We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

"COMMUTE" feat. Echo, from FF///////EP

FF​/​/​/​/​/​/​/​EP

by HANDS HOLDING THE VOID

/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
    Purchasable with gift card

      name your price

     

1.
Echo 03:00 video
info
buy track
2.
Twilight Drone 09:32
info
buy track
3.
John Cage 05:05
info
buy track

about

Impromptu, lo-fi experiments in which a monophonic toy keyboard plays simple, single-note rhythm patterns directly to tape, which is played back at high-speed using the tape deck's ff/cue function, and recorded into Ableton Live, where it is digitally pitched back down to normal speed. The individual keyboard parts, which are recorded consecutively to fill a side of tape, are cut into tracks and layered into these beatless-yet-polyrhythmic drones.

"Echo" was recorded at high speed through an echo effect as the time dial was turned, then lowered to normal pitch (or thereabouts).

"Twilight Drone" was played with stricter rhythms and was lowered a few octaves further, creating an eerie and organic drone.

"John Cage" uses John Cage's own speech patterns as the rhythmic basis for the keyboard parts, which, here, sound like a strange choir. The notes played are a transposition of the letters s-i-l-e-n-c-e to d#-f-g#-c#-a#-b-c#[*]. The rhythms they play imitate in 7 parts the 48 syllables of a quote from a 1963 audio interview with Cage, which is given the ff/cue treatment, here, as well, along with audio quotes from a 1989 local news piece about an interactive live radio performance by the man himself. That clip is well worth watching, by the way, if anything for the performative befuddlement of the TV news anchors: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vQAJ1p2VkA

[*the notes chosen almost don't matter, because, as ff/cue progresses, the spindles of the cassette spin faster and faster, gradually raising the pitch, so, as tracks from later in the tape are dubbed over tracks from earlier in the tape, any intended consonance is immediately skewed, followed by a steady, microtonal shift amongst all intervals.]

Tools used:

- Realistic Concertmate - 300 toy keyboard (circa 1985)
- Technics M218 tape deck
- Ableton Live (for track separation*, reverb, and echo on "Echo")

*apart from slicing the initial ff/cue recordings into layered tracks aligned by their first notes, no edits were made to these recordings.

credits

released December 3, 2021

Recorded November 26th and 28th, 2021, by George J. Fero, Jr. in Uptown, Chicago, IL, USA

license

all rights reserved

tags

If you like HANDS HOLDING THE VOID, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featured guests are the golden-voiced Baby Rose and psyche soulsters Brainstory.
listen now