rpm challenge: finished

By svc | February 27, 2008

It’s done. One track, 36′41″:

State Vector Collapse – Unlistenable Yet Far Less Annoying Than The Sounds Looping Continuously Inside My Head

It’s basically one continuous power electronics piece, so if you’re not sure what you’re getting yourself into, here are some smaller excerpts:

Unlistenable Excerpt A
Unlistenable Excerpt B

A postmortem analysis will be forthcoming.

Topics: Music | 3 Comments »

rpm challenge: the conundrum

By svc | February 19, 2008

It’s been a hectic time since I last posted. Lots of encroachments from Real Life have left me with less studio time than intended, but that’s just the nature of this modern, wiggly world…

The time that I have been working on music has been split about 70/30 between learning production techniques in Ableton Live through experimentation (I swear that every time I use that program it either teaches me something new or forces me to unlearn something) and recording improvisational noise performances. I’ve recorded about three hours of performance so far. Most of it is a mix between dark ambient soundscaping and chaotic bursts of noise in the style of traditional power electronics… pretty much what I’ve been doing for years as a primary performance method.

Herein lies my problem. I don’t want to do the exact same thing that I’ve done before. I want to push my personal envelope into a different territory of aggressive noise. My mind is formulating a clear goal for the sound I want to achieve, and I’m certainly motivated, but my skills with the new equipment aren’t good enough to get there yet. I like to think I’m a quick study, but I don’t know that I’m quick enough to pull together what I want before the RPM deadline.

Although I’m not looking to make some kind of a cookiecutter “breakcore by numbers” album, a large number of the artists that I like and look to as conscious influences are tagged with the breakcore label. My take on breakcore is very similar to that of Christoph Fringeli: it’s not so much a genre as a “hybrid strategy.” It’s the common-ground overlap of a lot of different high intensity musical approaches that are converging through use of similar tools and techniques. I’m drawn to this roiling edge of activity for the same reasons that I was drawn to punk rock and industrial music years ago… there’s honesty and vitality on that edge.

At the time of this writing, there are ten days left before the end of the RPM challenge, and I’m faced with a decision:

I have a feeling that this will be vexing me right up to the edge of this last weekend.

-

Parting note: Nau-Zee-Aun, the primary musical project of Voidstar Productions/Zero Times Infinity mastermind David Dodson, is preparing a Very Special Treat for their forthcoming shows in New York and New Jersey. I’m sworn to secrecy, but I will say that it’s one of the most unique performance ideas that I’ve heard about in a while and will really be something to see…

Topics: Music | 1 Comment »

rpm challenge: rebuilding the sound

By svc | February 7, 2008

I’m pretty close to having a working set of instrumentation now. The drums are solid and I’m getting better at controlling the guitar. I’ve got a few solid, simple, easy to control noise-based synths patched together that sound good. Most of the last few nights have been filled with experiments in trying to get the major pieces to sound right when used together. I’m trying especially hard to recreate a particular effect that I used to use that combined a tube amp style distortion with an exciter and a stereo field enhancer, but it’s not quite where it needs to be yet.

I’m giving myself until Saturday afternoon to finish playing around with the basic sounds, and then it’s on to song construction.

Topics: Music | 1 Comment »

soulburn rapoxtech backcatalog posted for download as mp3

By svc | February 5, 2008

Here’s our backcatalogue in mp3 format:

}hexdump{ – Unit (1994)

  1. Prophecy
  2. Iyam, Master of the Universe
  3. Transdermal
  4. Consume or Die!

}hexdump{ – Nybble Plus 2 (1995)

  1. }hexdump{ vs. the International Shadow Government
  2. Warped
  3. United States of Production
  4. Encapsulate
  5. Diminished Expectations
  6. Neurobyte (live)
  7. Stalking the Interim Enterprise
  8. Xenophobe Circus
  9. Technojunkyard
  10. Re-Entry (O-Ring Malfunction in Engine Two)
  11. Nybble (Bit Bucket Bottom Breach)
  12. Zen Kitchen (Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Buddha mix)
  13. Cabin Fever

da’ath – qliphoth (1997)

