THE WEB & CXXXVI - The Bunny Project (2013)

After the 10284 Miles project and a number of single tracks and remixes (DAST Net Recordings, Cyrus Sink, Magnetfisch...) Cat (aka CXXXVI) and i wanted to do start a new series of tracks. When we did remixes Cat always had to work on her vocals / do a song to a given track, and write the lyrics to a given track title. For a change, we decided that for this whole new series Cat will take the lead, write her lyrics and sing her song and then send it to me for the music that would fit it; that way it was me who had to react and adapt. And we already had a title for the series - it will be called "The Bunny Project", and we said it shall be a concept album or EP in that the tracks will center around the same set of issues. That was the framework in which Cat wrote the lyrics/songs. The main issue turned out to be genetic engineering - the opportunities but also dangers and fears linked to it... As concerns the music we wanted to explore the contrast between Cat's voice and hard heavy industrial like techno, and in this i also wanted to try unusual rhythms and go beyond 4/4 techno or breakbeat - if hat would fit Cat's song too.

The starter in October 2012, entitled "Giant Bunny", already was an example of this - i went with a 12/8 but built it on a 4/4 grid of 116 bpm (so the bpm you go with is actually less), for a very slow and heavy beat, like it is used in some alternative / industrial tracks too. I added a dirty bass synth and guitar based synth line and some synth/fx for a dark and heavy mood that gives solid ground to Cat's nightmarish song. For those who know it's obvious when they listen the song - Richard Kelly's independent cult movie "Donnie Darko" (2001) was the inspiration to it.

With "Created In The Laboratory", a song about creating a - said - better human race, i went one step further with my rhythm experiment, actually for me, this was at the extremes so far - i chose a 7/4 frame and tried to build a rather conventional techno track on it, but with one beat missing - without the listener missing something in the pattern. So i ended up in a 2x2+3 pattern and built all the sounds around it. Cat had sung her song on a conventional straight rhythm so it went to the 8, and this was the real challenge then - to shift and rearrange the rhythm of the lyrics / singing that it would fit in this 7/4 grid. At times the song was dense and no way to press the 8-line into a 7-grid so i stretched it in a way it met the 7/4 pattern at important points. The result is quite astonishing, the song has a unique flow although it is a clumsy 7/4, and, together with the really cool lyrics, it may be this that made the song highly recognized at IACmusic (now Indiemusicpeople) - in Sept 2013 it was in the top ten songs of the electronic genre on IAC, and number 1 in the new song charts (last 6 months) for the electronic genre :)

In the third track you wake up and realize you swapped bodies with your pet mouse. but hey that's great, being human is overrated anyway, and you know that mice rule the earth. What a crazy idea - Cat's song fits perfectly into this series. The song not only makes reference to a) Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy but also to b) Monty Pythons 'mouse organ', which made me laugh really hard when Cat sent me the vocals and lyrics. I tried to do a track to it that keeps the rather funny crazy mood of the song, and went with distorted breakbeat, a high bass guitar line that lags behind, and some beeps and scratches sound fx.

Finally "Have To Evolve" takes a look into the future of the human race - to catch up with all our technical means we gotta mutate to get stronger faster better... Of course this is meant ironically - Cat has really nailed this one :-) However, we think one thing is for sure: if we go on like this, being slaves to our technical means  - and to our economy that follows it - we'll deffo destroy this planet... For the music i combined 4/4 and 12/8 rhythm patterns in this one, this way i also could give it some 'fake tempo changes' which i like so much and which i thought fit the song perfectly - the rhythm you are sticked to during the intro and the break/restart around 4:00 kind of mutates when the main rhythm comes in.

As we'll probably destroy our planet someone's gotta save it - Cat did a short track with some electronic voices in it, just for fun, and sent it to me with a short video clip. "Supa Rotscha saves the earth"... but it's the wrong one, the bad one. I found this was so cool so i wanted to do a track with it. I asked Cat if that would be OK and if we could include it as a bonus track to our Bunny Project, at the end, because i thought this would fit in the series quite well. She really liked the idea so i used the short bit she sent me as a sample and built a proper track around it. I followed the high tempo of the original sounds and chose an oldschool hardtechno basis for the track.
I sent the sound samples to thadbb, a funny guy from Frankfurt i know from YouTube who does crazy hardtechno stuff, and unofficial hardtechno remixes of different techno tracks (some of them real classics like Universal Nation's "Push") and he did a remix, or rather a second version of the track with the material, as he hadn't heard my final track yet when he did his. You can listen the result here: "THADBB & THE WEB - Supa Rotsha reloaded"


The Bunny Project is conceived as a music videoclip series. You can watch all the clips below, or directly on YouTube or Vimeo.
The audio was released on DAST Net Recordings in February 2013 (DAST072). You can download it for free as mp3 but also in full glory (wav) or some other formats. Click links below.


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THE WEB & CXXXVI
The Bunny Project EP (DAST072)
1. Giant Bunny.................5:35
2. Created In The Laboratory...7:15
3. S.Q.U.E.A.K ................4:30
4. Have To Evolve..............8:07
5. Supa Rotsha saves the earth.6:03
-----------------------------------
DAST Net Recordings 2013

Click to download The Bunny Project EP (mp3 320kbps)
Click to download The Bunny Project EP in wav / other formats


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Magnetfisch - The Chexbres Trilogy Remixed (2012/13)

I had started this blogpage with the post on my NASA Remix of Magnetfisch's Raumstift. Next up, you could see in my Trains series that three of the tracks were actually reworks of Magnetfisch tracks. Timo, the co-founder of Magnetfisch who does the synths and programming, had given me the track layers of some of their old tunes to work with. As he was very pleased with my Raumstift-Remix and also the first Trains reworks in June/July 2011 (Magnetbahn, Grande Vitesse) he provided me with all the material of their new EP "The Chexbres Trilogy" that had been released at the same time (July 2011), in case i'd like to do some more reworks or remixes of tracks.

