Extinct: the Tasmanian tiger (THE WEB & CXXXVI - Demons And Cannibals)

After the third 'Extinct' track that was dedicated to the St. Helena Giant Earwig, Cat told me she picked the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) as the next one in the series. For this one, it was planned that it was her turn to start the work, send me the vocals and I would build the music around it.

 A thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) at Beaumaris Zoo, Hobart TAS

It was clear to me that I would want to go with a techno style for this tiger track, nothing downtempo, dreamy or mellow, but rather a bit more aggressive, pushing forward. The tempo set by Cat on her vocals was a perfect fit.

Usually when building tracks I start with the backbone, the rhythm section and bass. But with building around Cats vocals I am looking for the melodic pattern first. Here this threw me off a bit, I had some ideas and put them on, but whatever I came up with I wasn't really satisfied with it and got stuck. I couldn't make it fit all along Cat's vocals she had sent me. So I did a restart and built the track from scratch, taking her vocals as core inspiration. She then did a second take of her vocals on what I built and in the end everything fitted together perfectly.

The beats are built on a percussion line as a backbone that you can hear starting together with a bass pattern around 0:28. It combines with the syncopic deep drumbeats that stand alone in the intro. Together with the percussion, bass and the basic 4/4 bass drum (coming in 0:42), it creates some kind of a galopping rhythm bouncing on the deep bass frequencies, when played on a good bass reflex sound system. I love that feature :-) You don't really get it on listening the track on headphones on your mobile phone or on the speakers of a desktop computer. Several synth elements are added throughout the track, that combine nicely with Cat's vocals. The track has basically two parts that are equal, with a restart at 3:48, but the second one is built out a bit more towards the end.

The track was completed beginning of february 2025, but the video work took some more time. The visuals follow the style of the Extinct tracks that came before, especially Years Of Wisdom and Tales Of St. Helena. Another proper THE WEB & CXXXVI audiovisual experience :-)

Click to listen to THE WEB & CXXXVI - Demons And Cannibals on SC

 

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Extinct: the St. Helena giant earwig (THE WEB & CXXXVI - Tales Of St.Helena)

As it was my turn again in our 'Extinct' series, I started to work on some patterns for a new track in summer 2022. Cat had sent me some draft lyrics and the basic theme - it would be a track about the Saint Helena earwig (or St.Helena giant earwig)

 Labidura herculanea (Foto by Roger S. Key)

 

After the techno trance style first one (Ghost Of The Sea) and the slow breaks of the Dodo track (Years Of Wisdom) I was up for a more speedy breakbeat, kind of a Drum and Bass style. Cat and I did that before on an early one (The Faceless Men on the 10284 Miles album), and I love how her vocals combine with that style.

In my library I had this very classic drum pattern that has been used probably thousands of times, but I didn't just wanted to use it as such, so I cut it and rearranged it. It would be rather a background, combining with another pattern with thick bassdrum that would be on top. You can hear said pattern coming in after the first part of the final track, at 2:12. I added a bassline, that would serve as a kind of a melodic backbone to give the whole thing some structure. Then I had to play around a lot until I stumbled upon a e-piano pattern that I liked, but it wasn't until I changed the sound character when I was pleased with it. It would follow through more or less as kind of a backbone too, just with some added distortion now and then; it starts early at 0:12. With this basic frame of the track, I got kind of stuck and put it to the side. Then late autumn 2022, I had the inspiration to add another high piano-line similar in character to that i used in the Birdman track, and that fueled me and I completed the track with a glassy synth line and arranged the whole lot.

I had sent it to Cat. She didn't feel like singing at the time, but that is no problem as we are not in the music business anyway and do our stuff just for fun. Plus it took me so long to come up with my ping that it was only fair she had any time she needed for her pong. She told me she recorded a first take of the vocals but wasn't pleased with them. Finally in July 2023 she sent me the vocals and I completed the track. I had already started to work on videoscenes for our track video, so at least that important part of our work would not lag behind too much. And Cat provided me with some of her unique animation scenes too. You know, THE WEB & CXXXVI is not just music - it's an audiovisual experience. I'd say it's art :-)

Click to listen to THE WEB & CXXXVI - Tales Of St.Helena on SC

 

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Extinct: the Dodo (THE WEB & CXXXVI - Years Of Wisdom)

After the first track of a new WEB&CXXXVI series dedicated to animals that went extinct not that long ago - 'Ghost Of The Sea'; it was about Steller's sea cow - there should be more to follow. As Cat and I decided to work on this new series 'ping-pong' style again, and as I had started with the music on the first track, it was her turn to send me a song. I got her vocals in February 2021. Now the animal in focus would be the Dodo bird.

