31.05.11 - DAY 151 - CRISWELL SOLE RULER OF THE DARK WORLD

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Today is a collaborative track between myself and Chris Allen. After coming up with a couple of generic ideas, several cups of coffee later, GENIUS STRUCK!! The dialogue you will hear is from a selection of vintage sci-fi and horror scripts.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

30.05.11 - DAY 150 - Skinz

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Today's track plays with a variety of percussion samples and some moody strings. I kept this track a slow builder and padded out with some squelchy synth action for added atmosphere. It's something that would hopefully sit well in a computer game or a movie soundtrack, perhaps something set in a jungle, with machines... Or something.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

29.05.11 - DAY 149 - Auto-Tune Von Trier

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Having a bit of a muck about with Auto-Tune and Vocoder stuff. This is a wee short one. Rachel Austin gave me the idea to make this: An Auto-Tuned version of Lars Von Trier's recent "Nazi" gaffe at the Canne Film Festival. Personally, I think the guy is just having a bit of fun and it seems the audience gets that too, but still, his mumbling and rambling does become quite amusing too.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

28.05.11 - DAY 148 - Fightin' Talk

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Today's piece was a collaboration between myself and Crawfty. Along with the voices of some friends in Ryan's bar, recorded earlier today. The Craic was mighty and this tune captures the atmosphere (we hope). In memory of Henry Cooper.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

27.05.11 - DAY 147 - Négliger

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This is a bit of a sound experiment, attempting to explore similar territory to Autechre's later work: Glitchy, contorted rhythms often verging on the brink of collapse. Obviously Autechre spend more than 3 or 4 hours on their pieces, so I'm not sure I've hit the mark here. If anything it's like a piss-take out of Autechre, rather than a homage, which wasn't intentional. But often intention isn't what matters. So yea, this is a bit of a silly track really.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

26.05.11 - DAY 146 - Transthoracic

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The sonic representation of how my insides feel right now.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

25.05.11 - DAY 145 - Spite Bytes

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Vocoder action. Some synth and voice. Lyrically it's a celebration of creativity and a reaction against the nay-sayers who make comments like "Oh, if you make a song in a day, it can't be very deep/meaningful/good/important/insert meaningless adjective claiming to have authority on the value of music!" Which of course, I disagree with completely.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

24.05.11 - DAY 144 - Chroma

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Another collaboration with the veritable Mr Niall Kelly today. We aimed to find a sound not to far removed from the old Detroit techno, soulful stylings of a bygone era. Awash with summer vibes, the track is a slow builder that doesn't aim to tax the brain too much. The song contains a sample from the somewhat mislaid philosophy of a clearly deranged woman who believes that rainbows did not occur twenty years ago and are a very new phenomenon. Ironic perhaps? Or is she just stupid?

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

23.05.11 - DAY 143 - Slippy Sock Swing

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So this is all about playing with piano and filter delays. The piano parts were deliberately over-quantised for those tight 'stabs'. The layers of effects create a mild 'dreamy' quality, with a light electronic 'quirkiness' underneath. The rhythmic section comes from layering up different processed loops, similar to yesterday's track, I find this a nice way of working: Let's me create, somewhat 'abstract' grooves, which have a nice evolving / rolling quality.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

22.05.11 - DAY 142 - Faded Patterns On The Rose Curtains

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Today has mostly been spent reciting and singing the praises of James Blake songs. I got home about 20:40, after a lovely day of tasty frappe's, pints of Guinness, yummy blue cheese and bacon baguettes and a few glasses of red wine! I sat down to my keyboard and almost accidentally hit the first chord of 'Unluck' from James Blake's album. It was a sign! Today's SADFAY was going to be inspired by, and pay homage to, the amazing crooner from London! Then I whipped out the keyboard riff that runs through this song. Again, it just kinda poured out and instantly I thought, "Yes. That's what I want!" Some random lyrics also seemed to spew out of my head, along with a fairly nice triplet-feel beat. One of the fastest SADFAY sessions I've done and yet I don't feel it sounds rushed or half hearted.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

21.05.11 - DAY 141 - Loose Change

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I attempted to make something kinda minimal and vocal driven, with a strong mood of melancholy (again). I was quite pleased with the rhythmic backing, so I let that ride out a bit. It was 3 tracks of live percussion: slapping loose change in my jeans, tapping and shaking a near-empty box of matches and tapping a small metal box (I now use to keep my tabacco in). I then resampled a chunk from those tracks and applied some processing (flanger, reversing, saturation etc.), so it ended up having a nice crackling, but sorta 'swooshy' sound. For the last section I stuck a rather large digital kick, with plenty of click-y top end, then controlled it's timing with an arpeggiator.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

20.05.11 - DAY 140 - Do-Ya-Think-He-Saurus

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Aye, so "The Rapture". LOLZ! And stuff...

