Hello! Big news day here.
April 7th for Eddy release date, I'll save the content for then. Just wanted to share that dealer order emails have been sent and the goal is to keep building and shipping them and have them in the shops hands by then. We're pretty stoked!
Also I have a new album called Whalespace on Julien's label Concrete Collage that we finally released today. It was recorded in France with several of the songs as A/V collaborations with Bastien Lavaud similar to Larval Beak. The first video is is available below, and hopefully I will find the time to polish up and release a few others.
Whalespace was recorded when I was finishing the Nibbler. Orbital Mirrors has a Nibbler generated bassline. Strobe is entirely based around the Nibbler rhythms and I think Shark is heavy on it as well. The main sequencer was still the SQ64 for most of the album, I've since stopped using traditional sequencers in favor of logic but I think it gives this album a distinctive flavor. It was easy to set one pattern in 3, 5, or 7, and another in 4 for satisfying polymetric or polyrhythmic feels.
Another thing I was doing on Whalespace (as well as the albums preceding it) is putting breakbeats on the 4MS STS and manually turning the pitch until the loop worked in some way with (or against) the main tempo of the song, then heavily modulating the loop.
One more recurring technique on Whalespace is sending v/oct pitch modulation to my kick drums. On most tracks the kick is patched with Boundary and Angle Grinder but there is also STS Ultra Kick used as a secondary kick drum as well. Sending v/oct to a kick (most obviously/egregiously done in Intension and Experiments) allows one percussion element to present as many or even carry a melody.
All the rest of the modules used are Schlappi modules, with at least one Three Body front and center in all tracks, usually with the ratio being modulated for FM timbres and strange arpeggio-like sequences.
I think the intent with Whalespace was to stay focused on heavy rhythms (making friends with French and Italian breakcore and techno artists definitely influenced this album) and I think it it came out great. Mastering from Julien (Stazma, Electric Voyage Studio) and a mix review from Ross Fish (Moffenzeef) both helped a lot.
Hope you are all well,
Eric Schlappi