Here’s some photos from my live performance (The Horrorist) at the Ground Zero Festival 2012. It took place in Bussloo, The Netherlands. It was a huge event with 5 stages and about 40 DJs and live acts. All the music was hard, hardcore, hardsomething techno. Like most people I can’t differentiate between the small music sub-genres but let’s just say it was an agressive night of music. Beyond the stages and many thousands of wasted youth there was large carnival rides, pyrotechnics and anything else you can imagine. I made some good new friends such as Mark Eg & Chrissi, Ms. Sprinkles and saw old ones such has Dano Leeflang, Lenny Dee, Delta 9, Dave Cik, Maxime Fight, Tymon, Laurent Ho, Manu Le Malin, Sacha Blank and Rene Schuster. I was on an “early rave” stage but of course I couldn’t resist playing a lot of new techno material. If you follow my Twitter or Instagram you will have seen the cool new Thermen Busslo hotel they put us up in. It was certainly a pleasant stay and I got a chance to see a bunch of old naked people at the spa. Time does funny things to a body. To see the full set of photos: click here.
“On behalf of the organizations UDC and Multi Groove, we want to thank everyone for visiting Ground Zero Festival 2012! It was a great success and we are pleased with the positive responses. We hope you all again next year for the party!” – groundzerofestival.nl
For more info: groundzerofestival.nl and thehorrorist.com
This entry was written by , posted on September 4, 2012 at 3:51 pm, filed under live performance and tagged Ground Zero, hardcore, live performance, The Horrorist, The Netherlands, 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.
This Saturday night I will be performing at a large techno festival in The Netherlands called Ground Zero. The event takes place in Bussloo which is about an hour and fifteen minutes from Amsterdam. There are 6 stages and about 50 DJs or live acts. It’s all “hardcore techno” of some type. There’s going to a large number of people there. To get an idea of what this will be like take a look at some of the photos of my live at Ground Zero 2008: flickr.com/grz08. If you do make it out to see my show try and say hello!
“Ground Zero 2012 is now more than ever before going to be a festival for the real hard-dance junkies, with a massive underground line-up, representing known and unknown artists from Holland and way abroad like no other festival does! Deep in the dark and mysterious woods of Bussloo, with all of its legends, Ground Zero 2012 is going to be a unique festival that will squeeze the living hell out of the night, all the way until a breathtaking morning sun merges above the lake to announce a brand new day!” – groundzerofestival.nl
For more info: groundzerofestival.nl/2012
This entry was written by , posted on August 30, 2012 at 6:55 am, filed under live performance and tagged Ground Zero Festival, live performance, The Horrorist, The Netherlands, 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.
I am pleased to announce the release of my next single The Man Master. The song takes you inside a world of gender bending and sexual domination. If you’re a fan of early 80s new wave, synthpop and EBM I think you will love this one. Everything was recorded using real analog equipment. The main synth is an Analogue Solutions Telemark. The drums are Jomox Mbase, Mbrane and MFB-522. Everything was sequenced using a Doepfer Dark time. I was blown away by the Carretta & Workerpoor and Millimetric remixes. This is the second single from the upcoming album Fire Funmania. The music video was shot in Berlin and I give a great hug to the director, Kate, the little makeup girl and everyone else!
“Feed me poison. I vomit blood. I kiss your feet. Show me the boss!”
This entry was written by , posted on August 17, 2012 at 5:18 pm, filed under music, synthesizer and tagged David Carretta, EBM, electronic body music, millimetric, new wave, The Horrorist, The Man Master, Things to Come Records, Workerpoor. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Today I thought I would give you a quick look at some of my workflow. Here’s how I often start creating an EBM (Electronic Body Music) style track. I’ve started a Eurorack modular system and you can see my first two pieces in action here. I have recorded a 5V Pulse into Ableton from the Korg SyncKontrol iOS app. I loaded the click into Simpler and use MIDI to create a pattern. In this example it’s a straight 16th note. I use Ableton Live to route the 5V click out of my Motu 828 MKIII into a Doepfer Dark Time analog sequencer. The Dark Time is not in sync with my Ableton MIDI set up. The Dark Time controls an Analog Solutions Telemark (SEM clone). 8 steps of CV variation and CV filter variation loop the bassline. I also have the Dark Time send a clock out to a Korg Monotribe. On the Monotribe I have muted the drums and just have it playing some lazer zap type sounds typically where you would find a snare drum. Using MIDI I have a Vermona DRM1 MKIII playing a kick and snare. The Monotribe’s clock out goes into an Intellijel uStep which sends a 16th note clock to a Make Noise Echophone. I have a MFB-522 drum machine in sync with Ableton via MIDI playing a clap. This clap is sent into the Echophon where it’s delay shimmers in 16 synced steps because of the uStep control. I can play with the Echophon’s pitch knob for a wicked nice analog clap delay effect. Is it worth all this effort? In my opinion yes. You can’t really get a sound like this without going analog. This part would make a good verse. Because I can pitch the bassline on a MIDI keyboard the next step is to make a Chorus, maybe change the Dark Time sequence length or patter slightly, add some pads from an Ensoniq ESQ-1 and add vocals. I hope you enjoyed the peek into a world where control is everything.
