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: Cathode Ray

Fourth in my series of free singles is Cathode Ray / U235. These both lean towards the experimental, so they were a lot of fun to put together. There's nothing like unleashing your 'mad scientist' side in the studio!

Bandcamp player:

Cathode Ray opens with a march-like rhythm created from snippets of a sample & hold patch on the Korg Monotribe. The Monotribe also provides a recurring bleepy filter sequence. A bassline, drone, and some percussion sounds recorded from a Toshiba radio form the backbone of the track. The Alesis SamplePad was used to sequence some Speak & Spell percussion and tom-toms. Novation K-Station adds some extra percussive sounds. I manipulated my voice with the Marantz PMD201 tape recorder to create the spoken word part. A very nice VST called Lounge Lizard provides the electric piano.

I should point out that the TV featured in the artwork is exactly as I found it. No TV's were harmed (by me) in the making of this e.p.!

Audio:

Video:

I did something a little different with the video this time. It's shot entirely with a 40mm macro lens and features some of the instruments and devices I used to make the music. My tin robot 'Mini Radiocon,' which you might recognise from the cover of 'Let's Build Mecha!', also makes an appearance.

U235 was the first track I made for the new album project, and my first experiment with the Korg Monotribe. Once I had a patch and a sequence programmed, I recorded several live improvisations, cut them into chunks, and assembled them into a track. I then created various percussion sounds on Roland HS-60, TAL U-NO-LX, and K-Station, and added in a snare from the Yamaha MR-10. HS-60 provides some other synth sounds, more Monotribe was overdubbed, and K-Station and Yamaha CS01 also provide some melodies. Electric guitar can be heard on the ambient sections (backwards). My voice was once again pitch-shifted with the Marantz PMD201.

The title refers to the only fissionable isotope of uranium to occur in nature. In the film A Is For Atom, which I sampled for Isotopes For All, U235 is represented by a frenetic cartoon character. The bouncy arpeggio reminded me of that.

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New Equipment: Korg MS-20 Mini

The Korg MS-20 was produced from 1978-83 and has since become something of a legendary synthesizer. The brand new (as of this writing) MS-20 Mini is a complete recreation in a slightly smaller housing, with the addition of very simple MIDI implementation (it has MIDI In to allow sequencing, nothing more). The basics: it is analog, monophonic; has two oscillators, one LFO, and two filters (high & low pass). It's also semi-modular in that certain functions can be re-wired or patched-in via the patch panel on the right-hand side of the synth.

In 2002 I bought my first proper synthesizer: the Novation K-Station. It's a fantastic machine but at the time I found it exceedingly complex. While it has a wealth of hands-on control, a great deal of its parameters are hidden in the menu system. As I've come to learn its ins-and-outs, it's proven its versatility and I still use it as my main instrument. But circa 2005 I wanted to get my hands on something simpler in order to get to grips with basic synthesis.

The K-Station, a true workhorse.

This led to a search for such an instrument, and among the contenders was the MS-20. Unfortunately it was long out of production, and I'd missed out on the 'great analog purge' of the late '80s early '90s, when analog gear was practically being thrown away in favour of digital. By this time analog was back in vogue and the MS-20 was fetching upwards of $2000 USD. So, after much consideration I settled for a Yamaha CS-5. It only had one oscillator, but its design was such that it had oodles of character. It was simple and easy to use, and it helped me get to grips with synthesis and the K-Station. Being of a vintage, and I suspect mistreated by its former owner, the CS-5 failed within a short time. The handful of songs I made with it are among my favourites, and for a long time there was a void in the studio that couldn't be filled.

Alas, poor Yorick... the ill-fated CS5.

When the MS-20 Mini was announced I was understandably excited, and I pre-ordered it the first chance I got. The demand for it was such that it took 11 months to arrive. It has not only filled the gap left by the CS-5 in my sound palette, but expanded it to undreamt of horizons. You will no doubt be hearing a lot from it in the coming months.

The day of its arrival. The postlady dropped it and ran away (I kid ye not).

Sound exploration in progress!

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.

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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.

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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Digital Single: Isotopes For All

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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Audio (album version):


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.

Slideshow: Rust And Bones

Now that I'm getting a handle on this whole video thing, I'm illustrating some older material and posting it on Youtube. First up is a mix of video and still images accompanying my ambient track 'Rust And Bones' from the 'Let's Build Mecha!' e.p.

It features photographs from two locations shot on my wanderings in 2012. Burnt and rusted car parts, and an entire car body with the twisted remains of a bicycle on top that had been torched like some Pagan effigy. The car in question has since been hauled away, so these photos serve as a document to its downfall.

Perhaps this presentation will give you a glimpse into what inspires my music and art.