The band features Matthias Bossi, Carla Kihlstedt, Jon Evans, Emily Hope Price, Jeremy Udden as well as many others. The instrumentation includes a core rock band (guitar, drums, vocals, synths/bass) joined by an ensemble of strings, winds, and brass. I hope to bring video updates of each session as they come, which will be posted here.

Acid Washed

Thanks, Spotify. While you may only pay artists .02 pennies every time I listen to one of their tracks, you are enabling junkies like me to find new music with little to no effort. This is one of those.  I clicked on Mr. Oizo’s related artists, and these guys came up. I don’t think they sound much like Oizo, but ho hum. They are rad.

Bot’ox

This is a little more weird, a little less dancefloor.. quite good (if you click this, listen at least past 3:00).

Lindstrøm & Christabelle

No, these folks aren’t French. Gys hipped me to Lindstrøm a while back, and I listened this record for weeks on end. I even hooked a few other people on it.  Coming back to it now.  On first listen you might find this track totally cheesy, or tongue in cheek. Too bad. You take yourself too seriously (Yeah, I’m guilty of that almost all the time). But come on. This is totally sexy, and almost perfectly produced. I say almost because I would never let that guitar solo stay. I spent too many years listening to Low to get behind guitar solos.

And I must post this one, because of this bassline.

Principles of Geometry

Another group I found via Mr. Oizo. They did a remix of Z, which is one of my favorite jams. I will not make the Boards of Canada reference.

Joakim

I knew nothing about this guy until 20 minutes ago, and now I’ve watched a studio walk through of his space and I feel like I know him. I dig how unassuming his attitude towards gear is. I won’t make the LCD Soundsystem reference.

SebastiAn

Digging this.

Get it directly from Tzadik, from Amazon, and I’m sure it’s on iTunes which I don’t use.

Mr. Gnome

This was my theme song for the month of January.

Brian McBride

This whole record is great. I’m positive I will be posting more of his music in the Listening Jail.

Slint

I learned of Slint from a Heavy Vegetable lyric – “they don’t play slint on the radio.” It’s almost true.  WMBR has played Slint only three times in 2011.  This record came out in 1991.  20 years ago.  If only I had heard this then.  Killing.

The Angels of Light

It’s so hard to choose one song from this record. I usually listen to the whole thing every time I put it on.

Eric Burdon & The Animals

I used to listen to this LP as a kid, and I never made it past this track.  I finally found it on youtube, and here it is.  That bass sound is insane. I could listen to 2:26 to the end forever.  Kind of out of character for me, but man I dig this.

Nest

I saw a link to this record on some random music blog, and decided to check it out.  Often times I get weirded out by ambient music.  I’m often very skeptical of the craft involved in it – how much of the enjoyment is brought to the party by the listener vs the performers. whether it’s just some folks wonking out for 40 minutes, or if there is real purpose and drive behind the music.  A wise friend of mine once gave me great advice on this topic: “Do you like it?” Yes. I do like this. This is from a 4-song EP and I generally listen to the whole thing at once.  Also check out this track. Excellent piano part.

Siriusmo

Ok, so I happened on one of his tracks via a related video on a Mr. Oizo track.  Since that moment I have pretty much listened to nothing but Siriusmo.  Basically he has seemingly endless nasty techno tracks, and millions of slamming disco house tracks.  And they all kill.  It’s production like this that makes me feel like I’m in the stone ages.

He is seriously good, and not just for the techno heads.

Anyway, insanely bad ass.  I had to choose one track to put down here as the main video.  It wasn’t easy.

No. Scratch that. I had to post two vids. This is the sound of me blasting along in a Porsche 928 with brown leather driving gloves and a light blue oblong duffel bag full of brand new white T-Shirts.  Too specific?

And go listen to that Zombie Nation remix – it is an absolute beast. (Click on the word “Nasty”)

Mr Oizo

Always a favorite of mine – I had missed this record when it came out.  Catching up on it now.  I wanted to link up the track “Ska”, but copyright infringement on youtube keeps me from doing so.  This is also a stellar track.

Our Broken Garden

This is one of those songs that I could have gone either way on – it’s either absolute brilliance, or way too cheesy. What took me towards brilliance is imagning this in a live setting – where the production would be much more sloppy and gritty.  If I heard this song at a live show I would buy the record. Oh, and if you want to hear the studio version it’s here. Also check out this song – also live.

