93 Years On

In which Dom and Andy, separated by the Pandemic and the English Channel for far too long, spend a short evening with some boxes and just press go and see what happens.

This is a live recording, completely unmixed, unedited and warts and all, of a jam that we had on Friday 8th October 2021. It consists of our respective Eurorack modular synths, a clarinet plugged into various iPad things (Gauss doing the heavy lifting), an analog four, analog rtm and bits of Pro3. 

Strictly for the curious and a taste of what's to come.

Digitonal Reunion Jam

Gold of the Azure

Gold of the Azure (Marconi Union Remix)

Autumn Journal

Autumn Journal (Fire_sign Remix)

The Dance's Pattern

The Dance's Pattern (Musin Remix)

Set the Weather Fair: Seasons

Bramley (BUNKR rmx)

The End Is Just the Beginning (Aeon Cub remix)

Set the Weather Fair (Proswell quietgrainmix)

Orion (Of the Night Sky nebula mix)

Taken from the charity compilation 'Touched', this is a short piece for violin, piano and Reaktor.

Piano and electronics: Andrew Dobson
Violin: Samy Bishai

Touched is a fantastic compilation of 123 tracks of forward-thinking electronica from both familiar names and grassroots artists available as a digital album with all proceeds going to Macmillan Cancer Support.

https://touched.bandcamp.com/album/touched

https://www.facebook.com/touchedmusic

A Distant Thought

A collaboration recontextualising sampled whalesong from the BBC.

Original recording of the Bowhead Whale was made by Kate Stafford who writes: "they are from a moored hydrophone I deployed in the Beaufort Sea as part of a scientific project."

Use headphones for full impact!

Bowhead

Taken from the new studio album by Digitonal, Beautiful Broken, released on the 4th of May 2015 by Just Music, this track is a tribute to one of my biggest influences.

---
Digitonal - Beautiful Broken | Release date: 4th May 2015 | See below for pre-order link.


Beautiful Broken

Eighteen

Pre-order

Taken from the album Save Your Light for Darker Days.  The title was taken from a line of poetry written for me once by somebody I loved once.

Wide-eyed, wrapped in Love

My official remix of Max Richter's wonderful Path 5.  Taken from the Sleep Remixes EP released by Deutsche Grammophon.

Sleep Remixes

Max Richter: Path 5 - Digitonal's Theo In Dreamland Mix

A carol for Christmas.  

There has often been a tradition at Christmas for carols to be sung as lullabies, sung to the infant Jesus, but often extended to any child.  Some years ago I asked the poet Katherine Venn if she would write something along these lines, and she came up with a wonderful piece which I've set to music.  The first verse came to me with great facility but it took me a long time to shape the rest of it. I'm very much out of my writing comfort zone with something so stylistically classical so it was a big challenge.  My thanks to Katherine for her patience and to Chris for helping me realise it on tape.

Written by Andrew Dobson, Christmas 2015

Words by Katherine Venn
Tenor: Christopher Elliot
Piano and production: Andrew Dobson

Cover image adapted from a photograph taken by Roland Keates (Flickr CC)

The Fisherman's Carol

The Fishermans Carol

This is a remix of Paper Unicorn from Ochre's album Isolette which actually turned into more of a cover version.  I've been a huge admirer of Chris' work right from his early demos - REM Sleep Research will always be somewhere in my all time top 10 electronica tracks.  

He's continued to release some of the most beautiful and intricate music in the field.  You can find the original of this track, and all his fantastic music at his bandcamp: http://bandcamp.ochremusic.com/

This cover version has been made available to download with the artist's permission.  Thanks to Chris, it's a wonderful piece and I had a lot of fun putting this together.

Unreleased

Paper Unicorn (Digitonal Transcription)

Ochre - Paper Unicorn (Digitonal Transcription)

Quick and dirty experiment in ambient throwbackery, experimenting with a few new programming and performance techniques.  Everything is controlled on the fly through touchable and Konkreet performer.  No bus mix, eqs or the like, just straight out to 2-track. 

