Wellcome to THE WEB's tasty audio electronics!

On this blogspot page you can find all my electronic music tracks from the clips i present on my YouTube channel - or Albums/EPs from single tracks you might have heard on Soundcloud
For every album/EP/single there is a post, with some descriptions of the making of, a track listing and links/infos about download. most of the stuff is free...
contact: gronku(at)hispeed.ch

Have fun, you're wellcome!
THE WEB

Monday, February 28, 2011

THE WEB - Exerz EP

Exerz is one of my first tracks dating back to 2006. It is the second track of the album i worked on in the sommer holidays 2006 (The Web Experience). I was experimenting with synth sounds and came around to a church bell -like sound - one from a church quite far away... And I found that a fat buzzing breakbeat was very suitable to carry this bell sounds. With these two elements, the exercise began - and that was it: Exerz was born.


In summer 2008 I did another mix down of Exerz. I was still very pleased with this track, so I decided to do a remix. This remix version follows the original quite closely; the bell sounds are tuned a bit lower, the beats are slightly enriched. The alternative version Zerex finally is entirely made up of samples from the remix, with a pounding, straight 4/4 beat and added space synth atmosphere.


For the video of Exerz and Zerex (and title cover of the EP) I used pictures of a "3-dimensional" painting that I made 1991/92 (the title of this painting is "Purzelbaum" = somersault. A somersault for your eyes... ;-).



-----------------------------------
THE WEB - Exerz EP
1. Exerz ......................7:50
2. Exerz (Remix) ..............6:31
3. Zerex ......................5:51
-----------------------------------
BRICO - not available, 2008

click to download Exerz EP  (mediafire)
 


Watch and listen







Monday, February 14, 2011

THE WEB - Mouse Costumes

"Mouse Costumes" is my most recent work (summer 2010). It is a four track concept EP dedicated to the globalised financial markets and the consequences of absent control and supervision - the hype in making money out of money i.e. out of nothing, the suffering from the delusion that speculative bubbles will grow forever, and the surprise when the inherent crashes reoccur (dotcom bubble... real estate bubble...).

For the vulture capitalists and stock exchange gamblers I chose the picture of the wolf in sheep's clothing. Not quite... - to be adequately surreal it became "cats in mouse costumes". And with this, the acting like an addict, which is obviously a feature of many traders in the financial markets, came in too: Here's the link to the famous sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus, where a drug addict (J.Cleese) is interviewed in a serious TV-show - the only difference is that the drug is acting like a mouse, wearing a mouse costume and eating cheese... ("The Mouse Problem", click to listen on youtube)

Money is the central topic, and because I always liked Pink Floyd and their song "Money", I decided to update and transform it to modern financial times... There are two different tracks: The aggressive opener of the EP, Money / Business Transactions, a heavy pounding techno track that really rocks the house and sets the pace for the traders today. The third track Money / Shocked (the crisis has arrived...) is a spacy downtempo dub-techno version. For me this is the best track I've made so far. (Unfortunately, these two tracks still are unofficial versions of the original "Money", so there's no preview here.)
Just before the crisis, there is of course a ralley at the stock exchange, everybody goes Mad. In this breakbeat track you'll be blindsided by the beat from time to time. The last track is the title track Mouse Costumes. It comes in a tribal techno/trance style - depicting what seems to be the motto after all the recent crises: Don't change too much, go on - dressing up as mice, collecting money.... (Preview see below).


In October 2011, .machiine, a friend on youtube who is doing remixes / reworks of different tracks did a remix of the title track Mouse costumes. He did a second mix, too, which is essentially part2, it is best to listen to both in one go. I enclude this now in my EP
visit .machiine on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/The79Machine






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THE WEB - Mouse Costumes
1. Money / Business Transactions
   (The Web vs. Pink Floyd)......      6:12
2. Mad ................................5:58
3. Money / Shocked
   (The Web vs. Pink Floyd.............8:47
4. Mouse Costumes .....................8:50
5. .mouse_costumes .machiine_miXx......6:18
6. .mouse_costumes 2.machiine_miXx.....4:15
-------------------------------------------
BRICO - not available, 2010


click to download Mouse Costumes EP  (mediafire)



Watch and listen










Tuesday, February 8, 2011

THE WEB - monoton

The "monoton"-series were created between october 2008 and april 2009. All tracks follow the same principle: They are all based on a central audio track with sounds from a famous vintage analog synthesizer - the Korg MS-10. I extracted these sounds from a tape dating back to 1994/95.