As I didn't feel very creative at the time and had quite a lot going on at work, it wasn't till July when I started play around with some rhythm patterns for the track. Cat had sung on a 120bpm grid, and I decided to go with some slow breaks. I found a good bass synth pattern to go with it - and then got stuck again... It was November 2021 when I was looking up some sounds that researchers figured out the dodo could have made and that I could use for the track. Finally the flow kicked in, and I finished the track in December 2021.

Over Christmas and new year 2021/2022 I had some holidays and lots of time to work on the video. Cat provided me some cool artsy video scenes for it too, and among them was a scene with the dodo,having an eye as a body, and the words 'Extinct' on it. We decided that would be the name and the cover of the series.
The track video was released on 6th of January 2022 and completes the work on the second track.

 

Click to listen to THE WEB & CXXXVI - Years Of Wisdom on SC

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Birdman - another YT collab in 2021

Sometime in spring 2021, my friend JP (he had changed his name Darkobert Dub to Kaiser Nvtron) and I were emailing back and fourth about that cool bird that is the loudest ever recorded - the White Bellbird, found in the Amazon in South America. That call is amazing, and I think it was JP who suggested that it should be used in a track once. I totally agreed, and as we had collaborated before for the Reload Remix, and thought it was about time to do another track together, we decided to give it a go: he would send me his draft of a track with the track layers, and I would build something on that basis, adding sounds and expanding it to proper length.

Shortly after, JP came about that famous interview of Charlie Sheen, and as he loves to add vocal samples in his track, JP included some portions of it in his draft. In May 2021, I got his stuff and started to work on it. I added some fat distorted drums, a high arpeggio-like piano line (I know JP loves that :-) and some stuttering synth cord patterns, and arranged the whole lot around the vocal samples. The final track had sounds not only from the White Bellbird, but also the Three-wattled Bellbird. I used that one for the cover pic too and I put the track on my Soundcloud. JP had uploaded it on his YT channel with some nice earth footage shot from ISS, but as in the meantime he had retreated from YT / put his stuff on private, it's not available anymore. I might do a clip for my channel sometime in the future and add it here once it's done...
Just listen and enjoy the wacky birdman :-)

 

Click to listen and download Kaiser Nvtron & THE WEB - Birdman on Soundcloud

 

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Extinct: the Steller's sea cow (THE WEB & CXXXVI - Ghost Of The Sea)

2020 was a crazy year with that pandemic raging and the measures that had to be taken to prevent the health system from crashing. A year at home, basically; i worked in home office from march till end of the year. Could have thought this would have been perfect to produce a lot of tracks and videos, but somehow i missed the creativity boost... I preferred to go out and do a lot of walkies instead. However, there was a track that i had started a long time ago, and when Cat came up with the idea of starting another series of tracks, an EP dedicated to extinct animals, i finally resumed work on it. She told me the idea she had for the first track, it would be about Steller's sea cow, a huge sirenian that lived in the Bering Sea and went extinct some 250 years ago.

As i started that track on a 136 bpm grid, i decided something like an old school techno trance style would fit, with some bubbly or watery sounds and a swirling bassline popping in and out. I finished it and sent it over to Cat. She provided me her vocals, singing along the track and softening my rigid arrangement on the 8's and 16's. The result might be somewhat conventional. I'd say it's a pleasant track, with a lovely flow. But still got the WEB&CXXXVI stamp on it - some darkness and deepness, plus Cat's distinctive voice and way of singing.

The track was finished end of October 2020, and came up on Soundcloud and IndieMusicPeople. But of course, it needed the proper track video too. As always. Took a lot of work to fill the whole 8 and a half minutes with scenes that relate not only to the sound and mood, but also to the lyrics. Finally, just before Christmas, we finished it and could upload it on Youtube and Vimeo.

