I'm really excited about sharing this one with y'all, for multiple reasons:“Eloquencer Sessions” is a modular techno album by electronic musician and live performer Radiokoala. Loosely split in two parts, ‘A1: Tribal Tech-House’ & ‘B2: Bell Tower Operation’, it was recorded with a nearly identical patch, where parts of a modular system are treated as individual voices.
The main intention was to convey the feel and structure of a live set while approaching the “tracks” like unbroken, intact compositions. This is a friendly nod to the classical music tradition but employing the XXI Century instruments. The tiny analogue ‘orchestra’ is conducted by five or six CV/gate tracks coming from Winter Modular Eloquencer playing at approx. 130 BPM and quantized to G# Harmonic Minor.
Gear Used: 6U Eurorack format modular synthesizer; KORG volca beats; KORG volca sample OKGO; nikitaeffects delay BOX; Behringer Xenyx 1002B; Zoom R8. Recorded in 24-bit / 44.1.
1. Believe it or not, but the very existence of this album's been inspired by this forum! Rewind to early January days, and you will see me playing with my new acquisition — Winter Modular Eloquencer, — which has replaced SQ-1 I've been using for nearly three years both in my live sets and studio as the primary modular sequencer. This is when I recorded this session, 'A1: Tribal Tech-House', which I was very excited about and wanted to post in 24-bit *.wav as kind of a New Year gift. Then, a couple days later, I had recorded another "track" — 36 minute long 'B2: Bell Tower Operation', — and it occured to me I can make a digi-tape / LP of sort, which would contain both of these lengthy james — side A and B, respectively!
2. I've been playing [hardware] live sets for 4+ years, and, even if they had always been all-improvised, I would always need to rehearse, still, be it for sound check / gain staging reasons or plain peace of mind... So you can imagine, I literally have like... I don't know?! — 70 maybe?! — volca & modular live sets & sessions, some of which I like more than others. These two (from 'ES') are some of my finest sessions to date — top five, no doubt.
3. While many of you are already familiar with the dance-music side of mine, be it via youtube clips or other media (two 45-minute long live sessions @ my SC), I want to put special emphasis on the fact: never before has it been possible to get a feel for my live performance in such a Hi Quality: this album will be available in lossless 24-bit / 44.1 kHz... for free!
So this is more or less it, I'm really hyped about the release — I consider modular live performance to be an art form, and as an artist, I want to be breaking new ground — which I believe I'm partly doing here. I don't think you can type "modular techno live set in studio quality for audiophiles" in Google and get you a hour of 24-bit jams... but soon you'll be able to.
- - -
Here is how you can stream / download the [sneak-peek 16-bit] FLAC audio file ahead of time:
- Go to http://radiokoala.bandcamp.com/yum
Open this sheet with special download codes: drive.csv
Enter one of the codes into Bandcamp form
Delete the code that you have used!
Enjoy your D/L!
The key thing about this album (as you have possibly guessed already) is pretty much everything was controlled by WM Eloquencer. It would trigger PEG & PTG envelopes, change root note and melody line on each of four voices, interval / chord type and degree on Telharmonic etc etc. Voices are: I Sputnik 258c II Mutable Tides -> L-1 VCF [bass] III Mutable Warps [melody/bells] IV Make Noise Telharmonic [harmony/whatever]. Drums courtesy of KORG volca.
C H E E E R S !
