Mastering new EP by LeStrange for Germany Techno imprint Black Snake Recordings

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Recently I mastered the new EP, Drench for rising Australian Techno producer Lyndsay LeStrange.

The three track EP is released by German label, Black Snake Recordings, and was an interesting mastering job from a loudness perspective.

Despite many articles about the end of the loudness wars, many artist and labels are still requiring masters that have higher LUFS or RMS than those being quoted as the new standard.

There are many informative videos, such as Dave Pensado interviewing Maor Appelbaum that suggest mastering is reforming and aiming for around -14LUFS, in line with streaming volume automation.

Personally, I’ve been loving new technologies such as the Meter Plugs’ Loudness Penalty plugin which shows how much various streaming services will be turning your masters down by. For an online version of that plugin visit https://www.loudnesspenalty.com/

Despite such things, labels are still requesting masters in the realm of -8 RMS, or if you belong to certain worlds / genres, this can even go higher. Check out the RMS reading of the reference tracks provided for this latest mastering job.

Needless to say, the client is always right, and similar levels were obtained via the combination of a few industry standard limiters.

Danga Island Drum Session

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I recently had the pleasure of 3 days of recording drums with session player Mark Spence and producer Joel King.

Mark and I were put up in a lovely house a short stroll across the island from the studio. We worked into the early evening each day and enjoyed an open fire and island life after hours. The studio as you can see from the pictures is a garden studio set amongst fruit trees, a chicken run and a host of vegetable gardens.

Over the three days, we tracked drums for an electronic record, a country record and a pop single. Quite prolific!

Due to the project studio nature of the studio, we only had 8 channels in, but they were very decent indeed, 4 channels SSL Alpha VHD and 4 channel Warm preamp WA412. Both preamps performed well and it was certainly fun exploring the variety of tone colour possible with the VHD (variable harmonic distortion) in the Alpha VHD. For those that haven’t used these preamps before, the control allows you to shift between 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortion, in short, a thickness through to a brighter harmonic saturation.

Other than that it was nice to work in a small room for a change. The surfaces were well treated, not too reflective and not too dead. As a result the drums were tight and had that classic small room drum sound.

Fortunately, I took personal protection earmuffs, as I was sitting within a meter of the ride and floor tom. Loud it definitely was, but with the earmuffs, not ear damage occurred and on a positive note, communication with the drummer was immediate and easy and even allowed giving hand signals to alert the drummer to changes in the tracks.

Below are a few images from the session and the mic input list. The studio boasts a good range of mics, mostly from Audio Technica, baring the very fancy Telefunken U47.

There’s only one beautiful compressor, the UA LA2A, but that wasn’t much of an issue as most of the mixing and compression will be done after the fact.

Due to the vibe, beautiful guitar collection, U47 and LA2A, I can’t wait to return with a folk artist of some description and spend a few days recording vocals and guitars.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, between takes, if one needs inspiration or a break, there is always a boat ride up the Hawkesbury River.

MIC INPUT LIST:

  1. Kick – Audio Technica AE2500 – Warm Audio WA412
  2. Snare Up – Shure SM57 – Warm Audio WA412
  3. Snare Down – Shure SM57 – Warm Audio WA412
  4. Rack Tom – Audio Technica – ATM250 – SSL Alpha VHD
  5. Floor Tom – Audio Technica – ATM250 – SSL Alpha VHD
  6. Overhead L – Audio Technica – AT8471 – SSL Alpha VHD
  7. Overhead R – Audio Technica – AT8471 – SSL Alpha VHD
  8. Room – Telefunken U47 – LA2A – Warm Audio WA412

 

South Coast Dreaming

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My ambient project The Horizontal Society, has released their second record titled South Coast Dreaming on the lo fi spiritual label.

The record is a tapestry of field recordings, bamboo flute, tamboura, and some minimal chanting. Blissed out major scale drones attempt to communicate a deep gratitude for my recent sea change.

My move from Redfern to the NSW South Coast is definitely impacting my art and the sounds I am creating

I hope you find the record to be relaxing, immersive and that it transports you somewhere beautiful.

The release is digitally available from all the usual outlets.

Dub Techno release on Organica Sounds

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In recent news, my Dub Techno alias TEChSLo had a release on Italian label Organica Sounds.

Titled Redfern Nights, the release is somewhat of an ode to my old Redfern neighbourhood. The record takes field recordings taking during the wet Redfern winter of 2018 and weaves them with more typical dub techno instrumentation such as dubbed chord stabs and 4×4 kick patterns.

The record is available on DJ friendly platforms such as Beatport and streaming services such as Spotify.

A film clip was also created which was mostly used for Instagram. I have recently posted a long play version on Youtube for those interested.

The rest of this post shall involve a reflection on the production: 

I used field recordings of rain to emulate the noise floor and textural sounds that I have always loved in seminal records from Basic Channel and other alumni such as Echospace Detroit. 

To achieve the maximal width, these stereo recordings have often been split into mono and placed out of sync to maximise left and right channel differences.

Embracing the Dub Techno emphasis on shifting tonality rather than chord structures, I have used a lot of the Max for Live LFO tool on this record. Specifically, each track has used multiple LFOs to slowly shift filter cut off frequencies and other variables. See my Youtube channel for tutorials relating to such techniques.

Tracks 4 & 5 are interesting to me and reflect my interest in the idea that a remix can be an opportunity to take a reductionist approach to the original sounds; stretching and turning them into their most basic tone or texture. These two reductions were heavily inspired by the works of Variant. 

In researching many of my favourite Dub Techno producers, it has been noted that many of them have used reel to reel tape machines in their production. To emulate this analogue tape warmth, I have recorded all the audio stems to cassette tape and then re-digitised before the final mix. From a production standpoint, it has been interesting to see the harmonic stimulation and the softening of transients that such a technique has resulted in.