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

19.05.11 - DAY 139 - Sticks And Stones

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I've been in the mood to play some guitar riffs and do some heavier music again today. I guess this is what some people might call 'stoner rock' or 'post-rock'. It's full of melancholy and angst. I guess it's not a million miles off bands like ISIS or Neurosis. It was fun to play. I don't often make time to listen to a lot of this kind of music, but when I do it always grips me. It's a different listening experience, compared to other genres of music, because it requires a certain amount of tolerance / endurance for the large walls of noise, yet that somehow involves you more in the emotion and direction of it. Well, at least, that's how I get into it, usually.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

18.05.11 - DAY 138 - Memory Guy

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A bit of heavy rock / metal with a slight sprinkles of electronic vibes / hip hop spice. The vocals are fairly laid back / restrained and the lyrics came out of nowhere: Referencing one of my favourite movies! Spent a fair chunk of this evening working on the mix side of things. It's definitely one of my weaker areas: Creating room for everything, without inducing clipping and distortion. Hopefully this shows some improvement. Hmmm...

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

17.05.11 - DAY 137 - Brave It On

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A tasty exploration today, collaborating with Michael Sampson (of MatscaN Music). Good Orderly Direction and plenty of focus and idea bouncing. Recording some of our own sound effects in my kitchen and towards the rail tracks, near my house added layers of interest. Building up a selection of textures and knowing that we wanted a solid beat somewhere later. Vocal layers, chunky bass, piles of noise and effects. This has some deep moodiness to it and a real bite too.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

16.05.11 - DAY 136 - Dig Dug

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A shorter wee track today. Played with recording some stuff to tape, then back onto computer, layered with clean stuff for interesting phasing effects. Some nice wee riffs and beats on the lighter slightly retro-tinged side of things.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

15.05.11 - DAY 135 - Bounce To The Ounce

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Aimed for something BIG with this track, again. The mix was a little rushed, but I think the sounds are in the right places for chunky, angry, phatness!! YARS!

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

14.05.11 - DAY 134 - It's Been Too Long

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It's been too long since I wrote something this satisfying. I've been enjoying writing the SADFAY songs recently, because they've been full of good ideas, sincere enthusiasm, passion and hard work. Tonight's track takes that one step further. This is something I am immensely proud of: A phat-mutha-trucka of a track, which one might gladly shake ones booty to, we hope.

PS. It's got ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Eurovision, other than it's music and people should get rather excited about it...

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

13.05.11 - DAY 133 - Stasis Leak

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Yes. So. I love programming beats. I love groovy music. I love beats and especially dance beats, of varying genres and sub-genres. What I get tired of though, is finding myself re-doing the same kind of beats quite often, whether that's just the way I approach the programming or the way I mix the different drums sound together. It doesn't tire me to make this stuff, but sometimes I feel I'm not exactly breaking any moulds with it. Anyway, point is, today I decided to go for a 170bpm tempo, but with a 5/4 time signature. It works for me. See if you can't dance to it yourselves!

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

12.05.11 - DAY 132 - Sub-Orbital

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I tried to set up a little bit of a trick with the bassline at the start of this song tonight. It's in 6/8, but then plays against the 4/4 beat so it works in a triplet feel. Simples. Added some nice chunky beats and shiz. Done!

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

11.05.11 - DAY 131 - Phuzz City Five

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Kaoss Pad One Take Wonder. OK. Gotta go now. Byeeeeeeeeeee....

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

10.05.11 - DAY 130 - Show Us How It's Done

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I've been working on the music and audio for an animation series called Haven. I'm just about finished arranging all the sounds and mixing all the voices for the first episode. There's a scene towards the end of the episode, where a strange little character called 'Moog' dances at a houseparty and I got thinking, 'What kind of music would he be dancing to?' Realising I had my SADFAY to complete before midnight, I decided I'd turn my song for today into something that this interesting, weird little dude would possibly dance to...

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

09.05.11 - DAY 129 - Post-Retro-Nitro-Pistons

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Tonight I'm playing a gig with the QUBe in the Black Box, Belfast. We have a fair bit of rehearsing and setting up to do, hence this track was a tad rushed. It ended up sounding like something I would have made about 10 years ago, so it's kinda retro and quirky and schtuff...

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

08.05.11 - DAY 128 - It Could Work

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Piano and vocal. A simple wee song, asking at what point does a bit of a crush become a bit dodgy / obsessive? Is it ridiculous when teenage girls get excited over Ronan Keating? Or is he the type of character that would welcome having queues of impressionable young girls wait outside his dressing room after a show?

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

07.05.11 - DAY 127 - City Ghosts

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A lovely collaboration with John O' Neill and Steve Mc Cann. John and I used to play in a band called Emily Cuprate. Then we formed Black Stylus. I sent him some beats and pieces earlier this afternoon to work on. Then it was time for a mammoth Hexxed practice and recording session. Eventually Hexxed practice finished and John had sent through his guitar, dulcimer and viola tracks. I realised it was 23:30 and the song needed something more. Cue Steve "ONE TAKE" Mc Cann, who listened to the track once, then laid down a stellar vocal in one go. Track blasted!!

Good work lads!

Photo by Niall Kelly.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

06.05.11 - DAY 126 - Drawn To Scale

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I wanted to get into some nice deep electronica with this one. As the case with a lot of my SADFAY tracks, this could definitely be expanded and improved on given more time, but I am happy that I got pretty close to what I was hoping for. All the elements to this feel relatively simple, I didn't procrastinate over the individual sounds and samples too much. Often I do and spend a long time trying to mess things up, so they're not recognisable anymore. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. This time though, a bit of restraint in terms of the choices of sounds and samples (textures etc.) seems to have allowed something original to come through, maybe / I hope.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^