Nothing was better than the underground 80s. Music was way out there lyrically and humans were taming electronic synths and drums in unique ways. I always thought and still feel EBM (Electronic Body Music) was a great genre. The bassline below in these videos are clearly EBM even though they are simply 16th note patterns. It’s the notes and feeling that classifies them.
“This thing can really make some nice EBM basslines!” – sampleandhold
photo credit: free-secret-life
via Matrixsynth
This entry was written by , posted on September 15, 2010 at 4:03 am, filed under synthesizer and tagged analog, Doepfer, EBM, electronic body music, sequencer. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The Horrorist Live – Malta 2010 from Oliver Chesler on Vimeo.
Well I finally have a few hours this afternoon to chillout. Day job plus night job took its toll on me. After my weekend in Malta I had to report to the energy business early Monday. I’m not complaining at all its just coffee isn’t working on me anymore. As you can see from the video above I did my best letting the people of Malta know where they live, “Malta!”. I know its silly in the video but at 2:00AM it worked just fine. I played a new intro and a new song during the set and I was pleased. I love surprising DJs who don’t know my show with my antics. Billy Nasty took it in stride and smartly played some good party techno after my set.
“Malta, officially the Republic of Malta (Maltese: Repubblika ta’ Malta), is a developed southern European country and consists of an archipelago situated centrally in the Mediterranean, 93 km south of Sicily and 288 km north-east of Tunisia, with Gibraltar 1,826 km to the west and Alexandria 1,510 km to the east.” – WIkipedia.org
The promoters of this event SHIFT are always fun and professional. Visit them here: shiftmalta.com
This entry was written by , posted on February 4, 2010 at 2:04 pm, filed under live performance and tagged EBM, live, Malta, techno, The Horrorist, Things to Come Records. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
ReGen is a USA based EBM, Synthpop and Goth magazine. Since last October (2009) they have been putting out a free one hour mix of music. I like to grab it and scan through the audio to pick out a gem here and there. Where’s my black nail polish?
“An hour of the best in industrial, goth, EBM, synthpop and alternative and electronic music, downloadable every Monday provided by ReGen Magazine.” – regenmag.com
Subscribe now (iTunes link): click here
This entry was written by , posted on January 4, 2010 at 6:34 am, filed under music and tagged EBM, electronic body music, Goth, industrial, podcast, ReGen. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Here is the final version of a song I recorded for Andy De Decker. Andy is part of the Belgian band Ionic Vision. He put together a compilation to be released later this year all about sex. From a production standpoint one thing interesting about this song is many of the sounds were recorded into Ableton Live live from my iPhone.
Blow the Kiss – The Horrorist by thingstocome
“Cut the wrist. Blow the kiss. Blood bubbles. Trouble trouble. Trouble trouble!” – The Horrorist
For more info: www.dsbp.cx/ionic/
Photo credit: Amodiovalerio Verde
This entry was written by , posted on October 3, 2009 at 5:03 am, filed under music and tagged EBM, Ionic Vision, The Horrorist, Things to Come Records. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Here’s a song I recorded in Berlin and finished in New York. It will be on a next Industrial for the Masses compilation on Out of Line music. Later I will release it with remixes and several other new songs on Things to Come Records.
I Stand With You by thingstocome
Here’s a few notes about the production: Sequenced in Ableton Live, Kick Drum is a Jomox MBase01, Bassline is Audiorealism ABL Pro, Melodyne created the vocal Harmonies (with help from my friend Richter), lots of horn and string samples through various hardware distortion pedals (external). It took about 3-4 weeks total to create.
For more info: Things to Come Records.
This entry was written by , posted on September 25, 2009 at 7:45 pm, filed under music and tagged EBM, electronic body music, I Stand With You, Out of Line, The Horrorist, Things to Come Records. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Often I use delay on the main kick drum to create a rolling or pumping under current to a song. This technique is sort of the old school equivalent to sidechaining a bassline. However, the old school method sounds different enough that it should be a color on anyone’s sound making palette. It’s a simple trick and in Ableton its just a matter of a few clicks to the desired effect.
