So Peter Wade has been suggesting to use a Shepards Tone somewhere in our music since our first day writing music together.  A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the base pitch of the tone moving upwards or downwards, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.^[1]

The U.B.C.L. (C.L.U.B.) hook on that record has always sort of dissatisfied us since we first made it.  It seemed like we didn’t try hard enough to come up with a distinctive vocal treatment.  So recently, Peter Wade put into place a Shepard’s Tone patch and inserted the vocals to create an ever ascending and descending effect to the vocals.  Very helium mushrooms.  It took a lot of concentration and focus to create this patch, but I think we got something very new for vocal treatment.

Here is what it looks like as a patch in ProTools.  So those of you who have the original version of C.L.U.B., get ready to hear an updated version.

Have a new song I am very excited about.  Peter and I began the song in an awesome manner.  We both just stopped talking and started to make beats.  They were both in the right vein.  So we took my beats and ran it through this ipod speaker thing.

Conceptualized and executed with the help of Attack, ISAORA present their 2009 fall/winter collection in an interesting light with the following collection video. With a unmistakable technical approach that is necessitated by the snowboard apparel and fashion, the video highlights the technical properties of ISAORA’s collection albeit in an unorthodox form. The video was directed by Shinichi Maruyama and edited by Jamie Carreiro.

Check out the write-up on HypeBeast.

I modeled a timpani…how nerdy. 12 osc drum hit with varying decays and filtering to expose different harmonics. After some massaging from Peter with reverbs and mic-pre’s, I believe it turned out pretty good.

It really added another dimension to this new intimate headphone bleeder. Out of all of the MNDR records, Peter and I wanted this song to appear as if I was living inside of your skull and singing out of your ears.

Chained to Change is a record that you want to listen after some extreme things happened…or at least that’s what I think or imagine. While writing this I imagined one could fall in love or break up….maybe get fired too.

If you have a Nord G2 I am posting the patch for you to download.  Have a “good” time.

Timpani Patch

OK so a while back I worked on this 12 inch using my Sound Lab suitcase synth. It’s previous working title was Variation Repition and was being fashioned into a straight to white label 12 inch. However, the track is so chrome destroying that I decided that it should be developed out into a pop dance hit. Letting this one sit is like making wine..now i am drunk.

The concept is about a North American Phalanx. A Utopian communal society invented by French philosopher Fourier. Fourier believed people would be better off living in communal societies rather than individual, private living. Fourier developed the idea of the phalanstère, a community of 1,600 based in a single structure. In the phalanstère, there would be private property, but many activities including eating and cooking would be communal.

Peter and I were talking about economics and philosophy one day and than he brought up the North American Phalanx. I remembered reading about this in the past and we decided to run with it.
Apparently they were pretty successful on the East Coast, which means the East Coast had hippies way back in the mid 1800′s. Being from California…this was a SHOCK. EAST COAST RESPECT.

I think they basically failed due to patriarchal societies. Some concepts were interesting such as building the communities like a wheel. Every element of the society surrounded the main building where everyone lived and ate. American Communism

Check out more about this Shangri – La.

Chains Change is my new record that is going to be more of an intimate in your skull sort or headphone record.  A song to listen to after a heavy party or maybe just one extremely heavy experience.  A song that makes you want to just listen to it by yourself until you have zero tears left.

The synth work is mainly the OB8.  Literally Peter Wade and I worked the fine tune of this synth sound for at least 3 hours.  The OB8 allows you to pan all 8 of the voices in order to give it that spread out huge sound.  I do not expect to write any lead parts over this record.  Peter Wade absolutely killed the beat.  This is one of my most proud beats to be highlighted on this record.  Very remnant of early IDM and all Peter.  His feel is truly unreal.

We are layering my Nord G2 and debuting my Suzuki Omnichord which I used to preform with in early MNDR.  This omni chord can be run as a midi controller and generally sends out absolute cuckoo midi information.  I can not lie.  So it really can make some unreal sounds when using a sound module (which in this case is my Nord G2).  Your eyes will cry blood when you hear what this duo can do together.

