Low Entropy's Producer Diary: Field Recordings and animal noise in Hardcore Techno sounds
Teknoaidi, or Teknojita (I think he calls himself that now) is a guy from the scandinavian speedcore scene that I know since quite some years. I don't remember the exact details, but many years ago, he issued a call to get away from sampling and all that modern tech, and base techno more on self created sounds, at best, self-recorded and field recordings. to get away from our hypertech civilization and become more "shamanic" again, if i remember correctly.
i did not like this idea at all, i must admit. i love my digital sounds, my samples... and you know, field recordings usually have a lot of noise, unwanted sounds, they are unplanned, chaotic, feral, magic... sorry, got carried away for a moment!
i thought these would clash with my very cerebral, ordered, and "logic" approach to music that i use in a lot of my own tracks.
but over the years, i still did experiment with music, and was looking for new sounds that I could add to my tracks. it's hard to always come up with new things, you know, even if you have lots of digital tools and tech and stuff!
then i realized that one thing would be new indeed: to go away from pure technology... and finally do these field recordings!
i felt that i did not have the right tech or knowledge to do my own stuff right away, so i checked if there are some public domain, free to use field recordings on the internet, and yeah, there were.
so i started to do hardcore and techno tracks with sounds pulled from the real world, and not pulled from the (soft) synths!
i guess the first thing i used was the recording of a "marine pile driver". this was after i pedaled on my bike through the city of hamburg, where i live, and such a pile driver in action nearly blew my left ear off! ultra impressive and heavy sound.
a pile driver is mechanic and dead, how about using the sounds of the living. so i did stuff with whale recordings, wolf packs howling... also a thunder storm.
but yeah, taking sounds that are already recorded is... it's not quite as feral and magic yet, right?
so i decided to do my own recordings. thunder storms and howling winds was the most easy thing to do. then i made an entire hardcore track based on the recording of an icy lake getting hit by a stick again and again. (recorded during winter time, of course). i also recorded an air raid / flood water / disaster siren that went off in the entire city by accident one time. i have not used that sound yet.
and now i arrived at a special treat, or pun intended, it's really a hoot!
i managed to record an owl at the city edge of hamburg during the night. i don't know if i have the right to feel it, but i feel proud about this, because i think a big city owl is a rare thing to record. i mean, there are many owl recordings, but not many from inside a metropolis, right? plus even if there is an owl in the city, it's usually very hard to record it, as the city noises (trains, police sirens, traffic, people partying or arguing) bleed everything out.
so i guess i got really lucky with that one. the day after the night of the recording i immediately made a heavy 10 minute track to it, and here it is.
Big City Owl: Techno Sorcerer: https://soundcloud.com/low-entropy/owl-entropy-techno-sorcerer
Pile Driver: https://lowentropy.bandcamp.com/track/the-hamburg-harbor-slowcore-piledriver-experience-30-bpm
Whale Song: https://doomcorerecords.bandcamp.com/track/frequency-whales
Wolf Pack: Hakken with Wolves https://doomcorerecords.bandcamp.com/track/hakken-with-wolves-wulf-pack
Iced Lake: https://doomcorerecords.bandcamp.com/track/iced-drums
Radio Static: https://lowentropy.bandcamp.com/album/everything-that-has-been-taken-can-be-given-back-the-nucleus-project-juone
Thunderstorm: The World is Doomed let's Dance https://doomcorerecords.bandcamp.com/track/bonus-track-low-entropy-the-world-is-doomed-lets-dance
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