antlerland stuff - lttte
I've gotten to the point where I've got a provisional song listing for Leave Technofetishism To The Experts - which, of course, is the album I should've put out years ago, but you know, lack of confidence in the production + hassle of disseminating it. As such, I've tried to the songs of that vintage, but of course that's not stopping me from remixing those bits that I felt could've been done better. The big difference is that I'm making more use of EQ, delay and reverb, since I didn't really have those back then, though I would often fudge it - in many places I would simulate a delay by simply copy the part to a new track and bump it down 2 or 3 lines.
A lot of this stuff will be reasonably familiar to a few people, from demos and other CDs and the occasional thing I've put up for download. 5 of the 6 songs were on a demo I sent to a few people (the 6th I cannot bear to listen to today because it's so annoying), but whilst I haven't changed that much, I'll be reworking bits here and there. After this I'll get onto reanimating Recombinant Diamond Dust, with leftovers and remixes from the two going on Not To Be Played In Apartment Blocks. This will be going on concurrently with putting together In Our Spectacular Society, which will be a vocal-based album. That's taking the most time, since all of that is being committed to disk from my mind or something similarly inaccessible, so the remixing of this stuff is what I'm doing in between that.
Basically I want to get all this stuff presented as "final" versions, so it's finally out of the way and I can get on with the new stuff. As I mentioned earlier, I'll probably throw it up on Bandcamp, though that may take a while. As pressed CDs? Very, very unlikely, since that opens up a whole heap of new bullshit by itself. I'm not doing this for money or even the cred, I'm doing this because it needs to be done.
1. Judge Not
Pretty much done, I haven't changed much on this, though tweaking the parameters for the low pass filter so it sounded similar to the effect in Impulse Tracker took a little time.
2. Grow Up
The "glitch" part is a bit tricky to replicate in Renoise, the rest will probably remain as obnoxious as ever. A longer, older mix will probably turn up on Apartment Blocks.
3. Wronghead
I've got numerous versions as this has been the most problematic song to work with, structurally this won't be that much different from the version I released back whenever except I've dabbed around the place with various effects. The hardest part is to make sure it doesn't just turn into sonic goop. (A remix or two might pop on Apartment Blocks as well.)
4. Solar Sails
It might get replaced by something else, but it really is one of my favourite tunes, though its rather simple, I've never wrapped it up with a proper ending so I'll have to do that at least.
5 Rudi
Just as bonkers as before. The mixing has come up very nicely and I'd say it's ready to go.
6 Shores
A difficult track to sort out, simply because of the cheap digital distortion effect I used on the piano sounds. I seem to be sorting it out though a little more work is needed.
7 Two Minutes Of Squelching Noises
Requisite "force the listener to hit skip in a clumsy attempt to replicate the old thing of getting up and turning an album over" track. Won't have much done to it at all, I just have to find where it's hiding on the hard drive. I know the quote is actually "... and 52 seconds", shut up, the track is only two minutes anyway.
8 The Sharpest Knife
Probably won't even touch the "definitive version" with Renoise; I did a slight remix with OpenMPT just to roll the bass off some of the pad sounds so I'll probably render it with that. But strangely enough I am reviving some of the rougher earlier mixes, in fact I pulled out one of them and spruced it up for the pub gig because it was fun to jam over, and they'll probably make the oddities collection.
9 Exodub (working title, since others have used that name for a song)
Have yet to start on remixing this, it's the clearest candidate for screwing around with a dub delay plugin so I'll probably have a bit of fun there. I want to have at least one thing on the album that would make the late King Tubby proud.
10 Temple Temple Temple
still on the fence about this one, it might yet get subbed out for something else, but I released it along with Wronghead back then, and it's a pretty interesting track in spite of the lazy use of the breakbeat, so it should go on the album.
11 Going Out For The Milk
Probably never get bored of this song. It was my only really good stab at drum'n'bass, after several goes at such, and even then it doesn't follow convention. The remixing is pretty much done and very little's been done to the structure.
12 The Device
Fixed some pretty wonky level issues, aside from that it still sounds as odd and intriguing as ever. Some people might find it a bit pretentious but eh. Did it nearly ten years ago, now it sounds like something Pivot or Battles would do.
13 Fadeaway (at last)
Have remixed this but doesn't quite sound as I think it should. A little more work needed, probably just EQ and such.