Catherine Ribeiro

She rocks.  Apparently she was one of the French Chanteuses singing folk/pop music in the 60′s.  If I’m going there, it’s usually Francoise Hardy. My money is on her freakout stuff with 2bis and Alpes. The record with 2bis is one of my all-time favorites, and is high on my list of recommended listening for people looking for inspiration. This is from a different project (I think) with a group called Alpes. Killing

Hanne Hukkelberg

Yeah. Bad Ass. Absolutely ridiculous. Her first record was on heavy rotation on my iPod for at least a solid year, and then fell by the wayside. I accidentally skipped her second, and thanks to Spotify have been catching up on a lot of stuff, Hanne included. I strongly suggest checking out all of this stuff – inventive and heart-felt.

Charlotte Gainsbourg

I had totally dismissed Charlotte Gainsbourg for some reason. Bad idea. This record (IRM) has been growing on me. Reminds me a bit of the Wendy & Lisa record “Girl Bros.” Also check out the track “Trick Pony.”

Blonde Redhead

Eternal favorite of mine. Pretty much can do no wrong by me. I have not stopped listening to this record since it came out, mainly the last 4 songs.

Morena y Clara

I stumbled across this on tour last month. The video is spectacular. Yes.

Las Grecas

Also in the late 60′s/early 70′s Catalan funk era is this banger. Absolutely in love with the guitar in the intro. And the video.

Andy Stott

And now for something completely different. If you’re listening to this on iPod headphones or your computer speakers, just stop right now and go get a real set of headphones/speakers. Then turn it up. Yeah so the heavy side-chain compressor is a little played out, it doesn’t matter.  This is artful use of a technique and it serves the vibe. Also check out North to South from the same record.

1. That’s the Release I Needed (hopeful mix)
2. I Wanna Be a Packet Kiddie

Release date sometime in 2001.

DOWNLOAD

I have been writing electronic-based music since 1993, but I really only have a catalog of what I’ve done since 1998 or so.  Why am I posting this? because music is nothing if not heard, and granted I don’t get tons of visits on this site, but if people do listen to this music, I’ll be happy and the goal will have been achieved.  Also, I am constantly getting questions from my friends about old songs that I’ve done.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if even some of my close musical friends haven’t heard a lot of these tracks.

In rough chronological Order, so if you want to hear the more recent stuff, go to the end.

I Love Saturdays

Done in early 1998, this is a track written on a weekend when i didn’t want to do any other “real school work” like counterpoint or harmony. One of the other guys in the studio brought in his Nord Lead which I used for the synced lead sound. the piano was on an akai 12bit sampler that I resampled and looped backwards and forwards. That’s how i get the weird backwards piano stuff going on. The drums are all from a Korg 01-W. What a crap synth – but I own one, so I knew how to make it do some weird things. The distortion effect is wild. I wrote the “solo” melody at the end by slowing the tempo down a bit and just playing it. By now it sounds good to me, but I feel like it’s kinda wandering.

Dirt on Muh Shirt (falling)

I showed this track to a guy on an irc channel (#audiowarez anyone) and he thought i just sampled RDJ’s Selected Ambient Works II and called it my own. To me this sounds nothing like Aphex Twin. The melody is longer and more drawn out, and also his drum programming is much better than this. This was written right after I started skateboarding. I was falling a lot then. Gotta love the Oberheim 1000 lead sound. If only I still had one of those synths.

Chocolate

This was a hit in my electronic music class. It’s totally simple. I had two copies of the Propellerheads’ Rebirth running into some effects units. I then sampled them and played those samples by hand – which is why the timing sucks. We were doing a microtonal thing in class, so I retuned some of the synths. I really like the lick at the end – and have thought about using it in a mom’s tune. We’ll see. The juno always sounds funky when you run it in mono mode, like it’s phasing. probably is. Classic Roland D-50 bell sounds.

Am I Breathing?

This was a track I did with Joe Berger, a fellow classmate who has since become a staple of New York party throwing. This is perhaps the first slammin track I did. It was essentially the two of us improvising in Audiomulch and then editing what we did into some kind of “track” afterward. It sounded GREAT! at 3am in my dorm room, but rest assured my neighbors didn’t think so. Almost all of the effects are done by hand in a cracked copy of wavelab 2 point something. This is like Late 1998.

The Simplicity of Numb

Another Audiomulch track I did, this one was less improv, more zone out and vibe. I was in love with the sound of the Audiomulch bassline filter for a while, as you can see. Also this is the beginning of my love affair with delay. To this day I still love this track, something about how it evolves and releases. I love the sample of Ottorino Respighi’s Fountains of Rome in the middle. Totally doesn’t fit, but whatever.