Here’s a live pic of Wade on the OmniChord!

Here are some pics from final touches on Send My Greetings.  Little Yamaha CS15 came in and stole the show as the lead synth.  We added a lot of chaos into this record which means pedals that are laying around and running stuff through everything and twiddling knobs.

Send My Greetings is for everyone that just says fuck it and fuck you inspired by the life and times of Patty Hearst and her involvement in Guerrilla Urban Warfare in the SLA.

I have a new upbeat record finished.  This record is my homage to Patty Hearst and her moment of extreme political radicalness and her involvement with the SLA (Simbionese Liberation Army).

Patty Hearst is the heir to the Hearst publishing fortune.  She was raised with a diamond silver spoon in her mouth in SF.  At age 19 while attending UC Berkeley (1974), she was kidnapped, held hostage, and used as ransom by the SLA.  The SLA kidnapped her in order to further their cause of feeding the poor and taking down the prison system in America.  The SLA asked for $70/person for every poor person in California which added up to $400 million for Patty’s safe return.  They received $6 million from the Hearst family along with donations of food for the poor in California.  The SLA felt that the food was of poor quality and did not release Patty Hearst.  Patty was eventually recovered by the FBI after spending over a month with the SLA.

After her recovery she willingly returned to the SLA and their cause.  Keep in mind that the SLA was more extreme than the Black Panther’s and believed in urban guerilla warfare to further their cause.  The SLA philosophy was to take down the prison system in America by waging war on The United States.   They believed that the prison system was a modern form of slavery of African Americans and the poor class.

Here was her quote when she was arrested after returning to the SLA.

“Tell everybody that I’m smiling, that I feel free and strong and I send my greetings and love to all the sisters and brothers out there.”

I love these moments in life.  Where the veil has been dropped and their is a moment of clarity…bliss.  Maybe it doesn’t mean anything and she was brain washed.  It doesn’t really matter to me.  These moments of absolute certainty are so powerful.

Imagine if Paris Hilton was kidnapped by a radical politcal organization, recovered and then left her fame and fortune to become a full time member of an urban guerilla warfare organization.

Where is the passion in all of this decadence in our time?

I have more to say on this topic….especially having lived in The Bay area.  More to come.

I started this record I Go Away at Photo Call’s(Eli Epstein) studio in Los Angeles.  He has a label call Computerlife and also is working with Ghostly.  Anyways, we began this record with a Prophet-5, clavichord, and other amazing outboard panning, reverb, phazer, etc..modules.  His studio is unbelievable.

After bringing the record back to NY, we began to deconstruct it more and challenge the structure and sound scape.  We decided to add additional pads from the OB-8 to build up the chord progression and set the sorrow filled sounds.  All of the OB 8 sounds have a decaying feel like they are dissipating into static.  I added a very slow pitch modulation LFO to the patch in order to give it the feeling that it is bending down and fading away.

We also had to fix the OB 8 because it wasn’t storing its presets and we would have to load the presets from the cassette tape.  Peter Wade figured it was the internal battery.  I used to work at Atma_Sphere building pre-amps, so I got out the solder gun and soldered the battery into the circuit board and that seemed to fix its internal memory.  Keeping it haute.

I have a new minimal techno record called Variation Repition.  I made all of the the keyboard sounds using the gate function on my Soundlab Suitcase Synth.  I am featuring a rapper on this record.  I will announce soon!  It is going to be sick.

The main synth sounds reminds of me of a Tesla machine…very heavy and illustrates a picture of cartoons with their bones glowing after they have been electricuted.  I also made the vocal hook by reading the liner notes of a Morton Subotnik record entitled Butterflies and from Phillip K Dick wiki.  I was looking to make a dance 12 in the style of minimal Bpitch Control/Kontakt Berlin techno.  The lyrics are very dry and ominous.  My favorite style of dance lyrics.

This is the Pro Tools session below.