journal

demo mp3: Skating on Europa
[update: file removed but you can check out some mp3s from the new album here]

The inspiration for this tune was a strange message left on my answering machine. The message itself is the odd distorted voice at the beginning of the piece. That is the unprocessed sound of the message. No idea what the guy is saying, but it sounded like a telemarketer calling from orbit. But as soon as I heard the message I knew I was going to run some mic cables upstairs and record it.

The rest of the piece has a rather jammy/spacerock feel to it. The basic drum programming, guitar and bass tracks were written and recorded very quickly. Then I spent a lot of time working on the synth parts, which had I left a lot of space for. I wanted the keyboards to have a real old school feel to them. So I spent some time really learning how to use my Artura Minimoog plug in, particularly controlling the filters with the knobs on my midi controller in real time. There was a lot of trial and error but I finally came up with a collection of sounds and got the feel I was looking for. And there is some melotron in there for good measure as well.

This one is gonna take forever to mix down I think.

As for the graphic at the top of this post, just my little photoshop contribution to the world of ipod parody images. And it fits this tune rather well.

So that is 4 tunes & 50 minutes of music I have completed. I'd like to have one more song on the album and I have a few options I'm mulling over on that.