I’m pleased to announce that my debut album, Hypnagogia, will be released on Thursday 10th September.
This minimalist psybient album, released under the artist name Elementare, explores concepts of isolation, contemplation and realisation within the context of electronic music that straddles the worlds of generative and performative composition. The concept running throughout the album speaks to our eternal capacity for spiritual liberation and ability to find release from the involutionary forces that surround us.
Every track on the album has been created outside of a computer, using a eurorack modular synthesiser combined with additional effects and sequencing hardware. Performed and recorded live, the album forgoes any digital arrangement or post-editing (other than basic mastering of the recorded tracks) in order to capture the organic nature of instrumental performance within the new modes of electronic music.
This performative approach was taken for a number of reasons, but primarily because I wanted to experience both the uncertainty and commitment required to create music that is recorded live without micromanaging the final result. The use of a modular synthesizer allowed for sound design that changes over time, using both fixed and generative automation, even as other parameters are manipulated directly to create the structure and movement of each song through successive stages beginning to end.
The nature of the songs and how they were constructed, along with the fact that I recorded them as a whole mix and not in their component parts, means that each song is a fixed echo of a moment in time. The exact patch, sound design, automation and structural elements are all lost once the patch is completed and another emerges from the newly empty creative state. There is deep catharsis to be found in something that cannot be reconstructed or repeated, even though it makes it more difficult to let go of each track when the time comes!
Album Now Available on Bandcamp
and on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify
All of the music on this album will be released under a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license
so that it can be freely used for your projects with attribution.
The modules and hardware used in the creation of this album are as follows:
Modular System: Moog M32 / Moog DFAM / Pittsburgh Lifeforms SV-1 / Make Noise Maths / Xaoc Devices Batumi / Mutable Instruments Plaits (Beehive) / Expert Sleepers Disting MK4 / Mutable Instruments Shades / WMD Ultrafold / Music Thing Modular Turing Machine / 2hp Freez / Intellijel uScale / Mutable Instruments Ripples / Pamela’s New Workout (w/ PEXP-1)
Other Hardware: Eventide Space / NDLR / Alto ZMX122fx Mixer
Mastering Software: Audacity / Steinberg Wavelab Elements 10
