Friday, June 01, 2018

Blunted and One Dropped

Sticking with the dub vibe from the last post, this week's release is a rework of a recorded idea for a reggae rhythm section that I put together in 2008.

This was originally just a 2 minute progression, layering instrumentation over an eight bar loop.  It didn't get further at the time, but I always felt it was a solid sound with a bit of potential.  I have cleaned up a very beefy low end and added a bit of detail, in keeping with my love of cinematic sounds.  I have also added a 2 minute dub at the half way mark with all manner of crazy echoes, feedback and reverbs.

This tune came about from a series of sessions I did after reading an interview with UK band Doves, with their release of "Kingdom of Rust".  Supposedly, they had read a book for overcoming writer's block and had adapted the method for the recording of the album.  The technique involved taking the time to set up a studio environment with instruments, recording gear and software templates, and then scheduling a single day where the aim was to record one song, every hour, for ten hours.  My understanding is that many of the fruits of this experiment made it on to the final cut.

(At the time of writing, a pretty quick search of google can't turn up the article, nor the book they were talking about.  This could therefore be complete nonsense, but at least it makes for an interesting backstory).

I never had ten hours to commit to such a task, but in the spirit of experimenting, I set up a recording template and a bunch of instruments, and decided to spend one hour, five days a week, for two weeks, recording a single song every hour.  The results were of enormous variety, and on re-listening ten years later I can hear the tension between my need to experiment and also the need to contain that experiment within some kind of structure.  With luck I'll release more of these in a future edition.

The original sounds came again from my Korg N synth, a Roland XP synthesiser, my old imitation SG bass, all recorded into Cubase SX.  For the re-mix I recorded a new pad part, then sampled a few sections to create a loop, and the dub version was a hybrid of performance and editing.