First create an Impluse and put a place in a 4/4 kick drum. Next, add an Ableton Simple Delay to a Send Return channel. The Simple Delay loads up with the preset we want so you don’t have to tweak anything. Lastly, turn up the Send Return’s volume on the Impulse Channel to hear the kick drum start pumping and rolling along.
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Imagine you have a song and during the verse you have the Delay off (by turning the Send Return to zero) and then when the Chorus begins the Delay is on. This builds some tension and energy into the Chorus. 
Maybe you have a song and you can’t get any bass sound to fit? Just forget the bass and use a delaying kick drum instead. Many dance records in the 90s used this technique. Partly because it was a sure way to get a dance groove and possibly even because there wasn’t enough sample memory available for a bass sound in an Akai S900!
Adding a delay to a bassline which has notes strategically placed off the 4/4 grid can get you an old school EBM sound. Early Front Line Assembly tracks all had basslines treated with delay in this manner. Here’s an example:
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But let’s not stay stuck in the 90s. Switch the kick to something tight, increase the shuffle to about 50% and replace the bass sound with a high end noise sound and add a low pad and your now in this decade:
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I know this is an incredible simple technique but it’s hundreds of small details like these that add up to a song that’s infinity interesting.
Related post: 6 steps to Sidechain the Auto Filter in Ableton Live 7
This entry was written by , posted on December 5, 2008 at 8:01 am, filed under Ableton Live, plug-ins, song writing and tagged Ableton Live, bassline, EBM, Front Line Assembly, song writing. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
In keeping with a new tradition on Wire to the Ear called “Sunday Sounds” where I post a music playlist each week here’s the next installment: Electronic Body Music. This is my personal favorite music genre. EBM is creative, powerful and mostly electronic music. You can find some sophisticated song arrangements and vocals in a lot of EBM. The genre almost disappeared in the early 90s but it’s back with new blood. Even the old guys are back on the show circuit.
I created this playlist using Imeem. You can find me there at
http://www.imeem.com/thehorrorist
Are you an EBM fan?
This entry was written by , posted on November 9, 2008 at 11:51 am, filed under music and tagged DAF, EBM, electronic body music, Front 242, Front Line Assemby, imeem, Laibach, Nitzer Ebb, Orange Sector, Severed Heads, Sturm Cafe, The Klinik, Vomito Negro. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I am finally free of all obligations other than to finish my next album. It’s a good feeling especially because these last two remixes had me pulling my hair out. Satronica’s remix for a song called Shout will end up on Lenny Dee’s Industrial Strength Records. Originally he sent me a song called Revenge Plan but after remixing it twice and still not being happy with the end result I told him to send me something different. This brings up a point: Trash the stuff that you do that’s not great! There is a mountain of average crap out there. I spent a week remixing Revenge Plan and I put those files in my trash and emptied it twice! If I don’t love the remix I’m not going to torture the rest of you with it.
For the song “Shout” Matt (Satronica) only sent me vocals. The biggest nicety in this remix is the automated TC Powercore Chorus/Delay plug-in on his voice. As you can see in the faded orange circle above I spent a good amount of time tweaking the envelope breakpoints to catch certain syllables he was screaming and have them shoot off motion wise in different ways. When the Chorus is tight is has a modern Hip Hop vocal sound. I also like what I was able to to at the breaks using Effectix. Using only the Loop parameter I was able to make it seem like the song is slowing down and breaking up. What else? Ah yes, I like the 80s tom fills but those are standard in almost any song I do these days. Take a listen:
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I decided to have my Italian pianist friend Gabri help me with my remix for Belgian band Implant. Their song “We Are Noise” was a simple but effective electro verse chorus type of diddy. I wanted to make it a bit darker so Gabri took their somewhat simple melodies and expanded them using several tracks and different synths. Gabri always picked his favorite VST ReFX Vanguard (Gabri is also a trance producer :)).
