Beautiful party - thank you! fields we found interview Part One today - in the studio and the making of thoughts persist

quiet details
6 days ago
5 min read

Hey friends - hope all good :)

Big thanks for making the thoughts persist Listening Party such a good one - very appreciative for the support and positivity x

Was truly heartwarming to see so many of you there - our corner of the world’s a beautiful place and, in the midst of the madness raging around us, I’m so glad to share it with you.

Thanks to everyone that’s bought the release, if you picked up a CD remember to message me for the long-form edition private download - I mixed it live with effects and new elements to be a cohesive deep listen.

Now the second best-selling CD in any genre on Bandcamp - thanks so much!

Loads of CDs gone out already, more in the post soon.

Listen / buy here

As I covered a lot of my background in the first Q&A, this time I thought I’d go straight into the making of thoughts persist

Part Two next week will be answering questions from you - had some good ones already so send over anything you’d like to ask.

In the lead up to starting on this album, I’d been focusing on long-form pieces as seen in the landscape series - which was very much about metaphorically staring at a still yet ever-shifting panorama..

and resolve / relate series - which was more about moving through different soundscapes as they gradually morph into each other..

thoughts persist is the result of going into making music with a completely open mind.

Always starting with a single improvisation, a pattern or motif - a thought. Most were made on my modular system, broadly designed around the idea of patch-programmability - modules which can be used in multiple different ways, encouraging exploration and experimentation. R*S Serge, Make Noise, Mannequins, Joranalogue, Toppobrillo, Intellijel, Mutable all feature heavily; others in there too.

The thinking of these designers really connects with me sonically and conceptually - and each module has endless corners to explore, and within a system the creative scope is endless.

The combination of synthesis and sampling is fundamental to what I do - the juxtaposition of sound quality and the way of handling sonic material is beautifully complementary - especially when the audio generators and samplers have so much innate character.

So with the initial idea, I then recorded takes to multiple tape machines and samplers. Reel-to-reels (in this case using Revox, Akai and Nagra units) impart a unique signature on what they record, with a huge range depending on the incoming signal level and content.

As do samplers - the low fidelity nature of some units is wonderful, for this album I used my old modified Akai S612, alongside the more recent suonobuno Polyvera - both turning what they sample into something with a distinct and singular personality.

In addition to these raw electronic sources, field recordings were fundamental to each track. I often carry a recorder with me, and am always keeping my ears open for interesting textures out in the world. I live out in the countryside and walk a lot, and it’s always captivating to watch and hear the natural surroundings change over time - the terrain always the same, always different.

From the sound of branches skimming on ice, to the ground crumbling underfoot - each moment brings back a memory of a time and place, a snapshot of the past embedded into the music.

Then the process of exploring these sounds really began - resampling between machines; slowing them down, speeding them up; running them into various effects or back into the modular for filtering, audio-rate analogue processing, modulation and more.

This was the first music in a long time I also used a computer extensively. I’ve used Ableton Live for over twenty years, and recently it’s finally become a part of music I actually finished. A computer-based sequencer never used to work for me - I’ve got hard-drives full of half-finished tracks - I learnt the fundamental art of finishing music when I started recording tracks live to tape, committing to a final piece and learning to live with it. I truly think this is one of the hardest skills to grasp as a producer, but one of, if not the most important.

Learning that skill with all my previous fields we found albums and releases, made me realise I could bring the computer back in as just another tool - keep it focused and with specific uses. So, along with Ableton’s Push3 for tactile control, I used it for some recording, sampling and looping, midi sequencing for the samplers, and a way to build collages of the various elements.

When I had all the pieces of a track in place - audio in the samplers and tape machines; fragments and manipulations in the computer; sequences running on the modular or, a late addition to the album, the Whimsical Raps Atrium - I recorded final takes of each track to 1/4” tape as I have with all fields we found music, using my ever-present Revox.

Hands-on performances, inspired by the way dub originated and its innovators - live and direct to tape; riding the faders; adding effects; building the arrangement from the constituent parts.

I create chains of effects, stacking delays, reverbs and other devices to give a wide range of sonic possibilities - one of my favourites the Teaching Machines Wellspring, a gorgeous stereo spring reverb and delay.

These were then digitised from the tapes, and I mastered them myself using a hybrid analogue and digital chain. Digital for precision, analogue for character and the sense of depth it imprints so well.

Mastering your own music is an interesting topic, with many incredible mastering engineers preferring not to do their own work. I do mine as I have a very specific sound I want for my music, and mastering has now become an important part of the creative process.

The long-form mix was done in the same way as the individual tracks - a live performance to bring the tracks together into a single immersive piece.

So from the initial experimentation to the final master - the seed of an idea made its way all the way through, existing in various shapes and forms, coalescing into the whole - thoughts persist

One shout-out today - big thanks to Shawn Reynaldo for the inclusion in his First Floor Recommended Releases this week - very kind words in the full review here.

Huge respect to Shawn for covering some of the most important topics every week, from the state of the music industry to societal and geopolitical events. He’s an important voice and invariably on the right side of history, please subscribe and support him however you can.