"Hey, you! Mister! You in the dumpster! This your office? Got a business card here, for a professional troubleshooter, and it says I can find you in the dumpster between the hours of 10 and 6."

"What do you mean, you don't know?!"

Haven't done one of these in awhile because of the bout of tinnitus I had last year, plus the ongoing reorganization of the entire studio. Still, the tinnitus has calmed itself to the point where I can get work done, and enough of the studio is back together that I can now bust out the odd little something.

Synth spotting: the Rhodes Chroma is responsible for the bulk of the analog work. Digital duties are handled by the DK Synergy II+, back from the shop, which handles all of the koto noises, various low bass gronks, and even at various points some unusually lush strings. The guitar is a Korg Prophecy, the Rhodes is a Rhodes Suitcase, and the John Bowen Solaris is responsible for whistling, the drone, and oddly the kettle drums. Drums and loops by Black Octopus. 
Outboard: Phoenix Audio N8 DI->Neve 5059->Burl B2 ADC.

In A Cyberpunk Dumpster, With Amnesia

Nothing but a little experimentation for Saturday afternoon.

Cybernetic Rites

Not exactly what I intended to produce this evening, but sometimes you get what you get; and sometimes you channel the Wizard of Woo.

(Instrumentation: Prophet 5, Clavinet, Rhodes, Hydrasynth, Rhodes Chroma, various Black Octopus Sample Packs)

Ritual of Purple Light

Strange experiments late at night, with Orson Welles. (Rhodes, Clavinet, Emulator II, Prophet V, Wurlitzer 7300 Combo Organ, and egregious Dubstation 2 Abuse.)

See The Picture

Piss the wrong person off on the streets, and the Bulletwizards will come for you. And maybe, if you're very lucky, you might make it out with some of your limbs intact.

(My affectionate pastiche of the Cyberpunk 2077 fight music. Rhodes Chroma decided to do the drone bit; otherwise, uh, Rhodes, Jupiter 8, MIDIMini, Emulator II.)

Bulletwizards

Sometimes, when you open up the satellite of music to receive the signal from the universe, you get some distorted signals.

(New toy in the Studio: Arturia Polybrute! Otherwise, it's the usual suspects: Hydrasynth, Rhodes Chroma, Modal 001.)

Midnight Cruising (With Walter And Donald)

I ATE THE MAGICAL TROUT AND IT BLESSED ME WITH SONG

TROUT THURSDAY

In the year 20xx the Megacorporations decided it was important to present a kindly, avuncular image. They crafted digital spokespeople to maintain their corporate presence, all the while anonymizing who (if anybody) was controlling the strings over at Yayland-Wootangi and Beavertronics and the other major Megacorps.

Once a week the corporate avatars would be tested for any sign of imperfection such as empathy or thoughts of disloyalty to the stockholders. In the event of a cascade failure, the programs would be deleted and restored from backup. Nobody is sure why the rate of cascade failures has been increasing lately, but honestly once you've condemned the screaming digital avatar of Buzzy Beaver to the void of cyberspace once, the horror lessens each time. 

(At a certain point, a man reaches that stage in his life where he wants to make a little Tangerine Dream. Somewhere in here this got cut up with Blush Response. This is mainly Korg Wavestate, Hydrasynth, and Prophet VS.)

Corporate Avatars

On every street corner.

(Synthesis hodgepodge this week. Roland D-550, Korg Wavestate, Korg Wavestation, Prophet XL, Roland JV1080... I really have no idea what happened here.)

Digital Prophets

A little ambient meditation that turned into kind of a Tangerine Dream thing at the end, which seems to be happening more frequently now that I have all my MIDI clocks sorted out. I think this has a little bit of everything here: the main pad is of course the classic Soundtrack patch from the Roland D-550, but then it gets layered with the Modal 002 and 008, Emulator II drums and bells, DK Synergy bells, Hydrasynth, Arturia Polybrute, and Korg Wavestate. Some of the timpani/kettle drum things were found, oddly enough, in a Psytrance loops collection from Black Octopus, and it then necessitated retiming the entire piece to 138 BPM (whyyyy) and here we are. The entire piece feels unabashedly digital.

Dedicated to the very nice elderly couple that I bought a Rhodes Chroma and Expander off of two years ago, who had retired with the plan of buying a geodesic dome on the hill to make music "in the Berlin School" together but couldn't quite afford to keep all their synthesizers running. I hope you built that shining city on the hill.

Music for Geodesic Domes

Chick Corea has Three Ghouls covered on his album "The Ultimate Adventure" which kind of inspired the drum part and some of the decisions about this tune; I then threw out all the bits I didn't like and put new bits on it, producing something that is sort of a bit more of a Burroughs cut-up than I'm used to.

Tools: Prophet VS, JV1080, Midimini, Polybrute, Hydrasynth, Leviathan Sample Packs, probably some other stuff

Two Ghouls

Some small sketches done for a cyberpunk game that may never be made.

Decking

The smell of first rain after long, dry, weather. Much nicer than the blood on the subway tiles.

First track in a long time, mainly due to redoing the studio around a Rupert Neve 5059 mixer and a Burl B2 ADC. I'm still in the process of figuring out how to make tracks with this set up, but so far I'm happy with the improvements in audio quality. My monitors are still, regrettably, tin cans full of soup.

Matrix-12: pads, that big bass thing at the beginning. VP-330: obvious strings. Chroma: buzzing, bleeping, menaces. Hydrasynth: "Soil Festivities" lead. Waldorf Quantum: bits of this, bits of that. Drums from Black Octopus.

Nicholas Vining

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