Another remix challenge. This one is a contribution to Dan Weatherall’s SKatterBrain project. The main album, out today as a £1 (!) download from BandCamp is entitled The Basic Condition Of Life.

To accompany the main release, Dan has pulled in remixes from several artists including Synoiz, PetePec, dyLab, DeathBoy, Jrechs and my own contribution – a mix of his “Last Brief Seconds” track. The remix album is a free download.

Ignore the fact that the SoundCloud player says “Buy”, click the link – it’s FREE. Or use the BandCamp links below to download the whole album.

I always enjoy remixing tracks and I’m proud to have worked on tracks – remixes and collaborations – by Alka, Digitube, Little Boots, Bootslam, Fernando Fonseca and Shadi Angelina. There are others in the pipeline – I’m particularly excited about the potential of collaborations and remixes with Rory Dow and Dan Furr. Watch this space for more news!

Particular thanks on this one to Göran, Justin and several others for their excellent feedback of the work in progress. Comments really helped me to develop the arrangement of the track and tidy up the mix.

Respect, as ever, to Pure Tone for mastering.

The Complete Albums

Listen to and download the complete albums:

FOUR, by Kieron James

A little like Alcmene, this track came together pretty quickly and, as I mentioned on Twitter, it’s the first one I’ve composed for a long time which has been built on a completely linear timeline (i.e. no use of the Cubase arranger track). This doesn’t happen very often and when it does, it feels like the track has almost written itself.

The idea kicked off with a couple of bars sequenced up using iPad App from Korg, iElectribe which I’m hugely impressed with. You’ll hear the iElectribe very clearly at around 1:57. I then exported the pattern into Cubase and started to build the rest of the piece around those four bars. Adding sub bass first and then building some of the other synth parts, drums (glitched using Automaton from Audio Damage) and finally adding Marcus Hutton’s fabulous delivery of the Edgard Varèse quote.

I’m handing over to Pure Tone for some quick analysis (to see if he can spot any howlers), stepping away for a couple of days to watch the Spain v Germany World Cup Semi Final tonight and concentrate an Bootslam’s kick drum and I’ll work on the mix at the weekend.

idea by Kieron James

The Burns We Earn

I spotted the @blocsonic remix competition on Twitter on 1st May and was intrigued at how I’d get on remixing a track which was “outside my genre comfort zone”. A couple of elements of the track – notably the bass and vocals – suggested one or two ideas and I started to play around with them.

I extracted midi from the bass line and worked with Rob Papen’s SubBoomBass to generate a couple of different sounds. I created a new (extremely simple) drum part in Battery and glitched the hats using Audio Damage’s Automaton. I created a sequence for one of the original synth parts using BigSeq2 and applied a few filters to the vocals. The guitar part was run through Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig as was an additional synth to create the siren sound.

First up is the original – 2 minute track from Friends or Whatever:

Friends or Whatever – The Burns We Earn by blocSonic

And here is my remix:

The Burns We Earn (Kieron James RMX) by kieronjames

You can download the single including six other remixes and a lovely eleven page PDF booklet from blocSonic’s website:

»» DOWNLOAD THE FRIENDS OR WHATEVER SINGLE AND REMIXES ««

FOUR, by Kieron James

Last Wednesday was Elisa’s birthday, so I took the day off work and we headed out to the cinema with the kids to watch “Clash of the Titans”. The film was pretty much as we’d expected – mediocre really, but we all kind of enjoyed it. I don’t remember the soundtrack being particularly captivating, but at some point during the movie, I started to think that I’d like to have a crack at something cinematic, something EPIC.

I didn’t get much of a chance to sit down with Cubase with one thing and another, but I did manage to develop a chord sequence late in the week and last night I added some new instruments and wrote a couple of melodies for oboe, trombone and a strings.

Alcmene has come together faster than anything I’ve ever written before and though I may tweak this a little before passing it to Pure Tone for mastering, I’m very pleased with the lead melody and I think it meets my goal.

Given the inspiration, I thought it appropriate to name the piece after Heracles’ mother – “the tallest, most beautiful woman with wisdom surpassed by no person born of mortal parents. It is said that her face and dark eyes were as charming as Aphrodite’s.”