  1. immaculata
  2. the cleansing flame
  3. a throw of the dice will never eliminate chance
  4. forever starts tomorrow (again)
  5. interzone safari
  6. klaustrophobia (pepe’s revenge)
  7. uncovering holarchies
  8. cyclic redundancy check (where are my slippers?)
  9. i think i swallowed the godhead
  10. influx in flux
  11. all that is solid melts into air

da’ath – Factory Floor Sessions (1997)

  1. Red Sky is Down
  2. Fraudulent Binding
  3. Mining the Eleventh Dwarf
  4. Take Some Dextin89 for that Headache, Comrade

rising!man!incinerator – Live at the Catwalk, Seattle WA 2002.03.08

All of these mp3s are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. This basically means that you’re free to copy these mp3s as much as you like, share them with whomever you like, and remix them as much as you like… just don’t sell them or anything you make out of them commercially. Attribution of the work to this website is also deeply appreciated.

Topics: Music | 1 Comment »

rpm challenge: subliminal inspiration techniques

By svc | February 4, 2008

Sunday was pretty much a wash, as I got pulled into a non-musical project that lasted all day. There were poodles, raspberries and Latin involved. Don’t ask, it’s complicated. =8)

One thing I did get done on Sunday was putting together an mp3 compilation that’s going to serve as an inspirational soundtrack over the course of the rpm challenge project. It’s a group of songs by artists that have stylistic components and production techniques similar to those I’m looking to use during this project. The idea is to have it on random play constantly when at work/exercise and hope that some of the good ideas stick and set a mood for the songwriting.

The artists on the comp: Aesop Rock, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Alec Empire, Aleph Null, All Out Assault, Ambassador 21, Atari Teenage Riot, Babyland, Behold… the Arctopus, The Berzerker, Big Black, Bloodlet, Botch, Burnt by the Sun, Cop Shoot Cop, Cryptic Slaughter, Cryptopsy, Cubanate, Curse of the Golden Vampire, Dag Nasty, Daughters, Dead Kennedys, Deadguy, Delta 9, dev/null, Die Warzau, Dillinger Escape Plan, Dissecting Table, DJ Spooky, Drumcorps, Dying Fetus, Earth Crisis, Ebola, EC8OR, El-P, The Exploited, Genghis Tron, Hansel und Gretyl, Hatebreed, Heartworm, Hecate, Holy Molar, HPP, Hypnoskull, Ion Dissonance, Kid Dynamite, Kill Memory Crash, Knifehandchop, Leng Tch’e, The Locust, Los Crudos, Melt Banana, Meshuggah, Microwaves, Ministry, Nailbomb, Panacea, The Plasmatics, Poison Idea, Public Enemy, RA, Rabbit Junk, SOD, Schizoid, Shitmat, Sickboy, Slayer, Some Girls, Suicidal Tendencies, Techno Animal, Terrorfakt, Tired of Trying, Today is the Day, Venetian Snares, Voivod, Winterkaelte and Xanopticon.

I’m traditionally a power electronics and noise soundscape artist, but I’m shooting for a sound that’s much more beat oriented and far more aggressive for this project. Punk, metal, power noise and breakcore will all be represented under the thick, oppressive layers of noise and distortion I tend to overapply to everything.

So tonight’s activity was mostly programming drum patterns and experimenting with the guitar sound from the Slayer2 guitar/amp/fx simulator. It’s hard to wrap my brain around guitar-centric metaphors as they relate to MIDI production but I’m learning. Slayer2 is a pretty amazing emulation, and I’m not sure I have the chops quite yet to use it for a “wall of guitar” without it sounding like a huge swampy mess. More as this develops…

Also, I wanted to welcome three other bands that I know into the RPM challenge: I’m Pro Death and I Vote, Cory and Miles, and the Milk Shake Daddy. See you on the other side, guys!

