Wednesday, November 11, 2009

More Tales From the Black Heart stuff

So yesterday Gggarth was asking me when I was going to have some stuff ready and we got chatting about this album project. I mentioned that I was thinking of doing the album as three EPs and he advised me that's the wiser route to go, in fact he suggested why not do it as three six-song EPs?

Mwa ha ha ha... I had a look at my list of songs are realized that was actually a pretty easy change to make.

So, as an update to my post about the project from a couple of weeks ago, here's the new projected track listing.

EP 1:

  1. Trouble Thing

  2. Purple and Red

  3. song I haven't written yet but have a few ideas about

  4. Throw Me to the Lions

  5. Blue Eyes Black [Bleed Mix]

  6. Writhe


EP 2:

  1. Siamese Twins

  2. 200 Cuts

  3. Disco Disgorge

  4. Little Leech

  5. How Could I

  6. The Trap I'm In Now


EP 3:
  1. Lightning

  2. Force the Issue

  3. another song I haven't written yet but have a few ideas about

  4. Lord of the Flies

  5. Flow and Float

  6. Dream Come True [used to be called "Dream Made Flesh"]


I haven't come up with titles for individual EPs yet, but I have a while to think still. I'm partly thinking I could go with colors: EP 1 as Red, EP 2 as Black and EP 3 as Purple or Blue, but I'll probably change my mind before too long.

Earlier this evening I drew out a rough album completion chart. On EP 1, I have one final mix done ["Trouble Thing"], two more songs ready for a final mix ["Blue Eyes Black" and "Writhe"], one almost ready for a final mix ["Purple and Red" is now restructured with a new verse written, I just have to track some more vocals for it and edit them], and the other two songs are being written, though "Throw Me to the Lions" is almost ready to begin programming.

For EP 2, I have two songs ready for final mixdown ["200 Cuts" and "Disco Disgorge"], another almost ready for mixdown ["Siamese Twins" is just waiting on tracking some vocal harmonies], one in programming progress ["The Trap I'm In Now"] and the other two I'm almost done writing.

EP 3 is still the least ready, but at least there is one final mix completed ["Dream Come True"], and one partly programmed ["Flow and Float"]. Still plenty of time left before that would be slated for release. And I wrote "Lord of the Flies" yesterday, so progress is being made.

Oh yeah... I interviewed Ogre last week

Usually I post show-related stuff only on my show blog, thevampiresball.blogspot.com, but I guess this is the sort of thing that warrants reposting, even if it is a week later. Which is to say I thought I already had stuck this here as well but clearly I hadn't. For brevity, I'll chop out the playlist data, you can find it here if you want.

Apologies to my Facebook friends who have seen this link at least twice now...


So, Tuesday November 3rd was the Skinny Puppy show. I've wanted to see them live for I don't know how long, and I recall being super thrilled when Vernard relayed the news to me back in June-ish that cEvin Key had said they would finally play Vancouver for sure this fall [this being around the time cEvin came up to do a DJ set for Luv-a-Fair at the end of May]. And last's year's ohGr show was one of the highlights of my 2008.

I was not disappointed. Even better was getting to chat with Ogre backstage for this week's show.

As I said on-air, I quite enjoyed the new site associated with the next ohGr release, wdihtf.com, which is where you can go and get a taste of the next release and do a live remix of the new song "Collidoskope" by playing with the typewriter graphics. I suspect I'll probably be spending entirely too much time on that in the next little while...

There are also links to get a free download of "Collidoskope" as well as little widgets and I'm sure there will be more aspects unveiled as things progress. Do check it out.

As I also mentioned on air, the boys from ForeskinRadio.com also interviewed Ogre, so here are their videos. Their interview mostly covered different territory from mine since I was asking about writing and Puppy in relation to ohGr, etc., and they got Ogre going about stage shows and American culture among other things. Enjoy!





[Yep, that's yours truly off to the left of your screen...]

Back to my stuff: Part 1 of the Vampire's Ball for November 1, 2009. [Ogre interview is about 30 minutes in.]

You realize that by now I have captured the samples from the site and am already contemplating how to approach a remix of "Collidoskope." I noticed that litany.net's forums have a thread dedicated to posting such remixes, so I'll have to have a listen and add my own work as well. I expect to have news or a link to report here in a month or so.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Two New NIN Remixes Uploaded to remix.nin.com

Tidying up loose ends this weekend, I decided that the quickest and easiest to tidy up were a couple of almost-finished remixes of "Only." For anyone who hadn't heard, you can get remix kits of some Nine Inch Nails songs from remix.nin.com and then you can post your finished versions to either be loved, spat upon or ignored by other denizens of the site.