“CV/Gate (an abbreviation of Control Voltage/Gate) is an analog method of controlling synthesizers, drum machines and other similar equipment with external sequencers. The Control Voltage typically controls pitch and the Gate signal controls note on/off. This method was widely used in the epoch of analog modular synthesizers, beginning in the 1960s and up to the early 1980s. It was mostly superseded by the MIDI protocol, which is more feature-rich, easier to configure reliably, and more easily supports polyphony.” – wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_voltage
For more info: thehorrorist.com
This entry was written by , posted on August 7, 2012 at 10:26 am, filed under effects, modular, synthesizer and tagged ableton, Ableton Live, Analog Solutions, Dark Time, Doepfer, drum machine, Echophone, Korg, Make Noise, MFB, Monotribe, synthesizer, Telemark, 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.
I’m back from Rotterdam and as you can see from the photos I had a great time. I met Juan Atkins, re-connected with Mathis (Panacea) and screamed into the open air. Mathis was a bit late setting up his gear so I ended up performing one of my longest sets ever. As more an more time when on and Panacea wasn’t quite ready the only material I had left to play live was really songy slow stuff. To my amazement the crowd really loved it. It goes to show you sometimes you have no idea what’s going to work. The stage was built in sections and the section leading to the audience was about seven feet up. As I do in smaller club I really love going out and getting to the crowd. I had to jump up and down off the stage many times. My legs are totally black and blue. This happens so often I’m considering some sort of shin guard sports equipment the next time I perform. Be sure to look at the full set of photos (link) to see some of the art and mobile performance pieces that were on display. It’s fairly certain that Containerfest will now be a regular annual event. I am please to be noted in history as performing the first one. Toward the end of my set the sun went down and I have to say I felt pretty lucky to be standing up there.
“ContainerFest 0.1. On the 21st of July 2012 from 12:00h till 23:00h the first edition of ContainerFest…Schiehaven of Rotterdam. ContainerFest0.1 is a new, multidisciplinary festival with different styles of progressive electronic music styles, industrial designs, cool performance art, visuals and art and light installations. This year you will be spoiled with two big area’s filled with big (inter)national headliners.” – Containerfest.nl
To see the full set of photos: click here
This entry was written by , posted on July 24, 2012 at 8:32 am, filed under live performance and tagged Containerfest, festival, Juan Atkins, Panacea, Rotterdam, techno, The Horrorist, The Netherlands, 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.
I (The Horrorist) will be performing at Containerfest in Rotterdam this weekend, Saturday July 21. It’s a large techno event. I’m on the main stage with Juan Akins, Luke Slater, Model 500, DJ Sneak and many others. In fact there are a huge amount of performances and art on display so check the website for full details. Rotterdam is a huge port in The Netherlands and they have created stages out of shipping containers. I’m very excited to be playing this outdoor festival!
“ContainerFest 0.1. On the 21st of July 2012 from 12:00h till 23:00h the first edition of ContainerFest will be organized in the Schiehaven of Rotterdam. ContainerFest0.1 is a new, multidisciplinary festival with different styles of progressive electronic music styles, industrial designs, cool performance art, visuals and art and light installations. This year you will be spoiled with two big area’s filled with big (inter)national headliners. On top of this twelve of Rotterdam’s finest music organisations will combine their forces in six dance area’s: Blendits & Classified, Redrum/Deformer & Social Disturbance, Strange Fruit & Triphouse Rotterdam, Maatschappij voor Volksgeluk & Moustache Records, Lowriders & Doublecross and Strictly Techno & Rotterdam Ondergrondstalent.”
For more info: containerfest.nl
This entry was written by , posted on July 14, 2012 at 3:59 pm, filed under live performance and tagged Containerfest, Juan Atkins, Luke Slater, Rotterdam, 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.
