Weekly Beats 43 (Pius)

I’ve managed to do it yet again and forget to update my site about my weekly beats project. I will be putting them up throughout this week again to catch up.

On Week 43 I was doing a lot of travelling and didn’t have a lot of time in front of a computer let alone my studio. So instead I decided to do the whole track inside the OP1. It started with the Organ sound and its chord structure and I slowly layered other instrumentation on top to create a self-reflective and sombre track I hope you enjoy it:

TOTW: Bing And Ruth_ The Towns We Love Is Our Town

As you may be aware I’m a huge fan of anything Piano, I’m also a fan of ambient music. So mixing those two together will always get me exited.

Tomorrow Was The Golden Age is a new album by Bing and Ruth and manages to do just that so find yourself a quiet hour, sit back, put on some headphones and immerse yourself in the beautiful world of stretched out classical instrumentation and wide ambiences:

TOTW: Boreland_phillipa’s secret

I have been Listening to Boreland for a while now, they have always impressed me with their sound design and lush use of synths with a dark lining.

Over this year they have released two albums under the name OMAR and the final track from the first of the two entitled Philipa’s Secret stands out as one of the best. The rich vocal pad sounds and arpeggiated synth lines are right up my street and it manages to do them whilst still holding the albums overall darker themes.

Weekly Beats 42 (Moth On A Train)

This Track track it’s made up of two parts. A mix of both the OP1 and a Nintendo 3DS. The first Two minutes focus mostly on OP1 samples and then after the two-minute mark a more freeform and alternative sound comes out of the use of the M01 software for the 3DS.

Weekly Beats 41 (41 Weeks, 2 Cuts, 7 Stitches)

I picked up the Korg DSN-12 piece of software for Nintendo this week and decided to make a track using the software. All sounds are from the DSN-12 exported into ableton live for mixing together.

It’s amazing the amount of textures you can now get from musical equipment that is available on devices so portable.

TOTW: John Beluchi_ Guilty

I’m a big fan of the Blues Brothers but this track stands on its own. Maybe in hindsight the track feels more poignant due to John Beluchis personal experiences and death which seem to be intimately reviled in the track. But I also think it’s these experiences that enable him to deliver the lyrics with an authenticity that make it so powerful for me:

TOTW: Crystal Castles_’Baptism’

On hearing Crystal Castles had broken up last week I got a bit nostalgic and gave their albums a listen through.

I managed to see them live four times. Two of those gigs were easily in my top ten and one of which was one of the worst I’ve been to, I think it sums up the band quite well. They were bottled lighting, trying things that were always different and when it did work it reminds me of the descriptions of the punk movement in the 70’s. Anarchistic youthful rebellion wrapped up in a sound scape that forced you to either be in the gang or out.

I’m most certainly In that gang. When I look back at their catalogue Baptism stands out as to me as the perfect introduction to their work. It has everything that made them great, The video game style synths, the screeching vocals of Alice Glass and the hard compressed repetitive drums all make for a unique and exiting work: