The Gestalt Analysis Podcast

This is a cracker. We didn't do Drum & Bass very often, if you can call it that. It's certainly our interpretation of it anyway.

Taking what we had learned on the SR16 on Instant Gratification and applying it to the Drumstation we created this monster.

All without the aid of a sampler.

Named after one of our best mates (It's his porn name, you know, the name of your first pet and your mother's maiden name) and probably one of our strongest critics. He always wanted us to go harder and more weird. We thought this might appease him. It probably didn't. It was a good thing to have such an aficionado of electronic music being so critical. It pushed us to keep trying.

This is the first track we would class as definitive fenducci. It is the earliest work that fits into what would become "our sound". We did have other "sounds" but always came back to doing tracks in this mould.

Not quite as polished as later tracks but many of the elements are there. The Poly800 really shines in this one but I do remember it being a quite job to get it to do what we wanted. It would only make the exact sound we liked on the first notes played then drift into something not quite as nice. This required us to change the program on the synth whenever it wasn't playing and quickly change it back again. I don't think we knew how to do program changes over midi at that time or if we did it it didn't work doing it that way. We had to stand over the synth switching programs all the way through the recording. I think we had quite a few attempts at getting it down.

Akimbo? It's just a really nice word.

Hair clippers. Always loved the clunk of switching on a set of hair clippers.

Very difficult to tell whats playing what here. It sounds like there are more synths than we had which makes me think we were using the DX21 in split mode. You could divide the keyboard in two one sound in the bottom half and a different one in the top half.

Named after a friend who after visiting would leave you without a lighter. Thieving bastard.

Nice bit of acid.

I think that is the SH-101 playing the acid baseline only because its definitely not the Bassstation which is pretty distinctive in this tune. This is fast too, must be hitting 140 easily.

All in a pretty banging go at it. Still learning the craft but putting our own little spin on it.

Starling Assembly? I'm thinking BBC birdsong CD, some mention of starlings assembling in a murmuration. Thats all I've got.

This is a lost track. As I started going through this minidisc I recognised all of the tracks apart from this one. It was quite a surprise to hear something you haven't heard for over a decade. Listening to the others through that period has kept the memories of creating them alive. Not so with this one.

Listening to it now, we have another example of a whiny random synth sound from the Poly 800, auto wah on the drums and not much else of note.

I can't think of why the name contains a misspelling of gremlin. The "A:" of course refers to the designation of the floppy drive, remember them?

This is a long track that doesn't do much. I recall trying to create a certain drum pattern for what reason I don't know. I can hear a triangle and the 'impact' drum sounds from the SR16. I guess we were just trying create some kind of DJ tool or something.

We were still getting to grips with the new drum machine so a lot of experimentation and audio sketches.

As I was saying previously this is the best example of the drop down technique we used to come up with different ideas. It came from what we called a 'happy accident'. We were probably just moving midi parts about and put them in the wrong place.

The midi parts are played by the sequencer on tracks that are assigned to midi channels; 16 for the drum machine, 1 the dx21, 2 the poly800 etc. Drums would be at the top, something to do with midi being serial rather than parallel. You wanted the rhythm section to come first to avoid timing issues. The drums would be separated into multiple tracks all assigned to 16.

What we would do is take all the midi parts and move them down one track. In effect each instrument was playing the notes of the preceding instrument. You could get some really interesting stuff from this that could be used in breakdowns and such. Where the drums became synths could really throw things in a new direction.

For this track I think we just took the whole of Root to Root except the kick and moved it down. That's it, I don't think we even bothered doing a new mix down going by the brutal volume of those hi hats.

We didn't do that to a whole track again but you can see how useful it was in producing new sounds and layers that we might not have thought of.

Happy accidents, while not being essential, were a useful and sometimes direction changing tool in our production process. There are a few more to come.

Not much to say about this one. It's probably most notable as the progenitor of 2Root which will be up next.

Title is a reference to "Beavis and Butt-head do America". It's actually a misheard quote:

"Agent Hurly, I want you to give this scumbag a cavity search. I'm talking Roto-Rooter. Don't stop until you reach the back of his teeth."

I think there a few more of those to follow.

We need to stop and go back a few months. About halfway through The other one with the picture and certainly before we got the Drumstation, we landed ourselves a couple of gigs.

The first was at the 1997 Glastonbelly Festival in Carnoustie. I can’t put a date on that. Maybe someone else can. In fact, I have so little recollection of that night I’m not even sure we did play. I know we played the previous year but I just don’t remember performing at this one.

We were chatting with David “Moe” Morris and he offered us a gig. He also needed a name. Calvin and Hobbes had been a staple of ours at that time so we went with Spaceman Spiff.

I have a memory of having to rush and create something for the live set. I don’t think we had much material to work with or recreate so we just wrote a whole batch of new stuff. The timelines are fuzzy and I am struggling to remember what happened when.

Meanwhile, in a tunnel in Paris…

Perhaps the mood of the nation that day helped soften opinions on the quality of the music. It's rough and lacks punch but somehow we got away with it. We learned some lessons that night. We do get much much better.

Thanks to Mitch for the recording.

Last track of the disc. Yet another "Dirty Harry" reference in the title. We must have been watching the films.

It can be quite difficult thinking of names for instrumental tracks. A name might pop into your head from the emotion or memory invoked by the tune. Sometimes it is just a cryptic description of the track or how it was created. Maybe, its a reference to a joke or catchphrase that we had used during the making of the tune. Sometimes, it is words grabbed from evenings of watching films, listening to music, and talking crap. Good times.

Yes, it was an auto wah, thats the TR-606 going through it in this track.