Digital Album: Let's Build Mecha (Remastered)

 

Let’s Build Mecha (Remastered)

2020 marked the 10th anniversary of Let’s Build Mecha! so it seemed like a good excuse to revisit it. I’ve always been happy with the sound quality, and I found the mix reasonable considering my lack of studio headphones or near-field monitors when I made it in 2010. At that time I was using a Logitech 5.1 system with a very clean – but thin – sound, and some Sony earbuds. It was also early days for mastering on my part. I believe I’d discovered the wavehammer compressor in Sound Forge by then, but none of the multi-tracks were summed to a master bus, and the title track was mixed-down with hard clipping instead of compression.

In 2012 I made some alterations – Clockwork Robots was made to run seamlessly into Autonomic, for example – but no real ‘remastering’ was done. The biggest hurdle, ten years later, was accessing the original multi-track files. They were recorded in Sonar 2 and 4 and saved as bundle files: single files containing all the data. Newer versions of Sonar don't play well with bundle files and prefer a project file pointing to a folder containing all the stems. A good comparison would be a zip file vs a folder. So I had to open the files on my old Windows XP machine, ensure all the samples and plug-ins were present, and export them.

A couple of songs needed no tinkering whatsoever, beyond clean mix-downs on a superior DAC and some mastering compression. Others required more care. The e.p. has always sounded clean and crisp to me, but I had to wonder why I'd chosen to EQ so many bass frequencies out. I’ll put it down to inexperience.

The songs that required the most attention were the title track - the most layered song on the album - and the other full vocal track: Production Line. The latter has always fallen a little flat, so I wanted to address that. Another challenging piece was Rust and Bones. The bass guitar always had a ground hum that stuck out like a sore thumb. Having some new tricks up my sleeve, I was able to address it. Another issue with that piece was the sampler I was using at the time, a clunky old horse called VSampler, which I could not resurrect. Each instance had to be replaced with Grace, my current sampler of choice, and the attack/release settings carefully tweaked by ear to match the original.

In most cases, the generic Cakewalk EQ plug-in was replaced with the superior Sonitus Equalizer. Heretofore unnoticed digital hiss on certain samples was carefully tamed. Vocals were brightened, and suppressed bass frequencies were restored. One tiny edit was made on the vocals of Production Line, where a slightly off-key word was replaced by an alternate take from the original session. The final step was to check the dynamic range of each track and adjust as necessary.

 

A little history. In 2010 my good friend Stevie K. Farnaby was producing a Doctor Who audio drama for Brokensea.org. He had an upcoming episode called Mechalution, which featured a race of sentient machines. He’d heard the music I’d been making with circuit-bent Speak and Spells, etc... and thought the sounds would be perfect for the show: both as music and sound effects. It just so happened that I had a song called Let’s Build Mecha, inspired by Japanese anime, and it fit the concept perfectly. With the script for Mechalution to hand, I set about writing the rest. 

 I don’t recall any difficulty or writer’s block. The subject matter was so in tune with my aesthetic that I could easily have carried on. In fact the Mechalution storyline was intended to carry on for the rest of the season, but for various reasons Stevie had to halt production. I wrote four more pieces for subsequent episodes (three of which can be found on The Mechanicals e.p.) and two more demos for what would've been the season finale. As of this writing, Stevie is upgrading his studio: so there’s a very real chance there’ll be more Mecha-inspired music forthcoming.

To coincide with the remaster, I've released a promo video for Production Line that was filmed in 2014 but never completed until now.

Digital EP: Side A by Disco Antenna

The Disco Antenna project is a collaboration with my friend Jimmy Aaron that's been in the works since 2009. If you've been following this blog you'll have heard Jimmy’s distinctive vocal contributions to my Gary Numan cover songs, and his programming talents on a remix of The Mechanicals. For this project we decided to choose a proper name for ourselves. This is our debut e.p., 'Side A,' released on New Year's Day 2015. It's a tribute to the disco epics of the past, drawing inspiration from the earliest proto-disco to late 80's electro and the dawn of digital sampling. As the title suggests, it represents the first 'side' of an eventual full album.

Bandcamp Player:

1. Love Is Never Cold. When I revisited There To Remind Me (track 2) to prep it for release, I added an arpeggio that we both thought could be expanded upon. I combined it with elements from the other two songs, added some new strings and percussion and this is the result. It was by far the quickest and easiest track we've done: three days to flesh out the basics, two more days to add Jimmy's vocals and finishing touches. By comparison, tracks 2 & 3 are two of the most labour-intensive songs I've ever worked on. I liken Love Is Never Cold to an overture. Its laid-back groove is a perfect intro to the set.

