First tracks in 6 years!  New studio, taking a while to figure out how to tame all the beasts but getting there.

Slippery Gears

Analogue Jacuzzi

Messed around with trying to create that archetypal dub techno chord sound on the moog matriarch and a prophet 12 in a kind of call and response pattern.  Built in a rumbling acid style bassline off analogue solutions ample, and interspersed with beats from the alphabase.  Pretty happy with the kick and snare in particular, as they were fully synthesised and played in pitched.

The image I had in my head whilst creating it was of a cenote, which is a type of water cave in mexico, which appears in openings in the forest floor.  

Cenote Dub

Made a windy sound on the quantum waldorf that made me think of gliding over a snowy, tree filled mountain valley, hence the name boreal glider.  

Chords made on the moog matriach, using the step sequencer from the analogue ample patched into the filter envelope amount.  Bass made on the analogue ample - same step sequencer internally patched to the filter on that from about halfway through the tune and moreso at the end.  Arpeggi synth was the korg monologue, did a lot of knob twisting as I played it through on this one to get the changes in sound.  Beats from the jomox alphabase and dave smith tempest

Boreal Glider

I saw a bit on treehoppers on a david attenborough programme.  The sounds            they make are astounding, so varied and full of life and personality, so I found a bunch of samples on the internet.  I also haven't worked with a breakbeat sample before, so I got one, and cut it up in to its seperate elements.  I feel like 140bpm is a good breakbeat tempo to let to drums sing, so started writing a track at that tempo for it.

The bassline was made on the prophet 12, which has some great capabilities to adjust the frequency envelope modulation.  I wanted it to be powerful in the low end up have some space in the top end, so split it into two tracks and gave the top end some reverb and phase to create that extra movement on top of the filter envelope modulation.

Chords were written on the moog matriarch, we has some lovely natural movement in its sound from the analogue oscillators and filters.  I love the ping pong delay as well, which has tonnes of character.  I feel like it added to a natural sound rather than that polished edm synthetic sound; natural being the theme of the track.  

The high end guitar sounding riff was written on the korg minilogue, adding loads of extra reverb and delay, as I feel like the minilogue needs a bit of extra processing to make it sound less synthetic.  

Also wrote a happy little acidic riff on the doepfer a-100 for the middle section, with an arpeggi from the oberheim ob-x8.  

All sounds were given quite low filter frequencies and a bit of movement on the pitch to make them sound a bit more natural.

Synthesized percussion from the jomox alphabase was mixed together with the breakbeat sample.  Manually added a bit of shuffle/swing as well to give a more natural sound to the rhythm hits, rather than just 100% atomically on the beat.

Interspersed treehopper samples throughout the more quiet bits, with a sample of some rain in the background to set the scene, and that's about it!

Treehoppers

Tried to make a harder techno track here.  I wanted gradual buildups into a huge but charismatic kick, an ethereal buildup to a melody from noise sounds into oscillators in the mids, aggressive filter and pitch modulated rhythms over the top, and a rhythmic, slightly subby bassline that transforms into more of an acidic synth sound later in the tune.  I also wanting to incorporate a huge white noise fuelled drop of the kind I have seen speedy j do when performing.

Thermogenesis

Arpeggi style synth on the oberheim ob-x8, chords on the moog matriarch, percussion on the jomox alphabase, with a breakbeat sample behind, and some light pads from the quantum waldorf

Lunar Glade

Experimented with planting various images of the tune within itself and with feedback loops

Rob Joyce

Pinned to spotlight

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