You Eat what you Are

“Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.” 
― Ruth Reichl


This series of two videos began their existence as a series of experiments designed around the loose theme of getting to grips with Adobe After Effects and the series of filters and special effects it had to offer. The first idea for content was based around a certain TV cook from the 60s and 70s. The footage was taken from a repeat of a Christmas special - unfortunately I couldn't get a sample of dear husband Johnny, although there is a passing mention of him from the footage being a dab hand with the UHU in making decorations to go on  Christmas Cake. The second piece of footage was originally a trip through the digestive system, made with an endoscope, though when it passed through After Effects and came out of the end, all versions were something completely different.

But then, while editing things together, I was hit by a dilemma - whether to include the original footage of Fanny the C or leave it with just the endoscope footage. And so two versions emerged - the deluxe version using both sources of footage, and a slimmed down version being based purely around the endoscope.

The muzak made for each video was based around samples of Mrs C in action, a timestretched sample of gargling, a little bit of white spacenoise as an intro from an earlier session with a Kaossilator, and a sequencer section played from an Arturia Microbrute.

The title for this first version is an oblique reference to made by husband Johnny after a show by Mrs C which has now passed into Urban Legend.

The title for this second version, now cut off from our favourite childhood celebrity chef, simply refers to the version without Fanny.

Enjoy!

DikMik Spacenoise

This mix was the natural end to a theme spent exploring efforts to recreate the Hawkwind "Space Sound" from the early 70s, as pioneered by Dik Mik and his audio generator. This evolved into working with Binaural brainwave frequencies fed through a Mini Kaoss Pad to add extra effects, producing a whole series of different samples and frequencies, and then mixing the whole lot together. Could take your brain to somewhere it may not quite want to go...

Planktonia

A return to video based projects here, with taking a batch of moving images from a series of obscure sources - exotic jellyfish, the surreal banality of 1970s popular TV culture, vintage classics from Bunuel and Dali, a series of my own photographs, and then chopping and editing to mix in with a track from an earlier post, being an edited jam session made with a Roland MC303 and a Korg Volca. The overall results are probably very damaging to your cerebral cortex - though it's probably far too late for some of us!

A View from Inside

This project began its humble life as a series of explorations working with various vintage audio function generators in an attempt to find a way to recreate the classic Hawkwind Space Sound from the Dikmik era of Hawkwind. This led us to work through a series of experiments using binaural sound brainwave generators, feed through a Mini Kaoss Pad. The audio mix is all based around two base frequencies: one designed to add effects to your head and the upper reaches, and the other designed to promote other effects a bit lower down...The video part of the project grew from an idea of using my own photographs showing my love of textures, put together as an edit. It works alongside the muzak to definitely take you somewhere else. So here it is. From Inside. For You.

A World of Their Own

 

While working on a series of sessions on the Big Ambient mixes, there was one big sample that was considered and left behind - it was a 17 minutes timestretched drone piece that had been produced from a series of sessions working with my Roland Mc303 and a bass station rack. However, it soon became friends with another track  produced using the Bass Station rack - and the two of them were mixed, reversed, reverb added and weaving in and out of the mix. Then, coming to join them, was a little bass loop from my favourite 70s Glaswegian Psychotic Rocker. The whole thing evolved into quite a noisy earwax melting kind of mix. Strange, as it was originally going to be part of a big chilled out ambient piece. Funny how these things evolve into a world of their own....

Big Ambient Mixes

This was an idea for an epic mix, to be based on using a series of field recordings. I have always loved the idea of field recordings - checking out both the abstract and concrete sound qualities in the world around us- but sometimes these recordings do get plain weird (yes, I know - you need talk) - in that you will have a field recording supposedly set in a jungle where an entire circus of exotic animals is paraded into the mix one of the other...but then it struck me as a great idea, to make a mix based on field recordings, but placed deliberately in direct contradiction which each other...so there are wolves with whales, fires with thunderstorms, frogs with a desert wind...And then the whole thing mixed down into a big drone timestretched piece to add extra depth and textures. Quite an epic mix too, with some two hours of sound going on down here! More versions of this to follow...




...almost immediately. In this second of the series from the Big Ambient Mixes, we have the field recordings mix, all by themselves, with no backing timestretched drone piece mixed in this time to keep them company, as with the Full Mix. Not they had a chance to get lonely of course, as the mix became rich in delay and reversed samples...

...and in this third and final mix from the Big Ambient series, we have the backing drone mix, recorded from an earlier series of sessions, all by itself and no field recordings mixed in. This grew out of a series of electronic jam sessions that were edited and mixed together, with pitch shifting and time stretching added in key areas of the mix. Sort of atonal and harmonic at the same time...

Take it Away...

Is it the time of year? Is it the position of the stars? Is it the tea? Whatever, and whoever, one thing is for sure, that the latest wave of projects coming out of the land of Plankton and Quaquaversity seem to be getting longer and longer as a series of mixing possibilities get further and further explored and mutilated.

Like this one for instance...
 

Almost a traditional style of mixing shown here with lining up a series of different Conny Plankton tracks and doing a straight mix in and out of each other. Nothing else added except a few choice effects like phase and delay. The whole mix takes you into different parts of your head, ranging from frantic, to chilled, to unsettling. Take it away, Mr Plankton!