Piece of gear (Dreadbox Utopia in this case, the orange thing)
List of things it can do musically (additional things will be discovered in the course of #3 below)
Patch up something from the list and start messing around until a piece emerges
If history is any guide, spontaneously discovered sounds will add between half again as many and double the patches on the initial list.
I haven’t started this record yet, and I’m in no rush to. Plenty going on, and I’m trying to decide if this is a collaboration or a solo jawn. It’ll be waiting for me when I’m ready.
A few weeks ago JT Hills reached out and asked us to record a stay-at-home version of “Blues or Astroblue” for Pride. We threw in “When Breathing” for good measure. They’re featured in the United Church of Big Rapids worship service this morning, embedded below, with stand-alone videos to follow.
On Friday we will release Night Mode’s Your Pain Matters in celebration of Bandcamp’s fee waiver. We hope you’ll add it to your list of purchases on Friday!
Your Pain Matters is my follow-up to Dirac Spike. It’s a solo Night Mode effort recorded from March to July 2017, with the setup* used on the first Night Mode trio jams** and shows*** plus some overdubs****.
** What became Load Exceedance and Load Transcendance
*** April 2017
**** Rhodes, guitar, etc.
Musically and emotionally, Your Pain Matters is really the beginning of my story with making instrumental synth music. I absolutely stand by Dirac Spike but it was only a first experiment, and all of its pieces are based on the Poly app. (The app is fun, but I have not used it since Dirac Spike.)
For Your Pain Matters I began writing and performing parts for synthesizer with no sampling or sequencing; just me, at the keys & knobs, coming up with sounds and playing/recording live. This is largely what I continued to do for several more albums yet to be released, and am still doing. I did a bunch of it last weekend.
For the few who might care to trace Night Mode’s sonic development, here’s an attempt to sort out who was doing what, when. Of course reality was and is messier than can be fit into these boxes. We’ve had this idea of a Drew solo > Howie solo > Some type of collaboration (duo or trio) release cycle; Capsule was a departure from that, and it seems likely we’ll continue to deviate from that idea. It was a cool plan, but it doesn’t line up well with the pace at which we finish things individually or together.
Drew
Howie
Damon
(Collaboration)
Feb – Dec ’15
OTHER
Jan – Aug ’16
Dirac Spike
Feb ’17
Duo (H/Damon) – (Untitled/Unreleased)
Mar ’17
Trio – Load Exceedance Load Transcendance
Mar – Jul ’17
Your Pain Matters
?? – Jul ’18
Gentleman Scientist
(there’s a Drew/Damon noise / Marshall reamp / drums project in here somewhere
Jan – Apr ’18
Working Bears Or Barely Working
Jan ’18 – Mar ’19
Only Mostly Dead Come In Alone / Stuck On You (Sep ’18)
Jun – Nov ’19
Not One Person Left Out
Jan-Feb ’20
Duo (Drew/H) – Capsule
Mar ’20
Duo (Drew/H) – (Merritt/Unreleased)
In progress: Seen Heard and Known, Monotribe record(s) (Oct ’19 – ??), AX60 record (Nov ’19 – ??), Medusa record (Apr ’20 – ??), Noise record (Mar ’20)
Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, the world’s first Thereatari; a photoresistor-controlled dual 555 timer “Stepped Tone Generator” synth (the famous “Atari Punk Console“) with a bunch of bells and whistles.
It’s nice to be building again, after a break since early fall when I made the run of FNTSTC octave fuzzes.
This Thereatari will mostly live in the minirig, along with the Monotribe. The enclosure will also hold two passive mixers: one for submixing things to the Monotribe’s audio input, and one main mixer to produce a mono output from the whole system.
I might do a run of Thereataris later. In addition to putting them in others’ hands, it would be cool to have one for Night Mode shows to put at the front of the table and invite audience members to play.
I must have heard the band first through KDNE. 100 Broken Windows came out before I was even at the station, so my guess is the label may have been giving it a push in the run-up to releasing Idlewild’s next record (The Remote Part). I got comp tickets to The Remote Part tour through my connections as Music Director. This show also introduced me to the French Kicks; I remember both bands’ sets clearly.
All to say, I wasn’t quite in on the ground floor, but I made up for it in listening. Every note on 100 Broken Windows is as familiar as a favorite hoodie, and if CDs could be worn out my copy would be.
100 Broken Windows is a perfect indie punk record; it doesn’t waste a breath, it maintains momentum from start to finish, it’s stuffed with hooks, and it has a perspective.
