Reviews: Reactor Four & Cathode Ray

Mark Barton of The Sunday Experience has reviewed my two most-recent releases. Here's what he had to say:

Reactor Four

Keen observers of these musings will no doubt be familiar with the Manitou – better known to kith n kin as Joshua Blanc – notably through love poured upon his ‘electro magnetic’ and ‘the mechanicals’ visitations. Third in his series of two track single releases finds a sinister countenance afoot in both sound and subject matter for both ‘reactor four’ and ‘fukushima fifty’ centre on the nightmarish realities of nuclear meltdowns. Inspired by the Chernobyl fall out ‘reactor four’ is steeled in a haunting dead still that aside being disquieting (with the appearance of the chilling Geiger clicks) is bleakly head bowed and signed in regret, the atmosphere suitable ice cold and bleached I a hollowed emptiness shimmers delicately into territories more commonly associated with Karl Bartos. Carved out in old school retro electro minimalism ‘fukushima fifty’ seductively pirouettes along the same sparse melodic leyline as that found populating a ‘man machine’ era Kraftwerk universe albeit with it frosted exterior somewhat fused to the expansive hypno drills of tangerine dream. http://www.themanitou.bandcamp.com/album/reactor-four

 

Cathode Ray

Those of you loving your electronics spared in minimalism like it was 1979 and steered in a sinister off set funky iciness might want to stay with the Manitou a little while longer for the follow up to ‘reactor four’ – and by a quick head count the fourth in the singles series is entitled ‘Cathode Ray’. This un plugs directly into Human League Mk1’s sound space more specifically having us reaching for our copy of ’reproduction’ in order to sample the dark delights of ‘circus of death’.

My promo video for Cathode Ray has also been featured on Matrixsynth blog, of which I've long been a fan. If you're into synthesizers and you haven't paid it a visit, I urge you to do so.

Digital Single: Reactor Four

This month's free single is a double-bill inspired by nuclear disasters: Reactor Four (Chernobyl) and Fukushima Fifty (Fukushima Daiichi). Both of these horrendous events continue to threaten life on this planet and will do so far into the future. My music is often inspired by grim subject matter, and writing about the real world instead of fiction for a change is my own small way of creating awareness.

Bandcamp Player:

Reactor Four is built on a moody percussion loop created by a rhythm box manufactured in the 60s: the Univox SR-55. Two instances of the loop were pitch-shifted, fed through a software emulation of the famous Moog ladder filter (to enhance the noise that sounds like crickets), compressed, and then fed through two stereo delays. Over this I added an odd pulsing arpeggio and bassline (K-Station) various synthesized percussions (KS & HS-60), and ye-olde strings in the form of GMedia M-Tron (a Mellotron emulation). HS-60 provides further synth sounds, and the Korg Monotribe is brought in on the outro to supply some acid basslines and theremin-like pitch-ribbon improvisation. Vocoding was done as usual through the K-Station. The 'big 80's drums' were originally done via MIDI keyboard, but I re-did them using the Alesis SamplePad once I discovered what a difference variable velocity (aka. loudness) made. The drum samples themselves were taken from the Alesis SR-16.

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Fukushima Fifty was originally envisioned as an addendum to Reactor Four, hence it has the same tempo. The music went in a different direction so it became a track in its own right. A rhythm loop from the Casio MT-100 provides the backbone. I also used a tone from that quaint little keyboard during the refrain. The vocoder that opens the track was slowed down to half-speed, because I liked the imperfections it added. K-Station, HS-60, and Monotribe were also used. Crumar Performer provides the strings this time, and electric guitar adds a touch of menace to the outro. It was recorded through the distortion effect on the Roland SP-404. I honestly can't remember if the soaring 'Vox Humana' synths at the end are HS-60 or Alpha-Juno, but I think it's the former. Percussion-wise, there's some Speak & Spell, but the bulk of it is synthesized from scratch.

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