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MACROM 059CD
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Stefan Goldmann's Veiki is a bold foray onto new rhythmic ground for machine-based dance music. While Veiki's sounds appear firmly grounded in contemporary techno, its pulse is neither based on the 4/4 tradition nor on the breakbeat continuum. The meters employed here are distinctly asymmetric -- i.e. they never add up to binary entities, but are odd-numbered instead. With patterns of 7, 9, or 11, they offer possibilities for dislocating the center of gravity not available to standard rhythmic fare. Thus, this may represent one of the few systematic efforts to move slamming machine techno onto an alternative rhythmic foundation: Real broken beat. Asymmetric/irregular meters are part of the ancient music tradition of the Eastern Mediterranean as well as of South Eastern Europe. The patterns employed here are also present in the traditional music of Bulgaria with which Stefan Goldmann grew up. Citing no other aspects and using no "ethnic" samples, these tracks lead a way to resolving the problem of how to bring the tools and traits of cutting-edge electronic music to alternative traditions of music, or vice versa. Structure over surface. Of course, irregular meters have been visited for structural exploration for Western musicians of different backgrounds, such as Don Ellis, Steve Coleman, or Burnt Friedman & Jaki Liebezeit who have all developed highly distinguished and idiosyncratic approaches in relation to these. Thus, a reduction of the phenomenon to its core and emergence as a clear-cut and reproducible form appeared imminent for at least two decades. The inexplicable surprise though is that despite the ongoing rhythmic differentiation of breakbeat and techno this obvious step seems to have never been taken decisively. Now here it is.
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MACROM 058CD
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Turntablist and sound artist Maria Chavez turns in her first continuous full-length audio work. Plays is a DJ mix CD that doesn't feature any tracks. It is a remix of a work whose original doesn't feature recorded sound. It is a minimalistic yet complex electroacoustic work, literally built from scratch, bootstrapping sound out of sheer silence: creatio ex nihilio. The story of this album starts with a record given to Chavez as a birthday present. It is Stefan Goldmann's Ghost Hemiola (MACROM 022R-EP, 2013), a double vinyl set of empty locked grooves. The record contains no sound whatsoever other than the vinyl's own surface noise. Chavez's work with records and turntables usually features a rich layer of recorded audio which is transformed, cut up and rearranged by a wide range of fearless physical manipulations. By contrast Ghost Hemiola is a blank canvas, unveiling her craft in its purest form, unobstructed by any audio content other than the sounds of the medium itself. Breaking up the medium is happening both ways here, literally as well as figuratively. Unlike with her live performances, for Plays Chavez employs digital processes extensively, zooming into minute details of sound and the artefacts of both mediums, the tangible vinyl record and disembodied digital audio. Narrowing down shards of sound to extremely short frames creates metallic timbres, reverberating quasi-spaces, and percussive layers. Slowing down the tempo until sound halts at one sample of its digital representation brings forth emergent frequencies, which Chavez then uses to play melodies -- vaguely resembling her analog technique of playing melodies by skipping a stylus back and forth across a test tone record. This thorough investigation of the unobstructed vinyl medium with digital means is distilled into a one-hour composition on this album. By the way -- Chavez and Goldmann share the same birthdate.
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MACROM 057CD
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Tacit Script builds its own network of interdependent grids in which sound objects move and thrive along multiple dimensions. All frequencies fall into custom scales, developed individually for each track and generated by bending the standard chromatic system. Most electronically produced music operates with a 1V per octave tuning which is divided into 12 equally spaced steps, equivalent to the piano keyboard. Stefan Goldmann skews or stretches this variable in order to achieve different microtonal spacings, wider or narrower, thus eliminating the octave -- commonly a fixture in most music. Intervals might thus be at 75 or 110 or 138% of their "regular" ratio. Melodic objects then traverse these unfamiliar spectral structures, singing electric songs with alien voices. Divergent metric layers drift apart, only to be pulled back together at critical points. Clearly pulsed elements hammer out persistent patterns, yet complex polymetric friction persists over long stretches of time. Alternating continuous sweeps and abrupt shifts through wavetables define the highly synthetic, yet organically developing timbres of Tacit Script. Relentless repetition is the force which yields coherent composite shapes in this setting. The results are emphatically in the realm of techno -- what is being pushed forward are the interrelations of its constituent layers. The music in this album is derived from works originally commissioned for the five-hour music theater work ALIF, as premiered at Berlin's MaerzMusik Festival of 2016. Revised from 2017 to 2019 for the album format, the works herein are an excellent representation of Stefan Goldmann's ongoing investigation of the wider potentials of techno.
