The Espion Archive (1994-present)“Every artist was first an
amateur.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I'll be posting up a track from the Espion Archives every once in a while, subscribe to my blog to be notified!
Latest Track::The latest track is
'Salient/Sardine', as mentioned earlier in the archive. Two ideas made into one, to give the track more evolution, and something for the listener to look forward to. :) Written entirely on hardware.
Previous Tracks::The latest track is my remix of
'Dr. Air - Number 47', which I did for him during the days that we did Super Scientists together. I remixed this because I loved the spooky melody - really deep and disorientating. He really captured that vibe well in his music. Psychedelic. I added the robot voice, sequenced it in time with the beat, counting up to when the track kicks in. This track was a favourite on Mark Henning's Clevermusic back in 2003, when Dr. Air and I were doing a lot of minimal and experimental tracks. I still think this track could do well even now.
'Interfere', an experimentalchillout track in 6/8 time signature. The idea was to come up with a completely new melody and chord structure, and fit it in with an unusual time signature for electronica. The result is an ice cold, cavernous track, which was originally only 04:10 mins long, but was extended because so many people thought it was too good a track to end so soon. Lots of reverb, lots of thought, and lots of tweaking to get this track just right. I've also put in the 2006 techno remix of this track (which contains a sample of Michael Meyer - 'Love is Stronger Than Pride' - used by request), which was planned to be released along with MKYF, but it never happened.
'Extempore', a drum n bass and electric guitar idea. All guitar performed by me, sliced up in parts, restructured.. The main distorted riff was the original concept for this track, and it was recorded LIVE, so those clicks and pops are caused by triggering mixing desk channels on and off, and the dub section at the end is all carefully controlled by sending aux to the effects, looping the signal back into itself and controlling the harmonics any time they get too distorted. This track is at 96Khz for streaming purposes. The original could do with being re-mastered.
'Sterlise' : This track was created using Cubase on the Atari STe, Akai S2000 sampler, Roland SP808ex, Zoom 1201 and RFX 2000 effects units. Each idea within this track evolved from the original bassline at the beginning; the filtered arpeggio at 00:38 was the main loop that the track was written around, and variations of the bassline (pitched, filtered, etc) weave in and out of the beats. The section at 02:48 is the bassline going through a chain of effects, being triggered live through the desk. There is an entire minidisc full of sound experiments created during this tracks' production, and the loops that appear in this track are the best and weirdest sounds I made from the parts I was working with.
'Sardine' : This was one of the earliest electronica tracks I ever wrote, sometime around 1994/95. The original melody ideas were performed on a Goldstar GEK-S230 GM Keyboard, and I kept the synth patch for the first melody that comes in, and used other synths for the rest in this re-edited version of the track, produced in 2001.
This track was also the 'finale' for another I did at the same time, called 'Salient/Sardine' - the first idea (Salient) evolved through differnt patterns, with a breakdown, followed by 'Sardine'. It was at a time when I wanted tracks to have elements that the listener would look forward to, rather than hearing the first two minutes, and then that's it -you've heard it all. Nonetheless, I prefered the melody layers to 'Sardine' and went ahead making it a track in its own right.
The main synths and basslines were all recorded live (playing the keys and filtering on mixing desk, while being recorded onto minidisc along to a beat playing on the sequencer on a separate channel), and then the 'good' bits were resampled into the sampler. So, no quanitisation, and even a little mistake at 05:28 that I kept in :)
'Emptiness' : Nothing too demanding here. Something for the minimal lovers among you. This was a quick idea that really just builds and drops, with little microsamples here and there, to (possibly) satisfy Richie Hawtin and his disciples.
'Mindtour' : Quite simply - inspired by Luke Vibert. Started a groove that just sounded too 'normal' at the regular groove, so I shifted it about to give it a bit more funk, and started jamming on the Korg Mono/Poly :) Short and sweet! Love this track.
'Lotos' : This track was made almost entirely out of vocal samples. Everything except the guitar and the ride cymbal. All the sounds are heavily processed through ring modulation, filters, pitch, lo-fi and more, so they are barely recognisable as my voice at all! This track is the end product of a 20 minute experiment with a microphone and multi effects units, resampled, structured, looped, and made into a tune! The guitar is also performed by me.
'Deceit Seq' : This track, written shortly after a relationship ended (which was a sequence of deceit!), was created with samples from a film soundtrack, rearranged, pitched, etc to create something new, and the plink melody was played live, recycled and restructured in Sony Acid 4 (hence the 'trills'). This is the 2nd mix of this track - this one has a better beat than the original.
Comments and feedback appreciated.