Glenbrook

basura

Techno track with bells, a focus on loss and remembering

nostalgia

I've wanted to cover this song for years. So I did. Mostly Roland System-1 and TB-3.

Materia Primoris (The X-Files Theme)

Something to get me in the mood for my morning commute

SH-289

This is a happy jam that has been in my head for weeks. I've just not had the time to get it out into the world. Now it is done.

Novation Circuit
Roland Aira TB-3
Roland Aira System-1
Roland Aira Demora
Mixed in PreSonus Studio One

ligna saltus laudabunt

Ligna saltus laudabunt

A chill dark house track with some nature sounds setting the mood, inspired by playing Ingress at night: checkpoint after checkpoint rings in. There are moments of tension and moments of release. But it never really ends.

Maschine, Studio One, System-1, a bell... and some frog samples

BT Hymn

My #ViaLuxAdventure tune. Something to listen to on the search for new places.

in viam pacis

Another Ingress track.

One frigid, onyx black night we drove out to a remote cemetery and waited for the signal. We waited and waited, anxious for the word to come through. As the appointed time approached, the instruction to "go now!"came  a bit early. We were in place and ready. What followed was a brief moment of frenzy, then a lot of watching the intel map as frenzy happened in other locations. Two dozen layers went up.

Josephine

Josephine (feat. TheSned)

Just proving to myself that not everything I write is dark. I've always wanted to do a happy hardcore track. I don't think I quite got it this time. But it is close enough. Just derping about on Pachelbel's Dur-D. Everyone has to at least once. Now I'm done with that I can move on to other things.

happy

Happy

Another Ingress track, kinda. It was inspired by that feeling of "You can't stop me. I'm coming and things are going to get messy when I get there." Going to take out a particularly offensive enemy portal that needed to go, right then.

Deeply inspired by Bjørk's "Army of Me" and The Orb's "A Mile Long Lump of Lard." Deeply inspired, blatant theft, is there a difference?

The title is a Russian euphemism for what happened at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, I ran across it in a theology book describing what we call "The Fall" in Western Christian theology. So part of this is a meditation on the difference between the eastern and western conception of what happened in the primordial story, and the effects of that story. I'm Augustinian, but in Augustine's framework, not the later medieval interpretations superimposed on his thought, and especially not going as far as Luther or Calvin. Which means I have a much greater appreciation for the Russian Orthodox understanding than most of my colleagues.

Most of my songs have theological reflections buried in them, usually the title hints strongly at the theological issue I was working with at the time. This one just needed a bit more unpacking than most.

несчастный случай

несчастный случай (Neschastny Sluchai / aka "The Accident")

Another song about streets on which I drive frequently...

My first track with my new Mother-32. I built the patch and programmed the sequence last night. The rest was done today. The Mother-32, bells (System-1) and TB-3 parts were done in one-take each. The sub-bass (System-1)and short theme(System-1)were cut up and remashed from their takes, using the parts that I liked. Drums are NI Maschine. 

All the system-1 patches were built last week, I was just looking for fun sounds the other night with no thought as to where I'd use them.

Rolater

I was jamming on my Novation Circuit and out popped a loop that reminded me of Orbital's "Impact (The Earth is Burning)." It wasn't going to be an Ingress track, just another in my songs about roads in Dallas(Beltline... Orbital... not the most subtle reference I've ever made) but it needed a vox sample (Like a cry for survival...) and I stumbled upon this Klue video which had those great lines.

Hardware used:
Novation Circuit
Roland System-1
Moog Mother-32
Lexicon MX-400, Alesis 3630
... no TB-3 on this one, really, I can do a track without it.

Software
PreSonus Studio One
Native-Instruments Battery (detailed 808 kit)
Native-Instruments FM8
Assorted plugins...

Beltline

Beltline (5:15 AM Carrollton mix)

Beltline (5:15 AM Carrollton ambient-dub mix)

NI Reaktor, Moog Mother-32, Roland System-1, Nord Lead 4R, Massive, .... lots of stuff.

