Futurists

MFT- Ahhhh (soundlord remix) (July 20, 2001) (download here).

MFT- Ahhhh Mix (2001) (download here).

back in 2001 a friend of mine, Michael MacBride, had a one-man electronica band called MFT. He produced some pretty inspired songs in those days, and the two of us did a pretty good job of inspiring each other to create techno music in our free time (which, back then, we had quite a bit more of).

one of the things we did back in those days was remix each others songs; he created a remix of Mindwipe, long since lost… and I made a remix of his Ahhhh Mix, a 12 minute ambient tune featuring some chunky beats.

here I have included my remix (the top link – I went by the moniker soundlord back then), and below that, the original Ahhhh Mix. By listening to them both you can tell that the remix is not a whole lot like the original; it was fun remixing the song using my own style (which, even back in 2001, veered toward melodic trance), with sounds from my principal synth at the time, my E-mu E-Synth sampler and synthesizer.

an interesting piece of trivia is that this remix was created using Cubase VST on a Windows machine. Currently the songs I have been creating have been produced using Ableton Live 8 on a newer Windows machine; however, just Friday I received in the mail my new machine – an Apple Macbook Pro. I also received the latest version of Logic Studio in the mail, so I’m going to be experimenting with that. Cubase, then Ableton, then Logic – by the time I’m done I’ll have completed a pretty thorough tour of DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software.

Aeris – Second Glance: Concept (October 9, 2008) (download here).

as I haven’t posted any clips for a while I wanted to go ahead and put this up – it is a song that my friend Bun Mun and I have been working on. Bun Mun has an impressive musical background including having at one time been signed to Ministry of Sound with his band Redefine. He’s brutal with the minimal, but he is also a guitarist and bass player. The two of us seem to have styles similar enough to make some good sounding stuff, but different enough that we manage to complement each other quite well. One thing we don’t have is a lot of time to hit the studio together, but we can always hope that will change in the future.

at any rate, last year we got together and started working on this song, “Second Glance” (I don’t remember why we called it that but I think it had something to do with coming up with a good melody on our second take). There is live bass by Bun Mun (that admittedly needs to be tightened up – we used the first take we got) and some great sounds coming from a Korg MS2000. I had a great time playing with all the different presets on that bad boy.

although this clip is admittedly more of a concept than a song, I think it has a lot of potential. It’s simple and has a pretty good vibe. One thing we need to do is change our band name – we picked the name Aeris out of thin air to refer to the works we put together because we’re both fans of Final Fantasy. Sad, or cool? Maybe both.

Futurists – Bobbins: First take (March 8, 2009) (download here).

I actually think this song is pretty good.  It has a bit too much sound wandering from ear to ear (which is a function of the instrument I used, and the type of reverb on it), but generally I think it has a decent downtempo vibe, and I like the breakbeat near the middle.

the end actually features three instances of the same instrument (off the Blofeld), recorded three separate times and tracked once in the left ear, once in the right ear, and once in the center.  I really like it, though I’d understand if people didn’t think it fit.