Every now and then I will grab a stack of old photo from storage, scan them and get them onto flickr. I came across this set from a Disintegrator (my first band with John Selway) show in 1996. It took place in Monticello NY. I decided it would be interesting to record a call with John and let him see these photos at the same time. Deadmau5 eat your heart out because we play live. Listen to the audio interview as we discuss everything on stage and more. Be sure to follow the link at the bottom of this post to see all the photos on flickr.
“The planetary journey continues on Saturday October 12, 1996 at the illustrious Concord Resort Hotel nestled within the Catskill Mountains just 1 hour north of New York City. For URANUS, the fifth in a series of planetary parties we have selected an unparalleled lineup of the best DJ’s and producers in the galaxy. The world renowned Concord Resort is one of New York State’s Largest exhibition centers featuring over 170,000 square feet of raw space. We will be converting this space into two MASSIVE dancing arenas complete with CLAY PACKY GOLDEN SCAN HPE series fixtures, J WOLF SOUND, and a huge ARGON laser sweeping overhead. For those wishing to continue your journey, the excitement continues. After the party rooms are available. The Concord resorts features indoor and outdoor swimming pools, saunas, steam rooms, and a plethora of recreational facilities to suit your every need. For reservations please contact the Concord after September 1, 1996 at 1-800-CONCORD and ask for the planetary group rate.”
To see the full set of photos: flickr.com/thingstocomerecords/721…
This entry was written by , posted on July 12, 2012 at 9:47 am, filed under drum machine, effects, hardware, interviews, live performance, synthesizer and tagged Disintegrator, Industrial Strength Records, John Selway, 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.
One of the major reasons for starting this blog was to share my studio notes with you. I love sharing the creation process and hearing feedback. Take This Step was released last month with remixes by Pet Duo, Mark Hawkins, Brian Burger and Lenny Dee. You can get the full details of the song including a promo video on it’s original post page: click here. Today let’s get into how I created it. My last album Joyless Pleasure was very autobiographical, song structured, love songed and a real listeners album. For my next album Fire Funmania which will be released later this year I wanted to go back to my roots a bit. The first single Take This Step clears the way. Lyrically it has two themes. You can take the song literally as an indoctrination anthem. Join the army, the troop and fight. You can decide if I am being satirical or not. However, the theme could also be about getting a day job or even being pushed into marriage and society. As a 42 year old trying to conform and be healthy yet keep my art pure surely there’s a reason I was able to make this song. The arrangement shows the nervous tension with 5 parts growing to a peak each higher than each other until the cresendo at the end. I think I’m trying to say yes it’s ok to join but if you do do it strong, properly and aggresively!
Ok so yeah now to the toys. There are several kick drums on the track. I’ve been DJing on my Traktor S4 a bit and you can hear that influence here. As I use NI’s Traktor anytime I put a loop into one of the Sample Decks and it loops more than 2 times is saves the loop on my hard drive for later use. I grabbed 2 of the kicks on Take This Step from this folder. I also created 2 kicks on my Jomox Mbase 01 which is signed by Jürgen Michaelis. The Mbase has a depth you can’t get from samples. There are parts of the song where you hear the underlying kicks booming and that’s the Mbase in action. In sections of the song there is a Boss DM-100 bucket-brigade analog delay on the kicks. You can hear it right away as the song starts. The ride is from my MFB-522. The 522 is like a mini Roland TR-808 and I like it quite a lot. You can get some really clean shimmering rides from it that again most of the time samples can’t match. I used Ableton Live’s built in Auto Filter to cut some of the high’s out from it so it fit well in the song. There are some large long white noise crashes that bring in new sections. Those are from an Ensoniq ESQ-1. I bought a Crystal-X cartridge off eBay that has a few hundred sounds on it and the crash/smash is on there.
The main synth is a Moog Slim Phatty going through Audio Damage’s Vapor diffusion chorus plug-in. In different sections of the song the main synth pattern changes. I used 3 plug-ins each seperately at different times to achieve the different synth patterns: Izotope’s Stutter Edit, PSP’s N20 and Sugar-Bytes Turnado. These are the type of plug-ins that are nearly impossible to replicate in hardware without a serious amount of work. What I usually do is go through the presets, do some editing and then render the same part 5-10 times. Then as the song plays back into the section I swap out the different renderings and choose the one that’s the coolest. It’s that little extra work that makes all the difference. Towards the end of the song there is a build up where the synth starts panning, changing and “lifting”. This was done with Sugar-Bytes Effectrix and automation.
