Ten Hour Track

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Two Hour Track

Whilst I was very ill the only way for me to program music was to do very little each day, which has led me to have many unfinished tracks on my hard drive and has got me into bad habits of leaving bits and going back to them much later, having forgotten what the original idea was or simply getting bored with it. Yuck! That way of working can also lead to over-polishing – adding too many effects and diluting the original idea and sounds.

No more fucking around

In trying to break the habit I’ve decided to write a series of tracks in a strict two hour time limit. Whilst my best works have taken much, much longer than that, most of the tracks from the Shocker album were written very fast, with the emphasis on excitement and attitude and less attention to audio fidelity.

Download the MP3, bender

I’ve put the first one up here. It’s called Bender as the pitch is bent on all the synth tracks. The title may have unfortunate relations with Futurama and homophobia, but neither are bothersome enough to change it. I think it turned out quite well for a first effort, but it’d need a couple of hours more to be more focussed and live out the potential of the ideas. I could do that, cannibalise it for sounds on other tracks or just leave it and move on…I’m undecided. See what you think…

Redux: I, Destructor

Film remakes often aren’t as bad as you’d think, for every crappy Wicker Man there’s often the irreverent fun of Dawn of the Dead. I preferred Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu to the original, as well as Rob Zombie’s Halloween - apart from the musical score. Even away from films, music almost invariably fares badly at remakes, and I can’t think of a single instance when an artist or band has re-recorded a track over a decade later for it to be superior to the original – it’s a stupid idea.

A bit thick…

So, while I’m learning the new equipment in my studio I’ve decided to rework some old tunes. First up is I, Destructor which was my first single for Earache Records in 1993. It subsequently remixed and retitled I am Destructor for the album Life of Destructor, upon which this version is based. I haven’t fucked with the arrangement much, but I made mostly new sounds and used all new toys for the mix. Was it really a stupid idea, or is the only thick in the kick? Click below to find out…

Ultraviolence – I, Destructor Redux

Update

I’ve been back to it a month later and made some improvements, resulting in a clearer and louder mix, especially the percussion which was a little floaty in the first version. I used Twisted Lemon’s fantastic Sidekick plug to tighten it up a bit – this really is a super-bargain plug at a tenner, and far better than the bundled Cubase sidechainer.  See how the bass kicks now…

Ultraviolence – I, Destructor Redux v1.1

Eye Destructor

Johnny Violent: Driven insane by the pain

One thing that I didn’t wish for the New Year was a painful long term illness, after all I’ve already got a substantial one of those and I’m not that greedy, however after spending half the Xmas period in the half abandoned Norwich and Norfolk General Hospital sharing floor space with the blood flecked amputees-in-waiting and piss-soaked lost souls I bring you…Recurrent Corneal Erosion, which means every time I go to fucking sleep for more than a couple of hours my eyelid attaches to my cornea and when I move or open my eyes it takes a little piece with it. I could take it for the first week or two but it’s driving me fucking mad, and I’ve taken to switching on an alarm to wake me up every 90 minutes, which is making me totally loony tunes. I caught the my bloodshot eyes on camera and Photoshopped them up for the previous post…

I’m seeing a specialist in a few days and the problem should sort itself soon, so it’s not hopeless like my chest sometimes seems, but that’s a little better right now and I’ll write a whingathon on it in a month or so when I’ve been to the “awesomely named” Pain Clinic for drugs and agony coping strategies. Meantime, here’s a rundown on some CDs I’ve been enjoying lately…

Defqon.1 Festival 2008: (3xCD) compilation

I’m a huge fan of the Stunned Guys and it’s a great shame they don’t have a full length CD out – here there’s around a 40 minutes DJ set. When people talk about Gabber or European hardcore it is often labelled as dumb, gratuitously aggressive and overly repetitive and here the Stunnies demonstrate complete mastery of all three attributes for everyone to love or hate. Also banging set by Evil Activities – any chance to here Neophytes Always a Rubberboot is fine by me. The other disc of DJ sets is slower trance and hardstyle which aren’t genres I listen to much, so it’s interesting to hear what is going on, especially on a technical level. Some huge meisterkickdrums break up the 140bpm strobe-gazing and over familiar preset synth sounds. CD3 is a mixed bag of tunes by the artists who appeared at the Defqon festival, the vocal introductions to which are mostly hilarious for one reason or another… 

Update (March 2009): I’m still regually listening to the Stunned Guys mix – I think it’s got the perfect balance between aggression and audio fidelity – really modern and powerful. The Void Settler track on CD3 has about the heaviest kick drum I’ve ever heard.

Omen Trilogy: OST

I can only think of two “devil” films that are close to being frightening; Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen, which is nearly as silly a film as The Exorcist, but Jerry Goldsmith’s pounding choir and orchestral soundtrack cranks up the fear level without the need for any visuals whatsoever. You could take just about any two bars from the first track Ave Satani and loop them with a suitable drum break for a seriously floor-quaking hardcore track. Best played very loud in a darkened room, just like most music. Classic.