Once on a saturday in late summer 1994 there was one of these flea markets in my home town Winterthur. I was in the pub when a colleague busted in, came straight to me and excitedly asked me if I knew what a Korg MS-10 is and if I wanted to buy one - if yes I would have to hurry because he found one at a stand of the flea market, for only 300 bucks (Swiss Franks)! Although back then I was only DJing from time to time, but was not doing my own music, had no drum machines and other equipment, I knew this was a golden opportunity I shouldn't pass up - techno and house music had become popular and the prices for old analog synths nobody was interested in a few years ago had risen to astronomical levels. So I immediately went out to the stand and bought this vintage device. Back home, I explored the sounds of it in depth, also because I had no other instrument that competed for attention. I experimented with the patch cords and tried every connection. "Sick and industrial sounds and lots of dirt is what the MS can do at it's best" (www.sequencer.de) - oh yes, that's exactly what I like. Everytime I had found a sound that I liked I recorded a few minutes of it on tape. Since I always wanted to do my own electronic music tracks but back then couldn't afford the equipment I decided to give the Korg MS-10 to my friend Sauri, former DJ from Winterthur (DJ Das Sausen) and drummer of the band "men from s.p.e.c.t.r.e" (superb instrumental music! - visit www.men-from-spectre.org).


Thank god I had recorded this tape - finally, 14 years later I was able to use this stuff for my own electronic music tracks. After I made the Freeze!-series and a few inofficial remixes of oldies-but-goldies from the 80ies (REMIXED) I wanted to do something more "raw", stripped down, classic techno, so this old Korg MS-10 tape was very wellcome. I used the sounds on it as a basis for the tracks (definig theme/mood, suitable beat and speed), added one or two drummachines, an additional synth- or bassline or a few effects - and that was it. Since the Korg MS-10 is monophonic I used the working title "monoton" for this series of tracks.


The tracks on "monoton I" vary from oldschool technohouse acid-like style (monoton 5 - doppelstern), wavy rocking breakbeat (wave roller) and even friendly downtempo (cleanup) to raw industrial machine beat (alien tank). In monoton X there's no drummachine, all the drum sounds came from Korg MS-10.


"monoton II" contains alternative versions of several tracks from "monoton I"; the tracks are renamed so that the original as well as the new version are visible. alien tank for example grew to alien tanks in the storm, a three part version with one tank in the beginning and another one returning to the windy, empty battlefield (middle part) at the end. A peculiar element in several tracks here is the different tempo of the beat while keeping the original tempo of the Korg MS-10 sound track, in a ratio 4:3 (pulsating source of radio, little jumper, planet easy). In planet easy such a change in tempo occurs in the middle of the track, deviding it in a living slow and a living fast part. In the spacy quasi-stellar radio source, the effect of slowing down is reached by a 3/4 echo-effect and a different beat - the tempo remains the same as in the 4/4-trance-style original monoton 6 - quasar.










THE WEB – monoton

-----------------------------------
monoton I
1. little stomper .............4:58
2. in the mist ................5:25
3. wave roller ................4:31
4. alien tank .................4:22
5. monoton X ..................6:09
6. monoton 4 – pulsar .........4:00
7. monoton 5 – doppelstern ....5:00
8. monoton 6 – quasar .........6:00
9. aetna ......................4:19
10. living on my planet .......7:16
11. cleanup ...................6:53
-----------------------------------


-----------------------------------
monoton II
1. monoton rem X ..............7:25
2. pulsating source of radio...4:35
3. quasi-stellar radio source..6:14
4. etna .......................6:04
5. alien tanks in the storm...12:37
6. planet easy ...............12:19
7. little jumper ..............4:51
-----------------------------------

BRICO - not available, 2008/2009



Download monoton I (THE WEB original files) (mediafire)


Download monoton II (THE WEB original files) (mediafire)


Download [DAST EXTRA 01] THE WEB - monoton series [remastered] at http://www.dast-recordings.net
320kbps mp3, wav and other formats




Watch and listen - monoton I

















Watch and listen - monoton II











Sunday, February 6, 2011

THE WEB - Carousel remixed

Koenig Cylinder's "99.9" is one of these tracks I only heard once or twice in a club in the early 90ies but was looking for all the time since then - without knowing the name of the band/artist who wrote it. Then I redescovered the track on the compilation "Kraft Zwei" (sub terranean) in 1997. Last year (2010) I came across  "Koenig Cylinders I", where the original was from and was very excited about the track "Carousel" on the other side of that redord. That's a fantastic techno/trance-hymn and I was quite astonished that I did never hear this before. I specially liked the quite long guitar part without beats at the end. This would also do well somewhere in the middle of the track...


So I thought let's have a go on this one then... Now I've got the original and three own remix versions (all made 2010) to choose from when I travel to work :-) Two classic pounding techno/trance Versions suitable for a bicycle race to catch the train and a smooth long Version to relax afterwards (Auditory Vertigo Remix).

If you are a connaisseur, it is a pleasure for me to share these inofficial remixes with you.





-------------------------------------------
THE WEB - Carousel remixed
1. Koenig Cylinders - Carousel
   (The Web Merry-Go-Round Remix)......8:38
2. Koenig Cylinders - Carousel
   (The Web Reverse Ride Remix)........8:13
3. Koenig Cylinders - Carousel
   (The Web Auditory Vertigo Remix)...11:56
-------------------------------------------
BRICO - not available, 2010


click to download Carousel remixed   (mediafire)




Watch and listen










THE WEB - Freeze!