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12" + CD
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MACROM 056EP
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An Ardent Heart is a focused techno mini-album that brings forward Stefan Goldmann's most dancefoor-centered material since 2008. The tracks push and pull relentlessly. Despite their linear appeal, there is an intricately balanced interplay between the heavy-handed kicks, the bouncy bass accents, and the sizzling, yet clear-cut details whipped up by the rallying drums. The peculiar, seemingly "vocalized" mode of synthesis is maybe the most unifying sonic characteristic of the six tracks and one coda. Formant shaping, vowel filters and airstream perturbations let a wide range of sounding elements speak in the tongues of a cybernetic Babylon. Layered polymetric patterns perforate the aural plane with alien scripts. Clearly structured, yet opaque messages that seem to have traveled for aeons emanate from the red-hot circuitry. They spill into a network of delays, channeled down into labyrinthine corridors, enveloped in electrostatic noise. Most tracks build on chance patterns evoked with hardware sequencers and freeform modulation sources. The resulting synthetic systems are as cohesive as they exhibit vast internal variation and range. Balancing simplicity and complexity right in the middle, the results are just as immediately gripping as they can feed sustained attention. A wide palette of distortion and overtones mark the contours of individual elements that seem to have near-physical qualities -- as if there were metallic strings, thick membranes, a resonating sphere, all struck by electric mallets, caused to vibrate by mechanical bows and sung by silicone lips. Includes CD with three tracks not included on 12".
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MACROM 055LP
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2x12" version. KUF create emotion-laden dialogues across layers of time and dimensions of sound. Voices recorded in private are chopped up and brought out center-stage to sing with beats hammered out right here and now. Glowing synths push forward. Basslines rise to grab the melodic role of a track while a vowel is truncated and locked into a grid, driving the rhythm. Voices move within the frame of a sample, performed by hands pushing keys, guided by the ear, immersed in a trio session's deep flow... A vortex of quirky hands, responsive ears and glowing circuits. Since Thomas A. Edison first recorded the human voice in 1877, the recording arts have changed music forever. Musicians have explored the endless possibilities of bouncing their input onto layers of tape, off the walls of an echo chamber or the circuitry of electronic helpers -- technology that modulates, spatializes, shifts, divides, or multiplies the work of human hands and mouths. An era of sampling offered a cubistic analysis of the recorded past and DJs took dancers onto intricately fractured time travels. This is the historic foundation that KUF keep probing. Just like the sampler and the DJ before them, they found new ways to re-allocate where machine and man stand when making music together. Most importantly, they turn the resulting friction into sparkling bursts of energy. Universe digs deeper into the android vocal chords. The album offers sweeping melodies, different beats, and persistent bass. Immerse in the intimacy of the voices, probably recorded in trains, backstage areas, and at late night private parties during Berlin Lichtenberg warehouse rehearsals. By striking the keys, KUF squeeze out and serve up all the soul accumulated in those savory phonetic shreds. Wood striking metal, thick bass strings moving air, oscillators humming eagerly. Physical and electrical, alive and stunningly beautiful -- after a year well spent in smoky clubs, on festival stages and in extensive nocturnal sessions, KUF deliver chapter two of their unfolding saga.
