20.12.11 - DAY 354 - Hydrogen Super Excluder (ft. Korny Devenney & Michael Sampson)

Listen (and/or buy) now on Bandcamp 

An experimental number, full of pop promise, hallucinogenic drugs and death. Short enough to fit on a 45. In the sonic universe with me tonight, were Korny Devenney (http://www.facebook.com/AnthonyKornyDevenney) and Michael Sampson (http://www.facebook.com/pages/MatscaN-Music/350947393632).

 Enjoy

 Cheers ^_^

18.11.11 - DAY 322 - Hyrule Castle Garden (ft. Andy Harrison)

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Today's track is a collaboration between myself and Andy Harrison. We recorded multiple samples of a fan striking guitar strings and made four separate 'ambient instruments' from these. Andy scored a very slow, minimal chord progression for these instruments. An improvised guitar performance was added which was then fragmented and scattered throughout the track.

Andy Harrison is a guitarist and sonic meddler living in Belfast. He is currently studying for an MA in Sonic Arts at Queens and plays in the QUBensemble there. http://soundcloud.com/notcham

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

27.06.11 - DAY 178 - MAX SESH

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Tonight's track is a live jam with Rory Brady. Testing out an early prototype of his new Max 5 performance system, we set up two computers and recorded ourselves jamming through the system's various parameters.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

17.06.11 - DAY 168 - Ninja Jam

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Today's track was made rather discreetly. I rammed a series of automated notes through a tonne of effects (as you do) then played around with all the available control settings. Another layer of similar stuff with a bass patch, some final edits. Hey presto!

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

14.06.11 - DAY 165 - Bonnie Wee Noise

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Caroline Pugh very kindly let me use recordings of her voice for this SADFAY, which basically mangles the recordings in as many ways I could think of, with a fairly limited amount of time. Caroline and I will be collaborating on a SADFAY track, properly, later in the week!

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

11.06.11 - DAY 162 - A Hallway In Galway

11.06.11 - DAY 162 - A Hallway In Galway by SADFAY

So, as I wrote in: IMPORTANT UPDATE: 4.0 I couldn't get my wav files of SADFAY 161 to upload to Bandcamp, last night. I've since tried uploading mp3s to Soundcloud and huzzah!!! I've been able to get SADFAY 162 up there... Still having problems with SADFAY 161, for some reason.

So this track is a bit of a twisted concept: A clattering of beats, builds up then falls apart into a sound scape, full of random recordings taken here in Galway. That's about it.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

09.06.11 - DAY 160 - I Want To Believe

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The second last time I took LSD, about 7 or 8 years ago, I felt like this music sounds. (The last time I took LSD was a few months after that). I wanted to believe I could stay permanently in that state of consciousness. I wanted to believe that everyone in the Universe was already there, waiting for me to join them. It was great until I had to face the reality that this was utter nonsense. That was a bad comedown. Don't do drugs kids! Anyway, this is a soundscape-y piece that I'm very pleased with. It reminds me of some the moments on Autechre's last album, so of course I'm chuffed.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

05.06.11 - DAY 156 - Tasty Tasty Brain Juice

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I am bloated and tired after a big load of yummy chinese food earlier. This is something of a representation of that, but it was also a chance for me to use the funky little string-percussion-thing-a-me I bought today too. Also added about 20 layers of voice, because I felt like it.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

02.06.11 - DAY 153 - Atmospheric Pressure

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Making today's piece has been a good lesson for me: I was feeling a bit bummed before I started and by the end my mood was lifted. Through that simple process of being creative and actually making myself complete a song, my outlook on things has been radically changed, from angry, frustrated hopelessness, to one of a clearer perspective, maybe even a happy perspective. It reminds me how vital creativity is to my life and how much I have benefited, not least in terms of mental health, from the SADFAY experience. Creativity is my lifeblood. I know and feel this through my being so clearly, every time I begin to write a song, or work on a bit of audio, or jam with my band, or perform a gig: Making music really is everything to me. It feels so wrong and unnatural for me to suppress this or try to tell myself that I should put it aside and get on with doing more 'serious' things. The thought of giving up on this, or letting any lack of 'recognition' / validation get in the way, seems similar to a parent giving up on a child.