I wanted to keep these vocals clean and commanding. The chain was a Shure SM7b mic through an API 512c micpre. I also used Izotope’s Nectar plug-in. There’s quite a few places where the last song in a verse has some effects on it. Like the synth parts I would render the last word, move it to a blank channel, load several effects on the channel and change presets, edit and render about 5 different versions. I would again listen back to the song with replacing each version and choosing the best one.
I follow my own advice and the faders were all at about half height so the mix came out nice and clean. I added some volume to the master file using Izotope’s Ozone. I didn’t work on this song all day in a succession of days so it’s hard to tell you exactly how long it took to create it. I would guess about a full week or two weeks on and off. For me the most difficult part is always the arrangement. It’s like a puzzle and if you don’t feel inspired or take the time to get it right you can really ruin a song. So this song is a mix of the best hardware and software I have.
The next single which comes out in August is called The Man Master. I shot a music video for it in Berlin, there are remixes by David Carretta, Millimetric and Dupont and there will be a limited edition 7″. Production wise this song is a full analog affair using only analog sequencers and such. More on that when it’s released!
“The Horrorist’ new single is pretty awesome. His new record is going to be the best one yet.” – alexxaugustus (via Twitter)
For more info: iTunes, Amazon and Beatport
This entry was written by , posted on July 9, 2012 at 6:58 am, filed under effects, hardware, music, promotion, song writing, synthesizer and tagged song writing, 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 new mix from Rolf Mulder’s Public Stand features The Horrorist – Take This Step (Brian Burger Remix) among some other hot tracks. This mix already got me through my Sunday morning work out.
“Simplicity Is Beauty – Operators Manual (The Exaltics Remix) (Forthcoming on The Public Stand)
Phase – Binary Opposition (Innigo Kennedy Remix) (Token)
Horn Porn – Old Sketch (Death Proof Recordings)
Toni Alvarez – Offline (Mr. Jones Remix) (Forthcoming on Monkey Recordings)
The Horrorist – Take This Step (Brian Burger Remix) (Things To Come Records)
Roy Davis Jr. ft Bear Who – Automatic Principles (Roy’s Autoelectrik Speaker Killa Mix) (Rock It Science Laboratories)
Romplex & Tanz Organelle – Epicentre (Unreleased)
Joseph Anton – Epic (George Lanham Remix) (Unreleased)
All Tourettes – Mind Over Scatter (Electronic Explorations Compilation
Sunil Sharpe – Saturana (Work The Long Nights)
Mike Humhries – Cassini (Unreleased)
Ryogo Yamamori – Iesukak (Unreleased)”
For more info: thepublicstand.com
This entry was written by , posted on July 8, 2012 at 6:05 am, filed under DJ, music and tagged Brian Burger, dj, mix, Rolf Mulder, The Horrorist, The Public Stand. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Take this Step – The Horrorist from Oliver Chesler on Vimeo.
Available now on iTunes, Amazon MP3 and Beatport!
You must confess we are the best. We know war! War for sure. Take this step. Take this step. Take this step. Take this step. You must undress. Dress like the rest. Wear the uniform. It is the message! Take this step. Take this step. Take this step. Take this step! You must scream. Big as it is! Your one of the troop. Man in a group! Take this step. Take this step. Take this step. Take this step! You must oppress. Hit like you hit! Hit like a truck. Hit so you’re seen. Take this step. Take this step. Take this step. Take this step! Hit like bull. Hit like steel. Hit like a shank. Hit like a sword. Hit like a gun. Hit like a storm. Hit like fire. Hit like doom. Hit like death! Hit like death! Hit like death! Hit like death! Take this step. Take this step. Take this step. Take this step! Take this step. Take this step. Take this step. Take this step.
1. Take This Step – The Horrorist
2. Take This Step (Mark Hawkins remix) – The Horrorist
3. Take This Step (Pet Duo remix) – The Horrorist
4. Take This Step (Brian Burger remix) – The Horrorist
5. Take This Step (Lenny Dee remix) – The Horrorist
Written & produced by Oliver Chesler. Published by Strengholt Music Group and Things to Come Records. thehorrorist.com thingstocome.com
“Absolute hammer!! The 1st single from The Horrorist’s next album “Fire Funmania” that comes out later in 2012. A wild slick techno blood war song. Super crazy! Easy hit! Now add diverse remixes by Pet Duo, Lenny Dee, Mark Hawkins and Brian Burger. 10/10!!” – Red Team (USA)
Available now: iTunes, Amazon MP3 and Beatport.
This entry was written by , posted on June 21, 2012 at 6:14 am, filed under music, promotion and tagged Brian Burger, Lenny Dee, Mark Hawkins, Pet Duo, 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.
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