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MACROM 055CD
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KUF create emotion-laden dialogues across layers of time and dimensions of sound. Voices recorded in private are chopped up and brought out center-stage to sing with beats hammered out right here and now. Glowing synths push forward. Basslines rise to grab the melodic role of a track while a vowel is truncated and locked into a grid, driving the rhythm. Voices move within the frame of a sample, performed by hands pushing keys, guided by the ear, immersed in a trio session's deep flow... A vortex of quirky hands, responsive ears and glowing circuits. Since Thomas A. Edison first recorded the human voice in 1877, the recording arts have changed music forever. Musicians have explored the endless possibilities of bouncing their input onto layers of tape, off the walls of an echo chamber or the circuitry of electronic helpers -- technology that modulates, spatializes, shifts, divides, or multiplies the work of human hands and mouths. An era of sampling offered a cubistic analysis of the recorded past and DJs took dancers onto intricately fractured time travels. This is the historic foundation that KUF keep probing. Just like the sampler and the DJ before them, they found new ways to re-allocate where machine and man stand when making music together. Most importantly, they turn the resulting friction into sparkling bursts of energy. Universe digs deeper into the android vocal chords. The album offers sweeping melodies, different beats, and persistent bass. Immerse in the intimacy of the voices, probably recorded in trains, backstage areas, and at late night private parties during Berlin Lichtenberg warehouse rehearsals. By striking the keys, KUF squeeze out and serve up all the soul accumulated in those savory phonetic shreds. Wood striking metal, thick bass strings moving air, oscillators humming eagerly. Physical and electrical, alive and stunningly beautiful -- after a year well spent in smoky clubs, on festival stages and in extensive nocturnal sessions, KUF deliver chapter two of their unfolding saga.
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12"
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MACROM 054EP
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Anno Stamm is the revered 4/4 branch name of Berlin's Lars Stoewe. As Anno Stamm, he has been at the forefront of dark beat science. Annothek is his second EP for Macro Recordings. The three tracks build on the same set of sound sources and offer three different views at their glowing core. Elastic basslines pierce through a bed of sweet and warm chords, surrounded by sizzling noise percussion. Definitely on the more introspective side, the three cuts offer a special emotional depth while maintaining a bit more than just enough oomph to get the action going.
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MACROM 053EP
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Techno's vanguard can be found in the East right now. Sofia's quirky techno underground is dense. Roboknob are part of this movement, and this is their debut EP. A live hardware duo, Yasen and Stanislav drop noisy machine jams around the Bulgarian capital. The tracks here have been distilled from their live repertoire and mixed by Stefan Goldmann. "Dexydi" has a heavy-handed single-note bass attack that will cut through anything. "Spellbind" is bouncy with frantic upward movements, distorted percussive fallout and a seasick bass foundation. "Liulka" handles two layers of time rubbing off of each other.
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MACROM 051EP
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Vladimir Dubyshkin, from Tambov a city southeast of Moscow, presents his sweepingly effective de-centered vision of techno with his first fully fledged vinyl release. Dubyshkin has contributed tracks to two compilations on Nina Kraviz's Trip label. The For Various Reasons EP coming in two separate installments - 1 and 2 (MACROM 052EP) - shows the full picture of Dubyshkin's special talents. Highly energetic, rave-infested analog techno with de-tuned melodies rubbing against take-no-prisoners basslines. There is an intense emotional component present at all times, typically missing in Western grayscale techno.
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MACROM 052EP
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Vladimir Dubyshkin, from Tambov a city southeast of Moscow, presents his sweepingly effective de-centered vision of techno with his first fully fledged vinyl release. Dubyshkin has contributed tracks to two compilations on Nina Kraviz's Trip label. The For Various Reasons EP coming in two separate installments - 1 (MACROM 051EP) and 2 - shows the full picture of Dubyshkin's special talents. Highly energetic, rave-infested analog techno with de-tuned melodies rubbing against take-no-prisoners basslines. There is an intense emotional component present at all times, typically missing in Western grayscale techno.
