I have put up a new project on bandcamp called sojourn. This is something that is the product of some pieces I’ve had kicking around for the last year or so and I finally decided to do something with them. First off, it’s most definitely experimental. I make no claim for this being a masterpiece in sonic composition. So be warned that you’re in for something different. Hence why it’s pay what you like. If you’re into this sort of music you may wish to donate a little something, if you’re not then I hope it gives you an opportunity to dip into something a little more esoteric.
For a while now I’ve been becoming drawn to the more abstract and textural side of music and photography. I think it’s the desire to come up with something new and different but also the fact that it frees you from the traditional style of workflow you would normally associate with making music, something I have always struggled with and still really don’t enjoy.
The project started out originally by just trying out a couple of pieces of new hardware. Interestingly, they’re the cheapest pieces of sound producing electronic hardware I have, with the exception of the ubiquitous Stylophone. So these pieces are the result of a very minimal set of source sounds and some minimal digital processing via some plugins in ableton live.
The first sound source is a MFOS Weird Sound Generator. This was a small DIY project I put together, it’s not difficult to build and a great starting point if you want to get into building your own bits of synth. I wanted to see just what could be done with this and how ‘playable’ it could be. The second is the Korg Monotron. A small, simple and amazingly versatile little box.
Each ‘instrument’, or part, was played independently for as long as I was enjoying the sound-scape it was producing and, to my mind, this is what really makes this piece interesting. Each part was produced in the moment. By that I mean that the sound was being generated and I would stay with the sound or move on as and when I felt it needed to change. Sometimes it would be a frenzy of desire for new textures, sometimes it would be a wallowing in a sound that I really liked. The recordings weren’t made with a release in mind, so I was freed from the usual restrictions to progress or change. I really enjoyed the experience and once it was over I archived the recordings with a vague idea that I may sample them at some future point, but in all honesty knowing I would most likely never do that.
About a year after I’d recorded the parts I stumbled across one of them again, purely by chance. I’d been having a pretty dry musical spell so thought I’d play around with the one I found (the WSG) and see if I could add something to it to formulate a piece or turn it into something I could use in a concert. My first thought was the Monotron part I had recorded, it just seemed like a logical combination, the smooth ambience of the WSG recording combined with the staccato like interruptions of the Monotron. To my surprise the two worked remarkably well together, each part having enough interest and movement to allow your concentration to shift from one to the other or just absorb the sum. At first I thought there wasn’t enough there and tried adding a more regular beat to try and focus the listener and give them an anchor to grip on to when the abstractness got too much. Eventually I came to see that this wasn’t needed and so I have left it at just the two parts interacting and playing around each other.
That was journey 1. journey 2 came about quite simply by exchanging the effects used on the tracks. So it’s the same source material re-mixed and re-jigged slightly, the levels weren’t quite right so that needed some attention but on the whole the track just made itself . Again, something I was surprised to see work so well.
It’s all too easy to churn this sort of stuff out I feel. Which is why I have, hopefully, added some value to it by giving you an insight into how the pieces were formed.
Thank you for your time and I hope you enjoy sojourn.
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