I’m pleased to announce that Moving Furniture Records has release my latest piece. Here is what Sietse has to say about it.
“Most important news item for now is the release of the amazing album Broadcasting on Ghost Frequencies by Erstlaub.
After several releases on the London based label Highpoint Lowlife we get the opportunity to present a next work that explores more of the dark moody drones world this Scottish musician lives in.
Broadcasting on Ghost Frequencies is an album you really don’t want to miss out on; inspired by the Ganzfeld Procedure where the participant is deprived of visual stimulus and bombarded with white/pink noise drawing the mind to form patterns in the chaos often hearing voices from the past or inventing entirely new constructs within their consciousness, this release pays tribute to the parapsychological mind and its many wonders.
As usual, the album is limited to 100 copies and available through our shop here or through the EAR/Rational website.”
The piece was recorded in one take on my Nord G2 Engine using a Behringer BCR2000 controller plus my trusty Boss DD20 and RE20 Pedals to allow me to change environments on the Nord without the audio dropping. There is a little bit of mastering compression on the final output but other than that it’s free of any editing or post-processing.
You can stream it in its entirety for free from LastFm and Bandcamp
It’s limited to 100 pieces and you can pick up your copy for just ‚Ǩ6 which is just over a fiver, it hardly even counts as costing money so show some love and get it while it’s hot straight from here.
Cheers to Sietse for giving me the platform to put this piece out.
There’s is already plenty of schtick around about its concept etc. but I figured I’d just make a little post about my experience.
Ruaridh actually turned me onto MPD Psycho a few years ago now after a relatively messy night out which resulted in us sitting watching a few post club episodes. I was immediately sold on the equal doses of detective thriller/comedy/supernatural psychodrama and genuine what the fuckery and picked up the rest of the series shortly after.
I remember getting quite excited when Ruaridh mentioned the concept and asked if I would be interested in pitching in and even more so when the rest of the guests, Dave Production Unit/Dirty Hope, Chris Dooks and Tom Konx-om-pax slotted into place.
We were each to pick out a 10 minute-ish chunk of time to focus on but I elected to let everyone else pick theirs first, as I already knew the episode we were soundtracking and from having done a fair amount of audiovisual sctick with Somniscope and the Sugihara projects that I was happy enough to work to anything that I would end up with.
After getting my timeslot (I’ll let you try and figure out my main section from listening to the release) I had a few false starts and abandoned ideas for using treated source audio (some of which is still clogging up my 404 Sampler) I decided to pull it back around to my usual way of working and create underlying mood along with some directly literal sound cues tied to the scenes.
Performance day rolled around in no time, I clearly remember the trains being off due to works so I had to get the bus through to Glasgow, with it being a Sunday and transport from Perth being lame, I ended up through wellll early and made my way along to the Ivy where I sat and blind-built a G2 Patch to be used in a send/return loop on the mixer allowing me to fiddle about with incoming streams on the fly. There was another Triptych event on in the Ivy in the afternoon that mostly involved some folky sorts gently tickling guitars and banjos being witnessed by a clutch of bad jumper/bearded twunts who took umbrage at people asking the bar staff for a drinks order in anything other than the meekest of whispers.
By the time we were set-up and ready to go, I had probably one of the most severe migraines I’ve had, it was a proper dizzy, about to throw up episode but, on with the show eh? We got down to brass tacks. I remember the moment of realization that this was it, 4 people (plus Chris’s parts ready to be played via MP3 Player due to Illness/Diary malfunction, I don’t recall which) with isolated ideas all throwing their lot into the ring with little idea of the outcome. There were moments of unscripted injunctions, textures and colours coming from unexpected, still unknown places all forming together into an amorphous ball of sound driven along, keeping pace with the visuals both in mood and timing (give or take in a few places).
I used my G2 Engine being controlled by an Evolution UC33e as it has a smaller footprint and is bus powered. The UC33 managed to lose its shit within the first 5 minutes sending all my fairly abstract midi mapping into the ether. I did manage to reassign all my control numbers on the fly but It was pretty frustrating and nerve wracking at the time (I blame the Curse of Marcia for that one). Completists/archivists can take note that this was the first time I played live that I used my Macbook Pro to keep an eye on my patches rather than the old Toshiba doorstop that I’d been dragging around.
It was a really enjoyable experience (if you forget the headsplitting pain during/afterwards) and I love the fact that there are some definable elements by each artist but on the whole, it took on a life of its own and definitely ended up being more than just a sum of its parts.
Buy it now direct from Highpoint Lowlife, with TVO being this season’s big thing, I don’t expect the limited run of 100 physical copies will stretch very far.
Oh, and look out a copy of the first episode of Miike’s wonderful MPD Psycho and play them together for the full Wizard of Oz / Dark Side of the Moon experience.
more release news coming very soon.
Hertz
D
Watching: W, Central Bazaar, Seinfeld
Reading: Cormac McCarthy – The Road, Haruki Murakami – Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Listening: The Village Orchestra – I can Hear the Sirens Singing Again, Mono – Hymn To The Immortal Wind, William Basinski – 92982, Seaworthy – 1987, Soisong – xAj3z