Clear hat-tip to Mixmaster Morris in his Irresistible Force guise. Flying High was one of the records that made me get into writing electronica, particularly Symphony in E with it's violin line for obvious reasons.  I was re-listening to it tonight and wanted to try something in that old school vein rather than what Loscil's The Making of Grief Point describes as the 'tight and perfect digital palace' of most contemporary ambient electronica. 

Made me nostalgic for the days of old AWM synthesis - the washy, raw pads and hypnotic simplicity.  Sometimes it's useful to understand where things have come from to explore where you might want to take them to.

Strictly for fun, not meant to be anything releasable.  

Flying Eye (experiment)

Brand new studio mix of Seraphim.  Taken from the forthcoming retrospective "Be Still my Bleeping Heart

Be Still My Bleeping Heart

Seraphim (Angel Mix)

Proverb

Luna

Ana Kata (65 Days Of Static Remix)

Nothing Left To Say (Echaskech Remix)

93 Years On (Radio Edit)

Autumn Round

We Three

Anaethmatics

It Doesn't Matter

Mysterium - A Second Choral Christmas

Some 8 years after compiling my Lullaby - A Choral Christmas, made for friends as an antidote to the constant Hark the Heralding that fills the classical airwaves at this time, I've finally followed it up with a new volume.  

This mix takes in various obscure carols, from medieval and renaissance sacred and secular songs to 20th century pieces.  The principle thing they have in common is an ear for unusual harmony and beautiful reflection.  Grab a mince pie, pour a mulled wine and enjoy.

Anon - Lullay, I saw
Hans Leo Hassler - Verbum Caro Factum Est
Graham Lack - Jesu Swete Sone Dear
Jonathan Rathbone - The Oxen
Peter Warlock - Bethlehem Down
Philip Wilby - The Word Made Flesh
Pyotr Tchaikovsky - The Crown of Roses
Einojuhani Rautavaara - Christmas Carol
William Byrd - Lullaby my Sweet Baby
Francis Poulenc - O Magnum Mysterium
Andrew Dobson - The Fisherman's Carol
John Jacob Niles - I wonder as I wander
Judith Weir - Illumiare, Jerusalem
Hieronymus Praetorius - Joseph Lieber, Joseph Mein
Trad - Salutation Carol

Mixed by Andy Digitonal, Christmas 2017

Mysterium

Mysterium - A Second Choral Christmas

An early track and the first experiement in making a bridge between Reichian minimalism and AI-era electronica. Taken from a live arrangement of the track and reproduced for the retrospective compilation Be Still My Bleeping Heart

Drencrom

My contribution to the fabulous Earthlings II compilation, released on the 21st June 2018 by Pyramid Transmissions.  This is a charity compilation with all proceeds going to World Animal Protection.

Spindle is a brand new track which we've played live a couple of times.  It's us going back into the old school, breaks lead electronica sound  which we've dabbled in from time to time, but still keeping a sense of melody and space.

Please support the charity and the artists on the album through the Buy Now link below.  It's 79 truly outstanding tracks of electro, idm, techno and acid and is a must buy for anyone into electronica from the old school.  And for a very worthy cause as well.

Credits:
Written and produced by Andrew Dobson.

Thanks to Dom Graveson as always and to ADJ for inviting us to contribute.

EARTHLINGS 2

Spindle

Buy now for charity!

One of the earliest Digitonal tracks and the first collaboration with violinist Samy Bishai.  Taken from the Digitonal Retrospective, Be Still my Bleeping Heart.

Come And Play

A retake of an ambient track which I wrote for Cactus Island records a while ago.  This version was a special remix written for the ill-fated trip to San Francisco in 2008 to play at Yuri's Night at NASA Ames.  Whilst the gig itself was a minor disaster, this version of the track has become my favourite.

Antares (Yuri's Mix)

A new track, recently released on volume 8 of Neo Ouija's long running compilation series Cottage Industries.  I've been a fan of Neo and label runner Lee since the early 00's and their forum in particular was very encouraging of my early efforts. 

It's a privilege to finally release something with them.

Hit the buy link for the full compilation.  Without exaggeration, every track on it is a winner and some (Ruxpin especially) are blowing my mind.