So Soft

And welcome to the breakbeat. First time I ever did anything with a cut up drum beat. This track was done by Driving fruityloops with Opcode Vision, or the other way around. I had to listen to the track from the beginning every time because the sync sucked. I really still like the piano melody. But man, why did I not hear the sync issues. I think this is a genuine Moog bassline. God I loved that thing. I didn’t really know how to produce the end of this thing – I really wanted some huge sound happening, but it never really happened. At least I added the Bjorkian kick drums at the end. This was the first track of mine I ever heard on the radio, on WUNH’s Trancelab. Great show.

Burst of Flames – Militant Makeover Mix

Part of my lifting of some vocal samples from a friend’s group, Dufus!. I did these tracks all in an early version of Fruity loops. Production sucks, but I was having a lot of fun. The TS404 used to sound so much cooler, and you could get some great sine-synth sounds out of it. I wish the new version still behaved the same way. I feel like these tracks really show how I came to enjoy layering sounds without taking anything away. That’s really all they are.

Leave it Blank

I played this song live once. It was great. People hated it. I don’t remember what the sax sample is, it might be of a Terry Riley piece. Awful bass sound. I think this track really made me realize I needed synths like I had in the Electronic Music Lab. I like the drums though. All these tracks were done in the summer of 99. I was living in Dover, NH working on an organic farm. I’d go to the beach after work and try to surf in the dark, and then come home and work on tracks in my headphones.

Frothy – Imploding Frat Boy Mix

Ditto above, just different vocal samples and a completely different feel. Fruty Loops TS404′s all over the place thru the Opcode vinyl plugin. This is the first “getawaykyd” track. I dunno. I envisioned TGK as being over the top. This definately over the top. Those drums are so bad. Waaaay too distorted – but I guess that’s what I wanted. Again, awful bass sounds.

Burst of Flames – Getawaykyd Mix

This was my favorite “Dufus!” remix – not sure why… slow, bashing drums I think. It took me 5 years to realize why nobody could dance to this song. Oh well. More layers. I think the bassline is what I loved. Thank god I finally turned down the filter resonance…. too bad I layered it with more filter resonance. I envision this as my “chemical brothers” faze… I think I used the dreamstation tracker for some of these synth leads… can’t remember. All I know is it’s over the top.

Frothy – Keepalive’s Bitch Mix

This was the first song I ever did that someone danced to. Joe Berger (see Am I breathing?) used to play this at his house parties and said people went nuts at the end. Cool.

Further Investigations of Self Loathing

I feel like this is when I started making real music that can actually endure. This track made me feel like I was getting somewhere. Back from summer vacation, I had use of the Electronic Music studio in a new location with a slightly better setup. I still had no concept of drum programming/production, but started to get better with everything else. Classic Fruity TS404 sine synth wanking but it works. I used to practice this synth lick just in case I might one day start playing it live. I did once. It was a train wreck. I turned up the TX 802 Sine bass as loud as I could at the end – cuz I wanted it to be loud. Little did I know that it was just that the NS10′s i was mixing on couldn’t reproduce the frequencies.. they were there. Oh well.

I’m a Moron

Some guy from mp3.com really really wanted this on vinyl so he could spin it at parties in England. I feel like it’s the only successful use of zaps I’ve ever had. Used the great Oberheim 1000 synth. All the pitch bends were random and I could never figure out how to make them come back. Thankfully I finished this track in 5 hours and recorded it and that was that. This is one of my favorite TS404 sine synth lines. I think it adds so much to the track. Moog bassline brings it all together. I hadn’t yet figured out how to clean up errant kick drums in my breakbeat programming. Oh well. TGK formula working in full effect here.

Idiot Stick

The guys in my class thought I was ridiculous writing such a simple line. They loved it. I liked it too, I think Mike Uzzi really likes this track too. The synth chords are of course a Juno, thru some kind of delay box, not sure which. More Moog modular bass sounds. I fell in love with the open 909 hihat samples on the offbeats on this track. They really take up way too much space, but that’s cool with me. They worked for me. Yeah, it’s all about the breakdown I guess. TS404 sine synth in effect again. I didn’t realize how much the moog ladder filters added to this track.

Derived From an Opened Wound

The greates thing about this track is all the digital artifacts that came about from mixed up clock signals (44.1/48khz). The Oberheim recordings were transferred from one computer to another and it got all jacked up. I couldn’t have written it better tho. Too bad the drum programming is horrid. I like some of the loops, but there’s a reason I never got signed – thinking that this track was good is probably the reason. The chord progression at the end is dope tho, and the drums at the end kill.