This is expressed most clearly in Roddy Woomble’s use of repetition. Look at the lyrics to “Roseability.”
Roseability, there is no roseability Roseability, there is no roseability
You’ve got off with too much now You’re getting off with too much now Stop looking through scrapbooks and photograph albums Because I know They don’t teach you what you don’t already know You’ve always been, dissatisfied
Gertrude Stein said “that’s enough” (I know that that’s not enough now)
Roseability, there is no roseability
You’ve got off with too much now…
Gertrude Stein said “that’s enough” (I know that that’s not enough now)
Roseability, there is no roseability
You’ve got off with too much now…
Idlewild, “Roseability”
Across three verses there are only two lines (“Roseability…” and “Gertrude Stein…”). Both rhyme words with themselves, and follow the self-negating form [Thing] / [not Thing]. This is a recipe for boredom and cloying simplicity, but Roddy and the band make it work beautifully. They pull this trick off over and over across the record, and it still works.
For twenty years I’ve been happy any time I played this album, and I’m sure I will be for twenty more.
Not a lot of music works for both feelings, but here’s some that does for me.
High On Fire – Need everyone out of your face? Hell yeah. Blazing down the highway in a souped up Z/28 toward the best time of your life? DOUBLE HELL YEAH.
Run The Jewels – Goes without saying. Mike & El will save you, then MC your cookout.
Jim James – Specifically “Regions of Light and Sound of God” and “Eternally Even,” which are vulnerable and transcendent and mountain-funky.
Yob – The beauty and the absolute fury are the closest thing to capturing what my experience is like on the inside.
Doomtree – The crew records, in particular, speak directly to my body, mind, and heart at once.
Beastie Boys – Every other artist here helps me feel seen, heard, and known when I’m in a rough spot. Beastie Boys are the only ones who can drag me up a notch or two with sheer musical power.
First – new music in a week, or less! It’s already on Bandcamp if you know where to look 😎, I’m just waiting for the Spotify, Tidal, etc. links to come through before posting and sending the email.
( ^ Not joking. No pranks/foolin’ today, please.)
Then, I took a deep dive into analog noise over the weekend, working on two projects. The first inspired the second, and I went with it. I recorded seventeen (!) 46-minute (!!) takes of different colors of analog noise from synthesizers, and from dirt pedals with no input (just turning everything up, sometimes adjusting the tone controls if they worked). This is a long-term project too complex to summarize here.
That experience, and my surprise at the many different types of noise I was able to record, got me thinking about making a noise record. So on Sunday, I did.
Noise piece 1 rig
The first piece has a beat of sorts, and all the synths are synchronized; the Monotribe syncs the SQ-1, which sends MIDI to Medusa and CV/gate to the MS-20.
Noise piece 2 partial rig
The second piece is more ambient (though pretty intense to listen to) and I set up six different patches of gear. The six sections blend into each other, relay-style.
The picture shows my DIY slew module; just a giant capacitor alligator-clipped into the CV path! Works perfectly. I used this trick on an earlier (still unreleased) Night Mode recording as part of a thunderstorm simulator.
— M/S Ride – Night Mode – Mars Lights – MFR (@marslightsnoise) March 19, 2020
Short video of the mini rig. First jam, not bad, kinda left coasty!
We’re privileged and grateful to be doing this stuff instead of pulling double shifts, or grieving. But the scientists say staying home is what we need to do, so we are. Be as well as you can, everyone. -h
I’m working on a one-case mini-rig centered on my modded Monotribe. Tonight I got the lattice built and dual lock applied. Instruments and effects will move on and off the rig; there will be more synths and (let’s not kid ourselves) about this many pedals at least.
Compared to the stock Monotribe’s single output, I’m planning on three and a half signal paths:
Monotribe drums (direct output mod)
Monotribe synth voice
Monotribe audio in (including the Monotribe’s synth voice in a feedback loop and/or a separate, independent audio signal); this path routes through the Monotribe synth voice’s VCA
Extra synth voice (Volca Bass, Atari Punk Console, etc.)
This rig is more for me than anything else. It’s not particularly intended for Night Mode collaborations, though I’m sure I’ll use it for that eventually (and the ways it isn’t well-suited for that become cool challenges/limitations from another angle). In theory it would be fun to perform a solo show on it, though that’s more of a personal challenge and organizing principle for the setup than a serious intention.
