Thursday, June 19, 2014

Crack Concrete


This release is the result of little ''experiments'' I made this week.

''Noisy Neighbor'' is a ''noise-hop'' track that samples the track ''Oh Brian Dibb'' by the Nihilist Spasm Band (album No Record, released on Allied Record Corporation in 1968). The noise part is piezo mic => Fuzz Factory + Super Crunch Box + Octave One + Memory Boy + EQ.

''Touch A Bird'' (because I was reading an interview by Hüsker Dü in which they mentioned Birds Of Fire by Mahavishnu Orchestra so I was listening to that just before making this track) is a drone made with this set-up=

White noise => Fuzz Factory + Super Crunch Box + Grunge pedal + Memory Boy + EQ

on top of which I play a contact-mic'd Tibetan bowl through the Super Crunch Box with quite a bit of reverb and delay added.

''Grit'' is a completely different thing. Recently I made a hip-hop instrumental sampling AMM, this time I wanted to make a funky, gritty boom-bap beat by sampling some European free improv thing.

I chose a quite emblematic one, Topography Of The Lungs by the trio of Evan Parker, Derek Bailey and Han Bennink, released on Incus Records in 1970. All the sounds on ''Grit'' (except the scratching) were sampled from the 1st track on this album, namely ''Titan Moon''.



With ''Soaked'' I wanted to see what happens when a harsh noise wall is done with ''too much'' FX. I have already talked at length here about my opinion on effects like reverb and delay in HNW on this blog so I won't start again... All I'll say is that with this track I wanted to see what happens when you overdo it haha.

The set-up for this track is :

Radio (not tuned to static, just random short-wave radio talk) => Dream Crusher + 4 Eyes + Harmonise + Super Crunch Box + Metal Muff (nano) + Memory Boy + Boss Reverb + EQ

I used the fuzz pedals with ''light'' settings as to let some of the radio's mid and high frequencies bleed into the track because I thought it would be more interesting with the FX treatment.

The Metal Muff is set on minimal distortion.

Everything on the Memory Boy is at a maximum, except the feedback knob because if it were all hell would break loose (I mean a short and fixed feedback loop...)

The Reverb is on ''Hall'' with time at 75%. That's a lot of reverb...

I tried to keep a crunch going on and not smoothe it out completely with the fx. The result sounds like it was recorded with a mic from a different room, almost like an old-school bootleg, which I like a lot. The fx makes lot of harmonics come out of the wall, which is more or less what I had in mind when I made this track.

Listen / Download HERE

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