Losing Quickly

Trying to ride this “getawaykyd” vibe I had going, I tried one more upbeat fast breakbeat thing. The least successful of all of them I think. I mean what’s up with that bassline? I wasn’t ready to go down the path of 4 on the floor kick drums, so I shouldn’t have tried. TS404 Sine Synth wanking at it’s worst. But some of those lines are pretty cool. Believe it or not I could play that part at one point. I love the synth chords at the beginning tho. Also, the end is pretty dope.

Square

Right, so TGK was dead. He had overstayed his welcome and I wanted to get weird again. So I did a few more ambient tracks. The main synth in this is a reaktor synth I made. I recorded the lick and then did some editing in Acid. I think I did this whole track in Acid. Obviously I had just heard Oval. I’m pretty sure this was like 5 or 6 channels. More Oberheim synths as well. Not sure where these samples came from, but I remember getting some really weird artifacts from the kurzweil K2500 after it crashed. The piano at the end is all from that.

Three’s The Magic Number

This whole track was done in a little synth program called Rubberduck I think. I totally forgot about that synth. Some samples from a television program that I had ganked while working on a prog metal record with my friend Greg Allison. The main sample in the background was of some bushmen trying to find apes or something. As I remember you could load 4 samples into this synth program and they’d all loop. That’s how this was made. Obvious De La Soul nod in the title – this was when I started to get back into early 90′s hip hop. I know you can’t tell in the music I was making.

Thumper

Made this while home in Syracuse for Christmas break… 1999 I think. I used a Digitech Delay machine that had a 2second delay. Thing was awesome. Once I made the loop, I never turned the gear off until the track was done, took like 3 days. The Low synth line was played in real time on a DX-7, 808 loop was replicated in Fruity, and the bell like tones were the first things recorded from my newly purchased Juno-60 that I got from my cousin. This was the first track I used it on. My friend Miles Tilmann did a sick remix of this track that nobody’s ever heard. I’ll have to post that.

Curing Me

I did this pretty much the same way I did Thumper. The bass loop in the beginning is what’s in the delay box, the held chord is exactly that on the juno, the pitch bend is all done in real time, the rest of the stuff was done in fruity. It’s really too bad I can’t re-do this track, I think I could get the production much better… I really love the drum loop at the end, as well as the melodic line. Incidentally I used this track at my “promotional” Junior to Senior year. That’s where I went in front of a jury and said “these are the pieces I’m writing” and they say “good” or “bad” or in my case, “why?”

Since You Feel That Way

More Audiomulch ambient tracks. This was to be the beginning of some other project with Joe Berger. This was going to be the first track on our full-length. For some reason we never finished. I think he moved to New York. I love the hint of drums on this one.

The Pennywhistle

Another track that stemmed from me re-patching my studio. Juno was patched into Audiomulch, thru the bassline filter section (the gated synth at the beginning). I absolutely love the first drumbeat. Go amen beat thru the MDA Combo. This track had a lot of weird patchings going on. I think I’m using an external filter that my teacher Caleb Morgan gave me. A lot of the envelope stuff in this was from that machine. All the pitch bend on the chord is done in realtime on the juno. As the track gets bigger, I started playing on my DX-7 that was triggering reaktor on a laptop that was patched into the Audiomulch gate stuff as well. Being that this is all done in audiomulch, that melody was played live. I like this track mainly because I felt like I had control over the studio in such a way that I might possibly start playing out live. I started to sometime after doing this track.

Blatantly Obvious

Ah, the return of The Getawaykyd. Full Title is “it’s blatantly obvious that i’m unhappy with my current situation”. Sigh. I wrote this while living with my bro Bradley Kemp in the Fens in Boston. Done in Cubase with a fruity loops drum track. The lead chord synth is of course the juno, lead synth is a reaktor synth I made. the really active bassline synth is my doepfer A-100. I think this is the first track I used it on. I think you can really hear how hard I worked on the composition of this piece – it never really happened naturally for it and always sounded labored to me. I wrote the first lick, and then knew that I wanted to end in the choral part at the end, but didn’t know how to make it a song. Oh well. I played this for a couple classmates and they were all like “oh you’re so happy” but thankfully one person, Joanna Jenei, was like “fuck that, this song is so depressing!” THANK YOU JOANNA! I love the dopfer synth line at the end, melodic, rhythmic and fills out the low end. The melody was something that I didn’t want to beat over your head, but wanted it to steadily grow… I dunno – maybe I got it. Absolutely love the detuning synths at the end.

remember Kissing Me?

