winter in springtime

Weltraumfalle

Full version is ~7 mins long 😁

You see how we design this plot
Distract me with the things I’m not
Re-line my eyes so I agree
Revert from the taller trees
Build me up so I have strength 
To keep everyone at arm’s length 
I’ll lay out
In my shallow hole
In a low cut dress
With room to grow
I don’t I like what I see

Wonder why I don’t I like what I see

[…]

You see how we design this plot
Distract me with the things I’m not
Again, again,
This human curse
We don’t got it? It’s the worst
You keep me from the taller trees
Grinning while we grit our teeth
Ladies told to keep it in 
Now it’s out, 
Begin! 
Or keep on seeking out our screens
The moment we need company
While winged ones sing our requiem
Welcome authoritarian!
You see how we design this plot?
Who has power? We forgot!
Busy, busy, while they bleed 
Why don’t you like what you see?

Zero (demo pieces)

Forward

Last weekly track of 2015.  This one began with a little arpeggio in my mind, and it runs throughout the piece.  Initially I heard it against something a lot faster and drum-breaky, but for tracking I went with something slower, and that ended up feeling more right.  I tracked a few lines of guitar that worked well together (the two themes, some ornamentation, and a chordal part) and then set everything aside for the rest of the week until Saturday, when I tracked more guitar parts (wah + fuzz, some clean), bass, and a few variations on drums and keys. 

The drum line is Impulse with single hit samples of a kit hit with brushes (except for the crash and toms), going through the Saturator (tweaked Hot Tubes preset).  Electric and Operator are the piano and organ instruments, with four channels of guitar (Res-O-Glas, some direct into the A/D, some through Vox wah, and some through Reuss RF-01).  Most guitar channels got a pass through the Auto-Filter with pronounced drive, and bass was the trusty Epiphone, dry. 

The title comes from the feeling of forward progress--this piece seems slow, but inexorable, and I expect to keep doing these weekly tracks in one place (here?) or another (if weeklybeats.com comes back) starting this week for 2016.

Final stats: 54 tracks (weeks 25 and 33 had alternate versions), five hours and thirteen minutes of music.  Shortest: Week 38 (Cascade) at 4:07; longest: week 25 (Sustain, Long Version) at 15:56.  720MB in 320kbps MP3 form, and a working directory over 10GB (though I have FLAC-encoded some of the final mixes). 


Forward

one of my latest ones - accordion & electronics, all sounds are more or less processed accordion samples of my live recorded accordion

rise / sink

Nooksack

rough as a badger's bum but with massive potential!

TASCAM DR-07 

Myself (when I am real)(Brixton band rehearsal 05/03/16)

Episode no. 1 of the King Alphonso Radio Hour Podcast with Réamann. An entertaining interview and chat between two old friends - Franz Treichler (from Swiss post-industrial band The Young Gods) and Réamann O'Gormain (Raymond Gorman, ex-That Petrol Emotion and now The Everlasting Yeah). First in a series of podcasts with musicians, writers, journos, poets and actors with an emphasis on the immigrant's story, fun, laughter, collectivity, spirituality, great art and the war on loneliness. All welcome.

King Alphonso Podcast no. 1 - Franz  Treichler / Young Gods

I have a bad habit of starting tracks and not finishing them. The paralysis of having over 30 'In progress' finally took hold.  So what's a "musician" gonna do?  Why, abandon them all and start fresh, of course!  But first, let's have a brief funeral of some of the tracks that could have been something.  Or maybe not.  In any case, it's closure.

7 Years Of Glorious Failure

Part three (at last!) is the opposite of a deep dive – it’s a flight upwards through the night sky exploring the power of drones as medicine. We go into a bit of the reasons why drones have such a physical effect, with excerpts from an article by Robert Lamb (published Nov. 16, 2016; accessed June 25, 2020): https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/ambient-music-calm-psychic-maelstrom.htm#:~:text=%22What%20happens%20with%20ambient%20music,scanning%20the%20environment%20for%20danger.

We then ponder for a moment the power of drones to connect us to the world, and all who inhabit it, through deeply restorative soundscapes. After using some drones created by Tibetan singing bowls in the opening, we move on to the brand new "Celestial Music Box" to consider how the star field above us might "sound" if each star could be played like a music box. Thanks to friend of the podcast Michael Riley for granting us permission to use this excerpt!

As always, thanks to all our Patreons for your support! If you'd like to join them in supporting independent arts and production, you can find us on Patreon at https://www.Patreon.com/TheWillowsNest

You can also support this podcast and the work of our independent productions here at The Willows nest, through a one-time donation at https://www.paypal.me/bansheemedia

Tracks in order of audition:

(Under the voice): Glen Hoban “Singing Bowl Tanpura 1 & 3.” These were published in September of 2018. From the composer’s notes: “The sound of a "G" ('Throat Chakra') Himalayan singing bowl being droned, then having the resulting drone copied, pitch-shifted and multi-tracked to produce a long, subtly evolving drone.”
Found on Freesound.org. Find these tracks and more about Glen Hoban at: https://freesound.org/people/Glen_Hoban/

Sound artist and composer Michael Riley (mikronesia) created the Celestial Music Box to be available through Patreon only under the name “Meditative Soundscapes.” Check out his Patreon over at https://www.patreon.com/meditativesoundscapes. This one-hour excerpt from the music box was recorded in June 18, 2020 of the sky over Berlin, Germany. Find the trailer for the project on Youtube at: https://youtu.be/rcXzER9eEQI
And check out our episode, "Long Time Gone" for more of Michael's amazing work!

If you are looking for some summer reading, may we at the podcast suggest the New York Public LIbrary's massive, and fabulous, Schomburg Center Black Liberation Reading List, published on June 9, 2020. So much good stuff, so much summer reading! 

https://www.nypl.org/blog/2020/06/09/schomburg-center-black-liberation-reading-list

Because until Black Lives Matter, no lives matter. We are all related, beloveds.

Drones, Part 3

Musician, composer, programmer, vertebrate

Forward

onezero

Related tracks