I suppose if there is a theme, it is about how uneducated culture shouts down science for proposing new theories, i.e. evolution, global climate change, etc. Why do we give the microphone to those who are more interested in leaving things as they are rather than working forward?

There is no rose of swich vertu 
As is the rose that bare Jhesu. 
For in this rose conteined was 
Hevene and erthe in litel space, 
Be that rose we may weel see 
There be o God in persones three, 
The aungeles sungen the schepherdes to 
Gloria in excelsis Deo. 
Leve we all this werdly merthe, 
And folwe we this joyful berthe. 

The text is a Middle-English Christmas Hymn "There is no rose of swich vertu." The music is my own. The music came first. Heather suggested that it needed vocals and found the text to go with it, and then sang for me. We learned how to record vocals together.

The instruments are from the Native Instruments Kontakt factory library. Mixed in Studio One using stock, NI and Waves plugins; Lexicon MX-400 for reverb and ambience. Blue Reactor and Shure SM57 (yup) for microphones.

Heather helped arrange. Kuperman said "make it better" so I did.

There is No Rose of Such Virtue

There Is No Rose of Such Virtue (feat. Heather Oglevie)

Why 17? I have no idea. It was the op's codename.

Started off as a field recording of a creek in my home town. The bass came next. Then I left it alone for months...

We were on vacation at the opposite end of Texas and found ourselves playing Ingress with the locals. We took out a blue field over Corpus Christi so they could put up a green field over Austin and San Antonio. It was a major op and we got to be a small part of it.

I took the zello channel, recorded it out, started editing it and remembered the bass track from months ago.

Sprinkle in some techno and out popped a track.

nord lead 4 - most synths
Roland TB-3 - ACIEEEEEED!
Roland System-1 - two very faint pad parts
Maschine - drums
PreSonus Studio One - mixing
Steinberg Wavelab - mastering
ITB-Techno quantities of plugins of various vendors.... because... techno.

Special thanks to the Austin and Corpus ENL who graciously let me use their vocals and looped us into the ops. Shout out to Barcode-MJ and OptimumCenturio for ... reasons.

Seventeen

A shorter mix of "Seventeen"
https://soundcloud.com/scot-bontrager/seventeen

Seventeen (7″ mix)

Seventeen (“Just the good bits plz” 7″ mix)

The folks at Liminal Continuum were kind enough to share the stems for "More Than a Game" with me so I could do a remix.

It came out a little more ambient than I had anticipated. As I was close to finishing I realized that in concept, if not in outcome, it was similar to Orbital's classic "Halcyon+on+on" (taking an acoustic track, making it techno).

Nord Lead 4R features heavily. Maschine and NI's Reflektor plugin. Random other things. First time using the "detect chords" in PreSonus Studio One 4.0 (which dropped this week! loving it). Composed fast, mixed fast.

More Than a Game

More Than a Game (deviousness's "Get out and Move" remix)

I will write an extended blog post on this track soon. I've been working on this one for months, but have never been able to get it to where I want. I have never been happy with my vocal work on it. So, instead of singing or chanting the psalm, I just whispered it. The result was the creepy, hate-filled vibe I think it needs.

This is an extended meditation on what it means for a Christian to pray Psalm 139:19ff. I've heard many bad sermons on, and interpretations of, this psalm. In sum, I think we should quit trying to sanitize it, it isn't God's word to us. It is the truth about who we are. Loving God cannot mean hating our enemies. The character the psalmist embodied, like the character I embodied when I composed and whispered this track is simply wrong about loving God—that isn't love. It is simply demonic hatred trying to hide behind a mask of sanctity. But it is also true. Because I feel these things. I could embody the character because he is not foreign to me, as much as I wish he were.

The title comes from a sheet of paper I saw on a crash cart at a hospital as a woman I was visiting lay dying after 3 years of fighting cancer. I don't know what it means. But is is a phrase that stuck with me.

The key is C in Jeth's mode. I'd never heard of it. But when I started playing with it, the basic melody and chords came out.

