The16 tracks, which are drawn from LP, CD, cassette, and download releases made between 2000 and 2021 reflect the various strands of my output, so as well as Sanderson tracks one also gets four Ice Yacht numbers, and two pieces that originally appeared on Storm Bugs releases.
Throughout the 21 years various pieces of hardware and software have come and gone, but the overall methodology has remained largely unchanged. Whatever the set-up almost every track began life as a quick ‘live’ (live in the studio that is) take. In a couple of cases namely "Lay-by Lullaby" and "Feeding Time" the original single take is what you hear, but in most cases there followed many hours of editing. This is especially true of the songs.
Given that editing and selection is a key element in the process I have favoured computer programmes that facilitate cutting over multitrack recording. Back in 2000 I was using Sound Edit 16 whose real world paradigm was a film magnetic sound stripe. It is what is known as a ‘destructive’ editor. Once you change something that is pretty much it. I liked the way this forces you to make decision (even if you regret some later) and when Sound Edit 16 disappeared along with OS9 I embraced Sound Studio which is very similar, but has endless undos, the ability to use Audio Unit plug-ins and so on.
So lets run through the tracks.
1. Lay-by Lullaby
My ‘return’ to music making (after 7 or so years concentrating on installations) was made on a Mac bought in late 1997. I had no other hardware to speak of and anyway liked the idea of doing everything in/on the computer. The Mac didn’t come with any music making software but the programmer at Apple David Van Brink who had overseen the implementation of QuickTime music had independently made available a small app called wbl4014. The wbl4014 allows you to access all the QuickTime Musical Instrument parameters and sequence them. A quirky programme without instruction one can do a surprising amount with the wbl4014 albeit the app doesn’t record so one had to organise one’s sequences and then play them back live recording the output to another machine or in my case a mini disk player. The wbl4014 is well suited to short repetitive phrases and is mildly addictive I recorded numerous tracks with it but found myself distilling many of the ideas down into one piece that reminded me both of some of the soundtrack music I had recorded in the 1980s as well as aspects of Ralf and Florian era Kraftwerk when they still combined acoustic with electronic instruments. I decided to make the Dusseldorf suggestion overt and go with the parody motorik title "Lay-by Lullaby". The somewhat thin sounding QuickTime Musical Instruments are supplemented by Moog bass and Melotron string samples. Watch out for the banjo part. Original released as a CD-R in 2000 and mostly sent to friends.
2. Omeletto
Following the release of the Storm Bugs archive recordings on the CD Lets Go Outside And Get it Over, Steven (Ball) and I felt the inevitable urge to make some new Storm Bugs music. We didn’t collaborate on the recordings in the conventional sense, but both of us recorded our own tracks with Storm Bugs’s hats on with the 'idea' of Storm Bugs as a loose frame of reference. An album’s worth of material was recorded from which Walter at Klanggalerie selected 4 tracks for a vinyl EP released in 2002. "Omeletto" is one of the numbers from the EP and is made up from loops assembled in Soundedit 16. The vocals sounds are all manipulations of the word egg.
3. Feeding Time
I continued to use the wbl4014 for a number of years When talking about equipment it is easy to slip into technological determinism, but it is more a case of finding software (even if limited) whose underpinning paradigm in some way resonates with one’s musical thinking. I tried umpteen apps at this time, but found myself coming back to the wbl4014. "Feeding Time" is the second track on the CD recorded in one take using the wbl4014. One reviewer compared aspects of the track to chip tune music used in early video games, but having never played video games I was thinking perhaps more of the little runs and riffs that fruit machines make between payouts, or to entice you to put in more money. The jaunty tune designed for feeding fish to seals at the zoo nods to Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Music Workshop. Originally released on The Seal Pool Sounds CD on Seal Pool records with thanks to John Podeszwa.
4. Body Snatcher & 5. Crystal Set
The first songs on the compilation. I had written songs (of sorts) for the original incarnation of Storm Bugs as well as the Naomi, Swoon Baboon and subsequent projects, but from 2000 to 2014 my solo output was exclusively instrumental (if one discounts sampled voices). I was initially a little cautious about singing worried my voice was too reedy, out of tune, etc. There was also the concern that the small audience might be alienated by the more ‘poppy’ aspect of the songs.