After Gabri left Berlin I spent a good amount of time taking each new synth line and dumping tons of effects on them. With today’s CPU power I like to add one 4-5 things to each channel and just let me ears pick out the tasty colors. For example I added Izotope’s Trash and Fabfilter’s Volcano 2 to several of the synth lines. A great thing about Volcano is it’s ability to generate internal feedback. You can hear it rolling along semi-randomly in several sections. The drums are from my new and beloved Vermona DRM-1 MKIII. Lastly, I used Simpler quite a bit on the some vocal parts automating the start and loop times. Take a listen:
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Thanks as always for taking a listen. I wish I could put the full songs up here but I don’t have the rights. Now it’s time for my own tunes!
This entry was written by , posted on September 4, 2008 at 6:25 am, filed under Ableton Live, plug-ins, song writing and tagged Ableton Live, automation, Belgium, EBM, Implant, remix, Satronica, The Horrorist, Things to Come Records. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
An Interview with Ionic Vision. from thingstocome on Vimeo.
One of the best ways to promote a band on your record label is to create a video interview with them. It really doesn’t take much skill, time or money. In fact, the video above was shot using the video mode on a single point and shoot cheapo camera. I used iMovie08 which uses Core Video so any image adjustments, transitions and titles all happen in real time, no rendering! This makes the entire process actually a lot of fun. Sure the video would be better if I was using a better camera, external mic and some lights but you 
know what? If I had to lug all that stuff to the club I probably would not have bothered. Showing up and creating something is the most important thing. I actually own quite a lot of video equipment including Final Cut Pro but workflow always wins in my book so I went for the fastest way to the finish line. I mentioned before on this blog I love Creative Commons and here’s why: See the images I cut during the interview? They are all CC licensed so I’m not stealing anyone’s art to create my own.
The style was characterized by hard and often sparse danceable electronic beats, clear undistorted vocals, shouts or growls with reverberation and echo effects, and repetitive sequencer lines. At this time important synthesizers were Korg MS-20, Emulator II, Oberheim Matrix or the Yamaha DX7. Typical EBM rhythms are based on 4/4 beats, mainly with some minor syncopation to suggest a rock music rhythm structure. – wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_body_music
Sven Lauwers and Andy de Decker are great live which is extremely important for an EBM band. Be sure to check out Ionic Vision’s release on Things to Come Records: Beatport, Junodownload, Things to Come Records
For more info about the event they played:
www.myspace.com/crossingtheparallel
This entry was written by , posted on July 28, 2008 at 3:10 am, filed under interviews, live performance, video and tagged Alfa Matrix, Andy de Decker, Berlin, Club Isolation, Club Maria, Crossing the Parallel, EBM, electronic body music, electronic music, Front 242, Germany, Ionic Vision, Maria am Ostbahnhof, My Cell, Nitzer Ebb, Oberheim, Orange Sector, Propellerheads Reason, Scapa Flow, Sven Lauwers, Terrence Fixmer, The Hacker, The Horrorist, Things to Come Records. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The next release on my record label is by French DJ and producer Stamba. I am remixing one of the songs called Deviation. All the tracks on the release are what you would call darkwave, ebm, techno. Don’t you love all these sub-genres? Take a listen:
I recreated his original song in Ableton Live, keeping his vocals but using all my own sounds. Some of the gear and plug-ins used include a Jomox Mbase-01, Vermona DRM1 MKIII, Audiorealism Bassline, Korg Legacy, PSP Nitro, Fabfilter Volcano 2, assorted TC Powercore dynamics and Sugar Bytes Effectrix.
We have released the remix samples under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. If you want to grab the samples for your own fun head to the discography page for this release at Things to Come Records:
thingstocome.com/discog/TTC-017
The full release will be available on August 4, 2008.
This entry was written by , posted on July 23, 2008 at 12:42 am, filed under Ableton Live, hardware, music, plug-ins and tagged Audiorealism, Creative Commons, darkwave, EBM, Effectrix, fabfilter, Jomox, Korg Legacy, PSP Nitro, remix, Stamba, The Horrorist, Things to Come Records, Vermona DRM1. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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