That’s probably enough of a nerdy audio reflection on the minutiae. If you have made it this far, I hope some of the above-mentioned technique inspires your own production.

the birth of new outsider label lo fi spiritual

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It has been over 6 years since I last organised a release on a label I ran, aka The Frequency Lab. The last release was Lab Files, a various artists compilation of Beats and Bass Music from Sydney and abroad.  The compilation to my mind was forward-thinking, spirited and featured some of my favourite artists.

Check it out below!

Personally, enabling artists to release their music, play some of their first gigs and festivals was always one of the greatest pleasures in running a label. However, at the end of running The Frequency Lab, I felt depleted.

6 years later, however, I feel restored and the urge to create another label is overwhelming…

With that in mind, please let me introduce you to my new indie label lo fi spiritual.

The focus for this label, as inferred by the title, is to be an home for music that has a soul, spirit and a sense of handcrafted lo-fi humanity to the music. We have planned out a year of releases, and thus far most of the releases have been of an Ambient and Left-field Techno genre. Perhaps that is where my aesthetic currently lies, or perhaps it is where I am finding the most spirited music. Regardless, I am excited to be assisting pushing out beautiful new tones, drones and beats into the world.

Our first release is lo fi sunrise, and was produced by The Horizontal Society. Please enjoy the immersive fuzzed-out, harmonic wall of droning tamboura, chants, and ocean sounds.

Our second release is The Desert Tap, and was produced by Sandwalker. Please enjoy the slow evolving Raga melodies and catatonic Techno pulse.

If you are liking the sounds, feel free to join at mailing list at lofispiritual.com, or follow us on Instagram

 

 

Binaural sounds

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In recent sonic research I have been experimenting with the Hooke Verse binaural microphones.

 

Coupled with a portable recorder, I have been capturing some 360 sonic panoramas of the south coast coastline, weather & bush environments.

Due to wind & background noise, some of the recordings have needed a bit of RX7 Spectral De-Noise and post production in general. As a result I have recorded a Youtube video which serves as a good intro to Izotope’s RX7 De-Noiser.

Lastly, a few of my favourite immersive 360 recordings from the session can be found at my freesounds.org page. Be sure to check the file titled trying to record 360 sound in the bush with the kids. Whilst unusable for what I intended the audio for, it does demonstrate the Azimuth abilities of the microphone set up, by that I mean the variable that can position sound spatially behind the listener.

From a binaural sound recording angle, Gordan Hempton, has been a bit of an inspiration of late. You can hear some of his super high resolution Neumann KU-100 Dummy Head binaural recordings through Quiet Planet, and their Soundcloud.

On a more beats tip, I’ve been revisiting Yosi Horikawa and his use of 360 field recordings within electronic music. The below 2018 Red Bull documentary shows him busy in field-recording mode with what looks like a strange DIY four capsule mic build.

Safe travels and happy adventures in sound to you all.

Freesounds.org and some new field-recordings

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If you haven’t used freesounds.org  before, let me have the pleasure of introducing you.

Freesounds.org it is a massive online library of recordings categorised by subject matter. A lot of the generous field-recorders & audio engineers upload there content under the CC0 license, in other words you are free to use their recordings in any commercial, or other manner you chose, without payment, and without attribution.

I have used many of these recordings in my productions, and have finally started to give back to this community.

My first four uploaded field-recordings come from a recent work trip up to the Hawkesbury River. They consist of frog and insect night time atmosphere’s from the ponds around The Grove Studios, and further, the lapping ocean and bird songs from Dangar Island, pictures below.

   

All the field-recordings were created with a Tascam DR-44WL and the onboard XY mics @ 24bit 48kHz. The recordings were then cleaned up with RX Spectral De-Noiser, and normalised.

You can find my these sounds here, enjoy!

 

Youtube Channel – Audio Adventures

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I’ve decide to start a nerdy Youtube Channel, Audio Adventures.

The content will vary from specific questions from my students, to techniques that I’m enjoying while producing records for both myself and others.

Thus far there is a tutorial on

How to set up sidechain with 3rd party plugins in Ableton

How to use dynamic EQ in Fab Filter’s Pro Q3

How to use Max for Live’s LFO Audio Effect

Introducing the CHORG CHAOSS PAD

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As part of my masters, I was challenged to build an audio processing application in MAX.

The result is a bastardised version of Korg’s Chaoss Pad, titled Chorg Chaoss Pad (Mac users only sorry).

Below is a video that will hopefully inspire and demonstrate some of the Apps functionality. Basically, it is an XY control pad controlling parameters of a delay, overdrive, band pass filter and a reverb.

The delay still has some zipper noise, but I quite like the lo fi artifacts. Excuse the Camtasia water mark, as the App is fairly basic I couldn’t route to Soundflower or equivalent and use the usual screen recording apps. Further, this is only my first build in MAX, but hopefully you will create some amazing sounds with it. Please let me know if indeed you do.

Download here

As the App is not Apple Certified you will need to tweak Security conditions in your System Preferences to allow the dmg to be opened / install.

Happy CHORGing

Non-Urban Decay VR collaboration

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Recently I had the pleasure to collaborate on a VR installation entitled, Non-Urban Decay, for the New Tricks group exhibition at Tortuga Studios, St Peters.

Grace Kingston, used photogrammetry techniques to create assets in Agisoft Photoscan and created, with assistance from Games Academic (SAE) Geoff Hill, a VR environment in Unity. The environment was then sonically realised by myself, giving a range of audio assets to Unity wizard Geoff Hill, to express the progression from natural environment into a decaying digital environment.

Below are a few images from the exhibition.