Alcmene by kieronjames

FOUR, by Kieron James

OK, this one has turned out completely off whack with the first three tracks of the album, but there’s something I really like about its quirkiness. There are lots of parts – both in terms of its many layers and the way it jumps from section to section.

I still have doubts as to whether it all works as a whole, but I’m not sure I care! Kinda happy to let it exist as a free-spirited piece and bounce wherever it likes.

Four by kieronjames

Update: 7 June 2010

Lovely to see that Matt Pacyga used this track for one of his #DAPTS videos:

Daily Achievements #DAPTS Playing Foursquare from Daily Achievements on Vimeo.

This track was composed last year as a collaboration with Shadi Angelina for her Messy Spaces CD (to be released by the Goethe Institute later this month).

I’m honoured that the collaboration inspired my very good friend, talented animator and my very first Twitter pal Digital Doyle, to produce the animation below:

Mass Of Moments from DigitalDoyle on Vimeo.

Doyle’s visual interpretation is captivating and his execution reflects the care he attaches to everything – not least his friendships. Doyle remains the top of my list of Follow Friday recommendations. Follow him now: @DigitalDoyle.

The track was wonderfully mastered (as ever) by Pure Tone.

FOUR, by Kieron James

I’ve been working on this one for a while and I’m getting happier with the mix. Need to tweak the arrangement though – not sure about the first appearance of the guitar or its sound. I think that will be removed once I have the vocals. It seems incongruous early in the piece.

You can follow the history of work in progress as Johnny developed and the story of the track’s title on this post.

One thing which Pure Tone suggested, was some “girly vocals”. This set a train of thought in motion and I was looking around some movie sites last night. The track is pretty light and bouncy so I was after something with a touch of humour for some of the quiet sections. I thought these four lines would work well and I’m delighted with the way Salwa Azar has delivered them.

Johnny, is this true? ‘Cause if it is…

Good luck Johnny

Bye bye Johnny

Say kid, what do they call you?

…never should have picked a name like that. A name like that you gotta live up to.

Any last words Johnny?

Johnny by kieronjames

FOUR, by Kieron James

This is the second track I’ve put together for my debut album FOUR, which will be released on 1st July by Clear Notice. (This will leave six months to create the three sibling albums for Somió, Half-BIT and Blue Omen.)

Recap is a remix of Capitulation – the first piece of music I composed, at the time using the Jonathan Scary moniker. It has been mastered by Pure Tone, though we may tweak a little when I have all the other tracks for the album completed.

Recap by kieronjames

FOUR, by Kieron James

So here it is. The fruits of around three weeks work and the first track for the album FOUR. The track has been beautifully mastered by @pure_tone whose attention to detail and ability to make stuff sparkle is second to none.

My plan at this stage is to complete FOUR before moving on to the other three albums, two of which are collaborative. I’ll be posting four bars of some of the individual channels here too – to see which inspires the collaborators and me to write for Blue Omen, Half-BIT and Sómio.

“Organised Sound” is a phrase coined by the stratospheric colossus of sound, Edgard Varèse. I was switched on to Varèse’s life and work by Chris Randall’s Analog Industries blog. From time to time he produces limited run, sound-themed tee shirts. I missed his Delia Derbyshire edition (sold out), but managed to get hold of one of the fabulous Varèse shirts designed by Stefan Goodchild.

And that’s the story behind the first track for FOUR.

Organised Sound by kieronjames

I think the single most impressive thing about Twitter has been the opportunities for musical collaboration which it has brought about. This, my third significant ‘joint venture’ is with the amazing talent, Scott Lachance, aka Digitube. I really am absolutely thrilled to have an opportunity to work with such wonderful musicians and producers from all over the world.

I’ve only just begun with this and I do have a slight problem with one of the VST instruments drifting slightly out of time (around 2’10″ which I’ll fix). I’m uploading the small amount I’ve done and I guess here will be as good a place as any for Scott and I to exchange ideas as the piece develops. The upload of work in progress has become something of a tradition and people do seem to enjoy chucking in their two pennyworth as a track evolves (which I both seek out and value hugely).

This has not been mixed at all. Levels are definitely awry.

