OPEN was my second album put into the wild. The idea for the sound design of OPEN sprouted from daydreams about a space held in blue clouded view, where metallic monolithic structures were still and separated from eachother. It features degraded, long-winded pads and melodies that trail into the beyond of where these structures exist.
While working through this concept, a loose narrative started to form which involved one's experience through several landscapes in places where the intersection of physical techno structures and non-human-made organic structures resided. While more specific scenarios about each track were in my head that describe the situations more fully, I felt that the titles were specific enough to allow the imagination of the listener to come through, unrestricted by my own visions. This individual, abstract mental/visual relationship between the listener and the sounds is something I wanted to leave undisturbed.
Along with the album release came a list of various gear that I used for it's sound design. The first reason for the listing this was so some of the seeds that grew the garden of sound for OPEN, would be known. The second reason being more complicated, and more recent.
After 2021'ish, the advancements in generative AI technology for art applications accelerated. I believe fully that the purpose of it's creation came from the idea that human expression through art is a goal to be achieved, and a product to be manufactured which devalues the human expression process. Any art that spawns from it, is irreversably linked to this averaging, anti-human mechanism. This purpose runs against my believed principle that the value of art through human expression is the process itself, the life experiences we have that shape the idea into a form, and the individual growth that comes from the learning and exploration of it.
To wrap this around to my listing of gear, telling a bit about the process and the methods i use is a way to retain the traces of humanity that belong to OPEN as an expression. The tools listed below enabled me to reflect those life experiences off of me in an individual way.
DAW:
- - Renoise
- - Dirtywave M8
Synths:
- - Hydrasynth
- - MegaFM
- - TB-03
- - JU-06
- - ER-1 MKII
- - Erebus v3
Effects:
- - Mercury7
- - Dark Star
- - Monsoon
- - Valhalla DSP