Tribe

Released: October 2017

Equipment: Waldorf Blofeld synthesizer, Korg Volca synthesizers

Listen:

As with stonechildren I'd continued to produce a steady stream of new tracks and once I'd reached 30 minutes worth I released the set as a new album. It was at this point that I decided to stick with using my Graveyard people pictures of cemetery statues as album covers.

In hindsight the sequencer/arpeggiator lines were consistently too prominent in the final mixes. At this time I would work on a piece, complete it, and move on to the next one fairly rapidly, often leaving me too close to the piece to look at it more objectively. Coupled with my limited equipment and poor mixing skills this often resulted in some very uneven results. There's a temptation to go back and redo them all but I know this is a honeypot trap for me, spending endless time polishing & refining and never actually finishing anything. So they remain in their original form.

Equipoise started out as another of my Exercise... pieces but developed a definite structure as I worked on it. A nice rise & fall through the length of the song.

Keepsake has another of my 'meandering' chord sequences with the arpeggiator line bringing in snippets of repeating notes almost randomly. I liked the feeling of nostalgia and (slightly melancholy?) reflection that this piece brought up for me.

Good day began as an almost throwaway piece based around a very basic sequencer line. But the fun of working with the Volcas again (Keys, Bass & Sample) brought it to life and resulted in a bouncy pop song.

Twelver also featured the Volcas, allowing the individual sequencers to run out of phase and break up the structure.

Rubbersoles returns to being Blofeld-only with a very bleepy arpeggiator line.

Eskewed starts with 'processed strings' on the edge of discordancy, setting the 'skewed' tone of the song. I really like the unsettled feel throughout the piece and the unexpected chords. The Volcas feature again with Sample (drums) and Bass.