and the Boss DR-550 provided the tom-toms.
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Audio (album version):
Nibiru began as a bass sequence on the Korg Monotribe. I recorded an improvisation of various filter and LFO tweaks as a single take and constructed the rest of the track around it. Also featured are the Roland HS-60, an arpeggio from the K-Station, and some Speak & Spell percussion samples. The title was inspired by a phantom sun purportedly hiding behind our own.
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Also included is a single edit of Electro Magnetic, which omits the extended breakdown. It essentially follows the same structure as my original demo.
I finished something? Wonders will never cease. This project was started January 31st and completed May 30th, but it's not like I worked on it full-time over the four-month period. It was done in fits and starts and sometimes languished for weeks at a time. But I'm very pleased with the end result. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at what went into it.
When I learned there was to be a fan tribute to Gary Numan's 1981 album 'Dance,' compiled for the website Numanme.co.uk, I thought it would be great to participate. The entire album, including b-sides and demos, would be recreated by fans from around the globe. I decided early on that the song 'My Brother's Time' inspired me the most to create a cover version (although my favourite from the album is actually 'A Subway Called You').
For those of you who haven't heard it, here's Gary Numan's original:
And here's my version, The Manitou featuring Jimmy Aaron:
After formulating some ideas, I started recording the various parts as MIDI data. This was initially linked to the EastWest Orchestra plugin's Steinway piano, and Shortcircuit sampler loaded with a music box sample. The concept was to replace the piano and music box by degrees using custom-made synthesizer sounds. The distinctive melody on the chorus was added right away. This, like most of the other synthesized sounds, was realised on the Novation K-Station.
Percussion elements were also added early on. I decided on a bass drum and snare combo I came up with for my (as yet unreleased) soundtrack project. The bass drum came from my Alesis SR-16 drum machine, and the snare from my Yamaha MR-10 rhythm box. All percussion was loaded into instances of Shortcircuit so I could create a complete drum track for the song within the Sonar workstation software. Ride and crash cymbals and some massive tom-toms also came from the SR-16.
In Numan's original, there are percussive sounds which mimic the
ticking of a clock. I believe they were produced by recording claves
through an effects pedal. I opted to keep the clock motif but use sounds
from a real clock, in this case an all-metal alarm clock I recently
acquired (I used to dismantle them when I was a kid!) Another percussion element, which punctuates the breaks between vocals, is actually the sound of ice shattering. As a bonus it happened to sound clock-like.
Again dipping into my recent soundtrack experience, I called upon an effect I'm fond of, which involves running an electric guitar through the Roland SP-404's 'lo-fi' effect. This effect mimics lowering the audio bitrate. If you've ever heard a really badly-encoded mp3 you'll know what that's all about. For the layman: high quality digital audio is generally recorded at 24- or 16-bit. Old Atari game systems etc... used 8-bit audio, and a fair few of us 'children of the 80s' understandably have a penchant for that kind of sound, hence the invention of the 'lo-fi' effect. You can dial in as much lo-fi as you want until all you hear is bubbly white noise. Needless to say, I go for somewhere about middle. The result is a strange, buzzy, almost chime-like sound somewhat like a grandfather clock chiming in a rusty shed.
Next to go on was a simple square-wave lead made on the Yamaha CS01 synthesizer. I played a solo of my own devising in place of the saxophone which plays out the original song. The solo proved problematic when interacting with other elements: it clashed with some notes I came up with to accompany the original piano parts. I decided to leave the solo intact and remove a few of the offending notes from the accompaniment. Creating an almost atonal synthesizer patch also helped the sounds 'play nice' with each other, as much as that sounds counter-intuitive.
A descending melody, played on Crumar Performer string synthesizer, was initially going to accompany the choruses. They were busy enough as they were, so I saved the strings to follow the solo which ends the original version. Once the tom-toms were added, it quickly built up to a powerful send off for the song.
Next was bass guitar. The original features the inimitable talents of the late Mick Karn on fretless bass. The only part of his performance I hinted at was a piece of melody on the chorus, played on synthesizer. Aside from a couple of notes during the verses, my bass parts were saved for the outro. I wanted a little more bottom end without competing too much with the piano. Throughout the track I left the piano bass notes in. The music box is also
still present where I thought it sounded good.