This is a litmus test as to how healthy our little scene is right now.

Cottage Industries 8

Daisychain

I've always been a bit obsessed with this tune since I bought the box set of Sally's Photographic memory from Selectadisc for £1.99.  A few years later I'd be fortunate enough to meet and work with Kirsty, producing some tracks for her and having her guest on Maris Stella from the Centre Cannot Hold EP in 2004.  I started doing my own version of this, utterly stunning, track with much trepidation.  How do you do justice to a Mark Pritchard production at the height of his powers?  But I really wanted to perform it live with Kirsty at The Big Chill in 2006.  In the end, I lost my nerve to do it, but fortunately didn't lose the files.  Around 2009 I played a set with Josh in the ambient room of a club at Corsica - we hadn't prepared at all (as usual) but I found I still had the stems that I'd written for this live version on my harddrive, so I dropped them in over a HPF'd version of the original tune on the fly.

This is the result.  

It's impossible to improve Kirsty Hawkshaw's Orange (original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvk344jiohU), but I hope I've managed to slightly make it my own.  Maybe one day I'll do it properly.

Kirsty Hawkshaw vs Digitonal - Orange (Live version)

A collection of lesser known carols and rocking songs, compiled as the soundtrack to my Christmas Eve a few years ago and wheeled our for your seasonal gratification every December.

Anon, trad – Intonent Hodie
Rubbra – Virgin’s Cradle Song
Britten – Hymn to the virgin
Trad – Blessed be that maid mary
Howells – Sing Lullaby
Leighton – Coventry Carol
Britten – Balulalow
Trad – Lute Book Lullaby
Dobson – Winter Lent
Vaughan Williams – The Truth from Above
Howells – A Spotless Rose
Warlock – Balulalow
Trad – King Jesus hath a garden
Trad – The Boar’s Head Carol
Joubert – Torches
Gardener – Tomorrow shall be my dancing day

Selected and mixed by Andy.Digitonal
Christmas 2008

Lullaby - A Choral Christmas

A remix I did last year for Talk in Colour (featuring our frequent collaborator Kat Arney).  It was included on the Bones/Radiophonic EP which can be bought at iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/bones-radiophonic-ep/id573061914

More information on Talk in Colour here: http://www.talkincolour.com/



Buy EP at iTunes

Talk in Colour - Headlights [Digitonal Remix]

Ambient Box output v3. This track was generated from original samples that I wrote, then popped into a physics based ambient generator that I built in flash a couple of years ago. The mix and panning of each sampled element is derived from the movement of spheres within a bounding box, according to a physics modelling system. To keep the spheres moving in this example, a pulse of gravity was applied every 15 seconds. This is an example output which has been recorded and mastered for this release with no additional edits or production.

You can play with the box at http://www.digitonal.com/ambientbox/ and I'll hopefully have an iPad version ready later this year.

Digitonal-ambient box output v3

The full, raw audio from a recent live stream improvisation by Andy from Digitonal.

Regular Friday night sessions on twitch.tv/andydigitonal.  In which Andy hooks all his boxes up and sees what happens.

The tracks are quite long as they develop slowly, much in the manner of how I write a lot of music actually. Sometimes they are messy and experimental, sometimes they form into tunes. This one is one of the more tuneful ones so I thought I'd make it publicly available for once.

More stream highlights can be found on the Twitch channel along with video footage of how it's done and a full kit list.

Streams

Live Improvisation Stream - Jan21

Cinematic electronica's chief complainer.  Andy Dobson has been recording as Digitonal since the late 90s.  Part of the late phase of UK melodic electronica, he came to prominence on the seminal Toytronic Records label with a track on the Neurokinetic compilation and a debut album on the label shortly afterwards.  Since then he has recorded for Seed Records, Cactus Island, Uncharted Audio, B12 and Just Music who released Save Your Light for Darker Days in 2008, followed by a retrospective compilation.  Alongside frequent collaborator, Egyptian violinist Samy Bishai, and a flexible array of band members, Digitonal have toured extensively and have been in demand as a live act, known for their improvised sets of great range and beauty.

Digitonal

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