The last three were the first I've started remixing, they're almost all done bar a last once over. I always felt that they made a nice run-out sequence and thus I've kind of worked backwards from there, so they're probably the impetus for keeping the LTTTE concept after all these years.
A lot of this stuff will be reasonably familiar to a few people, from demos and other CDs and the occasional thing I've put up for download. 5 of the 6 songs were on a demo I sent to a few people (the 6th I cannot bear to listen to today because it's so annoying), but whilst I haven't changed that much, I'll be reworking bits here and there. After this I'll get onto reanimating Recombinant Diamond Dust, with leftovers and remixes from the two going on Not To Be Played In Apartment Blocks. This will be going on concurrently with putting together In Our Spectacular Society, which will be a vocal-based album. That's taking the most time, since all of that is being committed to disk from my mind or something similarly inaccessible, so the remixing of this stuff is what I'm doing in between that.
Basically I want to get all this stuff presented as "final" versions, so it's finally out of the way and I can get on with the new stuff. As I mentioned earlier, I'll probably throw it up on Bandcamp, though that may take a while. As pressed CDs? Very, very unlikely, since that opens up a whole heap of new bullshit by itself. I'm not doing this for money or even the cred, I'm doing this because it needs to be done.
1. Judge Not
Pretty much done, I haven't changed much on this, though tweaking the parameters for the low pass filter so it sounded similar to the effect in Impulse Tracker took a little time.
2. Grow Up
The "glitch" part is a bit tricky to replicate in Renoise, the rest will probably remain as obnoxious as ever. A longer, older mix will probably turn up on Apartment Blocks.
3. Wronghead
I've got numerous versions as this has been the most problematic song to work with, structurally this won't be that much different from the version I released back whenever except I've dabbed around the place with various effects. The hardest part is to make sure it doesn't just turn into sonic goop. (A remix or two might pop on Apartment Blocks as well.)
4. Solar Sails
It might get replaced by something else, but it really is one of my favourite tunes, though its rather simple, I've never wrapped it up with a proper ending so I'll have to do that at least.
5 Rudi
Just as bonkers as before. The mixing has come up very nicely and I'd say it's ready to go.
6 Shores
A difficult track to sort out, simply because of the cheap digital distortion effect I used on the piano sounds. I seem to be sorting it out though a little more work is needed.
7 Two Minutes Of Squelching Noises
Requisite "force the listener to hit skip in a clumsy attempt to replicate the old thing of getting up and turning an album over" track. Won't have much done to it at all, I just have to find where it's hiding on the hard drive. I know the quote is actually "... and 52 seconds", shut up, the track is only two minutes anyway.
8 The Sharpest Knife
Probably won't even touch the "definitive version" with Renoise; I did a slight remix with OpenMPT just to roll the bass off some of the pad sounds so I'll probably render it with that. But strangely enough I am reviving some of the rougher earlier mixes, in fact I pulled out one of them and spruced it up for the pub gig because it was fun to jam over, and they'll probably make the oddities collection.
9 Exodub (working title, since others have used that name for a song)
Have yet to start on remixing this, it's the clearest candidate for screwing around with a dub delay plugin so I'll probably have a bit of fun there. I want to have at least one thing on the album that would make the late King Tubby proud.
10 Temple Temple Temple
still on the fence about this one, it might yet get subbed out for something else, but I released it along with Wronghead back then, and it's a pretty interesting track in spite of the lazy use of the breakbeat, so it should go on the album.
11 Going Out For The Milk
Probably never get bored of this song. It was my only really good stab at drum'n'bass, after several goes at such, and even then it doesn't follow convention. The remixing is pretty much done and very little's been done to the structure.
12 The Device
Fixed some pretty wonky level issues, aside from that it still sounds as odd and intriguing as ever. Some people might find it a bit pretentious but eh. Did it nearly ten years ago, now it sounds like something Pivot or Battles would do.
13 Fadeaway (at last)
Have remixed this but doesn't quite sound as I think it should. A little more work needed, probably just EQ and such.
The last three were the first I've started remixing, they're almost all done bar a last once over. I always felt that they made a nice run-out sequence and thus I've kind of worked backwards from there, so they're probably the impetus for keeping the LTTTE concept after all these years.