Making music / expressing myself creatively is vital to me: It's both a good realisation that I want to celebrate, but a frustrating one as I understand the struggle involved to do anything 'worthwhile' or 'financially viable' with this 'talent' / gift / ability...

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 ^_^

01.05.11 - DAY 121 - Interview With An Empire

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Today's piece is noisy. Clang, bang, drone, blurred chit chat. A massive prize to anyone who can work out who is speaking in the background, under the streams of chaotic noise.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

18.04.11 - DAY 108 - Marathon 2930

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Spacey, trippy, moody, synthy, bleepy and other adjectives-y... Just lots of Reason synths put through lots of effects plugins and occasionally resampled and mucked about with in Ableton.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

09.04.11 - DAY 99 - Party Like It's Pi (to the 99th decimal place)

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Today's piece explores German mathematician Ludolph van Ceulen, who dedicated his life to calculating Pi to 35 decimal places. He was so proud of his achievements that he had the numbers engraved on his tombstone.

Image by Niall Kelly

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

04.04.11 - DAY 94 - Kaleidoscope Temple

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A multi-layered "soundscape" piece today. Audio plugins were used to process source samples. Pitch shifting, stretching of samples. Some master channel processing to give the piece a pretty trippy / hallucinogenic / head melt-y vibe in places. I recommend meditation along with this one.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

24.03.11 - DAY 83 - From Bernagh To Mars

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A walk in the Mourne Mountains today. Right to the summit of Mount Bernagh. Great weather. Great views.

Photo by Niall Kelly.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

22.03.11 - DAY 81 - Music For Time Travellers

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I thought I was being very clever today, soloing with that lovely Rhodes patch over two chords. I then realised that G major and D minor are all the white keys, so I could literally play anything across those keys and provided I didn't hit a black note, it would at least sound harmonically correct. I guess this is similar to how people sometimes tune a guitar to an open chords and just belt it out.

Anyway, all the sounds in this are derived from that one live take on the Rhodes. I took little snippets from that performance, reversed, stretched, filtered and looped them etc. They work as a backdrop to liven up the main track. Sometimes hinting at what's to come, sometimes floating around complimenting the main track. Sometimes it works like a residual reference to the main track. I like this effect.

I've called this Music For Time Travellers as a slight reference to Brian Eno's ambient piece 'Music For Airports', which this is definitely a little influenced by.

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

19.02.11 - Spring Spiral

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Song 50 today! A lovely collaboration with Adrian O'Callaghan, local session percussionist. I've never seen such a massive collection of really interesting percussion instruments. There was cajon, logdrum, udu, claves, shakers, rattles, guiro, various hand percussion and effects, cymbals, chimes and bells, which was only a small few things from his extensive collection!

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

09.02.11 - Where Are You Taking Me?

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The Story of Laika. Part Three.

Minding her own business on the streets of Moscow. And then...

Today's track was a collaboration between myself and Ian Pearce. Ian played dulcimer, drones, bass guitar, organ and percussion.

He also plays bass for Comply Or Die: http://www.diecomply.com and produces his own brand of drones and noise under the name Devonian, which can be heard here: http://loscabras.bandcamp.com/album/cairns

Give Ian a shout at: strongreaction@hotmail.com

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

06.02.11 - And Round Again

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Sometimes creating is about destroying. So yes, today's track is somewhat "abstract". The track works like a big loop. It plays backwards then forwards, so that the end is the start is the end is the start type thing. Creating this track was a somewhat cathartic experience I must say.

Enjoy-yojnE

Cheers! ^_^

27.01.11 - I Wish I Could Speak In Technicolour

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Ambient, soundscape, electro-acoustic, sonic art, acousmatic... A lot of names for what is generally known as 'music without obvious beats'. But that's enough politics!

Enjoy

Cheers ^_^

Sample used:

LSD Research