Click to listen to "THE WEB & CXXXVI - Ghost Of The Sea" on SC

 

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THE WEB & CXXXVI - WTF (2013-2018)

After completing "The Chexbres Trilogy Remixed" for Magnetfisch in Summer 2013, Cat (aka CXXXVI) and i decided to start a new series, producing it 'ping pong style' again as with the tracks of 10284 Miles, that is, she sends me a vocal song i do the music to it, next i send her a music track and she does the vocals for it. Another thing we made up is that the lyrics would rather be strange and funny, crazy stories, silly lines... or simply put: wtf aka "what the f++k?" . And that's it. As for the rest: anything goes...

End of August 2013 Cat started with a song inspired by the children's picture book "There's a Wocket in my Pocket!" by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel), hence the track title Zeuzz. For the music i tried to keep it raw with a strong rhythm, and using a 6/8 signature covered by a 4/4 beat so there's 'fake tempo changes' in it (check it at the 2:46 mark of the track). A friend on YT commented that the track reminded him of Leftfield...and this is no coincidence, as Leftfield's 'Double Flash' is one of my fav tracks and indeed i got inspiration from it for the sound of that heavy beat pattern. The video goes with the style of Seuss' book.

Next up is Aligel which can be said is one of our biggest hits on YT (together with Silicon from 10284 Miles). Here i provided Cat with a deep dubby tech house like track that inspired her for doing the perfect lyrics and instead of singing in her typical bluesy style she tried to do the singing half spoken word style, which fits the track perfectly and makes it a hallmark. For the video we did some shots together when Cat was visiting me in autumn 2013. The fab duo as black and a white ghosts in the forest, and as black and white angels too...

The third track follwed in February 2014. Cat did a cool song about someone that has had a brain transplant. She entitled the song Brian. The song is big fun and has a lot of crazy ideas and funny lines in it, it always makes me smile when i listen to it. For the music i got inspired by the progressive techno tracks of Underworld, with slowly adding more and more sounds and layers towards the end and keeping a certain haunted mood with the melodies and harmonies. I also used samples from my old tape where i had recorded sounds of the Roland MS 10 i had once (see monoton series) and added some effects that would fit the story and lyrics of Cat's song. The video goes with the story and the lyrics of the song as well - don't miss it, it's a nice crazy package :)
This track was a quite a success on the US-based small independent platform IACmusic.com (relaunched and renamed to IndieMusicPeople.com), when i uploaded it there it climbed up the 'Most Popular Songs Last 48 Hours' list till it reached the top on February 26th 2014.

It took a while until we were able to work on the fourth track. I had been working on a track for quite a while, when in winter 2014/2015 i tried to finish the work on it and use it as the next ping for our WTF series. As on 8th of January 2015 it was Elvis Presley's 80th birthday, this inspired Cat for the Lyrics to the track, it's called Grasslands. The track is rich in sound, melodies and harmonies, and Cat's vocals add the right bluesy touch to it.
Grasslands brought a lot of attention to the guys running the IACmusic internet radio station (now IndieMusicPeople.com), and it was featured not only on their official Electronic radio station, but also on their Blues radio station... as of now (November 2015), the track is still on the playlist of the Electronic station and it is still listed as second one on the Blues station ..."a selection of the top blues tracks on IAC" - what an honour! :)


We were both quite busy in Real Life so it took a while till we were both up for working on a new track, it was already summer 2015. It was up to Cat again to send me a song for track number five, called 063 - if these digits were on a calculator and you turn it upside down you would read 'ego'...but no, you can't calculate your life, sometimes your ego lies at you... The music here is a rather stripped down rhythm track, an electro industral cross over thing, with calculator sound samples and a synth line that might remind you a bit on Kraftwerk. As in Zeuzz there is some 'fake tempo change' in intro and breaks as i used a 12/8 signature that gets covered with a 4/4 beat. For the video Cat provided lots of cool shots of old calculators, and again there's some of our silly stop motion animations in it too, where we popped a lot of balloons. was great fun to work on this.

A long break followed. It was my turn to create the music for the next track but i suffered some kind of creative block. Finally in summer 2016, after i did 'Universum', i used the momentum to create the sound for a new FTW track. I used a 4/4 grid, but built it up with 6/4 patterns, this allowed a 'fake tempo switch' of the heavy bass drum after a slow paced intro, while keeping the synth patterns, bassline etc. Also i added a distorted howling lead synth melody for a hallmark (or kind of climax) part in the 'slow' and and again in the 'faster' section. I sent the music to Cat who added her unique vocal interpretation and great lyrics to tie it all together and give it the right dark and trippy WEB&CXXXVI twist: Only The Rich Get Colour. We tried to mirror this in the video too, using black and white scenes as well as very colorful scenes - just insert a coin and switch on the colours...