Audio:

Video:

2. There To Remind Me. This is the first Disco Antenna track Jimmy and I worked on. We even released an early version half-heartedly back in 2010. It began with a vocal demo Jimmy had made, with a backing track created in Synapse Orion. I thought the song had potential, and my initial intention was to polish up the production and add a few ideas that had jumped out at me. It quickly ballooned into a longer and more complex creature. I picked-and-chose from Jimmy’s original synth parts, and added all the disco clichés I could think of. Perhaps I pushed the limits of good taste, but it was all done with sincerity. 

I relied heavily on Orchestra Silver for the strings. It samples real orchestral instruments and allows you to play them via MIDI. I favour layering at least two stringed instruments per patch, such as a viola and violin or violin and cello combo. On this track I had some fun with the pitch wheel to give the violin stabs a more human touch. On the outro I used some synthesized strings from the Yamaha TG-33.

Jimmy's drums, a kit based on the Roland TR-505, were augmented with some percussion from TR-707 and Alesis SR-16. The vocal samples were manipulated with the Akai S1000 (before it was retired from the studio). Bass guitar (both played and sampled), Lounge Lizard electric piano, and Novation K-Station round the track out.

Audio:


3. I Need You. This started with a complete backing track, carefully crafted by Jimmy in Orion and inspired by Giorgio Moroder’s distinct brand of arpeggio-laden synth programming. It took me to another dimension when I started layering my own parts over the top. I really felt like I was tapping into something magical. Because I was working to a rigid backing track you may find the song-structure a little unconventional. It threw me quite a few surprises. We recorded the bulk of this one circa 2013, then it lay dormant until I finished my album Radioatomic.

Orchestra Silver was again called upon for string duty. By this time I had acquired the Roland HS-60, so a lot of the synth parts were done with that. The electric piano was recorded hastily using an old stand-by patch I created on the K-Station, with the view that I'd redo it later with Lounge Lizard. But we both liked it so much that I kept it in. A funky little VST called Ticky Clav was used for the clavinet parts. Sampling duty was taken over by Shortcircuit Sampler. Additional percussion came once again from the Alesis SR-16,
and a tambourine recorded in-studio.

Audio: (Soon!)

4. Side A (Suite) [bonus track] is a continuous-mix of all three tracks. Even though the tracks are designed to blend seamlessly, not every media player takes this into account, so we decided to provide this bonus track so the listener can hear the e.p. as intended.

Audio: (Soon!)

I asked Jimmy if he had anything to contribute to this post, and he provided this short-but-sweet message for our listeners:

"Enjoy the beat, enjoy the music! May it bring back fond memories, and let you make new ones, with 'Disco Antenna'. XOXOXO."

Stay tuned for more video and mixes from us in coming weeks!

Promo Videos: The Mechanicals (Part 2)

I took a short break from my single releases to illustrate a couple of tracks from 2012's 'The Mechanicals' e.p. I've had some of the video footage 'in the can' since I completed the release but never got around to editing it. I'm glad I waited, because I ended up shooting some extra footage that greatly improved the visuals.

First up, here's The Mechanicals (Part 2). I decided to go with monochrome for this one, to reflect the mood of the piece.

Video:

Secondly, The Mechanicals (Part 2) [End Of The World Remix], which was a collaboration with my friend Jimmy 'Jamz' Aaron. Since the track has a lot more energy to it and uses a lot of the same footage, I chose to keep it in colour.

Video:

For those of you that are interested in such things, the mechanical devices seen in these videos are a hand-cranked rolling mill, a vintage Remington 12 typewriter (which can be seen in this post), and a vintage electric sewing machine (the make and model of which escapes me at the moment). They were filmed with a Nikon D7000 (as are all my videos of late) with an 18-55mm kit lens and a 40mm macro.

Thanks to: Jimmy for the collaboration, my dad for the use of the rolling mill, and my uncle for the use of the typewriter.

You can, of course, still purchase The Mechanicals e.p. via my bandcamp page, and read all about it in this post.

Review: The Mechanicals

My e.p. 'The Mechanicals' has been reviewed by Mark Barton in Tales From The Attic Volume XI. His missive is a regular feature in the independent music and culture webzine God Is In The TV. Here's what he had to say about it:

Somewhere here after a casual rifling through cyberspace we happened across this little curio. A soundtrack no less for ‘the mechanicals’ story distributed by broken sea audio recorded and composed by the Manitou better known to kith and kin as British Columbia based musician Joshua M Blanc. Classic BBC Radiophonic Workshop fair is what you get for your time and due diligence albeit updated and eyed from a mid 90‘s Warp-esque minimalist craft, a perfect companion for those of you who managed to nab yourselves a copy of Ochre’s very excellent ’music from the tenth planet’ set from a few years back and I dare say that very excellent ’the séance at hobs lane’ outing from mount Vernon arts lab. Steeled in chilled atmospherics that creep with a tension seeped carnival-esque sense of the sinister, there’s a playful fondness for that old school hide behind the settee flavouring seeping out of these cosmic fairground sounds as though an Orbital c. ‘the box‘ and latter career Add N to X had been re-visioned by Raymond Scott whilst peeking through the eyes of the Barron‘s especially on the opening ‘the mechanicals – part 1‘. Etched in sparseness and couched in hymnal chorals ice chipped in detachment ’part 2’ is hollowed with the same analogue artistry as befitted the work of landscape whilst ’insufficient data’ is detailed with an ominously spectral wood folk chill factor that imagines Philippe Petit located in some servile mechanoid nightmare dosed up on a claustrophobic soundscape icily chimed to a meeting of Carpenter and Goldsmith minds. Creepily cool in short. http://themanitou.bandcamp.com/

