Tunnel Of Night, Glimpses Of Day

Static Park - Tunnel Of Night, Glimpses Of Day

WARNING= really long post, so if you want to go straight to the download link, it's HERE

So,

I'm working 12-hr nights again which means I have much time to think about noise tracks I could possibly make but very little time to actually make them. These tracks were kind of ''written down'' at night (main idea, gear, sequencing) and recorded during the small intervals when I'm awake before I have to go back to work. I wouldn't go as far as calling them ''compositions'' (although the term has been covering suprising things) but you get the idea...

''Death Compass''

I more or less already said that in a previous post... but I don't use the Death Metal pedal too much. That's probably because that was the first distortion I got (not very original, I know) and I used it all the time when I started making 'walls with gear back in 2010/2011 (before that I processed everything on the computer). There was that and the fact that of course everyone else was using it too, which means I hear A LOT of Death Metal pedal so I don't turn to it too often nowadays.

Another aspect of the Death Metal that bothers me is that I really need to push the lows to the max in order to get any kind of crunchy sound from it, otherwise it quickly veers into ''Fast-flowing Death-Metal mud'' (you know?) and I never really was into that.

With this said, I decided to make this track with the DM, resorting to ''extreme equalization'' = only sub-bass and highs... The source is the piezo, into the Earth Quaker Dream Crusher + Fairfield 4 Eyes + Super Crunch Box and obviously Boss EQ.

I switched textures during the track by switching the Pitch Shifter and Crunch Box on successively..

''Jenny Says Wassup''

For ''Jenny Says Wassup'' I took a scene from Larry Clark's 1995 movie Kids, extracted the audio and used it as source. Although I put the unprocessed sample at the start, the source is actually the scene that leads to it. It's an important scene in the movie because Larry Clark (or maybe rather Harmony Korine, the scenarist) really shows how a bunch of kids can be equally naive and cruel, bright and stupid.


The audio was fed into the Earth Quaker Dream Crusher and Fairfield 4 Eyes Pedals, but I tried not to mangle the dialogues too much. You can't really make out what they're saying, but it's clearly people talking.. I added a slight delay with the Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy and then straight into the Bass Big Muff.


I swithed distortion during the last segment of the track, opting for a Metal Zone with all the frequencies cut out except the highs, with Distortion at maximum. In the meantime, the delay goes into overload and creates a loop I decided to keep because I find it suits my relationship with this movie...


Kids was very important for me at the timeit came out (I was 16, roughly the same age as the male characters) and a friend also gave me the soundtrack by Lou Barlow, including songs by his bands Sebadoh (with the poignant ''Spoiled » my favorite song of theirs with ''Magnet's Coil'') and The Folk Implosion, Slint (who's gig in Paris I'm going to miss because of my tinnitus) but also Daniel Johnston, of whom I was hearing for the first time and who turned out to be a big source of inspiration for me.

So yeah, New-York, slacker rock, skateboard, hip-hop, getting high... all this made a big impression at the time. I watched Kids again with my wife recently and it felt good. The kids are forever young on the screen, living in a state of constant danger, while I'm getting deeper into adulthood and the dangers are of a different nature I guess, but that's alright.

''Flesh-Eating Fuzz Heads''

As the title implies with this track I wanted to hear the (almost) unadulterated sound of fuzz in action. I used white noise as source, put it through the Earth Quaker Dream Crusher and the Fairfield 4 Eyes and that's it for the sound. Well, I must admit I added an octaver for a more meaty sound and a little delay on the Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy to get that flesh-eating sound I love so much.

''Husband & Wife'' (with The Girl With The Stanley Knife)

This is a collaboration with my wife, whose noise name is you guessed it, TGWTSK. We decided to make a new track together with voluntary constraints=

• each of us records on one channel of the stereo track (she's on the L, I'm on the R)
• each has to chose 1 FUZZ, 1 DISTO and 1 FX and work with these only

so this reads :

L = Earth Quaker Dream Crusher + Electro-Harmonix Bass Big Muff + Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy

R = Fairfield 4 Eyes + Proco Rat + Boss Reverb

Source is a piezo mic for both of us and of course there's a little EQ at the end of the chain.

I take this opportunity to remind you that I still have a couple copies of TGWTSK's Dark Feed 3'' Cdr on Ink Runs Recordings. We also have a minimal noise duo called FleshClocks whose 1^st release I reissued for a gig, and I still have copies of this one also.

''Pillow Of Sorrow''

This is another of my ''Noise-Hop'' experiments. The beat is made out of samples from various RZA productions I reprocessed a little. I played the electric bass and there are two layers of noise. The first layer is made with the Boss Metal Zone, the second, feedback-y one is the MI Audio Super Crunch Box with lots of reverb and delay (which seems to be the new trend around here)