The Gestalt Analysis Podcast

This is a bit odd. It sounds like the SR-16 going through the hacked up Jen SX1000. That’s it for three minutes and seven seconds.

I think, and this is purely conjecture, by this point we had devised a scheme allowing us to purchase a sampler and a new mixing desk. If that isn’t the case, I certainly think we were at least in the process of developing a cunning plan to do so and we certainly believed we would have a sampler very soon.

It sounds like we were getting ideas together to use in the sampler. Maybe it was stuff we didn’t think we could recreate or imagined would be good to use. I don’t know.

We never did use it in the sampler.

The reality was so unlike what we supposed it would to be…

You will notice as we go through these tunes that there are rarely any remixes, re-edits, or versions of tracks. I'm not exactly sure why but we generally tended to work through an idea until we thought it was done, recorded it, then moved on to the next one. We might have had a few projects on the go and some of these might have spawned new ones but we never really revisited anything once it was finished.

There are of course exceptions and here we have one. It could be that we had a fear of overworking a track. Much of what we did we liked because of its rawness. Perhaps lingering too long on a project meant we created something that was a little too soft, too contrived.

This one, as the title suggests, developed into a pretty standard acid track. Maybe we thought the ideas deserved a bit more exploration or we just didn't want to create another "standard" tune. So we took a snapshot in this state and continued on with its development. The result is on the next disc. I'll leave it up to you to decide which you prefer.

This is the first of our collaborations with other artists. It was an off the cuff jam with our long time friend Dave Philp. Dave is a phenomenal guitarist and a true natural. He was a member of Cannon, Uncle John and Whitelock, and currently is a member of Adopted as Holograph.

There was no plan or structure and it really was just a jam session. The basic track was a work in progress, which is probably really noticeable at the start of the tune. Some of the elements are really strong though. The acid line is probably one of the best we have written and the hat patterns come into their own later on in the track. Gav and myself brought in the various parts and loops, building up the track and Dave just did his thing. It built and built. We were all picking up cues from each other in a really organic way. Nothing much was said, just a few nods and winks to signal changes but I think we knew where each other was taking it intuitively.

As I said, the start can sound a little stilted due to the unfinished nature of some of the parts. Listen past this and you will get to hear a genuine artist create something special on the fly. Later collaborations with Dave had a bit more structure to them but for this one it was just a case of us saying...

"Goan yersel big man"

Woah, this is a long one. Can't imagine what we were thinking. Maybe we were trying to tease the listener. There are a lot of moments where it feels like the tune is about to really get going then we go off on one instead.

I guess we were mostly experimenting with all the layers we could create because we had enough sounds to go round.

Title? Your guess is as good as mine.

I can't remember much about this one I'm afraid. Sounds like another one of those new kit tracks. Lots of K1 sounds.

No idea what the title is about either.

So, here we have the appearance of the Kawai K1. As I said previously we tended to run out of synths on some of our more lavish productions but we also really desired to have something that could recreate the sound of real instruments. Strings in particular were something we felt we were missing in a number of tracks. I also have a great love of choir sounds.

So we decided to try and pick up a relatively cheap sample based multitimbral digital synth. What we really desired was a Kawai K4 because it had a filter section on top of everything else. Unfortunately they were selling for nearly three times the price and clearly out of our reach. So we plumped for the K1.

886? Three words, Countdown numbers game.

Quite abrasive in parts but a well constructed little tune. I think this is another of those that pretty much wrote itself. You just know where it's going, how it should progress, where the flourishes should be, and when to break it down. They tend to develop quickly with little needing said throughout construction.

Title is just one of those things you shout when playing as a kid.

More acid. Bread and butter stuff really. I think we liked to make standard tracks that could be used in future live sets or just get some practice making dance floor type tunes. In general I would say we took everything we started to it's conclusion. Going through the discs there are very few unfinished tracks at all.

Later, I think, we did get a bit more discerning but during this period everyday was a school day and anything we learned could be added to our toolkit.

Can't tell you where the title came from. Maybe someone had been mean to us.

This was just a bit of fun. We are both big fans of Lalo Schifrin and wanted to have a crack at doing a remake. I can't claim much credit for this one as Gavin did all of the work figuring out the notes. I think it was tough going and we gave up trying to recreate the whole tune and instead just lumped for repeating the sections we managed to work out. The drums probably could have benefitted from a breakbeat, something with a bit more of a human feel. They feel a bit too programmed.

I don't think we spent too much time on it to be honest, we had to get back to work.

We are very proud of this one. We felt it conveyed so much emotion that it deserved to be dedicated to someone very special.

Two years previously we had lost a very close friend to a tragic accident, the young man pictured on the cover. It was such a great loss to us and our circle of friends that we still thought of him daily. Twenty years later with so much time and life having passed, in fact more time than he was on this earth, he is in our thoughts less often. Because of that, it is good to have something to help bring back those memories and feelings even though the tune itself is not something he would necessarily have appreciated.

The title comes from a catchphrase he would say. In an Australian accent.