Here are my latest two offerings:

Only [Climbed Through Mix by Maqlu]

Only [I Just Made It Up Mix by Maqlu]

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Now, onto some other loose ends...

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Halloween Mixing Session

So, I've been in mixing since 6pm in the big room at Nimbus, working on the G-Series SSL.

Initially when I snagged the time I figured I'd get 3 songs for my album mixed in the 10 hour session, but since I realized earlier this week I would not have time to track the backing vocals for one of the three, it actually worked out just fine.

That song was "Siamese Twins." I did spend the first 3 hours of the session just reamping the mountain of synths for it, and there may yet be more synths added. I might even add some guitars just to be all retro or whatever. [Just kidding - I'm not likely to add guitars to it, though it does seem to want some noise and more synths.]

Anyway, synths re-amped it was time to get on to the real business of the night.

I set to work on "Dream Made Flesh" and since it's a fairly straightforward noise piece where I tried to arrange things so as to not step too much on each other in placing all the samples it's made from, it went pretty quick. Mostly it was finding the right level of burying for the spoken word to get it to sound more like a thought in the back of your head than a vocal, and getting the end to be a blurry cacophony yet one with enough definition that you can still pick out little details. I think I got it right.

Taking a little break to tear down the reamping set-up in the live room and stretch after sitting behind the board for a few hours, I then set up "Trouble Thing." I had previously mixed it on the AWS, but then I sped it up slightly, and to that end it needed a proper new mix and some vocal edits.

At this point I'm printing stems for it, and it sounds killer. I'm actually thinking in order to make sure the whole album is mixed on the G-Series I might actually see what days it would be feasible to come in super early in the morning to have 4 hours before classes start to mix a song per session. Booking it ahead of time is usually iffy and really unless it's a long mix session or if I was tracking beds with a band, it doesn't make much sense to use prime time, but if I can get my ass up and be here by 5am, I can always go back home to sleep before coming in for class and no one else will be after the room at the same time.

Might incur the assistants' wrath in making them come in super early, though. We shall see.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

New MySpace Profile

Specifically tailored to my career as a recording/mixing engineer and producer:

Pyra Draculea on MySpace

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Tales From the Black Heart Updates

I realized that I haven't really put much here in the way of updates on the album I'm working on. And while there have been all sorts of mini updates on progress on my Twitter account, they're of the superficial variety you would expect on Twitter, eg. "Back at Nimbus, working on 'Siamese Twins.' Today is MIDI day..."

So, here's a few updates.

The title, Tales From the Black Heart, came to me last year at BCIT. The project/artist alias is Maqlu, which is an old, old handle of mine, probably going back to the mid nineties.

Last year when I first started compiling material in a serious way I thought this would mostly be noise and instrumental work, but then I started writing lyrics which were pulling in a different direction, so while I still have a bunch of those pieces in various stages of completion on my drives, I think that will be set aside for now.

Anyway, the lyrics - I've got something like 25 songs kicking around plus various fragments. Most of which lives up to the album name, though it's not all about romantic relationships by any means.

It was getting to the point of being a pile of songs needing direction and editing, which brought up the issue of how to even approach it. Some of my better songs were ones I frankly didn't care much for [though usually for reasons having not much to do with the actual song] while others I was overly attached to would need a lot of work to say the least.

Enter Bob Ezrin. [How many artists get to say that?]

Well, saying it that way is a little misleading. At the end of September Bob came to my school for a couple of talks, one with the students only and one open one for the Fox's Mentorship series with Dunner. Bob talked about various things and I was scribbling notes like crazy, but I had a list of several burning questions related to my own work since this was after all the guy who helped form the vision of the Wall as well as sequencing Nine Inch Nails' the Fragile, which are two of my favorite albums.

I went first in the question and answer phase and asked Bob about how he approached albums like that. Bob spoke of drawing a blueprint for an album and then you know what you're building. The analogy was if you were building a house and had all the parts in the yard, it would be easier if you had a blueprint rather than trying to figure out all the stuff in the pile.

Think of the four corners of the house or the first and last songs of each side of vinyl and build from there.

It's been in my mind for a couple of weeks for what to do with Tales From the Black Heart. Right now I have no blueprint, I have a pile of stuff to work with. So a little light bulb went off in my head, though it took a couple of weeks to coalesce.

Before I could draw the house, isn't the first thing an architect does a survey of the building site? So I listened to all my songs. I thought of what I've already written, themes and possible characters or metaphors that span the whole thing.

Somehow the ideas that came into my head had to do with forests and hiding spots and sanctuaries and all that - well I guess maybe because the new lyrics for "Trouble Thing" have to do with games and chasing and "darkened corners two can hide in." Playing games, some of which could be dangerous.