Update (March 2009): On further listening disc two is numbingly hammy and overblown, featuring an unessesary pipe organ. However, disc three (Final Conflict) is a, ahem, revelation, taking the themes from the first film and adding an epic good vs evil element it is remanisant of Goldsmith’s work on Star Trek V. I’ve just ordered the film trilogy for a fiver from Play.com, as it contains a documentary on the score.

Goblin: The Fantastic Voyage Of Goblin: The Sweet Sound Of Hell 

Sticking with horror movie soundtracks, this CD has a couple of pieces from Goblin’s scores from the 70s and 80s, standouts being (especially) Susperia, Profondo Rosso and Dawn of the Dead. Disappointingly, Tenebre lacks the slamming main theme but don’t worry as the CD can be had for around a fiver, and the odd prog-rock dirge aside, shows genuine invention and transcends it’s time period. Unlike the dorkish title and sleeve design.

Blade Runner: OST (standard edition)

Maybe I’m listening to too much retro soundtrack music. I’ve always liked this but haven’t bought a copy since I got stung by the ridiculous “jazz” reworking that masqueraded as Blade Runner for years. Here we have Vangelis’ authentic score, but if I wanted to hear voiceovers from the film scattered over the music I’d have bought the (cheaper) DVD instead, which also comes with visuals. I can’t really recommend this recording.

M83: Before the Dawn Heals Us

Most of my CD collection is hardcore and classical/soundtrack music so I’m trying to find some modern electronic music I can listen to in more social situations such as when my girlfriend’s in the same room as me. I’ve only heard this once – I like the synth layers which give a nice Pink Floyd-esque expansiveness but could do without the over-excited clacking of the “real” drums, as well as some deliberately aimlessness lyrics. We’ll see…

New Order: Original Masters

Blue Monday: art over wealth and ego

When I was awarded my first recording contract in the early 90s I was shocked at how the music business still encouraged childish images of rebellion and pretentious attitudes from artists, because I thought that had all been killed off. Not by the then current rave culture but by New Order, surely the best band of their era. The most iconic image, for me was their Top of the Pops appearance for Blue Monday. Seemingly dragged from Manchester via the Co-op clothing department, they looked gaunt and uncomfortable as they shambled their way through their beautifully melancholy electronic symphony. They imsisted on playing live and, as though to prove it, even the synthesizers were out of tune. Such a world away from Miami Vice, big hair, big grins, big voices, big wallets, wanker DJs, the whole shebang.

Hearing recent pastiches of their work by The Ting Tings and Sugarbabes reminded me to restock my New Order CD collection, as when my old discs were either played to death or killed by trampling and oxidisation. All their 80s albums now come remastered in a collector’s edition with a second CD of remixes. The original album tracks still sound fresh, with Bernard Sumner’s little stories and/or streams of consciousness are always poignant and warming even when intending nonchalance and sarcasm. The backing is mostly inventive, and can fluctuate from charmingly naïve to toweringly statuesque in a brilliantly disarming fashion. The effect is heightened by the fact anybody with a modern PC could theoretically make this music, but nobody ever will. The remixes, however, from the likes of Shep Pettibone sound hideously dated and weren’t that great in the first place, overlong and literally laced with bells and whistles. Blue Monday ‘88 sounded bad by 1989, its shameless commercialism standing in monotonic contrast to the accidental ethics of the original’s infamous loss making sleeve design. The pleasingly restrained remastering process whilst adding nothing to the recordings, doesn’t spoil anything, making it no worse than pointless. The Perfect Pit is a glaring omission from the Lowlife CD – a short deconstructed version of The Perfect Kiss which I beleive to be the precursor of 808 State’s Cubik – the track which defined early ‘90’s hardcore and remains influential.

New Order were so hardcore from a marketing perspective that many of their singles didn’t appear on the albums at all. But the remastering of the relatively recent singles compilations has fared much worse than the albums, with the sound compressed to all but eliminate dynamics in order to raise the volume – perhaps to appeal to the severely disabled listener incapable of adjusting his or her hi-fi controls. I don’t really see the point of remastering old material at all – the originals sounded fine and translated well to CD so what’s the point? Current music is mixed in the knowledge of what the modern mastering process involves, and therefore is well suited to the procedure. Take the aforementioned Sugarbabes’ About You Now, for example. Its titanium clad production thrives on the mechanical pummelling and squashing like a super-knight, but older recordings cannot survive the punishment that they were not designed for. There is no point in imposing these 2008 production values onto old recordings, any more than there is a point to applying 21^st century moral values onto a 17^th century witch-hunt.

So as well as recommending the old editions of the New Order albums, a real must-have is Substance 1987 – now widely available for well under a tenner. Over two hours of New Order single heaven with their own remixes, completely untouched by misguided tweaking. The one problem – you might have to turn the original masters up.