Update: 07/11/2009

FInished track. Mastered by @pure_tone

Update: 24/10/2009

Really great to speak with Scott on the telephone this evening. Felt very inspired after our call and so I did a little more work on this track. Spent quite a bit of time on the percussion and created a kinda funky guitar out of one of the stems (actually came from the drum stem, using BigSeq2 to create the groove).

I’ll have another listen tomorrow, but in truth barring level checks and EQ tweaks, I quite like the place this has got to.

[See post to listen to audio]

First Upload: 23/10/2009

Just playing around with some deep percussive ideas for this first upload. No arrangement and no mixing completed so far.

[See post to listen to audio]

Digitube Original “Organic Build 2″

Scott published his ‘let’s kick things off’ MP3 on SoundCloud and I’m uploading it here too for reference. Clearly, it’s much more than a ‘starter for ten’!

[See post to listen to audio]

OK, off we go again!

I finally completed my own remix of Alka’s Separate, when a few days ago I was sent a link by Fernando Fonseca to have a listen to what he was up to with his remix and to offer an opinion as to whether it needed vocals.

I am really impressed by what he’s put together.

Long and short of it is that we got talking about whether I’d be interested in mixing his remix. Fool that I am, I agreed!

Last night, I loaded the stems into Cubase and started to have a play around. I’ve worked on a supplementary bass part and I’m uploading a quick burst here, just a flavour of what I’ve got – it’s just a few bars of percs and bass, but gives a hint of where I want to take this.

Rather than the “drop” you’ll hear after the short soloed percussive break, it’ll almost certainly lift here (more drums!), but I do love the sub at this point.

As always, I’m uploading a tiny snippet to kick off the post. I really like looking back and listening to how the tracks evolve, so these are always great to hear once the finished piece has been mastered.

Mastered version

Separate – STRBX RMX by Half-BIT

Mastered by Pure Tone

Update: 20/10/2009

Should really listen to this again with fresh ears tomorrow before uploading, particularly as I did most of the mixing on the train. But what the heck! Let’s pop this version on the website now and if I need to remix or tinker in any other way, I can always come back to it over the next few days.

[See post to listen to audio]

Update: 15/10/2009

Train journey home allowed a bit more time to play around with the Half-BIT Mix. Really liking the way this is coming together, though clearly a way to go yet.

[See post to listen to audio]

Update: 12/10/2009

Still poorly so it’s laptop in bed (again) and a little bit more playing with The Half-BIT Mix.

[See post to listen to audio]

Update: 11/10/2009

Took @pure_tone’s advice and brought the laptop to bed to do a little more work on this track. Not taken it too much further as my head feels like ’tis full of cotton wool and I don’t want to have to undo lots of this later if it’s awful with proper ears.

Not an arrangement, nor a mix. Just some ideas. Some will stay, some will go.

Anyway, Tone was right. That killed an hour!

[See post to listen to audio]

First Upload: 07/10/2009

[See post to listen to audio]

This contribution to the Artists 4 Freedom project (organised by @fjfonseca of PublicSpaces) has been a long and at times, emotional, journey.

It’s the first true collaboration I’ve done and my sense of responsibility to the track’s featured artist has been strong. There are still many aspects which I’d like to improve, but I’ve felt recently that constant “tweaking” was having a negative impact.

Background

Having put together the basic idea for the track, I sent a link through to Fernando (11 July) and he immediately suggested vocals. Later that day I placed the following ‘advert’ on Twitter:

Desperately seeking: FEMALE FARSI SINGER for modern take on traditional Persian piece. #MFF #iranelection

This was picked up and re-tweeted by a couple of people including @JCLemay. I received a reply within the hour (via JC) from Shadi Angelina and sent her a link to the work in progress. She very kindly agreed to get involved and from then on I’ve been revisiting and refining this track whilst working on other pieces such as Separate.

The lyrics – and hence the title – are from The Wind Will Take Us by Forough Farrokhzad.

The Wind Will Take Us

In my small night, ah
the wind has a date with the leaves of the trees
in my small night there is agony of destruction
listen
do you hear the darkness blowing?
I look upon this bliss as a stranger
I am addicted to my despair.

listen do you hear the darkness blowing?
something is passing in the night
the moon is restless and red
and over this rooftop
where crumbling is a constant fear
clouds, like a procession of mourners
seem to be waiting for the moment of rain.
a moment
and then nothing
night shudders beyond this window
and the earth winds to a halt
beyond this window
something unknown is watching you and me.