I started doodling on cartridge paper a skyline in the distance, then closer a couple of trees and the water separates this space from the city. I drew creatures hiding and thought of parallels to what's going on in my life. There was a rampaging gorilla in the city, a scheming iguana, a prowling wolf and an inscrutable, possibly angry rabbit. Sometimes they were about people I know, sometimes about me, and sometimes they were more symbolic.

But I started to realize that it needed to be more basic than the forest and the critters. That all felt too simplistic. It needed to be about the rage and suspicion not the gorilla, the calculation and "what's in it for me and how can I get it fast?" not the iguana, the drives of the wolf. The rabbit is still inscrutable, but it doesn't matter outside of a couple of ad-libbed references in "Disco Disgorge."

I started thinking of dreams, inner world things, desires. Things that aren't quite the way you expected in reality versus how you experienced them in sleeping dreams, not always in a bad way, just different twists. I scribbled some notes, made a list of all the songs, lyric chunks, etc. and started over with examining the songs.

Some of them I was able to dismiss out of hand. I came to a short list of five songs I have recorded that I definitely want to use: "Trouble Thing," "Purple and Red," "Writhe," "200 Cuts" and "Disco Disgorge." And I worked out that that is pretty much the order they need to be in, though there are some holes there.

"Trouble Thing" felt like a declaration of sorts, a strong start but not the immediate start. Something needs to set it up. Tentatively I've have called this first song "Fortress," but I really only have a couple of lines for it.

"Purple and Red" seemed to flow next. It's the most romantic thing I've written, which is taking some getting used to. I initially went with a remix-style structure, but now it seems it isn't serving the song. It has just two choruses and two verses plus some noise, but it feels like there's a hole in the middle where another verse needs to go and there are some other changes needed. I have a couple of weeks' break in December which I will use to fix it.

"Writhe" is next. I may or may not do some reworking on that too, but if so it will also wait for December.

The transition between the lust of "Writhe" and the disgust of "200 Cuts" was clearly a bad one. It needed something else to buffer it. And of course it means the story arc seems to go from the love/lust of the first few to much more negative feelings for "200 Cuts" and "Disco Disgorge" and so on. They're actually all about different people, it's not like I'm in love with him for "Purple and Red" and hate him by "200 Cuts" but I guess none of that matters to the listener as they draw their own conclusions.

Anyway, it seemed that there needed to be a pivot song there, something about suspicion yet clinging. Over a couple of days an idea started to form like a half-remembered dream or words just past the tip of my tongue. It was about two people who can't let go to each other in a mutual stranglehold, eventually solidifying into a notion of Siamese twins who wanted to destroy each other. I also thought of stories I read on a forum a while back of people who went nuts and refused to move from the couch [or in one case, a toilet] and over months their flesh grew into the fabric of the couch or around the toilet seat and the furniture had to be removed with the person, and then they had to be surgically cut free. I thought of scar tissue binding like mutual hatred tying them together. The song came together from there as "Siamese Twins" and I am working on the vocal comps right now. It'll be mixed [along with a slightly faster "Trouble Thing"] next week.

From "Siamese Twins" to "200 Cuts" now made more sense [and "Writhe" to "Siamese Twins" works as well]. I wrote about "200 Cuts" previously and the song is now done. It could be summed as being about about disgust or resignation at someone who flaunts their self-destruction yet never manages to either fix themselves or finish the job. It's glitchy, boomy, and harsh sounding, fairly stripped down.

Next we go into "Disco Disgorge" at the heart of the album. It has a fast and tight start, then sprawls out into noise and out of time beats. Also a pissed off piece, but with a mocking edge.

Then I started thinking of how to finish the album. I realize this is the age of shuffle mode and iPods, but I still like the idea of a song cycle, so how would I get back to "Fortress"? I had thought of making the last third about getting more into moving forward, getting desired results.

Also, I started to think of maybe doing 3 EPs instead of a single full album, which is maybe a wiser move in the new music industry as well as an interesting idea for the content of the album. [It's also a good idea for continued promo as opposed to a big promo push every couple of years.]

If I were to break it into 3 EPs, the obvious breaks are the two pivot points of the album. The first EP would be more about desire, from "Fortress" through "Writhe." Daydreams and wishes. The second EP is more negative for sure: "Siamese Twins," "200 Cuts," "Disco Disgorge," and a new track I'm working on called "The Trap I'm In Now" which starts to pivot back. Nightmares or those dreams which aren't quite nightmares but which still feel icky.

I did realize there seems to be a gap where it has to peak in unpleasantness. I have a very ugly set of lyrics called "How Could I" which will fill the gap, but I wish I could toss it aside.

