Kaoss Octagon

The Kaoss Octagon

A strange time here indeed...working on a series of mutated jam sessions that grew out of working with a Korg Kaossilator - strange in that after the original beats and samples were worked out, that all eight they were remixed, multi layered and generally evolved into shape, all within the space of a week. A busy time indeed.

So, without any further ado, let us nonetheless as soon as possible...

...and to round things off nicely, here are additional notes on each of the tracks featured on the album:

Theme One

Presenting for your delight and delectation the first in a series of pieces developed using a Korg Kaossilator fed through effects and multiple layers. THEME ONE was based on a mutated jam session and getting tow series of different samples that they had to just get on with each other!

Theme Two

The second in a series of Themes based on jams, loops, edits and general madness evolving from working with samples from a Korg Kaossilator. This one is a noisy little beast with a great bass riff.

Theme Three

Chaos, Dischord, pulled back into rhythm, spinning off back into dischord and back into a beat; layers of Kaossilator served on a bed of white noise...

Theme Four

The Fourth track in the series of themes from these Kaosillator sessions saw a journey into dronescapes, where ambient doesn't always mean a new age chill, but instead can produce something altogether more unsettling and discordant.

Theme Five

Possibly the most complex track from this series of Kaosillator sessions - although only based through two samples fed through Ableton and numerous effects, they were a series of loops produced direct through Kaossilator and then edited to create just the right amounts of sync, glitch and discordancy.

Theme Six

The mighty Theme Six from this Kaossilator series of sessions. What make this unusual - yes, well may you laugh - is that this is the only one from the entire series of eight pieces based on a single sample with only a little fade in and out to make it ever so neat and tidy. Metallic, unsettling, beautiful and irritating, all in one.

Theme Seven

Number Seven in this Kaossilator series sees a move into in yer face beats, white noise swirls, and a scratchy loop somewhere in the back of your brain. There are two mixes of this track, and this is the one without the extra delay added.

Theme Eight

Theme Eight and the final piece from this series of rather insane Kaosillator themed session moves into epic territory with a piece of sweeping multi layered cacophony that should shake loose those stubborn bits of ear wax and remove those last few feeble brain cells. Enjoy!

Monstrous Black Centipede

This started off its' life while listening to a spoken word piece from my favourite beat writer. Mentioning no names, though the initials WSB may be a clue. Anyway, this scion of the inventors of the adding machine spoke this amazing piece about a psychological experiment reducing the patient to a monstrous black centipede. And it suddenly occurred to me - that although I had produced comics, posters and video images based on this guy's work - not a single piece of muzak. So here we are: The instrumental is a big band number fed through paulstretching and ping pong delay filters and added flange added. I think the whole thing works really well together, and old Bill himself may well have approved!

Welcome Aboard!

Santa got me a New PC for Christmas - so having wired it up the first thing to check was to set up various audio interfaces playing through it to make sure everything was working properly. And from that initial Jam from my Mc-303, came various bits of looping, editing, and overdubs. The instrumental piece was made with a riff from my Kaossilator. But enough technical kit speak already - I love this track!

All Change Please

Yes folks - there are various changes afoot here at Quaquaversity as the Conny Plankton Soundcloud has reached its storage limit. Nothing wrong with the idea  of paying a bit extra for more storage, but it had left me thinking what the best long term solution was to getting people access to my muzak through the Quaquaversity blog and beyond. Soundcloud do a great job, but I have had to be ruthless in thinking is it worth paying a monthly fee when hardly anyone is listening to the music. This doesn't mean I am all morose and somnolent like, but just have to start getting a bit real about these things.

So I have started moving across stuff into a new site and online presence over at Bandcamp. A copy of the Bandcamp link is in the links section on the right hand side of the page. However this link can also be found can can also be found here, by clicking on the magic phrase:

Whelks are sleeping under your bed.

Or by clicking on the image below:

Bandcamp should allow for ready access, although the interface has been completely different and will make for a different layout to get to the Conny Plankton uber sound. This layout will kick in from this post onwards. It also means having to reupload some of the Soundcloud files from earlier posts back into Bandcamp as we get things sorted. All of this may get more than a tad confusing as we wind the clock back on some of these earlier posts to get everything roughly back into some sort of chronological order.

We will all get there in the end. I want to keep the Soundcloud site going however, which will continue to evolve and develop over the next few weeks.

So Beep Beep! Everyone aboard? On we go!

Kaoss from the outer reaches

Moving on to something new...exploring my Kaossialtor - a hand held device that allows some amazing sounds to be touched and stroked into existence. From a Jam session played on top of a midi riff through Bass Station and reverb added through an Alesis Midiverb. Oh, and rather good for the head too...

The P.A.Morbid Song Cycle

This Post is a generally sweeping and possibly wee bit pretentious title for a series of musical projects that began some six or seven years ago with the idea of doing a series of remixes and sort of cover versions of some of my favourite muzak pieces, lyrics and poems. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever done cover versions of these before.

Vocals were recorded on minidisc (remember them) by none other than the great North England poet, P.A. Morbid.  Morb is well known around the local poetry circuit, and has a number of published works.

He is also the voice and guiding force behind his own musical project, Killy Dog Box and Pre Dating the 13th. Perfect dark ambient fodder for a cold winter evening and well worth checking out, and links can be found here:

https://soundcloud.com/killy-dog-box

https://soundcloud.com/pre-dating-the-13th

The four tracks were finally completed  among a series of a number of other projects, although I did not want to put anything up on the blog or Soundcloud until I felt everything was finished, and Morbid had graciously given me the go ahead to use his golden larynx. So now, a mere seven years or so later, here we are:

Magog Hammer Machine

First one from a series of remix cover version projects. Vocals are by none other than P.A.Morbid. The original version is buried somewhere in the title and the supporting image may well be a clue. Suffice to say one of my favourite ever tracks, and a big influence for many things over the years.  It is now far removed now from the original track, with a series of time stretched tones. overlaid samples, loops and general madness.

Archbishop Thunderstorm

The second piece in the series was a classic from one of my favourite 70s Krautrock bands. Amazing lyrics and incredible vocals and beat in the original. No way that it could ever be matched in terms of its lysergic intensity - so this is a completely different and individual take. Vocals are again from the Rev. P.A. Morbid.

Come Again

A cover version born not in a song, but in a poem. But not just any poem of course, but one of the greatest poems ever. Penned by everyone's fave Irish Poet Golden Dawn member, this tells of an apocalyptic vision heralded by spiritual decay and cultural loss. Probably more pertinent even today than when it was written. Loved it ever since I saw a comic version of it in International Times made as a collage cut up by Biff Comics. Vocals again are by the incomparable P.A. Morbid.

All the Ears Round

The final piece from this series of insane cover version projects, this time returning to my favourite 70s Krautrock bands with the a track just showing their just plain amazing and incredible lyrics. I tried to use Morbid's vocals to bring the hypnotic, overwhelming, trancelike, unsettling quality of the lyrics right into the foreground.

Eight Bit Eight Bit - Two Pieces of Eight

Here we have one of two takes of a home made 8 bit/circuit bent synth type thang, fed through a Kaoss Pad for a bit of extra flange together with a bit of Bass Station loop sequencing to help it all gel together.

....and this time we have a remix of the session from the circuit bent 8 bit synth and Kaoss Pad, now just with midi bass sequencers. A more ambient sort of hollowness in the back of the head kind of feel...