Someone posted one of my first releases on my Facebook wall so I thought I’d share it here and tell you how it was created. Amazingly this was produced in 1992 (18 years ago!). Back then you could have actually owned all the techno releases available. Disintegrator was a partnership between myself and John Selway. We both owned Roland TB-303s and you hear them both on this track. You also hear my Roland TR-909 being distorted through a small 10 channel boss mixer. The mixer was brown and plastic. I wish I could remember the model number. It looked like the mixer you found on Tascam 4 Tracks of the time albeit without the cassette. The sample “Lock on Target” was from a large silver toy guy I purchased at Toys R Us and hacked and line-out into it. We used to bring the gun live (and all the 303′s etc…!). The only other sound you hear is a little bass pattern from a Roland Juno-106. I think what makes this song still work today is the arrangement. We played live as much as we could and to this day that’s a large part of what it takes to make good music.

The video below is the B-Side called “Dark Black Ominous Clouds”. It also uses two TB-303s and Roland Juno-106. However, the rest of the sounds are samples coming out of an Akai S-950. The vocals are from a black and white movie about schizophrenia. Everything was mixed on a Mackie 1604 with some added delay from a Korg SDD-2000. There are some great photos and an article on the SDD-200 here: dancetech.com/sdd2000. Both songs were recorded at SUNY Purchase where I lived down the hall from Selway.

“The SDD-2000 Sampling Delay was one of those great early digital fx processors all the Japanese music corps churned out in the 80′s using the newly arived affordable chips the 80′s ushered in. The SDD-2000 is most famous for being used extensively by The Edge from U2 on every album from The Unforgettable Fire onward. It is still in his rack today, 20+ years later.” – dancetech.com

For more info visit Lenny Dee’s: industrialstrengthrecords.com

I’m happiest when creating songs for fun. Music that doesn’t have to fit anyone’s expectations. Constantly those recordings are my best. Remixes fall in the “oh man why am I doing this” category. I really pull my hair out trying to bend someone else’s vision into my own. For the most part if a song is great to start with it won’t need a remix. Sure there are super rock or melodic songs that need to be made into club hits but most of the remixes I get offered are already electronic.

Today I’m remixing a guy named Satronica. He’s one of my good friends from New York. He’s working on an album for Lenny Dee’s Industrial Strength Records. The song titled “Revenge Plan” is vocal heavy. The way he sings is pretty weird, almost an Arab chant style. I’m still trying to figure out how to mash the vocals into a tight grid. I may end up cutting each word up and throwing it into Reason’s NN-XT.

Because the vocals are so strong I don’t feel the need to keep his original music so I fired up some new toys and here’s a clip of what’s on the machine today.Keep in mind it’s just the synths and basic beat at this point. Purely amateur time so far:

Download audio file (revenge_plan_remix_clip.mp3)

The kick is Jomox Mbase 01, the main synth is the Voice of Saturn being sidechained with the key using Ableton’s compressor, later I add in another two copies of the Voice of Saturn channel but detuned left and right. The lazer zap’s are from an Audiorealism ABL. The drum roll is D16′s Drumazon and Devastor also sidechained with the Mbase 01. The snare is loaded into Native Instrument’s Battery 3 and if from a freebee disc I got with Computer Music magazine a few years ago.

It’s not nearly where it will end up but I thought you’d like to check in on the process. Writing this post gave my ears a few minutes break.