This was written in about 2 hours. Everything just came out. Not much to explain except a healthy respect for Boards of Canada. More Juno, Reaktor meldoy synths, Doepfer bass, and drum loops thru a comb filter, which would all become staple sounds for me.

release (hopeful mix)

Classic Jay Flower shit here. MDA Combo, Juno, Reaktor, breakbeats with a huge emotional release at the end. I think this is the only time I used the Amen break without heavy effects. Mike Paradinas loved this track, and asked me to send him more, I did, but of course he probably never listened to them. Pressed this to a 7″ that can be found in random collections. The epitome of my TS404 writing, and perhaps the most concise melodic writing i’ve ever done outside of The Moms. Oh, I used Rebirth on this one as well. All those poppy Basslines are all rebirth. Woeful production on this, oh well. I love this track and I think it’s the only 4 on the floor track that Matthias Bossi likes.

I wanna be a packet kiddie

This is one of those tracks that I wish I could still write. For some reason i just can’t write like this anymore. This was a hit with even the harshest critics (Don Mennerich, Greg Davis). I think it was all in how the harmony moved, but it might have been the fact that I ganked the beat from Sgt. Pepper without being a Beatles fan. More Doepfer basslines and Juno chord passages. IMO, great TS404 shit in this track. I pressed this to a 7″ that you can still find floating around the north east.

how I know it’s hopeless

Wrote this track for a girl i was falling for (of course) and made the mistake of telling her about it – she made me explain the title. Oh well. This was another track that I sent to Mike Paradinas that he expressed interest in. This was the beginning of my love affair with the 606 Roland drum machine. the high synth was from a DX-7 and put thru that external homemade filter box I mentioned earlier. I loved playing this track live becuase the drop in the sine bass at the blowout sounded so effing good on a big speakers. Also, this was the first time I used an arpeggiator and first time i realized how awesome minor V chords were. I can remember my teacher Caleb Morgan throwing his fists up everytime the Bb Minor chord came in the chorus, saying “YES!” That was awesome, and I do that harmonic move a lot now because of it.

I’m being mean to you

This was a track I wrote in response to a track Miles Tilmann sent me, I was completely enamored with how open he was in a lot of his music. He has a knack for letting ideas be free and not manhandling them. I don’t know if I can explain it better, but he has a way of presenting his ideas and he lets them be without any pretense or force. I wanted that – I felt like I judged my ideas very harshly and threw out a lot of them that could be made into decent tracks. This was a track that I did very quickly – a few hours. I wanted to get the feeling of spontenaity. Not sure if I got it, but I really like some of the harmonic movement in this.

elongated lonliness

man. i should have erased this track, at least changed the first beat before posting it. I really like the synth line, it is a hacked together sequencer with my doepfer A-100. But nobody, and I mean nobody should use that beat. And the bassline sucks. But there are a lot of really great things that happen in this track. The way the doepfer filter freaks out in the middle is really beautiful, and it works really well with the audiomulch bassline synth line in there and the filtered drum beat. If i had just re-engineered this and layered things together much differently I think it could have been something.

such happiness

another track about a girl (same girl). I love this track. James Brown samples, and the furthering of what I considered “my sound” for a while, vocoded percussion that outlined the harmonies of the track. Also, the rhythmic guitar-like thing in this is dope. It was aorund this time that I started to get a little bored with the form I was using, but couldn’t really break out of it as it felt so natural. So it was kept. I think this is some of the gnarliest drum programming I’ve ever done. If it was just produced a bit better it could slam hard enough for a hip-hop track i think. Done in fruityloops.

the probability of failure

I think this is out of chronologic order, but I guess this is when I did this version of it. This was a staple of my live show, and the beginning of my life as a mainly Audiomulch man. Everything in this was done in mulch. There are so many little changes in this piece, I always wondered if anyone could hear them but me, but the whole time i’m changing little parameters here and there. I think it works. A continually evolving track that could have benefited from a serious drum programming tool in Audiomulch, but I shouldn’t blame that on the program – I could have gotten around it. But because it didn’t exist in Audiomulch natively, a lot of the tracks I did in mulch don’t have very interesting drums – they’re mainly just 1,2,4,8 bar loops. and many of them are straight ganked – I sometimes didn’t even edit them at all. I never got into creating longer loops in mulch like my buddy Bradley did. I think this drum loop was edited.