Timo trusts me, as for one thing he respects my skillz with beats, sound and mood, and for the other thing we both share a love to the sound of the 80ies with Bands like Cure, Simple Minds, but also such as Killing Joke and, above all for me, Cranes - i never thought i get to know someone who knows and also loves Cranes :-) I had put the files aside as after the Trains series i concentrated on the 10284 Miles project with Cat aka CXXXVI. During this work i had the idea of doing remixes of the Chexbres Trilogy tracks together with Cat - i'd do a WEB-remix of the track and she adds her vocals, with lyrics that fit the already given title. I could imagine this combination would sound very good. However, it was not easy to suggest this to Timo, as they not long ago had split up with their singer because it didn't work out anymore and he was kind of fed up with vocals then, going back to the instrumental, like in the good old days. But hey we're pro so i talked to Cat and asked Timo if we could give it a try, if he doesn't like the result we'd stop it. After a short while he said yes, yes of course, because he liked the tracks that we did in our 10284 Miles project and... see above. I said to him OK, my plan is we remix the whole EP, all four tracks if that suits you. Deal!

In February 2012 we started the remix project with "Le royaume de Chexbres" (French, = the kingdom of Chexbres). I liked the straight fast rhythm quite uprising part in the track, so i started the work for the remix with this part, and also used a stripped down version of it for the intro. I built the other parts from there then.
In this as in all the other remixes i used all the track layers of the original, almost every single tone from the original is in the remix too, but with more or less effects on it. I often stretched the arrangement of the track or repeated some parts of it. As for the instruments, it's usually the rhythm section that i start with (together with a carrying element in melody/groove of the track). Theres drums, synths and effects that i added to the Magnetfisch sounds. When finished i sent the track to Cat and she did her part on it - writing lyrics and singing them along the track her way, which usually surprises me when i first hear the vocals on the track - she manages to give the track a new twist i had never thought about.
In "Le royaume de Chexbres" the lyrics center around wine and vineyards - Chexbres, together with other villages of that region on Lac Leman, Switzerland is well known for viniculture. In the second track "Contre la crise" (March 2012) music is the best means against the crisis - put on your headphones, turn up the volume to 1000 decibels and block out everything. The track is quite fast tempo so i chose a dirty breakbeat to keep up with it, and made sure the whole thing sounded a) good mood and b) a bit punky too.

There was always a break after the remixes we did for this EP remix project, no one had set us a deadline. In between we were always working on other projects, tracks, collabs. And we did more than the tracks on the original EP - the first bonus track was the third remix we did in this project, called "Fruchtkönig V1" the original is one of the early tunes from Magnetfisch, it's on the EP "The Early Years 1998-2000". Really love that track, especially the guitar on it, so i asked Timo if he could provide me the track layers to that one too. He did, and so did we, the remix was done in June 2012. Cat picked the words wisely - the lyrics are about the forbidden fruits, the power of knowlege. Fruchtkönig is a German word play, = 'fruit king', instead of Froschkönig, the famous fairy tale about the 'frog king' which is known as Frog Prince in English.
In July 2012 we finished the third track of the original EP, "Scheebr Garten", the secret garden where you can grow without fear of being trampled on, as Cat puts it. I tried to make the track sound a little dirty but with lovely mood - found the high synth line goes perfect together with Cats voice and I treated Paddy's guitar with more fx in the heights to get a better connection to that high synth.

After that was a longer break until we did "Slurmz" (November 2012), the fourth track from the EP, but not the last for the remix project, as i had another one in mind that i wanted to do as a second bonus track. As usual i went with the original beat frame, extending it to a nice breakbeat with some kind of a disco feeling to it, and added some funky synths. A party in space. Cat joined this with her lyrics again. And how she had sung her refrain changed the sound character of that part in a bluesy way that was just perfect. you would never guess if you heard the instrumental only track. Timo had heard it, and he really loved this tweak too.
Finally in May 2013 we could finish the remix EP with the second bonus track "Rolizel", again from the Early Years EP. This 12/8 beat pleasant to listen remix became quite a success on IACmusic (now Indiemusicpeople). atmospheric and strange, with offbeatness in the vocal line, weird overlapping chords, and police sirens coming in and out... a good ending of a quite cool remix EP! ;-)

The Remix EP has been released by Magnetfisch 25.9.2013 on bandcamp, follow the link below! On 23.1.2014 it was also released on itunes, junodownload and lots of stores all around the net.

The tracks also play on Magnetfisch's pages on the internet, like the one on US based IACmusic (now Indiemusicpeole) or on CH based mx3. Of course they are all on my soundcloud page too, that's to where i put the links below.

It's recommended to enjoy the tracks with their proper videoclips anyway, and they are all on YouTube and Vimeo - i embedded them all below so have a look and listen!


Click title below to listen to the track on Soundcloud

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Magnetfisch - The Chexbres Trilogy Remixed
THE WEB & CXXXVI Remixes:

1. Le royaume de Chexbres (Remix).....7:45
2. Contre la crise (Remix)............5:16
3. Scheebr Garten (Remix) ............6:38
4. Slurmz (Remix).....................7:01
5. Fruchtkönig V1 (Remix).............5:28
6. Rolizel (Remix)....................7:06
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2012/13, Magnetfisch


Get The Chexbres Trilogy Remixed...
...on Magnetfisch@bandcamp
...on beatport
...on junodownload
...itunes



WATCH AND LISTEN