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MACROM 050CD
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Based on the eponymous play by brothers and author/performer team Tobi and Mike Müller at Schauspielhaus Zürich, Swiss experimental documentary film A1 traverses through time and space along Switzerland's first and most elongated highway structure. Rich in archival sources, it sheds light on the costs and benefits of rapid movement: social, migratory and ecological patterns, economic and military designs that are mostly not immediately obvious to the casual motorist. Stefan Goldmann's soundtrack engages the film's multi-layered aesthetics full on, providing a dazzling array of short compositions. Profoundly synthetic in production, this free-wheeling phantasmagoria of peculiar, yet intensely likeable miniatures branches off into all directions - from minimalistic to overflowing, calm to banging, nightmarish to soothing. The visual patina of historic documents is playfully mirrored in intense distortion and noise artifacts, bound into rhythmic units and melodies formed of ghost notes. Finding new ways of mining his techno background to yield surprising new forms and ideas, Stefan Goldmann has proven his abilities in a dazzling range of projects over the past years. Works for dance, ensembles, an opera and various object-based creations made him a natural choice for the job of finding a refreshing way of linking sound and image. On its own, the music for A1 holds up by putting the listener on a high-velocity road trip of the curious mind.
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MACROM 050X-EP
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Rough techno versions, derived from Stefan Goldmann's synth-heavy soundtrack for the Swiss documentary, A1 (2016). Five cuts remixed into the mighty 4/4 grid (mostly). "Inward Slope" features a warped beat layout and wave-table splashes, sounding like a weeping robot fighting with a cat. Free-wheeling hardware synthesis and heavy-handed beats line up for concrete-blasting impact on "A-Drive" and "Constructor". "Roadside Lot" is a soothing ambient FM tech tool. "Spikes" is a looser affair, around a scintillating analog synth riff.
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2x12"
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MACROM 049LP
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2x12" version. Elektro Guzzi, holding their position as the leading "real" techno live band, present Clones. Literary all the Granny Smith apple trees grown today, from Uruguay to Hokaido, are clones from Mrs. Smith's original tree in Sydney. Bananas, oranges, watermelons, garlic and other fruits of daily delight are routinely replicated without any input of external ideas - i.e., they are cloned. There is no general ethical or aesthetic decision to be formed about clones, since you have already imbibed them ever since your first bite. Thus, you are not in a neutral or otherwise preliminary position, but already involved, knee-deep. It may not be a coincidence that the first mammals, warm-blooded egg-layers and small marsupials, date almost exactly to the period of the first flowers, evolving some 125 million years ago. Quick-thinking, vegetable eating mammals provide a most striking example of cooperation in evolution, as their interest in plant foods led them to become well-fed. A bond has been formed. Seedless plants, like banana and oranges, have made a most remarkable dispersal strategy: season after season, human growers clone them. The plants are perpetuated because they taste so good. And that's about it. Much has been said about Elektro Guzzi's aptitude in transcending their instrumental sources towards techno of unlikely beauty, pristine consistency and razor-sharp definition. It tastes good, and thus they have decided to clone themselves. Elektro Guzzi plow through their own fertile ground of ideas and sprout structures, textures and gestures into a dizzying array of new offerings. Yet the tunnel vision of the singular point of origin of all tracks makes it smack even more, because there's never too much of a great thing.