miles tilmann – stairs to snow

My buddy Miles Tilmann sent me a bunch of files in like 1998 to use to make a remix. It took me so long to get something that I liked that I don’t think I ever sent this to him. This is an Audiomulch track. You can hear the totally distinct sound of the distortion on the Prosoniq Northpole filter plugin. I think I also used the Vellocet VReorder plugin on this as I did on countless other tracks.

what is it that i’m waiting for

A favorite of Mike Uzzi, and another track from the heyday of my Audiomulch days. it was so easy to do odd length phrases in Audiomulch that sometimes I did them without meaning to. I would mean to do an 8 bar phrase, but would cut it to 7 because I put the loop point in the wrong spot. This was the first time I used the Mulch comb filter, and it would be no means be the last. God I love that thing. I put the 4 on the floor kick drums thru delay on this track – I wasn’t scared. I really like the chord movement on this track. This is another track that could have used more intricate drum programming.

redefining us

A track about a relationship that i was in where we forced ourselves to call it something it wasn’t… whatever. Another track from my Mulch phase. I really liked the use of pitch manipulation on the percussion in this. The whole track is VReorder on Juno, and evolution of the arpeggiator plugin in audiomulch. Love that thing. I used it all the time, but never got as good as my bro Bradley Kemp. That mofo can do things with the arpeggiator that nobody can. This is one of my all time favorite programmed beats, I call it the Vague beat, cuz you can really switch it around and put 1 wherever you want. Of course with these huge backbeats its hard to fake anyone out.

i look like a coma

ack. this track sucks. I was way too happy to be living on the ocean, and wrote this thing with really delicate comb filter percussion and a really happy chord progression. Bah. The juno shit is pretty hip, anyway. Audiomulch 100%.

like a chump

This is another 100% audiomulch track, juno thru some weird erosion effects, percussion thru comb filters that were automated, and some big 808 beats. if only I used compressors and could have made those comb filter stabs hit more this might have been cool. I love the energy of this track. really somber but open and vulnerable.

another uneraseable year

This is coming to the height of my Audiomulch skills, where I really could do whatever I wanted with it. The great thing about mulch was that it made me perform everything live and do a real “recording”. I miss that. The vocal sample on this track is from my friend Shoham Arad and one of her friends. They went to a monstertruck thing in New Lebanon NY and recorded a guy saying “show me some love” it was great. Especially when he follows with “I know it’s a little bit different than show me some doughnuts, but love’s gonna have to work”. priceless. Anyway, this track is 100% juno and BJ Lofi, I really like how the track blows up in the middle. It took a lot of practice to get Mulch to do that. This was back when I still only used a Doepfer Pocket control, so I had 16 knobs, most of which controlled mulch’s mute/unmute buttons on loop players.

is this what makes me smile

This is another track out of order. Must have been a re-do. But it fits in anyway, as it’s another Audiomulch track. The main synth sound is from the ARP 2600 that we had at school. I spent like 3 hours jamming on this riff. I recorded it all, and pulled little bits out of it. The really high synth notes that are 3 notes falling are played manually on a moog by turning the frequency knobs where i wanted them to be. Add an AudioMulch bassline and a bad 2 bar drum loop and you have this track. This track was always great live because I created these immensely dense loops and let the track morph into the abyss slowly. The drum beat at the end is actually my dad. I had mics set up one summer and said “play”. Man has pocket.

a new approach to fucking up

More in the Audiomulch phase. Juno chords thru delay machines. The vocal sample in this is from an apple tech support recording i found somewhere on line, where a guy rips a tech support guy a new asshole about some stupid thing. Blatant RDJ rip off with the click sound, Sorry. I don’t remember how I made the main melodic sample, I think it was just me playing something on the Juno. I know it was put the mulch’s Shaper plugin. I really like how this track evolves, which is mainly due to how Mulch works, and how that’s really the only way to write a track in mulch without working really hard. This is one of the few times I used reverb. The high synths were the same juno samples you have already heard, just sped up. This is as close to I came to good drum programming in mulch, with a drum machine unit that had 20 different patterns. I am constantly changing patterns manually to create some kind of through composed thing.

all that sweet sorrow crap

A short ditty that I was detirmined to finish and make into a track. Perhaps it doesn’t deserve to be, but it held a place in my heart for what I wrote it about. VReorder all over the place with mulch’s comb filters.

