Not sure what I can say about this one. Its a weird, barely finished concoction from ’03. Aside from mangled beats it also features a few samples from John Cage’s Prepared Piano. The plan was to put those to better use at some point, but that still hasn’t happened.
If the title makes no sense to you, that makes two of us. Otherwise, fill me in. Either way, I hope you enjoy.
Ego Programme is an experimental track from ’04. It combines IDM and Drum n’ Bass elements into a complex and trippy arrangement which stands alone in the Montaz/Biotic catalog.
Inspired by the sound of Squarepusher and Funckarma/Quench, the track features a variety of mangled beat chunks and even some orchestral elements, played using a (since forgotten) software application. Non-sampled beats were arranged using Native Instruments’ Battery, while the played synths were mostly played on the Access Virus B.
I’m not exactly sure why this genre wasn’t pursued more since but its something to keep in mind since I do dig it. Hope you will as well.
Anathema was released on Gotham Grooves in 2005 on the Various Villains: Volume 2 record, which also featured tracks by Agent Orange, Adam Jay and Noah Pred. As mentioned in the previous post on Sativa, the two tracks are closely related and follow a similar sound pattern. The second of the two, Anathema is the more mature. For more production details, please check out the post on Sativa.
I was fortunate to have a release on Gotham Grooves’ first Various Villains record as well, which featured a track called Directive. We’ll cover that one here as well at some point.
Btw, while this was a Montaz production, it ended up on the release under the Alek Biotic handle. But, who cares… after all, BeatPort also misspelled “Villains”. But the player below is nice.
I’m also including our own player so you can hear the track in its entirety and in higher quality. But no download this time since its available at BeatPort.
Michael Hedges died on December 2nd,12 years ago. I only learned this recently and was completely unaware at the time I did this remix of Point B, Michael’s track released on his album Taproot in 1990. Like many of Michael’s works, Point B (as well as Point A) are solo guitar pieces performed using a Steinberger guitar. (I really like the original Steinbergers and have a few of my own. Btw, the photo on the left shows Michael with a custom Steinberger Klein guitar, which was a result of a collaboration between Steve Klein and Ned Steinberger.) Micheal did some cool stuff with Steinberger’s TramsTrem which caught my attention.
While the Point B is a very focused effort, my version features lots of instrumentation and beats with the goal of creating a very different aural experience. I purposely didn’t stay true to the source material but instead wanted to go in the quite opposite direction. Enjoy. And check out the Michael Hedges store on Amazon.com for all of his releases.
Vanilla String was released on DJ Becka‘s Gotham City Records label in 2006. The release, titled Departure EP, also featured tracks by Mark Verbos, Dan Physics as well as Becka and Agent Orange. A diverse set of tracks, Departure defined the sound of then new GCR label whose repertoire continues to evolve.
Vanilla String itself is an unusual track. It basic idea sort of caught me by surprise and seemed a good opportunity to experiment so I didn’t hold back. The result is a heavily mangled jam with wicked beats, heavily processed samples and a prickly riff which itself undergoes a transformation through Waves’ Enigma filter (if memory serves me right).
No download links since the track (the entire release, actually) can be purchased from BeatPort. Go get it!
And just in case the Beatport player doesn’t let you hear the entire track, its here:
If you are familiar with the track Hide And Seek, you know that its a voice-only track, vocoded and layered to perfection by the one and only Imogen Heap. This little missy just released her new album Ellipse and while I’m still trying to get into it, I remembered that a while ago I tried dropping some beats on Hide And Seek to see how that would sound. I quickly realized that the tempo of the track is very free-form and unless I busted out a real drumset and mics, getting this to work in a digital domain was going to require some heavy time adjustments.
