New Album - One Sea
Now available on our bandcamp site for purchase and download.
Or use the player below to stream it now.
The music on this single track album came out of a practice session that we had before our Awakenings gig in Burton this year (2012). Great fun to play and one of those, "wow, did we just do that!?" kind of moments that we though was worth sharing. Pretty much all improvised with some pre-programmed sequences but nothing really stays the same so it's a constantly evolving piece that provides an easy ambient backdrop or more if you take the time to listen.
Paul's sequencer patterns were mainly a simple combination of a Vermona Perfourmer mk2 and Cirklon sequencer. The Vermona is a very simple four voice analogue synthesizer but very tactile and easy to modify as you also modify the sequences. It also allows interaction between the voices - they can frequency modulate each other, sync to each other and it's possible to sync their LFOs either to each other or to MIDI clock. This means there are lots of tricks to be employed to make any sequence dynamic, organic, evolving and absolutely never the same twice. With two delays from an Eventide Timefactor pedal, by simply changing the panning of each Perfourmer voice, you can morph from one delay value to another, or sit somewhere in between. There was also a Korg Radias and Emu Proteus on hand to provide some conventional sounds but these played very much a background role here.
On top of this Paul played a Moog Prodigy.
Pete's sequences were an equally simple combination of a Mac running Ableton-Live hosting an Arturia Moog Modular which was sequenced by some max-4-live software called obo that, in turn, was being controlled by a monome (sixty-four). This combination allows for a very portable, yet very flexible, analogue sounding sequencer which can easily be pushed through numerous effects and delays, as indeed it was here. Pete also played the fabulous GForce Virtual String Machine which combined with some way out audio damage plugins provided some of the more ambient backdrops you hear washing around. Props to Colin for writing some of the best sequencer software in the world (in the Cirklon), especially for the seemingly minor ability to send out an instant stop start allowing Pete and Paul to re-sync in mid song without anyone noticing
The initial recording was done (no sniggering at the back there) using Garageband, although admittedly via a MOTU 828 MkII and later mastered at Paul's very capable hands at the softroom studio where he sprinkled various mixtures of pixie dust until he got the results being relayed to your ears now.
We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it, and there's more to come! :-)
