#electronic music
The Nirvana Of Skeletor. Drone jam with inspiration from the Buddhator figure created by @extratruckestrial on Instagram.
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About this drone jam:
This is really a session of playing effects pedals.
Unseen but an integral part of this piece is the Bastl Instruments Kastle. It provides the basic repeating drone used throughout. The Alesis Guitar FX, with its unrefined effects, and general lo-fi graininess is the perfect compliment to the Kastle. Those are fed into a Zoom A1 Four which initially is used for the increasing tremolo and vibrato effects, and then switch to some deep reverbs and slow phasing.
The Zoom MS-50G is then slowly brought in to expand the reverbs, the phasing and add some pitched down sub-frequencies to the mix.
From there the Alesis Guitar FX switched between presets to accentuate and manipulate the Kastle drone, filtered and masked by the Zoom pedals.
Full drone piece on Youtube that follows the story below.
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The Nirvana of Skeletor
Continually thwarted in his quest to dominate Eternia, Skeletor becomes increasingly frustrated with the inability to manifest his desire. He has heard rumors of a portal located in the Ancient Ruins that is said to be the key that bridges the divide between occult and material magic.
Skeletor ventures into the Ancient Ruins, and after a search of many years, he eventually discovers the location of the fabled portal. Once inside the deep, timeworn recesses that hold the apparatus and its machinery, he sets about to understand what he seeks to control. Decades pass, and following much study, contemplation and experimentation, he believes he has finally unlocked the secrets that will allow him to unleash the true power of the device.
After programming the apparatus to open a dimensional bridge, Skeletor seats himself upon the portal gateway.
Initially, Skeletor can feel the power emanating from the alternate dimension as it begins to fill his body. But as that power begins to radiate through him, he has the uneasy sense that what he craves to control cannot be dominated. And as the process continues, he is engulfed by the realization that he has fundamentally misunderstood the true purpose of the portal. But it is too late. He fights against the will of the energy now pouring through portal, but his efforts are in vain. The process has initiated, and he is now powerless to escape it. The mantle he sought as his trophy, has now become a yoke that will guide his journey beyond the confines of his reality. The pulsating waves of energy now engulf his body, mind and even his soul. His very essence begins to be transformed.
The energies of the whole of the universe begins to manifest into Skeletor’s form. The transformational energies begin to replace his perception of self. He is freed from the shackles that were his desires, his machinations, his perception of purpose. His mind is released from the confines of a singular reality, and he is opened up to the entirety of all things. Micro-cosmos embed themselves into the subatomic particles that compose his material structures. He lets go of his fading grip that confines him to physicality, and embraces the journey into the astral plane.
Skeletor is projected through the portal and into the vast reaches of both space and time. His journey is traversed in a blinding instant, and also simultaneously through the achingly slow aeons of linear time. He travels from the eternal beginning of the universe to its infinite ends. He observes all — the explosive creation of universes, the primordial formation of matter, the congregation of solar systems, and the eventual entropy of all things. His corporeal body dissimilates. The very fabric of his matters diffuses and is spread throughout the emptiness of space and time that was the universe. And he, with it, decomposes into non-existence.
The being that was once Skeletor ceases to perceive. Ceases to be burdened by all realities. His essence is assimilated into all super and sub dimensions, both known, and heretofore unknown; and he in turn absorbs them. He becomes an incidental, and yet also integral, component to all things. He ceases to be “he”, or “they”, or “it”, or anything discernible. The being once known as Skeletor simply ceases to be. And that emptiness is cradled by all existence.
That emptiness is now all things, all at once. And that emptiness is nothing, and never was.
The Buddhator has arrived.
KWATZ!
daMoment
I’ve been collaborating with my good friend Benjamin Wynn, aka electronic musician @deru (and sound designer from Avatar & Korra), on a series of three music videos for his incredible upcoming album, Torn In Two. I came up with these statue scenes, initially doing 2D concepts. During this process, I took a ZBrush class from @xandersmith_design at @conceptdesignacad so I ended up digitally sculpting and posing the figures. Xander helped out too with a bunch of technical stuff that is beyond my meager skill set, and he also posed the last scene in this clip based on my 2D version. EFFIXX did an awesome job texturing, lighting, and rendering the figures and environments, doing the camera moves, and dealing with my many nit-picky notes.
Go to www.deru.la to see the full video in 4K/2K and hear the rest of his powerful track. In it you’ll also see some great compositing from my other old friend, Andy Dill (who worked on the Avatar main title sequence), and vfx by Nico Sugleris. Ben shot some incredible drone footage and edited all three videos — the next 2 will be available on Vimeo & YouTube soon. Deru’s new album is a monumental achievement and I’m honored to have been a part in visualizing some of it.
7E Interview with Artist/Musician Dan McPharlin
Few weeks ago, we posted an article about our favorite Sci-Fi Artist Dan McPharlin. We had an opportunity to interview him about his process of art, science fiction, music, synthesizers, and gear.