Early on, I envisioned my friend Jimmy Aaron singing harmony with his distinctive voice on the chorus. I asked him if he was up for it and he said he'd give it a go. Jimmy is one for experimenting with vocal ideas and improvising. Not only did he sing on the chorus for me, but he came up with a simply incredible vocal track for the outro as well. My intention was to leave that part instrumental, but after adding the vocals it didn't sound the same without them. We also toyed with the idea of singing 'aahs' to accompany the solo, but decided against it in the end.
In Jimmy's words: "I'm glad you liked that outro idea, I like it too! :-)) Those
bells and the word innocence go so good together. And then 'what's
done is done,' a reminder it's the end of the song..." A little glimpse into his thought process when choosing the lyrics. Having worked on a track together in the past, I know my voice compliments Jimmy's best if I sing low. But when it came to following his melody, I realised I couldn't quite hit the low notes if I stayed in key with the first line. I toyed with the idea of singing higher and pitch-shifting the result, and even leaving the first line out altogether, before coming up with a vocal melody I could manage while staying in the lower register. Usually my vocals require a lot of editing: I choose the best parts from the best takes. In this case, the two takes you hear on the outro are unedited.
Rather than follow Numan's original vocal melody for the verses, I decided to wing it. The odd line came out much the same, simply from being ingrained in my memory, but the bulk of it is my own spin on the words. The line that proved trickiest was the first line of verse 2. No matter how you look at it on the lyric sheet, it doesn't fit the music! My vocals are far from perfect but I'm happy with the overall result.
I'm still waiting to hear whether this will be included on the compilation, but as soon as I know, I'll post the details here. Until then, enjoy the song. If you click through to the Soundcloud page, you can download the high-quality mp3 (it's free!) and also check out two remixes I did last year. One is another Gary Numan song, the other by John Foxx - two artists who've been highly influential to me.
Another transition piece for Tales Episode 1, 'Turned To Stone' marks the demise of the Troll Tree Removers after they're petrified by the sun's rays. I wanted it to have a haunting quality. The first idea that came to mind was the sound of tingsha (Tibetan prayer cymbals). These are small cast bronze cymbals on a leather strap which produce a high-pitched ringing when struck together. They're more like bells in that respect. Each cymbal is supposed to sound identical, but possibly mine are slightly out of whack because they produce some harsh harmonics. This just adds to the character though, making them all the more suitable for this track.
I started by recording several takes into my CAD mic and selecting the best ones. If the cymbals wobble about too much you get a wobbly-sounding recording, so after some experimentation I got some clean takes. You can be sure I kept the wobbly ones too, though - you never know when they might come in handy!
I loaded the sample I was happy with direct into Sonar (my multi-track software) and repeated it every couple of bars. I applied reverb to soften the sound a little, but had to tweak it quite a lot. Certain frequencies were bouncing around and sounding horrible. This served as my guide for adding other instruments.
Next I added a plucked spring sound, sampled from my 'Spring Thing' which is nothing more than two dishwasher springs mounted on a board. But hooked up to a contact microphone it sounds fantastic. This already had a reverb all its own, but I added extra software reverb and it totally stole the show.
For the third element I turned to the K-Station synth, with the intention of adding a slow, bright, metallic arpeggio. My tweaking produced a detuned sound - not unlike bells that have been really messed up - more suited for melody, so a melody it was. In an attempt to fit melody to tempo, I threw in a bass-drum sample to play to. That lead to the mimicked sound of a slow hearbeat, which echoes the plight of the poor trolls and further enhances the track.
Oh yes, I almost forgot about the growls. I took a sound from my modified Yamaha PSS-140 FM keyboard and pitch-shifted it way low in shortcircuit. To me it sounds like the growl of an alien animal. No real reason for adding it except that it adds some spookiness.
By then the track was pretty much finished, to my mind. But there's always the temptation to add more, and later on I thought of some string parts and had to try them out. I called upon my trusty Crumar Performer analog string synthesizer for this. I dropped the bottom and mid-range out via the on-board EQ, and modulated the pitch. The latter is a trick I used on the Doctor Who: Mechalution soundtrack / Let's Build Mecha e.p. to give the strings a wailing, melancholy quality, not unlike tape-wobble.
The final element I added was a Chinese woodblock (also called a 'wooden fish'). This was again recorded using the CAD. It sounded too bright in my first version so I pitch-shifted it about an octave lower and EQ'd out some high-end.
