Murder Diary Dictaphone - Volca Modular, Beats, 8Bit Warps, Fostex XR-3 - Ambient Music Jam

video upload by ChrisLody

"Well, it's very hot here in the UK today so I've been shut in my new studio for most of the day making this jam. It started off pretty cool in here but the studio lights and computer equipment have now made it pretty uninhabitable!

Anyway, I found this dictaphone (the common name for a micro cassette recorder here in the UK, for my generation anyway!) a few years back on a carboot sale, I think I paid a pound for it. It had a tape inside which is still the only micro cassette I own. On one side there was an incredibly badly recorded lecture and on the other side, this. I pretty sure this is the musings of a student writing a short story. She's talking about deathrow in prison at the very start and then an accidental death, I can't take any credit for the story of course and the tape and recorder are not labelled at all. All nice moody stuff but I've been struggling for a long time to 'frame it' just because it's quite whispery in its performance.

This was the first time I've set up my cassette four track too since I moved my studio so I wanted to do something slightly different with the video. There was going to be more footage, but like I said it's too damn warm in here now!

The Volca beats provides the rhythm on track 1, Volca Modular playing a bassline on track 2, Volca Modular again on track 3 playing a melody which has a kind of call and response with the 8Bit warps on track 4 playing a pad sound. I'm using an Inkel MX880E with a Zoom 1201 for reverb as usual. I'm creating a feedback path within the Zoom on occasion that provides the uncomfortable horror like squealing sounds :)"