Long song warning. Also lots of text. Part 1 of Titan City Nights.
› story‹ story
The window's rattling against the rain and some fly-by headlight blinds me into the waking world and my apartment stinks of last night's cigarettes and a half-empty bottle of Zero-Gee whiskey. Through the melting wet glass I can see Titan's yellow burn just below the dome's horizon, the fading light letting the neon city crawl out of the dark. An artificial fog rises from hot concrete to circle the mining-quarter like it's a steel mountain, thunder pealing across the residential sprawl as street-lamp lanternfish flicker to life, hunting the labyrinth of alleyways below. I hear the trains echo across the habitat, rovers and transport engines droning into the hum of the Saturnine night.
Titan City wakes up when its namesake moon falls into shadow.
I fall out of bed, strip off sweat-soaked clothes and wash up, towel off, only to put on clothes that'll be soaked with rain minutes after I step outside. No one ever seems to question the rain. No one seems to remember when they built the orbital, why they made it so it could rain at all. And where does the thunder come from?
The first drops hit my forehead, and snap me out of thinking about things that will just make me feel more cold. The night's just getting started, and I got plenty more to worry about than some evening rain.
› composition notes‹ composition notes
This was an edited live performance with some semi-modular/modular gear (which I don't particularly like listing cuz I feel very privileged to own it and this feels like boasting but here we are):
ASM Hydrasynth on a self-playing patch for the main ambiance and cyber-stuff
Moog Grandmother on Bladerunner-synth-leads
Pulsar-23 with the big thump and pulses and pings and other percussion
Various effect pedals and modular effects
Recorded to a 1010 bluebox eurorack version.
I spent more time working on the Hydrasynth patch than the actual performance - Hydrasynth is the closest thing to a modular synth rack in a self-contained synth, and can do amazing self-playing stuff (AI has shit on the word "generative" thank you tech bro assholes). It's also got a distinctly digital sound so it was well suited to the cyberpunk theme here. And I managed to get it to play nice with my Microcosm so we got two friends back in the fold for this one.
Moog Grandmother gonna be lending a Bladerunner/Logan's Run element to these tracks, it's got an old school analog sound (being analog and all) so not gonna try to hide it.
And pulsar is just delicious.
Recorded one long 12min+ take, dropped it all into Ableton and then edits, mix, effects, ear candy and master. Had to drop the bitrate down to 170-220 range for the mp3 for WB's file limit, sounds okay, but the full wav sounds better. Any questions, ask away!
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