Writing the songs was relatively straightforward for rather than working with a chord sequence I found that by simply singing over a sequence some kind of tune would quickly emerge that could then be honed down. The lyrics were often shaped by then repeatedly singing the tune back to myself as I walked to work (or wherever), quickly scribbling the words down in a notebook before I forgot them. "Down A Denny Lane", and "Kite" are also the first tracks on the CD to use analogue hardware rather than software, though sonically you would be hard pressed to notice the difference from the tracks on which software synthesizers are used. Originally released by Snatch Tapes on the Back Projection album. This was my first download only release, which as I soon learnt was something of a guarantee or reaching as small an audience as possible.
8. Racing The Arctic Shadow & 9. Summer With The Snow Bees
Having now developed a song based output I still was recording numerous sometimes lengthy instrumentals. I revived a pseudonym from the old Snatch Tapes days namely Ice Yacht (who appeared on Snatch 3) as a vehicle for releasing the material. A fanciful narrative was constructed about the master tapes having been discovered in some permafrost after Ice Yacht had gone on a trip sometime in the early '80s to retrace the journey of Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen to the North Pole. The story was implausible and I doubt one person believed it to be true unlike the Claire Thomas & Susan Vezey saga. Appropriately enough cassettes were once more back in fashion and Fragment Factory in Germany released Pole of Cold on a snow white tape.
10. Pity The Small
A late addition to The Storm Bugs Certified Original and Vintage Fakes album. The track began as an instrumental nod towards Laurie Spiegel and uses the Metasynth slicer to rearrange a short synth sequence into numerous different patterns which were then overlaid. It is that continuously evolving whilst standing still paradigm. The lyrics are reworked and developed from an early (and rather different) version of the song recorded in the early 2000s.
11 View From A Hill & 12. Rumble Of The Ruins
I contributed an early version of View From A Hill to a Linear Obsessional Christmas 2017 compilation, which had as inspiration the MR James ghost stories. The idea of the landscape as palimpsest infuses and informs many of the lyrics I’ve recorded. The whole idea of the hauntological has been very much into vogue in recent years. I view the enthusiasm for all things Weird Britain with a little bemusement as of course Steven and I were exploring such themes albeit on Super 8 film back in the 1980s before such things were fashionable. Both tracks are from the Rumble of The Ruins cassette released in 2020.
13. Slow Water
Somebody somewhere is no doubt already working on a thesis whose subject is the moody and reflective albums made during lockdown. In my case I was taking longish walks including across Rye harbour, which obliquely fed into the making of the instrumental Ice Yacht Pillbox cassette in 2020. Comparisons will possibly be made with the work of Mr. Brian Eno, but the loose inspiration for the track was not the big E but Walt Rockman’s library record Underwater Vol 1. Indeed there is a whole sub genre of underwater library records presumably to compliment the increasing amount of Jaques Cousteau type underwater footage that was shot from the 1950s onwards..
14. Morphover & Curl, and 15. Swing
Two songs from the 2021 album Not Even my Closest Friends. Both are good examples of how songs were conjured from the smallest of fragments. In the case of "Swing" the stating point was the ¾ electronic sequence you hear right at the end of the track and for "Morphover & Curl" it was a 4 note bass line that was overlaid on itself multiple times, each time at a higher frequency until a sequencer type patter emerged. A few weeks and countless overdubs later and the tracks took shape.
16. Colour Buffer.
The early Storm Bugs tracks made extensive use of the VCS3. It is many years since I have fondled the knobs of the ‘real thing’ but the paradigm of the matrix patch bay and joystick translates well into software and "Colour Buffer" (taken from the 2021 album of the same name) uses a software VCS3, a sequencer and a previously made recording of some interference. The VCS3 envelope was set to self-trigger (or loop), this then interacted with the trigger from the external sequencer creating a more fluid rhythm than the simple repeated pattern one gets with just a sequencer alone. The recorded interference was fed to various parts of the VCS3 so it is filtered and shaped dynamically with the signal. The whole thing was recorded in one 17-minute take, which was then edited down to the length you hear here.
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