peel away my skin until you get at what you want

The one keepalive track that got released and it’s one of my least favorites. Love the chord progression, and the way the track develops but it doesn’t hit hard enough for me. PWM Juno sounds, and more apple tech support samples – this one was a retarded woman trying to figure out some basic computer stuff. The subject matter doesn’t match what I wrote the track about, but the feeling of complete frustration and submission to stupidity worked great. I had to work hard to do the breakdown in the middle, and bring it all back together. Not easy to do in Mulch. Love my beatbox debut. I really like this melody. I guess this isn’t one of my least favorites.

attempt

I wrote this as a track to thrown in between songs in a live set. I ended up liking it enough to call it a song. 100% Orange Vocoder. Love it.

chuck

This may be the height of my Audiomulch skills. 100% CPU usage on this track. There are essentially 2 tracks going on the whole time and I am slowly switching between one. Juno bassline sample, Juno synth samples, everything is basically Juno. Not sure why I completely forgot that I had other synths. I love conga beat samples. So messy and Miami vice. Should have mixed the melody higher, but oh well. I really like the total change in feel in the middle there, when I bring in the Reaktor synth line over the syncopated bassline. I ran all the percussion stuff thru the MDA RePsycho to get the different pitched percussion stuff. I think it worked well. I started writing this track to be the last track on an album. I was totally into that idea, and that feel… I think on a lot of great records, when you get to the last track you can tell it’s the last track, and for a while I wanted to get that feeling. Incidentally Acetone was supposed to be the same thing.

blank blank

An aborted track that I never really finished. Ben Recht of Localfields liked this a lot and threatened to finish it for me. It’s all Fruityloops, vocoder and Juno. Some of the samples were made in Mulch with the comb filters. I had a very hard time weening myself off ot them.

the worst (version 1)

I made this the same time I did Puzzle. It just didn’t congeal quite the same way puzzle did. I really like some of the Piano stuff, but the beats didn’t work right. I like how I used weird sounds and made them work together, but don’t like the end product. So I used the same sample base set and reworked them into the version on “Formula.” All of these samples were recorded at my family’s cottage in the Adirondacks. A lot of the samples are of a coaster, the rest are random sounds from the Piano. (of course, the kick drum and snare drum aren’t)

yellow shoes

The epitome of an unfinished track: a loop that I could listen to for years on repeat that I paired with a bad bassline and drum loop. Once I did that, I could never get past hearing the loop like this. I dropped this at a River Gods DJ Set once, and Heemin Yang made fun of me so hard I don’t think I’ve quite recovered. Joking.

“Albums”

I’m keeping these songs here, because I wanted to keep the little blurbs here.

Neverwas

Yell

My close friend Ashley Paul heard this song and said “I love your music” and I don’t think I’ve been the same since. I love this song. The melodies, the percussion, everything about it. I love the way that the maj 3rd/min 3rd thing works, etc. Done in fruityloops in a small room in my apartment on Electric Ave in Somerville, MA. I used my favorite Nord sound on this one, and brought back the rebirth 303 sound as well.

Puzzle

The piano is played realtime for the most part. Recorded to my friend Justin’s Minidisc player while I was working in the Adirondacks. This was done around the time of my work in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar. My love affair with toms begins, as well as with pitched down cowbell samples.

It Took

My favorite Mulch track of all time, This was another one that was hard to put together. My boy Jeremy Udden thinks this track is the shit, which means a lot to me. Not much to say about the track tho.

I have my priorities

Another Mulch track, this one is a bit older, that I re-vamped when putting together this “record.” … This is of the same vintage as “the probability of failure”, but i essentially re-wrote it. I added all the funky tom sound beats to it, and brought out the kick drum a bit. The funky beat that comes in in the middle is all new too, some of my favorite uses of a gate ever, this one was the scuzzphut gate.

rejoining the faded emotion

More of the same, old Mulch track revamped and re-envisioned with better percussion. I worked hard to get the percussion to be melodic in this track. Love the guitar samples, done the lofi way with a piezo pickup (however you spell that word). I really like the detail in the kick drum programming. When I used to listen to this track at my office job, the guys in the office would say “can you tell that guy to stop honking?” … I suppose it does sound like a 7 minute long tone excersize. I really like the melodic drumset thru a comb filter that comes in, and the juno stuff gets really nice and layered. I think this is some of my nicest drum programming… not too over the top and it fits the track well.