The Mechanicals: Technical Commentary

Here's some technical commentary on the tracks from The Mechanicals e.p.:

The Mechanicals (Part 1)
Written to accompany a scene in a devastated spaceship. I started with the percussion: a hand-clap recorded in an old concrete loading bay (see this post) and a piece of 2.5" steel pipe being struck. The former was pitch-shifted an octave lower. Some minimal piano added bass to the track, and from there I added several layers of synthesizer. The bulk of the sounds were created on the Novation K-Station and feature two oscillators ring-modulated against each other. This is best illustrated by the deep bass sound with a wobble to it, and some of the sounds on the bridge section. The K-Station is also responsible for the white-noise percussion elements. A second bass sound, with a delay effect, was provided by the Arturia Minimoog V. The string sound with the rising attack and slow decay was made on the Roland HS-60, which seems well-suited to producing this kind of sound. The rest of the robotic and percussive sounds are sampled from a modified VTech Talking Whiz Kid, and modified PSS-140 keyboard. This kind of minimal electronic piece was something of a departure for me, and I'd like to write more in this vein.

The Mechanicals (Part 2)



I took an aborted bridge section from Part 1, built on it, and this is the result. I also wanted to illustrate the mechanicals concept lyrically. Since I didn't have to worry about clashing with dialogue, I filled up a lot more space in the mix. The Minimoog V makes a return, playing a different melody, and the K-Station provides most of the other synthesizer parts, including bass and lead sounds. The HS-60 adds a much subtler string sound: the best place to hear it is during the first break, accompanying the choir. EastWest Orchestra provides the choir, backing up three layers of my own voice saturated with reverb. My vocals on the verses are both raw and fed through the K-Station's vocoder. Singing backup is the AnalogX SayIt speech synthesizer, both untreated and fed through a granular plugin called Tweakbench Pudding. On the bridge section are several layers of my voice through the Roland SP-404's ring modulator effect. Modified Speak & Spell and Talking Whiz Kid samples can be heard as percussion and melodic elements throughout. As I wrote this 'on spec,' I was very pleased that parts of it were used in Stevie's Doctor Who production.

Insufficient Data
Written to accompany a scene in an abandoned technological structure on an alien planet. My initial concept was to base the track around humming electricity. To that end, I created a sound on the HS-60 not unlike the 60hz hum made by unshielded equipment plugged into 110volt mains voltage. Several attempts were made to find a suitable accompanying melody before the three-note piano motif and square-wave answering melody (courtesy of the K-Station) presented themselves. I intended to keep the track minimal, but during a percussion session in Fruity Loops I threw all sorts of rhythm elements into the mix that changed the whole feel of the track. These were mostly sourced from the modified Speak & Spell. A few Whiz Kid samples provide some eerie atmosphere on the intro, which I liken to the sounds of ages-old computers running forgotten programs for untold millenia. The timpani/kettle drum is from EastWest Orchestra, and the bass drum (with reverse reverb) is an old staple created on the K-Station. This ended up even more 'outside the box' than Mechanicals Part 1, and I'm very happy with it.

The Mechanicals (Part 2) [End Of The World Mix]



My friend Jimmy 'Jamz' Aaron sent me a rough remix of Mechanicals Part 2 he made by setting it to a new drum and rhythm track. This prompted a collaboration to produce it properly. I took out a lot of the original parts to give his heavier percussion more space. On the 21st of December (Apocalypse Day) I was inspired to add some entirely new synthesizer parts. The repeating melody that comes in under the verse was the first. It clashed somewhat with the original lead line, so I dropped the latter completely. In one of those serendipitous moments, a new lead presented itself and gelled immediately. Some resonant stabs from the HS-60 and some extra percussion elements from Jimmy's camp finished the track off. The entire remix was completed in four days, and both of us were thrilled with the result.

Digital E.P.: The Mechanicals

The trilogy of experimental robot music tracks I wrote for Doctor Who: Centurion is available on my bandcamp page. The track listing is as follows:

1. The Mechanicals (Part 1)
2. The Mechanicals (Part 2)
3. Insufficient Data
4. The Mechanicals (Part 2) [End Of The World Mix]

Running time: 21:03

The remix was a last-minute addition that my good friend Jimmy 'Jamz' Aaron and I cooked up over the Mayan Apocalypse (hence the title). It really took the track to another level.

Stay tuned for some track-by-track commentary.