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MACROM 049CD
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Elektro Guzzi, holding their position as the leading "real" techno live band, present Clones. Literary all the Granny Smith apple trees grown today, from Uruguay to Hokaido, are clones from Mrs. Smith's original tree in Sydney. Bananas, oranges, watermelons, garlic and other fruits of daily delight are routinely replicated without any input of external ideas - i.e., they are cloned. There is no general ethical or aesthetic decision to be formed about clones, since you have already imbibed them ever since your first bite. Thus, you are not in a neutral or otherwise preliminary position, but already involved, knee-deep. It may not be a coincidence that the first mammals, warm-blooded egg-layers and small marsupials, date almost exactly to the period of the first flowers, evolving some 125 million years ago. Quick-thinking, vegetable eating mammals provide a most striking example of cooperation in evolution, as their interest in plant foods led them to become well-fed. A bond has been formed. Seedless plants, like banana and oranges, have made a most remarkable dispersal strategy: season after season, human growers clone them. The plants are perpetuated because they taste so good. And that's about it. Much has been said about Elektro Guzzi's aptitude in transcending their instrumental sources towards techno of unlikely beauty, pristine consistency and razor-sharp definition. It tastes good, and thus they have decided to clone themselves. Elektro Guzzi plow through their own fertile ground of ideas and sprout structures, textures and gestures into a dizzying array of new offerings. Yet the tunnel vision of the singular point of origin of all tracks makes it smack even more, because there's never too much of a great thing.
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MACROM 048LP
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LP version. Macro has been the home for the albums of some of electronic music's most exciting live acts, such as KiNK and Elektro Guzzi. So when a live band enters this context, it should better enter with a bang. KUF do just this with Gold. KUF is a three-piece, featuring keys, bass and drums, cooks up a sound that is as warm, cozy and exciting as it is utterly alien. The rhythm section hints at the great history of dirty funk and bouncing R&B, but the grooves are firmly of today: dance-centered, thrillingly interactive and broken up at the best possible joints. The bewildering thing about KUF is that it is a vocal-led group that has no singer on stage at all. All vocal elements are based on self-recorded samples which keyboard whizz kid Tom Schneider melds, bends and squeezes in real time. With no artificial synchronization in place, Valentin Link on bass and Hendrik Havekost on drums push the disembodied voices into an arena of hyper-integrated real-time magic of rough soul, intertwined by improvised outbursts and shaped with the aesthetics of raw MPC-based cut-up techno. The openers, "Gold" and "Princess", are full-on instances of the brightly burning world of KUF, with the other ten tunes never ever letting you down. All along, the Berlin based trio take their audiences through a full range of emotions and constantly shifting dynamics. The thorough integration of this extraordinary degree of sheer diversity into a unified experience is simply astonishing. But never forget this is a live band, and that's how anything here has been developed: live, in direct interplay. Seeing is believing.
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MACROM 048CD
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Macro has been the home for the albums of some of electronic music's most exciting live acts, such as KiNK and Elektro Guzzi. So when a live band enters this context, it should better enter with a bang. KUF do just this with Gold. KUF is a three-piece, featuring keys, bass and drums, cooks up a sound that is as warm, cozy and exciting as it is utterly alien. The rhythm section hints at the great history of dirty funk and bouncing R&B, but the grooves are firmly of today: dance-centered, thrillingly interactive and broken up at the best possible joints. The bewildering thing about KUF is that it is a vocal-led group that has no singer on stage at all. All vocal elements are based on self-recorded samples which keyboard whizz kid Tom Schneider melds, bends and squeezes in real time. With no artificial synchronization in place, Valentin Link on bass and Hendrik Havekost on drums push the disembodied voices into an arena of hyper-integrated real-time magic of rough soul, intertwined by improvised outbursts and shaped with the aesthetics of raw MPC-based cut-up techno. The openers, "Gold" and "Princess", are full-on instances of the brightly burning world of KUF, with the other ten tunes never ever letting you down. All along, the Berlin based trio take their audiences through a full range of emotions and constantly shifting dynamics. The thorough integration of this extraordinary degree of sheer diversity into a unified experience is simply astonishing. But never forget this is a live band, and that's how anything here has been developed: live, in direct interplay. Seeing is believing.
