Cosmic Beavers (ft. Kathryn Yusoff)

Alpha Centauri

Written during the process of writing an article in Coimbra and Lisboa, Portugal in March 2018. This song playfully teases some of our favorite theoretical concepts, including, inevitably, our own concept of the icepick. We hope you will take it with you.

Oblique Curiosities (for Luke)

BONUS TRACK - Icepick in my eye

The major pentatonic scale, from which we construct our melody, uses the first five tones heard when sounding consecutive intervals of a fifth (five tones apart) from the first note of a key (C, G, D, A, E). These tones are then rearranged within one octave; in our song this produces the tones C, D, E, G, A. George Russell (1953/2001) argues that the fifth is the second most open-sounding interval (after the octave) due to its placement in the overtone series — where the doubling of the frequency of a tone produces an ever-darkening series of intervals. We ‘riff’ on this, by flattening the third during the English translation. This changes the sequentially fifth interval from a fifth (A, E) into a tritone (A, Eb), an interval historically banned by the Church for its satanic qualities. We include also seal-songs sampled during the Pilgrim’s Path mud walk during the culture’s concluding A Capella section. The lyric hook is from a sad phrase Trumey overhead in Nanjing many years ago that has always haunted her （不爱就是不爱）.

All (不爱就是不爱)

The name of the song comes from the unexpected presence of three black military helicopters on the widest vista of the walk, Wide-Open Hill. It uses an arpeggiator and disorienting lyrical and time signature changes.

3 black military helicopters

Uses the original voice recording (hence its relative poor quality). We cut up a single recording of the voice and deployed it to accentuate the natural rhythms in the recording. The lyrics are a proposition.

Hurry up lover

We took an impression of the song with us on a long walk, including a melody and chord sequence that we had earlier explored on guitar and piano. We later added a sizeable sampled string section, digital static, chinking glass sounds from our walk, and fourteen separate software-synthesizers. Our original vocal takes (sung into the iPad mic) are still incorporated into the song as backing lines and after the first chorus; the lead vocals were re-performed by our old friend Luke Jennings, who also added electric guitars. As a proposition for further thinking the guitars enabled the song to carry additional instrumentation, including taiko drums and field toms, a drum kit, and a bass guitar line. Finally, we added a Cyberman voice to the start of the song saying ‘I waited for you’ through a ring-modulator in reference to the ill-fated Ms. Bill Potts. Some of the synthesizers operate on algorithms that continue to run regardless of whether or not the Play-button is held. Derrida and other post-structuralists, as well as sonic methodologists, have attended to how meaning is always deferred in a text, and the purity of a sounding is always changed by the vibrational media. Even accounting for this, Cruel bliss (sweet pain) is materially different every time it is played, with the performance bounced for distribution only one of innumerable possibilities. Due to this, we haven’t been able to recreate our favorite bounce of the song.

Cruel Bliss (Sweet Pain)

The lyrics, melody and production remain mostly unchanged from the afternoon when we first constructed them. The singing was done in one take. Inspired by our mutual obsession with Doctor Who, broad, late-70s/early-80s inspired software-synthesizers are used throughout. The song concludes with a bassoon and bass clarinet playing quartal phrases, treated with iZotope’s free vinyl plug-in to mimic the sound of an old record. The scream was heavily contested — Trumey felt it should only happen once, Shanny thought it should happen for four or five minutes; we settled on repeated iterations that grew steadily more distorted through a ring-modulator and, thus, less scream-like. The lyrics are a diffractive walking-with philosophers Donna Haraway and Karen Barad (who Trumey was reading) and Missy from Doctor Who (who Shanny kept quoting).

Wouldn't that (be sexy)

The main lyric was advice passed on to Trumey about leaving a previous job and was repurposed for Shanny on the occasion of him having a bad breakup and turning gloomy. The song includes time-stretched and reversed glass shattering samples.

It's Okay To Say 'no' (to What Isn't Working Out)

This song includes Theremin, an electronic instrument developed during the 1920s that was popularized by its use in low-budget 1950s sci-fi and horror films.

Buttermoon

Dreary Feary Queery

Antebellum Lies

We think love is an erhu, assorted metals, and euphemisms.

Propel

It's about Maths and superhero female scientists.

Ada! A-D-A! (feat. Prof. Liz de Freitas)

Featuring Kate O'Brien on the Knitting Needles. This song scares even us.

Needles (A Day Dream) (feat. Kate O'Brien)

WalkingLab Podcast Jingle

Oblique Curiosities is:

Shanny - David Ben Shannon (Liverpool, England) 
Trumey - Sarah E. Truman (Melbourne, Australia)

Oblique Curiosities

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