Topics: Music | No Comments »

rpm challenge: drum rush

By svc | February 2, 2008

It’s taken most of the day, but I finally got the drum kit built and behaving. I’ve already got some patterns programmed for the first song as a test, and it’s working very well so far.

This evening has been spent familiarizing myself with the different synth instrument plugins and noisemakers that I plan to use over the course of the project. Most are very simple and easy to control… even moreso with Live’s intuitive interface.

Getting a feel for Slayer (the guitar synth) is my next priority. It sounds awesome, but the controls are confusing… I can’t seem to get the hang of getting power chords to behave well enough for a good crunchy evil thrash sound.

Working…

Topics: Music | No Comments »

rpm challenge: tripping at the start

By svc | February 1, 2008

Fresh from the daily work-grind this evening, I hit the studio running… I started Live and patched in a set of VSTi plugins in efforts to start building a wall of noise. Unfortunately, after a few minutes of noodling, I found that three of the keys on my M-Audio Oxygen 8 magically stopped working at some time within the last 72 hours. Great.

Everything I program directly into a MIDI grid using a mouse always sounds awkward to me, so in a mad rush, I ran out to the local music store to find some kind of replacement MIDI controller, and ended up with a used (but thankfully very inexpensive) Akai MPD16 pad controller. Unfortunately, upon getting home and installing the MPD16, the USB drivers immediately crashed my XP system, so I ended up disabling the device drivers and hooking the MPD16 up via MIDI cable, which works fine. I reprogrammed the MIDI note and control information into the MPD16’s banks in about 10 minutes, and started dropping drum samples into Live’s Drum Rack instrument, and all of a sudden I’m working a poor man’s MPC2000. Tweaking the drum rack to make a drum kit that responds well is going to take a chunk of time, but once it’s done it should bear repeated reuse.

Over the course of the day, I’ve been meditating on the parameters of this project, and what constraints I should utilize to try to keep myself from going off on a tangent and wasting a lot of precious time. Here are a few notes-to-self in that category:

I’m also going to take a few minutes tonight and select an audio CD’s worth of songs with elements that I think this project should embody… and then comb through it for techniques, inspiration, and themes to distill and utilize.

OK, back to building the drum kit. More tomorrow.

Topics: Music | 1 Comment »

rpm challenge: it’s on!

By svc | January 31, 2008

OK, it looks like the starting gun got fired on US East Coast time, so the game is officially afoot!

29 days to create 35 minutes of material.

Brainstorming has commenced!

Topics: Rant | 2 Comments »

rpm challenge: equipment

By svc | January 31, 2008

Here’s the equipment I’m going to be using for the RPM challenge:

Core 2 Duo E6400 2GB w/ WinXP Pro 32-bit running:

P4 2.4Ghz 1GB w/Ubuntu Studio Gutsy stock install

Warlock guitar through Line6 POD 2.0 (Thanks Pinky! Thanks Ken!)

Ibanez GSR-100 bass

DOD Meatbox pedal

Behringer Xenix 1202 mixer

Various homebrew pedals, effects, synthesizers and instruments

Various small line mixers (Rolls, MidiMan), shortwave radios, circuit bent electronic noisemakers and found objects.

So yeah, I’m little bit of a gear whore, which is pretty pathetic when you look at how idle it’s all been for the last 5 years.

Topics: Music | No Comments »

State Vector Collapse Will Be Participating in RPM Challenge ‘08

By svc | January 30, 2008

One month, one album, just because: the RPM Challenge. The idea is slap-you-in-the-face simple… shut up and record something. It doesn’t need to be perfect. You don’t even have to release it if you don’t want to. Here’s your excuse. It’s only a month. Just stop procrastinating, get off your ass and record.

As soon as I heard about the challenge, I realized that this is just the catalyst I need. State Vector Collapse has been silent for far too long. The voices in my head need venting. My Ass Shall Move.

I’ll be documenting the process on this site over the course of the month, and will post the resultant album on this site under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Wish me luck.

Topics: Music | 2 Comments »

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