Enter Ableton Live‘s sick Warp feature. (Time) warp works automatically by assessing the nature of the track and figuring out where stuff fits on its timeline as well as whether it should create a loop or sections that it attempts to play quantized (in time). It does a decent job but usually requires manual adjustments even for very straight-forward and repetitive dance tracks. But as expected, it had no idea how to deal with Imogen Heap’s beat-less jam. After manually tweaking words into time for a while without totally ruining the the vibe of the song, I dropped a few drum hits under it. (Admittedly, the first few verses could use further adjustments, but I got lazy.) The plan was to add other orchestration but that never happened (well, not yet). So I’m posting this here for you to listen to, drop in your editor and mess with further, or whatever. The BPM is 120.
I hope I don’t get in trouble with IH’s label or the miss directly. It might be wise to pull this one off asap since it may not last long.
Look for the updated remix at some point in the future, but for now here’s the first draft tagged as in progress.
Download: Hide and Seek (Montaz Mix)Download: Hide and Seek (Quantized by Montaz)
Tori Amos rules. There’s absolutely no need to mess with her work but I decided to do it anyway as an exercise and the result is this remix of her song (a favorite) Iieee, released on her 1998 album From the Choirgirl Hotel. Working with only the original track and wanting to keep her voice present as much as possible I had to apply pretty heavy filtering to drown out the rest of the original track and make room for my own music tracks. A fun challenge.
The remix ended up having a weird IDM/Drum’n’Bass vibe and includes an improv break about 2.5 minutes into it before returning to the chorus.
Around this time (year 2004) I stepped away from the dance productions and experimented with a different sound under the handle Montaz, the Serbian word for “montage”. This remix is the second Montaz effort, preceded by a track called Ego Programme, also featured on this blog.
Enjoy.
Decade Of Dissonance started out as a remix of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. That idea was quickly dropped and the track took a direction of its own. However, things kept getting in the way and it would take more than a year before it was done. Its another relatively long track and it takes a bit of turn around the 5th minute before getting back on, well… track.
The main line is played through Native Instruments’ insane modular software studio (to put it mildly), Reaktor, which allows you to create your own instruments and ensembles by literally drawing out the components (generators, knobs, faders, etc.) and connecting them into the signal flow as you see fit. NI produces some of my favorite software based instruments including Absynth (also used on this track), Battery and the newer Massive. To beef up the tone and give it some air I usually run the digital sounds through an analog device, preferably a preamp and/or a compressor, which was the case here.
(Speaking of preamps and compressors, I’ve gone through a few over the years and some of the highlights were a JoeMeek box, a Focusrite compressor (which I still have), and FMR Audio’s RNC 1773. Nowadays, I find that the Universal Audio’s UAD powered plugins provide accurate emulations of the favorite analog hardware while allowing project-related presets.)
Yet another NI plugin, Guitar Rig was used on the guitar which meanders in the background and is more prominent in the break. Guitar Rig does a decent job of simulating classic guitar amps and sounds, but it also offers some weird effects such as the one used here.
Exclusive: As you’ll see below, this post features the original (wav) format file for download. This the mastered version of the original mixdown available here with no compression. Enjoy.
Download: Decade Of Dissonance (mp3)Download: Decade Of Dissonance (wav)
I’ve never really been a fan of combining electonic sounds with traditional instruments but the blend definitely works in some genres and specific artists do an exceptional job of making it jell. One of such acts is Massive Attack whose sound was an influence on this track.
The guitar played here is a Steinberger GM which I assembled from various parts 10 years ago and sold just yesterday to a guy in Tuscany. I was actually a little sad to see it go but I kept the neck and trem and put those into a new guitar. The strings used on the track are super heavy gauge .13-.68 (baritone gauge, actually) which I had custom made a few years back. To compensate for the tension the guitar is tuned down to C, which gives it a nice deep sound while not interfering with the bass guitar. Aside from the guitar all other instruments were either keyboards or samples played through a (midi) keyboard.
The track is pretty long even when you consider that it was cut down from 14+ minutes. This length works for me, but I will admit that it could probably use some vocals (EJ Sebian, Shane Ali… are you guys reading this? Whassup?)
On to the track… Listen right here or click the link below to download. Enjoy.
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