Error

My boy Justin Carter loved this track so much he was willing to forgive all my earlier transgressions. It came pretty quickly, in a weekend. Not sure how I came to the main loop, but was messing with drums thru nutso distortions. A lot of the percussion sounds are my keys and playing drums on my legs in front of a close mic. Almost all the synths are Juno. The insane breakbeat that comes in at the end is a recording of Matthias Bossi. We tried to do a recording of a crazy Moms track that had bonkers breakbeats under a bonkers melody that never worked. But this was what he did for that, of course it’s re-worked to fit this. I think I almost got the production right, but alas.

Acetone

Oh, Juno how I love thee. The LFO is just so nice on pitch. Some more decent 606 programming. I really love the vocoded percussion stuff on this track, it really became part of my sound by this track. I brought back some of the Reaktor synths that I had built in my “getawaykyd” days, and I think they work well here. This track is a blast to play live. I think this is one of my best tracks.

Of Rows

A ripoff of Sigur Ros, but you’d never notice cuz the reference is so oblique. The chords were something that I wrote for an aborted project with Osvaldo Golijov, Francis Ford Coppola’s film called Megalopolis that never happened. Sounds of my future Wife laughing slowed way down.

So, then Here’s another one, this one never really got “finished”, but it kinda fits.

Formula

Wide Open

A new breed of jflower track, 4 on the floor at 90-110bpm. I love this. such a simple track, great use of filter envelopes and digi conga sounds.

The Worst (Version 2)

A much more successful version of “the Worst”. Used a reaktor ensemble that I hacked to do a couple weird things, The piano stuff is all using the same samples as the previous version. I did this in Santa Fe New Mexico, while performing Ainadamar there. I was stoked to get back to some of the Keepalive staples, like TS404 sine synths and 808 beats thru digi-degraders. I think it came out well.

May

I really started making some weird techno for the Unlockedgroove crew in Boston, and there were some that I couldn’t even pawn off as Techno to them, even though they have open minds. This is one of those tracks. My boy Mike Uzzi said “no, that’s just a new keepalive track” which meant that nobody would dance to it, but people might like to chill to it. It’s become a staple of my live set because it can be played slow or fast and it sounds good. I still layer too many things, in this case too many basslines.

Feet past the mini mall

Worst title ever, perhaps the worst track ever, but there’s something about it that I love.

Clinical

This is going on a Zer0G sounds release. I love it.

Do I Have A Treat For You

Recorded this in Tanglewood, the rainstorm lasted for like 10 hours. There was at least 1 hour of constant thunder. It was nuts. This is the only track I’ve ever done that might hip you to realize that I’m probably the world’s biggest Mahogany Fan ever. Nord Modular and Fruity loops. I love the Piano solo in the middle, before everything drops in. The Orchestral Loop is a sample from a rehearsal of some piece (shhh) but I only use like 1 second, so it’s cool. This is the only snare rush you’ll ever hear in a keepalive song, and perhaps the only singing!

Out In One Piece

Perhaps the last Audiomulch song I have ever done. I just can’t write in that program any more. I really like this one. It has the whole damn thing patched out into the nord modular doing a vocode thing, that is then fed back into AM. Not quite sure how I got around the feedback loops.

Zu viel

Man, talk about something that had so much potential. Oh well.

My 12″ release that went digital instead. For ZeroGSounds. TEKKKKKKKKKKNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

De:Bug review

“Keepalive – Platinum Chart Topper(Zero G Sounds / 014) Sehr deepe Tracks, in denen die Sequenzen mal ein paar Ecken weiter denken und die warmen Flächen des Titeltracks auch mal weit in Richtung Detroit ausholen. Eine Platte, die vielleicht manchmal ein wenig zuviel Melodie hat, aber dabei dennoch einen sehr dichten Sound beibehält, der die Tracks irgendwie stark aus der Masse abhebt. Definitv ein 4-Tracker, der einem ans Herz wachsen kann. Deep und verstörend, aber auch sehr direkt und perfekt für den Floor, der sich nach viel zu viel Minimal nach Geschichten sehnt.”

Yup.  Too melodic!

1. Platinum Chart Topper
2. This and That
3. Six Million Dollar Life Insurance Plan
4. Failure

DOWNLOAD

Another piece written by Osvaldo Golijov, I was also involved in creating the laptop parts for this one.  This was originally premiered at the Tanglewood Music Center and has since been everywhere from Santa Fe to New York, London, Granada and Buenos Airies. Truly an awesome piece full of love and emotion. Check it.

Amazon, iTunes, Deutsche Grammophon

Also, I did a remix for this record, which can be downloaded from iTunes on this page at the bottom.