Dark, dank, eerie and strange. That is what makes this music so much fun to review. Very cool textures and sonic syllables. I like the way you put the understated vocals in rhythmic syncopation correlating with the masterful electronic suprises. Cool drums and a very interesting soundscape. This wreaks of all the cooler elements of house, trance and techno. Great Work! (Stoneman, IndieMusicPeople)

controlled chaos at it's absolute best....complex and layered percussion....great vocals, great lyrics.....a techno masterpiece......builds perfectly to a satisfying climax. (Richard Scotti, IndieMusicPeople)

More time passed....We were both hamsterwheeling in Real Life and creativity was having one long nap. The years switched to 2018 when Cat sent me a song that would be perfect to add to the WTF series as a closing track. It was a giant. ....a giant weevil. For this track i wanted Cat's vocals to take the lead and carry the song, so i went with a rather simple but solid backbone. Dark drumpatterns that have different metrics, on a rather soft and heavy bassdrum with simple but scratchy hats, combining with a slightly morphing bassline pattern to be the principal rhythm section; voice-like slightly gurgling pads for a dreamy and maybe also bit spooky vibe; synth stabs as arpeggio element to season the whole thing.
As always, we put a lot of effort into the track video, to fit the sound and the lyrics - Ride them weevils! 

Click on title below to listen to the track on Soundcloud

-----------------------------------
THE WEB & CXXXVI - WTF
1. Zeuzz.......................5:35
2. Aligel......................7:15
3. Brian.......................4:30
4. Grasslands..................8:07
5. 063.........................6:03
6. Only The Rich Get Colour....8:23
7. Giant Weevil................9:17
-----------------------------------
BRICO - not available, 2013-2018

Click to download THE WEB & CXXXVI - WTF (mediafire)



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2017 addendum: YT collab - Darkobert Dub

For years that i have been on YouTube, JP aka Darkobert Dub from Germany has always been one of my friends. Always checking out his new tracks he uploads. Often he does dark dub step or breaks, usually rather short pieces with cool effects and voice samples. But now and then he does a straight beat techno track. (edit 2020: his channel is defunct now).

It was in June 2016 when he came up with a track called "Reload" that i liked a lot. I was wondering what a slick bassline added to this track could do, and he asked back if i would like to have a go on remixing it. At that time i was working on WTF track number 6 and had some other ideas in the pipeline... those projects got stuck and remained unfinished though. So i told him i will get back to him later. It was almost one year later, in may 2017, when i asked him to send me the files and got going. I decided to use the cool voice sample in his intro as the light house (If you have seen "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" you might recognize it). As usual i tried to keep a lot of the track and its sounds and arranged my stuff around it. I did a rebuild too in a more or less progressive way to get the elements have their place.
Finally, as allways there had to be a proper clip to it. I found cool old footage from movies about drug problems and some very old footage of stunts to edit a nice video that suits the remix.

Click to listen and download "Darkobert Dub - Reload (THE WEB Remix)" on SC


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...some updates 2016/2017...

The last two years have been rather quiet and i didn't work much on music. When i had the time to be creative, it rather went into working on video clips for my YT channel.

There was however two solo tracks and a new THE WEB & CXXXVI track; the respective posts are updated accordingly:
THE WEB - Five / Three: Universum and darkbird added
THE WEB & CXXXVI - WTF: Only The Rich Get Colour added

There should be some more stuff in the months to come. Two remixes are on the list, and the Five/Three and WTF series are not yet completed...

