Presque La • Just Before, During • BC Subscription

Had a fantastic time in Los Angeles, only the second fly-in concert since the beginning of the Pandemic 4 years back; felt great to get back in the saddle again & air a new 80-voice canon piece for the first time in public.

While out there, I had a series of productive conversations with friends new & old around my somewhat misplaced animosity towards the state of the marketplace right now, and on why I hadn’t been releasing music as regularly as in the past. My Bandcamp Subscription has been $30 per year (roughly a cup of coffee a month) for a bit & I probably don’t do enough to stress that this is easily the best way to engage with the three decades worth of music I have up on there, ranging from home-studio experiments with samplers & sequencing starting in the mid-90s (as Hrvatski) through the kranky & Planet µ era, then the modular synth decade clear through the generative “Digital” work of present.

In this spirit I decided to launch a few New Releases early this year to sweeten the pot, starting with the fruits of a day-long recording session carried out at GRM in 2017 (conveniently, capturing during the same stretch as the Coupigny material used to compose “The Blues Scale” for the “Feedback” tape in the post below) & an ongoing “Pay What You Will” package of recordings made of individual “Polyphonic” instruments as they come in (at present there is only a wonderful dovetailing of the Rehearsal & Concert takes of the piece for Roland SH-4d as played at 2220 Arts & Archives last weekend):

Presque La

These pieces are the result of an experiment in automating virtually every facet of the "form" of a piece of Electronic Music by way of 12 randomly generated control voltages multiplied & applied to 38 discrete parameters. The idea at work here is the implementation of a complete system which allows, via a simple algorithmic approach utilizing core Analogue Computer concepts, the piece to police itself, eschewing the predictive, emotionally manipulative aspects of traditional build-release dynamics in Electronic, popular, and in fact the majority of Western music.

Adhering to the time-honored bassline / chord-melody / drum triumvirate, I rendered three hours of music during a single day-long session that breaks free from traditional, logical progressions. The individual pieces gradually build in intensity, only to evaporate at perhaps the least likely moments; or in any case a point in which the forward momentum implanted into the listener would be best left to accrue. Most would interpret this as a series of frustrations; the sensation of having to sneeze but being unable to.

This experiment has a clear precedent in my "Generator”, “Nadra Phalanx”, & "Jardin Electronique" pieces, although considerably more complex & lending far more control to the system itself. The idea is to remove the composer completely, which is largely what's happening here; large sections of this music were captured as I wandered the streets of the nearby Passy neighborhood overlooking the France Bleu building, eventually settling on lunch at Crèperie Chez Yannick followed by the neighboring Aux Merveilleux de Fred, both of which I recommend wholeheartedly, in that order, without hesitation. Only the slightest of tweaks were made while these were being executed, and in most cases only at the very beginning or end of a "take". A one-second 1khz tone with one second of silence surrounding it delineates the takes from each other.

I've long sought to execute this experiment, and I feel this is getting closer & closer to what I had originally intended. To perhaps subvert the linearity of the experience - the individual takes are presented in order, edited to exactly 30 minutes per side - I recommend starting with the third, "Blue" tape.

Released February 20, 2024

Endless gratitude to François Bonnet & the staff at the INA-GRM in Paris, at which this material was recorded, in Studio A, during a single eight-hour session on November 15th, 2017. Specific thanks to the Eurorack Module Manufacturers 4ms, Alm Busy Circuits, Bastl, Bubblesound, Expert Sleepers, Intellijel, MakeNoise, Q-bit, SSF, Topobrillo, WMD, & XAOC, on whose designs this music was realized

Three-Voice "Melody"

Range of Note Generation
Speed of Note Generation
Wave-Shape of Note Generation
Offset of Note Generation
Octave Offset of Oscillator 2
Octave Offset of Oscillator 3
Attack / Decay of Melody Envelope
Division / Multiplication of the Timing of Melody Envelope
Division / Multiplication of the Note Generation of Melody Envelope
Transposition of Melody
Wave-Shape of Oscillator 1
Wave-Shape of Oscillator 2
Wave-Shape of Oscillator 3

One-Voice "Bassline"

Range of Note Generation
Offset of Note Generation
Decay of Bassline Envelope
Division / Multiplication of Bassline Timing
Transposition of Bassline / Tonality
Wave Shape of Bassline Oscillator

Three-part Drum Pattern

Kick Drum
Stutter Factor
Timing Division / Multiplier
Closed / Open Hat
Stutter Factor
Timing Division / Multiplier
Snare Drum
Sequence / Sub-Division
Timing Division / Multiplier

Effects Layer

Delay Channel A Send
Delay Channel A Time
Delay Channel A Range
Delay Channel A Feedback

Delay Channel B Send
Delay Channel B Time
Delay Channel B Range
Delay Channel B Feedback

Reverb Send
Reverb Decay
Reverb Absorption
Reverb Size
Reverb Tilt

Mastering Layer

Side-chain compression of Master Reverb via Kick-Drum