Daphnia & Cyclops (Electronic)

 A study of linear FM on the Wiard 300 series modular.

 Daphnia and Cyclops (Bandcamp link)

Three narratives.

I've got behind on the blog.These are three narrative tracks, all electronic but different in their origins.

"I thought I had lost my friend" Originally recorded a version of the track in 2008, the non vocoder parts created on the Wiard 300 Series and MXR Pitch transposer. I was always unhappy with the vocoded part so I finally re-recorded that in 2021 and re-mixed the synthesiser parts.

The original notes for the track read "The text for the track came from a dream recorded 30/6/2007. It is only a part that appears to deal with the fragmentation of the self into a number of personas, hero, scientist, servant and victim. It’s no co-incidence that the personas are within a graphic novel, they are literally “paper thin”

I thought I had lost my friend (Bandcamp link) 

 

"This house is like a Ship"  This track is about someone that becomes convinced that their house is a ship to the point that they stop looking out of the window to see that is not so. The words are their internal dialogue.

It’s an old track revised, originally based on thoughts about how easy it is to lose touch with reality and how isolation can lead to being trapped in your own thoughts. It seems perhaps appropriate at a time when many people have been isolated for weeks or months.

Narrative

"Sometimes this house is like a ship,
my room a ship's cabin,
with the creaking of the timbers and the ebb and flow of light it seems as if I am on some kind of immense sea.
I travel forever.
I hardly ever look out of the window these days, I know the sea is there...it's just waiting there, immense, impassive and primal.
Windblown or becalmed, I travel forever
Windblown, becalmed”

 

This House is like a Ship (Bandcamp link) 

 

 

"Feedback Occurs" Apart from the vocoded text all the sounds in the piece where generated or processed using feedback loops. This included Karplus Stong tones and runaway feedback on a MXR Pitchshifter.

 

Feedback Occurs (Bandcamp link)