Tourist Kid -  A Circulation EP (TT023) 
Digital & Cassette | 23/02/2016
 http://thisthing.us  http://bandcamp.thisthing.us


Rory Glacken has been heavily invested in Perth music for some time, documenting and presenting various events and archiving outsider goings-on. Their own efforts as Tourist Kid have been subtle and considered, with their live shows capturing recent attention. This EP marks their first release for a label.

"For me, the record itself came out of continual late night on-foot commutes from city to home, usually after clubbing or seeing close friends or whatnot. I have pretty bad tinnitus that acted up a bunch whenever I would be walking home which affected listening to music
and my engagement with the surroundings at the time.

Throughout the process of making this record, I became obsessed with the idea of how each person interprets & processes silence differently. I'd say I live a life surrounded by, and constantly filled with other people, often the walks I take are therapeutic & have a degree of seclusion. I find the idea of cancelling out or ignoring the presence of background / ambient noise strange when It comes to listening to music, as it often filters through and affects my experience of listening. Whereas silence can often be seen as a complete vacuum of sound, I became interested in the idea of living in the presence of intrusive or ambient background noise without feeling the need to drown it out.

Tonally, I wanted to find a way of having 128KB samples - fragments and soft synths which mimic real instruments - to be able to coexist and melt into something more ambiguous through layers of signal processing. The entire record was made on a laptop which isn't out of the norm for a lot of producers, however I feel that many feel shame or hide from that idea. I want to embrace the idea of trying to cultivate or sculpt an organic "non laptop" sound from purely digital means, whilst being able to
keep both elements of natural & digital present.

Texturally, the record takes cues from ASMR & Musique Concrete however my primary focus was on cultivating spacial awareness. I understand the EP falls foremost under the Ambient / Drone category but a lot of the status quo factors in terms of time and form weren't in my interests and structurally I wanted something that felt generative & cyclical."

Growth

// THIS THING //