If you pay any attention to my creative output (and in firehose of “content” we all now live in I’d be surprised if you do) then you’d know I’m not only quite a big fan of Robert Fripp but I keep coming back to the soundscape/frippertronics form as part of my own music making. Like a lot of musicians my gear is always in flux, chopping, changing , rearranging. Always looking for that “just right” configuration that let’s the music flow.
For making soundscapes I’ve had all kinds of setups. From (quite a lot of different) self written code to plugins and software to various pieces of hardware. A while ago it dawned on me, as a non guitar player, that guitarists are just as bad as us modular synthesists with their pedals and that guitar pedals were a whole new world to explore. And so to my latest soundscaping setup….
Much as I love Fripps work I have no desire to replicate the sound directly - for me the technique plus the sounds I am drawn to is part of the magic. And hence my current experimentation. The YouTube Chords of Orion often reviews looping gear and in one of his videos commented that the Ditto x4 remanded his goto frippertronics pedal. And I am indeed getting a lot of use from my VERY second hand (that’s not MY dirt on it!!!) one. I’ve wanted an El Capistan from strymon for ages and finally bought one. I love the quality of the sound on it. It gets that decaying analog tape sound just right for me.
The Box of Metal and Particles 2 are there because Alan Sparhawk from Low uses them at the moment. I was listening to Double Negative in the car one evening, I’d already listening and kind of been confused by the distortion and the deconstruction of the songs but that evening the car all the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up, I totally got it. Such an incredible beauty. And seeing Low playing at Manchester Cathedral a while later just confirmed how much Sparhawk is as obsessed with the quality of sound as he (and the rest of the band) are brilliant song writers. Box of Metal is everything I hoped it would be and more and you are just going to have to put up with everything being distorted as fuck for a little while…..
The reverb is Slo by Walrus Audio - can’t remember why I got it - someone mentioned in passing it was a great ambient ‘verb and I picked one up and whoever it was was spot on. So thank you whoever you were.
The Montreal Assembly count to five is eccentric, musical, very much it’s own thing and great fun. I bought it because I have some ideas for something in a vaguely similar vein whenever I finally get back to writing music software of my own
And the track at the top of this post is made with this setup,. Kind of what I hoped “disintegration loops” would have sounded like.
I also made this track which is very much a different side of the same coin……