O green from head to foot
place your hands like a burning memory
in my loving hands
give your lips to the caresses
of my loving lips
like the warm perception of being
the wind will take us
the wind will take us.

Forough Farrokhzad
Translated by Ahmad Karimi Hakkak

Huge thanks to Shadi Angelina for her wonderful vocals and to @Pure_Tone for mastering.

The Wind Will Take Us by Kieron James and Shadi Angelina

I guess it was the sun, sea and sand of a beautiful Spanish island which inspired me to try and turn a fabulous IDM track from Alka into a clubby groove, but that was my intention with this treatment of “Separate”.

With that in mind, I decided to name it the Jandía Mix after the small resort at the southern tip of Fuerte Ventura, where I was staying 10 days ago when this was put together.

Update: 7th October 2009

The shrill flute towards the end of this track and its incongruity with the rest of the piece has been niggling me since August. I love what Tone had done with the mastering and apart from that, was pretty happy with the track. Last week I could take no more so I opened up Cubase and played around with some different instruments. The flute has now gone and been replaced with a filter-tweaked lead synth patch from Ohm Force’s Symptohm, run through Audio Damage BigSeq2 with a little DaTube FX. Once done, I handed it back to Tone and he’s re-mastered compressing the track slightly to highlight some of the detail.

Separate (Jandía Mix) by kieronjames

And here’s a link to the original track by Alka on Last.fm.

Note re first three comments below:

I did have an earlier problem with the lead synth at 3:28. There was pretty heavy modulation on the original track which (to my ears at least) bent it out of tune – not on the original, but on the remix – so I sought comments from a few trusted Twitter folks. Responses from @digitaldoyle, @digitube and @UBLF are shown below.

I tried tweaking the EQ at 3:28 as suggested but was convinced that the part was still out of tune, rather than just a harmonics issue so I ran the audio file through Cubase Pitch Correct to see how far it was “drifting”. After adjusting and readjusting for about an hour, I ended up deleting that part and writing three new lead synth lines. I’ve also done more work on the arrangement and mix and as ever, I’d love your feedback.

Naranjo de Bulnes is my working of the Cosecha file. The track was inspired not only by the sounds generated by the random sound, but also the 2500m peak in the Picos de Europa.

After a couple of listens to Cosecha, I began to hear hard, edgy sounds and decided that mountains and the challenges they present would be my synesthesia. Pulling this piece together and referring to various photos of Naranjo de Bulnes has rekindled my interest in climbing. I might just have to pull that gear out of the attic and have at it again. Once mixed and mastered, this track will be included in the Somió release, Deva.

Cosecha has been a fantastic exercise in sound design – something very new to me. Having to work with only one source file to create all the elements of this track was a hugely enjoyable challenge.

Stream MP3:

[See post to listen to audio]

San Feliz (track #2 of the Somió release, “Deva”) is now complete, barring levels, volume rides, a little compression and limiting here and there, the swells are not too swell and mastering. OK, so not finished at all really.

My goal with this piece was to create something very lazy and sunny. As I mentioned in another post, “San Feliz” was inspired by long summer days reading Murakami in the garden in Spain. With that in mind, I started by writing an eight bar turnaround with some bluesy chords and just let that roll.

It’s a pretty conventional piece and will probably be the most accessible / least experimental on the album. But there’s always room for one composition like that and – to me at least – it conveys all the memories from last summer, an easy couple of weeks and a genuine “time out” from the day-do-day.

I may also reduce the overall length or add a bridge. It’s a touch repetitive, but then again, I kind of like the way it just drifts along, in keeping with the pace of those afternoons and the feel of Murakami’s writing (can’t remember which book it was, but probably Dance Dance Dance).

I think I’ll leave this for a few days and turn my attention to something much more experimental: Cosecha.

Update: 06/06/09

Final version uploaded. Re-arranged, new instrumentation (Spanish guitar and some pads), remixed and mastered.

Thrilled to say that this track has been selected for PublicSpaces PS010 compilation.

Stream MP3:

[See post to listen to audio]

Download MP3: