Aural Absurdity

We had a lot of fun doing this, it was the first time for Chipwreck to perform publicly. The lyrics were written the same day of the performance. The drums were programmed on the street outside of the venue and the synth part was improvised. We were a little nervous going into it knowing that the quality of performances at the Utah are really high and that there is a real community around the open mic night there. We also knew that most of the performers would not be doing electronic music, so there was a definite curiosity around how that would be received.

It all went better than we could have hoped. We were selected to perform first, which was pretty amazing considering there were something like 50 performers signed up. This also meant that we would have virtually no time for neurotic overanalysis of everything we were planning to do, which was definitely a good thing. The performance itself seemed to go well, with no big surprises and we had some fun with it and we were really pleased with the say the audience reacted afterwards. The really great thing about playing at the Utah’s open mic night is that they record all of the performances and post them online. You can here our performance from October 10th on the Chipwreck profile page on theutah.org. We will have to do more of these performances. Thank you to Brendan and the others who make awesome events like this possible.

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So, this was recorded in 2001 or some time right around then with my band Imperial Zero. We had taken part of the name from my solo work and combined it with another idea for a name which is why it seems oddly similar. We recorded this with a monophonic lecture recorder (appropriately enough) in a lecture hall after hours. My college would let people sign up to use the space for band practice, so that is what we did. This was completely improvised in the moment and we were basically just lucky the tape was running because we could never really get the feel the same again after that first shot. The audio at the beginning is from a voice mail that was left for me on accident.

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This is an early track. I made it while in college around the year 2000. I think this is the first one I recorded that mixed the use of sequenced synthesizer and guitar. The guitar solo was done using an E-bow and was recorded in one take. The whole thing was done with a cassette based portastudio four track, so editing options were quite limited once you went to tape.

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This is one of the first tracks I made, and I think it is actually the first to have a drum track with other instruments. Just a little trip-hop. I was just putting my jazz and blues influences to work with a little hip-hop drum beat. I remember using a guitar delay pedal to make a loop of the beat. I don’t really remember when I recorded this but it was some time around 1998. Imperial Velvet is the name for the “solo project” stuff I did at the time.

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I made this by vocoding a drum line and adding a beat. Not bad considering it was pretty quick to make. I like the atmosphere of this one. It has kind of a menacing techno-goth thing going on.

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Made a track with lots of analog style synths. Kind of pensive and stuff. Still needs a better mix…

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The Chipwreck crew put this together as a demo album. It is on Jamendo and can be downloaded from there. Here it is.

I recorded this after watching some telenovelas. I actually rather enjoyed the experience. The title refers to the all too common (or maybe not common enough?) scene where somebody is dealing with some dark issue (or matter, if you will…) and the character is for some reason literally wandering through the darkness or something, trying to figure it out, while somewhere else, something dreadful is about to happen to someone innocent. The scene is always set up so that if they figure it out in time, they could save the innocent, but it doesn’t always happen.

“Think of the children. Each of their tears is a helpless tribute to those who have failed them.”

(Ok, hyper-dramatized narration for this track complete, now listen to it…)

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I wrote/recorded this with something like a scene from a play in my head. Basically it is a dialogue between two groups that run into each other seemingly against all probability in the midst of the vast reaches of some far away interstellar medium. The space pirates (small stout ones with long black beards, bordering on inadvertent cuteness) are the ones traveling between stars. The sirens are somehow able to survive in the void, chill, and extreme isolation of the interstellar medium. There must be a reason they call out to passers-by and the intrepid, wily, and skeptical space pirates just sort of bark back at them to stay away. The space pirates must be familiar with some version of the more than ancient stories about sirens and ships.

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Welcome to aural absurdity dot com. This is the first post.