Animals on Wheels

A couple of weeks ago I performed at an event here in Cambridge organised by bad timing in conjunction with the enter festival. It was the first live show I’ve done where i didn’t use a computer as a central component. Instead, I used a multitude of diy sound boxes and circuit bent keyboards along with a very funky frostwave analogue sequencer kindly loaned to me by my friend alex.

The prospect of this no-pc show had been scaring me for months before hand and even a week before the night I was a little unsure that I could pull it all together. My big worry was not being able to find or control enough musical content from the machines. I got some great sounds and textures from them individually but I had always used the results within the setting of a pc audio sequencer along with some more ‘normal’ instruments and tools.

Here’s a list of the machines I used:

MIDI synced together:

• Frostwave analogue sequencer
• Circuit bent Yamaha PSS-795
• Circuit bent Bontempi AZ-1200

Non-MIDI:

• Circuit bent Yamaha PSS-270
• Circuit bent Casio SA-35
• Circuit bent Hin-Hon squarewave keyboard
• Circuit bent DSI toy keyboard
• Buddha box
• Barbie feedback box

• Mackie mixer

I was pleasantly surprised at how it turned out. I felt in control of the sounds and found some nice grooves from using the analog sequencer as a sync source for the midi-ed Bontempi and Yamaha keyboards. Practice before the night resulted in many variations in sound and styles, most of it repeatable but none of it ever exactly the same.

So, after the show I reconstructed the gear and began recording some of the material I could produce. I captured a couple of 30 minute sets which had similarities with the enter show but also made some shorter tracks and grooves. To be honest, I became a bit obsessed with it. There’s a slightly unhinged quality to the sound and I really like the atmosphere created by the buzzing echoes and alias noise.

Here are some mp3 excerpts:

• ac_enter_01.mp3
• ac_enter_02.mp3
• ac_enter_03.mp3
• ac_enter_04.mp3
• ac_enter_05.mp3

The sony family video studio came along for the show as well. Michele did a great job ‘vj’ing’ with it and the glitching vga looked really nice projected to a large screen.

Following my set, tom bugbrand did his great musical mad scientist impression whilst creating a unique live sound using a hand built custom modular and some pretty oscilloscope projections and finally, disinformation vs strange attractor spat out the high voltage, low frequency noise with their Victorian inspired ‘national grid’.

Many thanks to jo of bad timing for organising the event and also for the photo’s taken on the night.

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Bad Timing, Barbie, Bontempi, Buddha Box, Casio, Circuit Bent, Festival, Hin-Hon