Im Summer 2007, a friend came by for barbecue and brought this old music cassette, a tape he and a friend recorded when they were DJing at a party. It was sunday morning, they were tired and people just didn't want to leave. So they played the worst songs/records they had (grandma's German "Schlagers", Folksongs with lyrics that no one would dare to perform today... etc.) and mixed in all kinds of crazy stuff, such as excerpts from radio plays as voice overs. Heino and Heintje on acid... One of these inserts was from an old Swiss-German radio play. My friend told me that he had found it on one of these plastic foil single discs they once used for promotion/PR purposes; you could find them in print magazines or mailings (if you were born around 1970 perhaps you'll remember...). From the short sequence of the radio play that was on the tape - obviously a detective story - I sampled the sound of footsteps in a corridor you can hear in the beginning of Freeze! Another element was, of course, the voice samples - someone telling people to freeze and stand against the wall, and someone saying "Well done, Max!". These samples and, within,  the scenery of a bank robbery, prepared the grounds for the Freeze!-Series. 


Freeze! is my second series of electronic music tracks. In this series, i tried to go to the maximum pressure of bass - so don't use loudness or other equalizer settings with more bass!! it's already in twice! ;-)


I started from where the first series ended: the clumsy breakbeat of Freeze! is based on the 2-step beat of the track Love you, which was the last track of my first Album The Web Experience. Right after finishing Freeze! I decided to do a remix of the track. Although in this Freeze! Rmx there are only slight variations in the synth sounds and beats, the result is quite "spacy". With Freeze! Max I continued in that direction - finally it became something like a classic "hard trance"-version of Freeze! (...and my favourite one - "Well done, Max!").


With Freeze! Minimax I went back to the breakbeat. Here, the focus lies on the e-bass line. Freeze! Supermax finally can be described as a melange of the Max and Minimax-Versions, with a straight beat and several added synths and sound effects; perhaps the most characteristic feature is the guitar that joins in for the last two and a half minutes of the track. While the other versions were all produced in one go during september 2007, Supermax underwent several slight modifications until I was happy with the final result; the final mix down was in may 2008.


While working on some remixes of old 80ies tracks in summer 2008 (I'll tell you more about that in a future post) I also went back to Freeze! and produced another Remix that started from the Minimax-Version. That was it - with this track called Frozen (july 2008), the Freeze!-Series was completed. Definitely.


The original version of Freeze! and the Freeze! Rmx is available with visuals (february / june 2011). You can also preview/listen to Freeze! Max and Frozen (see below).




-------------------------------------
THE WEB - Freeze!
1. Freeze! ......................6:28
2. Freeze! Rmx ..................7:38
3. Freeze! Max ..................8:54
4. Freeze! Minimax ..............6:33
5. Freeze! Supermax .............7:08
6. Frozen .......................5:29
-------------------------------------
BRICO - not available, 2007/2008


click to download Freeze! EP  (mediafire)




Watch and listen









Friday, February 4, 2011

THE WEB - Remixes of an old classic... and a newborn: Electric Sea

It was in summer 1993 when we went to a party everyone in Winterthur's cellars was talking about weeks before: Sven Väth would be there! Playing a 3-hours set  - at least! The only performance in Switzerland! etc. It was the second "VISION"-festival (http://www.vision-festival.com), and it was my first outdoor "Goa - party". It took place at a gravel pit somewhere between Zürich and Schaffhausen. After this, VISION grew into a legendary event in Switzerland.


It was that summer when Sven Väth rocked the juvenile techno scene with his new trancy tracks, "L'esperanza" was top - remember the dolphin pictures and whale sounds? And one of our "party hymns" was Energy52's "Café del Mar". Essentially, the DJs then always played the Kid Paul Mix. So to me, this was always the "original" version.


Since then, "Café del Mar" became so famous that you won't be able to create a complete list of its remix versions. www.discogs.com for example lists 102 versions of the record, there are even "best-of" remix-albums. Back in winter 2008 I came across the Kid Paul Mix again when I listened to one of my old tapes ("music cassette" - do you remember?...). I wondered what the tune would sound like if I tried to play it by myself, so I produced some cover versions with variations of the beat, additional synth tracks etc. trying not to loose these good vibes and feelings of nostalgia I get every time I listen to the original (i.e.Kid Paul Mix). And I wondered how far I could take it.


The final result of this process was my own interpretation of a "Café del Mar"-Track. The working Title was Café del Mar Electric Water Remix. I renamed it to Electric Sea and put it on my SC and Youtube. This is not a cover version anymore (nor is it really a remix...), but an attempt to create something like a counter piece to "Café del Mar" from the point of view of today - i.e. "you have to fight to stay optimistic".
Remember, after the storm and all that rain the sun will always shine again.






I share the "whole story" with you. But please - except for Electric Sea which is my own track - don't go public with these cover versions (copyright hell!...)






-----------------------------------
THE WEB - CdM remixed
1. CdM THE WEB Remix...................9:25
2. CdM THE WEB Storm Remix............10:23
3. CdM THE WEB Club Remix.............11:19
4. THE WEB - Electric Sea .............9:04
5. CdM THE WEB Chilled Remix..........10:28
-----------------------------------
BRICO - not available, 2009


click to download CdM remixed  (mediafire)