7E- What is the earliest sci-fi you remember being exposed to? (Do you have a library of your favorite pasttime books, sleeves, material you could kindly share with us?) (See photo above that Dan shared with us!)
DM-When I was growing up in the late 70s, early 80s there seemed to be a lot of sci-fi around. I think many kids of that era just soaked it all in. The enthusiasm generated by the Apollo missions was still fuelling public fascination (and optimism) about space exploration and then films like Star Wars kicked things along nicely. My earliest cinematic memory was seeing Empire Strikes Back in the theatre, and I definitely remember being obsessed with Dr. Who. Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker era episodes were a nightly fixture on Australian public television for a number of years. The windswept quarries, medieval British towns juxtaposed with strange aliens and sci-fi hardware fuelled my imagination. There was something about the quaint Britishness of it all that I connected with. Then I began to discover the artwork of artists like Chris Foss and Roger Dean and there was no looking back!
7E- How do germs of ideas for new artworks usually emerge?
DM- Ideas usually emerge from an emotional rather than a technical inception. My art is about juxtapositions of the familiar and the strange, the natural and the manufactured. I try to imagine how it would feel to inhabit a particular environment, to set foot on the soil of a distant world. The figures in my pictures are a stand in for the audience (and myself) so as I’m painting I’m really exploring the landscape at the same time. I like to depict moments of quiet contemplation rather than action or violence and I don’t shy away from mystery or ambiguity.
7E- We’ve read that you primarily work digitally using Photoshop and Wacom. What are some tools you can not live without? Do you create an isolated color palette for each artwork or do you improvise your color choice as you go?
DM- Photoshop is the main software I use. I’ve worked hard to create a set of digital tools that are as analogous to traditional painting as possible. Facing a blank canvas is always daunting so I have a lot of ‘prepared canvases’ that give me a starting point. I usually come up with textures using traditional media which gets scanned in and chopped up in Photoshop. For example, with a series of pieces I just finished I created many of these textures using acrylics mixed with dishwashing soap. Sometimes I might even begin with an older piece of work and start painting over the top. The colour palette will tend to evolve as I go. I use the Photoshop colour-picker a lot, using the painting itself as my colour mixer, constantly switching brushes, opacity etc. The ‘feel’ of mark making has become more important to me over the years and I often place textured papers over the Wacom to simulate different materials.
7E- Could you list several musicians/artists you’ve been listening to lately while illustrating.
DM- Hector Zazou, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Steve Reich, a lot of the old BBC Radiophonic Workshop stuff, a bit of Krautrock and early 90s Warp releases.
I often put together playlists or mixes of favourite tracks to listen to while I work. I’ve recently started collecting these together and releasing them: https://soundcloud.com/cosmonostro/sets/transmissions-a-mix-series-by
7E- Which synth(s) do you currently own?
DM- I have a Synthesizers.com modular, Roland SH-101, Roland MKS-80 + Programmer, Ensoniq SQ-80, Nord Modular, a few digital things, Roland TR-808, Roland MC-4, Roland SPV-355, various samplers, analogue outboard, tape echoes. I think I could probably make do with just the modular, although I have something of an addiction to outboard effects units. My favourite way to make music is just to turn off all the computers and bounce voltages around the studio for 4 hours.
7E- Was there ever a “synth that got away”, or a piece of music gear you regret selling?
DM- I remember when a Moog Sonic 6 came up for sale for a really good price about 10 years ago. I probably should have jumped on it but at the time I was only buying modular gear and couldn’t really justify owning another monosynth. I’m a bit of a collector by nature (perhaps hoarder is the correct word!) and at the time I remember thinking do I really need this to make music, or do I just like the idea of owning it. I’m sure that inner struggle is familiar to many.
7E- What inspired the papercraft series?
DM- I suppose it was a way to express my love of analogue technology while trying to imagine an alternative timeline where digital synths like the DX-7 had never come to be; if analogue synths had continued to develop unchallenged, what would they look like? It was also a way for me to explore the aesthetics of technological objects using a non-technological medium like cardboard or paper. I wanted these objects to exist in the world and the only way for that to happen was to build them out of the materials I had around me.
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7E Guest Artist - Erwin Redl
An artist originally from Austria, Erwin Redl now hails from Bowling Green, Ohio. His art primarily utilizes LEDs as a medium. Erwin also once studied electronic music and composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, which brings him way up on the Y axis for me. His Matrix VI graced the facade of the Whitney Museum in New York for it’s 2002 biennial celebration. One of my favorite works is Planes, which was first exhibited at the MoMA in Queens NY in 1997. Erwin is an innovator in electronic installation art, bridging electronics with the world of fine arts.
Thanks Erwin for joining us on 7E.
-terry
twitter.com/7electrons
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