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MACROM 046CD
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April 27, 2016, would have been German composer and conductor Friedrich Goldmann's 75th birthday. Macro celebrates the occasion with a luxury CD box set collecting complete trios of 1986-2004 and Goldmann's singular oboe quartet (2000). Two of the recordings were produced by Goldmann himself, and all feature musicians with a long-term working relationship and deep expertise with the composer's oeuvre, including Ingo Goritzki and Björn Lehmann and members of the ensemble mosaik and the Ensemble KNM. The CD is accompanied by a 48-page booklet featuring extensive essays by Björn Gottstein (artistic director of Donaueschingen Music Days) and musicologist Bruno Santos exploring Goldmann's groundbreaking aesthetics. Born in 1941, Friedrich Goldmann studied with Stockhausen in Darmstadt in 1959 and went on to spearhead the young new music avant-garde of East Germany. Achieving widespread recognition in Western Europe with his fiercely modernist, highly integrative, and multilayered aesthetics since the late 1970s, his oeuvre comprises more than 200 works. As a conductor he has premiered major works by Lachenmann, Henze, Rihm, Hosokawa, and others with orchestras and ensembles such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Staatskapelle Berlin, and longtime collaborators Ensemble Modern. He also conducted the French and German premieres of Luigi Nono's seminal Prometeo and recorded Stockhausen's Gruppen for Deutsche Grammophon. As a professor at Berlin's Universität der Künste, he is considered to have been one of the most influential teachers of his generation. Among his students were Helmut Oehring, Enno Poppe, Steffen Schleiermacher, and Jakob Ullmann. After a period in the 1990s in which he withdrew from conducting due to health reasons, Goldmann's music has experienced a renaissance since 2009, with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Heinz Holliger, Ilan Volkov, Peter Rundel, and Matthias Pintscher performing his orchestral works. His opera R. Hot bzw. Die Hitze has seen three restagings since 2010. Since 2014 his entire orchestral and chamber oeuvre has been premiered in concert and is heard in concerts and at competitions in Europe, North and South America, Russia, East and South East Asia, Australia, and South Africa.
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MACROM 047EP
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Kuf are a trio of keys, bass, and drums. The rhythm section hints at the great history of dirty funk and rhythm and blues, but the grooves are firmly contemporary -- dance-centered and broken up at the best possible joints. The prominent vocal elements are all based on self-recorded samples that keyboard whiz kid Tom Schneider melds and bends and squeezes in real time. With no artificial synchronization in place, bassist Valentin Link and drummer Hendrik Havekost push the disembodied, highly abstract voices into an arena of hyper-integrated real-time magic. This EP includes a special guest VIP remix for the club.
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MACROM 045EP
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Oh, the terror. L'estasi Dell'oro delves deeper into New York's gritty shades of techno. Returning after 2014's super-bold "Iscariotic Lips" (MACROM 035EP), he enforces his signature clashing of disparate ends within the same, driving beat with the Every Light Is Blue EP for Macro. The A-side's "Pyrrhic Mundi" is endless drama, stages after stages toward eliminating mind/body separation. The B-side holds percussive structure rubbed against edgy metallic sound first with "Every Light Is Blue," and then unfolds into ultimate basement club action in "Sky Unknown." Heavy low end maintained throughout.
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MACROM 043EP
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rRoxymore has turned heads with her outstanding DJ sets and take-no-prisoners live act. Her 2015 collaboration with Oni Ayhun, Paula Temple, and PlanningToRock on Noise Manifesto (Decon/Recon/1 (NOISEMAN 004EP)) promised a great future, and that promise is kept by the Tautologies EP. From the techno drive of "Darksun" to the housed-out oddities of "Q19" and "DFF," this is as fresh as it gets.
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MACROM 044EP
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Techno exists in a distorted field. Awake at night and asleep by day. Rough is beautiful, slick is rotten. With Macro, things are always a bit more wrong -- and a bit more beautiful -- than usual. Stefan Goldmann's "Fossil Water": Fender bass tones weave a pad, from the thumping bottom up to the silky top, congregating into intense moments of dancefloor bliss. On the B-side, the tense yet laid-back workout of "Nephelin" tip over into the sheer techno claustrophobia of "De-Gauss." Dark and warm like a case of Stockholm syndrome -- feeling cozy while the horror comes upon you.
