Dead Eddy

This is another piece made for KVR’s One Synth Challenge. I originally wrote it about a dying sunflower, but it became more sci-fi as it progressed. Now it’s a piece about space cargo vessel, “Sunflower”. Having issued a Mayday distress call 1 year ago and without fuel (but plenty of supplies) the crew are nervous. For the last 6 months, alien entities made from light are breaching the vessel’s armour and hissing unintelligibly on the deep space radio. But nobody understands what they want or why they are here. Help may never come. One crew member has found and is learning to play a wooden saxophone.
Sunflower by objectman

This is a track based on something my nephew Ben (8yrs old) sent through. He was trying to capture the feeling of newness and adventure that comes with not knowing much about music. Ben sent through an 8 bar electro piece as an m4a file which was then converted to mp3 so it could be manipulated in Live. Weirdly the combination has the quintessential Dead Eddy sound and therefore Dan and I would like to welcome Ben as a full member of the band. The only thing missing in this piece is some input from Dan, but we really like the random aspects of this tune. As we venture forth into the musical realm, albeit with nervousness, we worry that “not knowing anything about music” is a pure, child-like state from which we come and then enter headlong into conservative regurgitation. Ben, Dan and Ed will together strive to keep the purity of ignorance alive in our music. Learning about music, whilst hanging steadfast to the rock of pure ignorance is the Dead Eddy gamble.

 

 Bensters Gamble [0:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

This tune took about 10 seconds to lay down (and hours to master). It was made after a long weekend constructing Prime Directive in Ableton Live on the weekend. I love free synths. This one is called, Daedelus. It comes with 16 presets and I used the String Machine I preset, playing it right into my QWERTY keyboard after a long day. It matched my mood. It was a bit dry, so I removed the native Daedelus reverb and added my own, richer reverb using 2cAudio’s Aether (Electric Sheep preset).

• Play Once [53s. | 330kb | mp3]

This track is only 128kbps, but it’s high rez cousin is included as a bonus track on our “Mary Street” EP (available for $4.99 at our Bandcamp Shop).

This is my second piece made for the KVR One Synth Challenge. I came 6th out of 12 for Waiting Room which I’m quite pleased about. KVR Audio is basically an unsigned musician’s forum and each month, members run a competition. We’re allowed to use one free synth to create a whole tune. The synth used here is Ugo’s Texture.

The tune was inspired by reading websites about alien abductions. The music is meant to be very synthetic and my aim was to emulate a small troupe of alien drones searching and scanning for humans. Once in a while they do horrific experiments and then keep moving on without compassion. When all humans of breeding age have been examined and semen extracted, their objective is complete and they can return to the mothership. It’s taken days to inject the horror and pain into this.

This track can be bought individually for US$1.50 or as part of the Mary Street Abduction EP (US$4.99).

Submitted for KVR Audio’s One Synth Challenge #15, this is my first entry into an electronic music competition and I’m pretty excited about it. We are only allowed to use one synthesiser and this time it’s Krakli’s FREE Stringz2 synth. The idea behind this tune is to conjure up feelings of the East. I recently bought a 3CD set of Russian music and it turns out that Sting’s “Russians” incorporates a few bars from Sergei’s Prokoviev’s “Lieutenant Kijé” suite. I’ve used a vaguely similar sequence in this.

• Play Waiting Room [3:30 | 3,091kb | mp3]

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This track, as it says, is a recording I made when the birds were being particularly rowdy – just before the rush-hour traffic build-up. I had a very basic tune which I made distant and thoughtful. It seemed right for this piece.

You can listen here or download the track for $1.50 Australian. It’s part of the Mary Street Abduction EP (which can be bought here for $4.99).