Back to Bob. One of the other questions I had was about what to do if you have an artist [translation: are an artist] who has a great song that they don't want to work with. Before I could ask it, one of Bob's stories led to him talking about getting out of the way of the artist in creation. Or helping the artist get out of the way of themselves. So I think I will need to just get out of my own way and hopefully once I get working on the music for "How Could I" I will like it more, because this song could be a peaking point for that second EP.

The last on the second EP is an ambient, noisy, floaty piece called "The Trap I'm In Now," which is turning out and sort of about reflection or seeking.

The third EP would then be about implementation or creating dreams. It will start with a year-old set of lyrics about "lightning in the hand." Then there will be two pieces in response: "Force the Issue" about impatience and potential self-sabotage or rather trying to avoid such, and "Flow and Float" trying to be more Zen and letting the world unfold on its own time. It will close with a noise piece called "Dream Made Flesh," which is more open-ended, not really a tidy end, but mood-wise more relaxed. [Plus if I decide to release a bunch of noise stuff as a fourth EP while I work on the next album, I think it will tie in nicely.

I feel better about the project now that it has a direction instead of me running blindly from song to song without a plan.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Still Catching Up to the 1980s

When I was a little kid, I think I had an old turntable in a box. It was kind of a green semi-metallic upholstery and fake leather all-in-one unit with a shitty little speaker and I used to have it in my room and listen to... oh probably garbage kiddie records I shouldn't admit to ever having heard, let alone danced along to.

I wonder whatever happened to it. It probably stopped working, but even then I bet you it's up in a storage box in the roof of the garage, along with any number of things I bothered with back then.

Anyway, lately I've been slowly starting to amass a real vinyl collection focussing on industrial, but with some electro and new wave as well - bits of old Chris & Cosey, old Skinny Puppy, Kraftwerk, Front 242, remixed Depeche Mode, more Puppy, Japan, Soft Cell, Cabaret Voltaire 12" EPs, Ministry, and did I mention Puppy yet? I've really only been able to hear it on the Vampire's Ball, though, as I don't have a turntable at home.

Well, there is one downstairs I think, but that's far from the creature comforts of my office/home studio across the hall from my bedroom.

So, I finally got fed up and looked where I could get a turntable at a reasonable cost (thereby eliminating the expensive DJ decks at Tom Lee, which can run as much as a grand). I was pleasantly surprised to see that Future Shop carries a couple of models, and I settled on an Audio-Technica model.

So I just bought a turntable so I can listen to my teensy but growing vinyl collection at home. It's a cheap Audio-Technica and lacks most of the features I'm used to at CiTR, but it plays and that's good enough for me for the next little while. I have it on my desk hooked straight into my Fostex monitors. It's a little ghetto in terms of set-up and I can only control the volume via the backs of the monitors [me need Mackie Big Knob monitor control badly....] but hey, it works.

So I've been listening to old Chris & Cosey, Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Skinny Puppy, etc. all evening. Happy happy joy joy.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Random question

Why is it that project A has maybe seven tracks and no plug-ins other than a fake mastering one, yet Pro Tools keeps crashing for various reasons related to CPU overload and H/W buffering, but if I swap to project B which has a shitload of tracks and many many plug-ins going, Pro Tools is quite content to work away without complaints?

Has Digidesign engineered some sort of sentience into the damn thing and now it's playing favorites?

Anyway, almost done with project A. That should appease the little bugger.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Podcast links for last night's Vampire's Ball with Rave

This will drive my Facebook friends nuts as 3 or 4 different feeds go into my activity stream, so this is something like the 5th time these links are going up there. I know - you get it already. Rave was on my show last night.

So, last night Dave Ogilvie of Jakalope [ex-Skinny Puppy] was my guest for the first half of the Vampire's Ball [midnight to 4am PST Friday nights on CiTR Radio 101.9FM in Vancouver, citr.ca]. Dave brought a few selections from his record collection too, so the playlist for the podcast part 1 included Cabaret Voltaire, Keith LeBlanc, Pailhead, Nitzer Ebb, Chris & Cosey, Diamanda Galas, Test Dept., Neubuten, Lustmord, Coil, SPK, Current 93, Borghesia, Controlled Bleeding, Etant Donnes and RevCo.

Plus Dave gave us an update on the new Jakalope album and we chatted about assorted other musical topics.

Part 1 of the Vampire's Ball for September 12 2009 with Dave Ogilvie

After Dave had to go, the show continued with some Nurse With Wound, Kraftwerk and Laibach and I wrapped up with a little Jakalope, which we didn't get to while Dave was there.

Part 2 of the Vampire's Ball for September 12 2009

Full playlists will be posted soon on the Vampire's Ball blog and you can download other episodes of the show on the Vampire's Ball's Feedburner page.