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12"
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MACROM 042EP
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Macro follows albums by two of techno's greatest live acts, KiNK (Under Destruction (MACROM 038CD, 2014)) and Elektro Guzzi (Circling Above (MACROM 041CD, 2015)), with an exchange of remixes by each artist. KiNK remixes "Atlas" into a tranced-out, peak-time world-domination slammer of pure euphoria. Elektro Guzzi let the snares smack and the pads build into nirvana "Vodolaz." Dream-team double-pack.
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MACROM 041CD
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Elektro Guzzi have been called many names: man-machine, clockwork, techno organism, but above all, the three Austrian wizards have become the preeminent techno band. A trio of guitar, bass, and drums, they play murder beats with the drive of a machine and sonic detail only physical instruments are capable producing. The unparalleled appeal of matching sound and physical performance in real time -- you see how every sound is created, right there, on the spot -- have made them a primary choice for cutting-edge festivals like Roskilde, Sónar, Mutek, Melt!, Stop Making Sense, C/O Pop, Eurosonic, Extrema, Airwaves, Sziget, Dancity, Spring Festival, and a long list of others across Europe, North and Latin America, and Japan. They have also conquered the club circuit, from Berghain to Fabric to Arma17. Originally released as a cassette by The Tapeworm in 2013 (TTW 056CS), Circling Above features the Austrian techno wonder locking into two "Circle"s and one essential addition. Tight as ever, in deep explorations of the long form. Rich on texture, all the little timbral strokes make for a continuous push down the bass-heavy techno rabbit hole. The result is nowhere close to a loose jam, but renders a concentrated display of musical swarm logic. Intimate, thrusting, circular.
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LP
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MACROM 040LP
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LP version. Industry sheds all personalized effort and tests how far you can get by using presets only. All sounds are factory presets of three obsolete 1990s Japanese workstation synths, all effects are presets, all notes are quantized and most panning is purely accidental (laid out in the preset sounds). Industry doesn't rely on successful presets, but on failed sounds of now-obsolete synthesizers -- industrial assumptions of where culture will go, but where it chose not to. The result is a surprisingly pleasant listening experience with effortless grooves and rich textures -- and mildly demonic connotations. From smooth to kicking -- a conveyor belt enjoying mood swings. As beautiful as the scheduled meeting of a PVC sheet and a thermoform mold on a workbench. 0% sound design. What? -> Presets are pre-programmed settings of a device such as a synthesizer or an effects unit: factory stock sounds, equivalent to stock photography or preset styles and filters in apps like Instagram. Audio presets provide a library of "typical" and supposedly desirable sounds -- thus enabling a consumer to bypass individual programming and get quick and easily repeatable results. Every modern instrument or software comes with presets -- and people use them heavily.
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MACROM 040CD
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Industry sheds all personalized effort and tests how far you can get by using presets only. All sounds are factory presets of three obsolete 1990s Japanese workstation synths, all effects are presets, all notes are quantized and most panning is purely accidental (laid out in the preset sounds). Industry doesn't rely on successful presets, but on failed sounds of now-obsolete synthesizers -- industrial assumptions of where culture will go, but where it chose not to. The result is a surprisingly pleasant listening experience with effortless grooves and rich textures -- and mildly demonic connotations. From smooth to kicking -- a conveyor belt enjoying mood swings. As beautiful as the scheduled meeting of a PVC sheet and a thermoform mold on a workbench. 0% sound design. What? -> Presets are pre-programmed settings of a device such as a synthesizer or an effects unit: factory stock sounds, equivalent to stock photography or preset styles and filters in apps like Instagram. Audio presets provide a library of "typical" and supposedly desirable sounds -- thus enabling a consumer to bypass individual programming and get quick and easily repeatable results. Every modern instrument or software comes with presets -- and people use them heavily.
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