Floating Fish Studios held Synth Jam 2015 - Snow at FFS II on 02/21/15. The ensemble gathered included Dave Chandler (aka Thee Sub One Genius), M Scott McConnell (aka MC2P4), and Matt Norcross (aka Ttam Troll).

The snow storm could not deter the three core members of Imbued Vagary from creating icy electronic music.  The six sonic explorations ranged from ambient soundscapes to Noise.

This live improv is more akin to ambient soundscapes and is titled, Storm Clouds.

Imbued Vagary - Storm Clouds (Live at FFS II 02/21/15)

"Crushing the Core".

The beat is heavy, relentless. It's a mid-tempo "stomp" that hits like a battering ram, designed to crush everything in its path.

The atmosphere is dark, industrial, with piercing synths that tear through the air like warning sirens. It is the sound of an unstoppable force moving forward, grinding everything down.

Crushing the Core

Songs Left After The Nod (Vol. 1)

Go! (Barely Conscious Mix)

Master Beat (Bitchslap Mix)

Driving the Two-Dimensional Highway

Casey

Swamp Terrorists - 03 - So Sweet-It's Painful

Swamp Terrorists - 09 - Deranged

Swamp Terrorists - 13 - Rosebud

Swamp Terrorists - 14 - I spit on you (slap-mix)

We came up with this song parody of Louie Louie while Scott (MC2P4) was working for Donnelley Directory Talking Yellow Pages in the Summer of 1991. Every year they would have an employee awards ceremony called the Ruby Awards. At the ceremony, they would serve breakfast and have drawings for prizes but the main purpose was to recognize outstanding work by employees during the past year. A Ruby Award was the honor that was given to each of the outstanding employees.

Scott thought that they needed a theme song for the awards ceremony so he told them that he was going to write one. They encouraged him to do so but we're sure that they never really expected him to deliver one.

Scott came back to the studio and told me what he had promised to do. He said that he'd already started to work on lyrics for it and had based them on the tune Louie Louie. He titled his song "Ruby Ruby". Though I was apprehensive about doing a parody of a popular song and, of course, thought that it was "beneath" us, we agreed that it could be fun to do if we did it in an "Any Questions?" way. So, we asked LTJTHC (Tim Harrell) to help us pull it off and away we went.

The recording session was quick and fun. For drums, LTJTHC played his Yamaha DD-5 which was MIDIed to my E-mu Pro/Cussion. I pulled out my Rickenbacker 4003 bass, which had been lying dormant since I was mainly playing synths by this point, and ran it through a nice distortion patch on my Korg A3. We recorded our tracks live to a Tascam 38 1/2" 8-track reel-to-reel machine that we had purchased from Larry Lee Fiber. I only have one version of Ruby Ruby on tape so, after rehearsing, I assume it only took us one take to record the drums and bass. I dialed in one of my signature A3 vocal effects for Scott and he sang his parody lyrics. We mixed it down and mastered it to cassette (this is before CD-R recording was common/affordable) and it was done.

Scott took the cassette in to work and, even without hearing it, his bosses said they'd use it for the awards ceremony. As the ceremony started, the Ruby Award Princess wearing her white dress, high heels, tiara, and carrying a Ruby scepter hit the catwalk. Our song, Any Questions? - Ruby Ruby, began to play and the employees erupted with applause for both the princess and our song.

Not too bad for a song parody! Check it out...

Ruby Ruby

Any Questions? - Ruby Ruby

Sadly, this post marks the end of Floating Fish Studios Holy Grail Week.  I hope you've enjoyed the past week of "classic" audio and video from the FFS Vaults.  Some of the material was funny, some serious, some controversial, and some downright hilarious but I hope you found it all to be entertaining.  While raiding the vaults, I came across more rare material so be on the lookout for a future Holy Grail Week.  Until then...

I'm pleased to share with you Ode to 1 Gold St.  1 Gold St or as it was otherwise known, Der Palast des Goldes, was the house I moved into with MC2P4 and LTJTHC when I first came to the Philadelphia area in Fall 1989.  After the long and turbulent Vizator Summer, I was glad to be able to get back to some fashion of normal life.  

The three of us wasted no time in setting up a studio in the house and the rest, as they say, is history.  When not at school or working (which wasn't very often), I was busy learning how to use all of the equipment we assembled in the studio and spent hours composing music.  Our set up was pretty small but, looking back, that turned out to be an advantage.

As evidenced in this song, taken from the final day of recording at 1 Gold St in the Summer of 1990, MC2P4 and I pulled out every bit of sonic might from the gear we had.  This majestically thematic improvisational jam was our final farewell to 1 Gold St.  Shortly after, we were off to Pottstown PA and the creation of Floating Fish Studios.

Swamp Terrorists - 14 - I spit on you (slap-mix)

Eduardo Ribeiro 8

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