My first time seriously attempting techno after being inspired by using an impulse wave as a sample, hence the name. I recorded me using note repeat on my MPK mini plus and added some backing drums. I need to properly master it still and maybe change some things here and there but honestly I think this is the most professional sounding song I've made in a while.
Synthesis remains an incredibly fulfilling activity, and I think it explains why guitar effects is the aspect of guitarmusic I find myself drawn to the most. I'm glad to have a Microfreak in my hands again, especially since my knowledge on how to build synth patches has only grown since last year when I owned it.
There will be a lot more music coming, so Watch This Space.
Trying to get some mileage out of the TD-3 since it’s my only synth right now, and wanted to try a live jam that WASN’T acid. Really happy with how this turned out, especially because I did it DAWless.
Once I get my interface I promise audio quality will be MUCH better.
Deciding where to end an album can sometimes be the easiest part of the process or the hardest, and an album such as Virgins surely required a lot of forethought. Every song aims to haunt the listener and experience the strongest emotions possible; grief, terror, awe. To unceromoniously dump the listener out of the experience would almost certainly sour the previous tracks, but a slow comedown from an album full of evocation of primal experiences would risk feeling out of place or condescending.
The album, in a way, attempts to do both, and I honestly think it needed to. As wonderful and terror-inducing the first half of the album was, it's hard to shake the feeling that it exists as a roadmap, leading to the final destination in "Amps, Drugs, Harmonium". As sonically compressed as that song is, the sheer overwhelming force of woodwind, violin, and choppy edited snippets of their arrangements is enough to risk making the rest of the experience superfluous. Like an ancient entity sitting in the middle of a busy city center, life must go on, but you must respect it being there.
I'm getting ahead of myself though, I will talk about "ADH" and its sister track "Incense at Abu Ghraib" later on.
I want to talk about how the album ends, not what leads to the ending. I want to talk about how the beast dies.
"Stab Variation" is the final track of this album, following a mostly peaceful pair of tracks in "Stigmata I & II". Those tracks felt like an eye of a storm; reflective, yet bracing. "Stab Variation" is by far the most outwardly violent track on the album, and not just because of the name. Every echoed synth stab feels like a wooden beam breaking. The album attempts to reach its older swelling of electronics, horns, and operaic pads, but gets sucked away in the flurry of distortion, reversed samples of piano pedals and other percussive noises, and the delay that they ride the storm out on.
It takes until halfway through the six minute track to even recognize what it was that the storm was destroying. What sounds were once censored come out in full force, and they are absolutely mournful. The remaining three minutes are a comedown, a gradual descent into resignation. Instruments gradually calm down before finally breathing their last, and a soft compressed static of whatever instruments stuck around (synthetic strings combining into an indecipherable wail) fades the album away, like rain dripping down from a damaged rooftop.
It's my least favorite track on the album, but I think that's only because it's a furious end following an album of emotional exhaustion. On its own, it's a fantastic piece. Following 40 minutes of equally fantastic pieces, it's tempting to shut the album off, feeling like you saw all of its tricks. I implore you not to. It had a mighty task ahead of it, and I think it's unfair to shoot the messenger. It's the neighbor running inside for cover, holding you close and hiding your head as everything around you crumbles, and sitting with you as you both look at the broken world around you. It didn't cause the end, it just saw it coming first.