Lots of Nord Lead 4R, Native Instruments Battery for the drums, Studio One 3.5 and 4.0 for mixing. All the usual outboard gear and plugins.

ps 139:19ff

si occideris Deus impium
viri sanguinum declinate a me 

qui contradicent tibi scelerate elati sunt frustra adversarii tui

nonne odientes te Domine odivi et contra adversarios tuos distabui

perfecto odio oderam illos inimici facti sunt mihi

scrutare me Deus et cognosce cor meum
proba me et scito cogitationes meas

et vide si via idoli in me est
et deduc me in via aeterna

Ice Over Purple

Robely wrote the lyrics, DementedTulip stepped up to the microphone, I mashed on the XMP and *BOOM* out popped pop GOLD!

I Love You Like a Junk Punch

Junk Punch (deviousness’s “Joy in My Heart” Ambient mix)

This started as scraps left over from another project. I wanted to use my new TR-8S for something since I've not had a moment to touch it since I got it for my birthday over a month ago. I've been listening to a lot of  https://soundcloud.com/julianewolfmusic  acid house stuff lately and really got inspired to just write an acid banger. Most of the parts were done in one take each... I was trying to play as "live" as possible on this. So, things are a bit wonky in places. I recorded fast, mixed fast and tried to let go of my perfectionism. Banger.

Stonebrook

Vocalist: Heather Oglevie
Produced by: deviousness

Bel Air

Bel Air (Heather Oglevie)(Lana Del Ray cover)

As I was saying... the universe is just doomed. Doomed, doomed doomed doooooooooomed. I'm going to sing the doom song now....

Doom Song (Instrumental)

No samples were used in the making of this track.

For my Ingress Anomaly team, #99 in Brooklyn.

NTS-B-99

NSTB-99

A cover of The Waterlillies lovely "Sunshine Like You"

Sunshine Like You

Full EP here: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/deviousness/sea-nymph

I found this at a flea market. I was looking for interesting old artwork to decorate my new apartment. I was going for a mid-century modern look and this was stuck in a pile of scratched-up chrome thingamabobs. I didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t mid-century modern. The guy selling it didn’t know what it was either, “it’s some weird art and it’s $3 like the sticker says...” So, along with a clock with real radium glow-in-the-dark hands, I bought it. 

When I was cleaning it, I realized it was more than a bit of odd metal, it looked technical, otherworldly, alien. I called my friend, Dr. B., PhD, who is the closest thing to a mad scientist I’ve ever met. He promised to look into it when he had a moment. A month or two later, he called back to say that it was like a CD player, but one that had a translator built in. “A translator? Why would a CD player need a translator?” I asked. He informed me that it wasn’t for translating between Earth languages but interplanetary ones.

The thing was not from Earth, but it had learned English. It was just some garbage made to advertise a spaceship. It was just one of those promotional records that car companies would send around to entice you to visit new places – and to visit those new places in their vehicle. Interplanetary promotional exotica. 

One of the tracks was supposed to be jazz from Earth, but it was the wonkiest jazz I’ve ever heard. I imagine some alien came here in their Sea Nymph, expecting our music to be like that and instead found Swedish death metal, mumble rap, or young country. They probably threw the damn thing out of the window (does the Sea Nymph have windows?) and shot off to the jade sand beaches of some other planet. 

I asked Dr. B. what to do with it now? He said, “dunno. It looks cool, put it on your shelf and get your $3 out of it.” So that’s what I did.

- F.A. Kaufman, 2019

Sea Nymph

Sea Nymph (Earth)

Slow Burn

I was watching educational videos from the 1940's looking for something related to a research project. I stumbled on one about following rules. This happened.

Spoil the Game

Started as a synth improv for a video soundtrack, I liked it enough to turn it into a full track

Novation Summit
Nord Lead 4
Lexicon MX-400

PreSonus Studio One
iZotope Ozone

W015

9 minute groove

Novation Summit
Roland TR-8S
Roland JV-880
Roland System-1
Roland TB-3
Bass Guitar
Bongo, Congo, Tambourine, Shakers...

deviousness

Popular tracks