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Tags: electronica 

The scientist dances.

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Tags: electronica 

The scientist lives.

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Tags: electronica 

Pure sliced-beat joy on a backdrop of some soft textures.

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Tags: beats best electronica 

It was back to basics on this tune. It's an electronic arrangement with flavors of Elegance but with more palatable drums. I consciously decided to break away from the layer-upon-layer-upon-layer of distorted drum tracks.

This tune is about good things gone wrong.

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Tags: best 

This tune was written and recording quite a while ago... probably about three years ago sometime in 2004. I only stumbled across it recently. It didn't make it on a CD or anything. Here it is in all its glory, or lack thereof.

The captured tracks are really weird... the guitars sound big, but they sound like they're in a box or something. The drums are tuned way way down... the snare is just tuned so low that only the high-end attack and "splat" of the snares really gets through... no tone or anything.

The entire mix has the crap compressed out of it and it's pretty loud.

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Tags: angry best drums loud science 

If this tune doesn't give you a headache, then you a) aren't listening closely enough, or b) aren't listening to it loud enough. It's a beast. Drums and more drums. And then more drums.

In case you want to dig a little deeper and hear some extra stuff, here are the drum breaks used in the tune, including slowed-down versions of a couple of them for your dissecting pleasure:

• Ripper Break #1
• Ripper Break #1 - slow version
• Ripper Break #2
• Ripper Break #2 - slow version
• Amen Break
• Amen - slow version
• Ripper Break - Ending
• Amen Break - Ending

Enjoy.

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Tags: aggression break electronica freedom violence 

Imagine graphing a quadratic function on a TI-95 calculator, throwing the calculator into a garbage disposal and obliterating it while fending off someone attacking you with a knife.

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Tags: basic unlistenable weird 

This is an earful, and borderline unlistenable (depending on who the listener is). It's a simultaneous mix of all seven tracks from the Basic album. Take away from it what you will.

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Tags: demo 

I dug this one up recently after not knowing where it was hiding for years. It's a demo of No One Knows from the 'Calle' album. While the entire mix is not too polished, unfortunately I think this performance is much better than what's on the final album. The vocals are much more energized and sound more inspired on this demo - even though there are some doozy pitches that I miss :)

The guitars were all done on my little Crate-GX15 amp with everything turned to 11. I remember that sound well as I used it for everything in those days. It's the same sound you hear on 'Making Future Go' from the Basic album.

Maybe what catches my ear the most on this mix is the snare drum. It sounds nice and organic. Ringy and like a trashcan. I love it.

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Tags: alone amen beats best cold electronica 

Ambient textures, contrasting moods, and lots of layered beats on this tune. The core of it is a mid-tempo groove and bass line that come and go while other decorative elements play around them.

Ursa Major (big bear) and Ursa Minor (little bear) are two constellations in the northern sky that reside nearby each other. I wanted the coexistence and contrast of the two constellations to be a theme in the tune. First, the two melodic themes in the song play and complement each other as they come and go throughout the song. Second, the first half of the tune is more mellow (Ursa Minor?), while the second half is more energetic and aggressive (Ursa Major?). I also chose a very cold, ambient texture for the opening intro so that it makes you feel like you're looking at a pitch-black northern sky while standing in the middle of nowhere in the dead of winter.

There isn't any big meaning behind the song, but you should feel a little cold and alone while you dig in to all the beats.

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Tags: amen break electronica sample 

This tune is all about the Amen break. I created the opening four bars, really liked it, and kept going from there. It also contains a sample I captured in college, which is from a small library of interviews where I ask people about their feelings on dirt. As Nate Perbix says in the sample: "It's essential".

The tune basically just builds to a peak at the end where the break and other layered beats all come together.

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Tags: electronica 

This was an experiment in ambience/downtempo gone wrong. It just ended up sounding too happy and thus it's being shelved as a Remnant.

The drums are way too busy for this tune too, although some of the passages are kinda interesting to listen to.

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Tags: electronica 

This one was close to actually going somewhere. I almost made it an "official" release of mine but stopped short because I just had a lot of trouble getting the parts I had to flow together. I don't think I had enough to work with :)

Anyway, this one is a big abbrasive. Some big drums and a fast amen break.

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Tags: electronica 

The only reason to listen to this little elctronic ditty is for the drum break section at 3:50. The rest is kinda boring. Yet another failed FL Studio experiment :) I worked on this one back in spring 2006.

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Tags: electronica 

I found this tune on a CD on the floor of my car last night. I worked on it in May 2006. It was basically an experiment gone bad. There are some interesting ideas going on but it just turns into noise. The drums are horribly mixed and you can't always hear them.

Really makes you want to listen to this tune huh? :)

It's pretty abrasive... so if you're in an angry mood or want something a bit aggressive, it'll make your moment.

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Tags: best optimism 

If I were to ever have a single, this tune might be it. It might be the only radio-friendly tune I've got! It's just a 7/8-based guitar riff on top of a slow groove with a sublte little drum solo thing at the end. The noise at the end is me playing with some objects on a table after the recorder was still running and then applying some nasty delay.

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Tags: best heavy optimism school 

Another rare tune where I got a decent sound out of my little Crate amp. This was the first tune (I think) that I recorded using my newer Ibanez guitar and stopped using the cheap Fender wanna-be Strat. The guitar has a very different sound from the Fender I used on other tunes like Departure and Farewell or Positively Charged.

The music is very Helmet inspired with a 5/8 riff over a 4/4 groove. It's about valuing your education as a kid and sticking up for what you've done in the past when you knew it was the right thing to do.

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Tags: electronic 

The significance of this little ditty is two-fold. First, I was inspired by the last DCI (Drum Corps International) competition I went to in Stillwater to create some rudimentary feeling stuff in FL Studio. Ultimately I want to see if it'll work in a more traditional electronic composition. Second, I wanted to see how difficult (or easy) it was in FL Studio to change time signatures, or at least change the feel of the meter from 4 to 6. Ultimately I found out it isn't so easy. FL Studio only allows for a single time signature in a tune. In order to achieve the 6/8 feel in this clip, I basically had to composite those loops in 4/4. Not ideal and it was a bit more cerebral than I wanted it to be.

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Tags: electronic 

This is just a little experimental piece. It's not really a finished idea by any means. I started putting a little effort into it after coming up with the opening melody loop, but after about 30 minutes I really started to dislike it. I probably could have improved it but instead I was more interested in experimenting with some new samples and ideas.

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Tags: best optimism 

This tune was the product of a riff that I just randomly came up with one day and an experiment to see if I could "jam" with myself. The "jam" is basically the first half of the song with a lot of ambient sounds. I'm no guitar player so the guitars are just a lot of percussive noisemaking with feedback and delay.

This is one of the rare tunes where I used my little Crate amp and captured a satisfactory sound out of it. I just cranked the hell out of it and put the SM57 up close.