Deserted Cities Of The Heart - 1986

42 years ago in 1974, I just finished building my first synthesizer; A PAiA 2700 as a kit. It has one oscillator, one lowpass and one bandpass filter, 2 Envelope Generators and an innate inability to stay in tune. I own it still. 

Greg Jones and I got together to see how crazy we could get with the limited tape recorder access we had at the time. So with one mono Voice of Music deck and a stereo Sony deck, we engaged in an exercise in destructive bouncing. I don't recommend it but it does build discipline as every mistake you make subsequently follows you for the rest of the recording. 

Here is the result of that afternoon. A overly ambitious version of “Take The A Train” which we would refer to as “Spaced Out Ellington”. As we completed each track, Greg would frantically try to adjust Billy Strayhorn's brilliant arrangement into something that I could manage to play one note at a time, then jam seven muddy tracks one on top of the other. 

Listening back to it and adjusting it a bit with Ozone and LANDR, it’s a period piece, but still kinda fun, and posted as such.

Transient Studios

Take The A Train

Using the Moog LFO to modulate the pulse width on the arturia. Varying VCO range coming from Korg Sequencer and envelope on the arturia to get some basic drum sounds and also some pseudo ring mod effects.

LFO Drums Exp

What if you could go back 70 years and hear a recording of your father playing piano that hadn’t been heard since then? It’s a very powerful feeling. My father died in 1970, but I still remember him coming home from work and playing the piano - frequently playing Stardust. That’s why I still today frequently sit and meditate over playing the same song.

70 years ago, my Uncle Joe owned a Recordio, which was a record machine made here in Michigan where you could record your own flexi-discs. They are resin on cardboard and cut by a steel needle; and needless to say the fidelity is low.

I inherited a bunch of my Uncle’s discs in 2014, and I have been producing a CD release for relatives. There’s been a lot of spent 78 cartridge needles as the discs were not lovingly cared for. That followed by a caress of Melodyne Capstan, and Isotope RX, and a bit of LANDR.

So this is a version of Stardust from 1948, by Tom Hassett.

Stardust

Metal Monday - Anti Lover
In 1984, Greg came to me and said “I’ve got an idea to do ‘And I Love Her’ as a metal tune”. He had the basic parts worked out, and we set at it and it soon became “Anti Lover”. This was recorded to cassette on a Fostex X-15, and I believe we 7 tracks on the Fostex. No edits were possible of course, so please hang in for Greg's masterful one take solo. From the forthcoming release, “Hogback - Jones and Hassett in the 80’s”

Equipment used:
	Fostex 4-track X-15	
	Korg Poly-800
	Effectron II
	Yamaha RX-11 Drum Machine
	Gibson SG Standard
	Sholtz Rockman

Post Processed with iZotope Ozone and LANDR

transientstudios