THE WEB - Five / Three (2013-2017)

End 2013/beginning 2014 i did the two tracks Five and Three, then as my back troubles started again and needed another OP in March 2014 there was a long break where i didn't produce new tracks on my own (but two collab tracks, one with Cat - Jeff / STEREOSLUGS & THE WEB, and one With Richard aka DZ - Andromeda / THE WEB vs. DZ)

Finally, one morning in April 2015, it hit me again... I was out on my terrace having a coffee, it was still quite dark, but the birds had started to sing. On the rooftop, just above my head, sat a blackbird and did his morning singing. It was lovely, loud and clear. I decided to record some of it and use it for a new track, wrapping the lovely singing of the blackbird in a nice envelope of synth patterns to go with it. I decided to go on with the ideas put forward in the preceding Five and Three tracks: synth patterns that go with different metrics on the /8 grid and nice dubby synth pads or stabs. basic grid is 4/4, but here's a 3/16 line, combining with a 5/16 line (repeating 10/4) for the bass, a 16/8 line, a dubby pad that repeats 5/1, filtered effect lines that repeat 3/1 and 10/4, and 5/8 stabs repeating 5/1 ...was quite a challenge to set the changes (adding or subtracting an element) at the right points where things meet up...but in the end it all fit together forming a nice chilled tune at 131 bpm.

With blackbird i decided to continue the series that started with Five and Three, and let it grow to an E.P. or even an album.

The next one followed end of July 2015, when i had the spontaneous idea of doing something similar as with blackbird: using a sampled sound line to accompany with music. But this time it wasn't a bird singing. It was the sound of two 'Hilti' chipping hammers i had recorded in autumn 2014 when they insulated my terrace and had to chip off the old asphalt covering. This time i went with rather conventional patterns going to 4/4. Tied to go with a tribalistic powerful rhythm and adding some nice slightly funky synthlines that give it a deep but yet bright mood that fits summer parties :-) First i thought about "deconstruction" as track title but as it is rather a good mood track and, with it's lush funkyness, has some influence of detroit techno in it too, i finally called it D-construction.

One month later End of July 2015, i felt like doing something inspired by detroit techno again, something that would melt my style and the style of the preceding tracks of the series with the funkyness of good old detroit techno. And so, this track Winterthur-Detroit has connections to blackbird - there's a pitched down sample of a nightingale in it, to D-construction - slightly funky beat and same percussion element slightly tweaked, and the Five/Three concept - here it is the bassline that goes to Seven/16, and that dubby synth once again...

In the months to come, the creativity with making music faded... Whenever i had the time and sat on the computer playing around with sounds and beats, no ideas for a track really hit me, and i stared at the screen... So i decided to take a break. Then suddenly, it was already summer 2016, i got inspired when i was listening to the German audio book of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. There's this scene where the Guide describes the features of our universe and as i always found that was brilliant i thought hey let's try and use this for a spacey track. Just use a sound sample and go from there, like i did with the singing blackbird and the chipping hammers... I put the sample on an empty sheet and fitted the BPM to the tempo of the repeated synth sounds in the background of the spoken words. I cut out the word Universum, slowed it down an put a lot of effects on it to create some kind of backbone loop. Then i added beats, synth pads and patterns one by one, trying to give it some kind of 'lost in space' mood.

Again it took a long time until i was in the mood to work on a track. One day in spring 2017 i was playing around with the sound sample of the blackbird singing just for fun, i remembered i saw a docu once about humpback whales and it was mentioned that if you would speed up their singing it would resemble singing birds. So i wondered if i slowed down the singing of the blackbird, would that resemble a singing whale? I found that when i slowed it and reversed it it sounded strange at least - dark and spooky. Quite cool. So i decided to use it for another track. I went with powerful beats and some percussive elements, a bassline and some dubby pads - the spooky background sample does the rest. I called it darkbird, and for the video i created some kind of dark version of the blackbird clip.

In July 2017, when i was msgin with my friend Julian Vas from Mexico, aka Egrojj, Flatch, on Soundcloud, he suggested doing a remix of one of my tracks. I had done remixes for his tracks earlier and i was happy he would return the favour. He chose darkbird and i was very excited and looking forward to what he would come up with. Only a few days later he sent me his mix - a really really cool techno remix. A perfect track to close the series.

Click on title below to listen to the track on Soundcloud

-----------------------------------
THE WEB - Five / Three
1. Five........................7:43
2. Three......................10:56
3. blackbird...................7:16
4. D-Construction..............8:45
5. Winterthur-Detroit..........8:07
6. Universum...................7:44
7. darkbird....................7:14
8. darkbird
   Flatch Hardtechytrance Mix..8:22
-----------------------------------
BRICO - not available, 2013-2017

Click to download THE WEB - Five / Three  (Mediafire)




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