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"Close The Portal (For the Love of God, Enough With the Drone Music​)​"

by The Erratic

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1.
Mr. Rogers Says... 00:32
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2.
Electric Guitar & Ebow in G Major (Wednesday 2nd August 2023) 20:40
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3.
Pedal Harmonium in F# Minor (Monday 18th September 2023) 06:23
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4.
Half-Hole Multiphonics for Bass Clarinet - Edit (Saturday 18th November 2023) 05:50
info
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5.
SoH (Wednesday 22nd November 2023) 04:00
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6.
Acoustic Guitar & Ebow in D# Minor (Tuesday 8th August 2023) 07:49
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about

Largely, though not exclusively, an exercise in listening & a study of acoustic properties, this album formalises a number of preoccupations that I have been developing, both consciously & unconsciously, throughout the nearly 10 year existence of The Erratic. I have always been more interested in the variety of sounds an instrument can make as a physical object made of particular materials interacted with in a particular space, as opposed to simply a thing to play notes on. Perhaps the most obvious & direct previous example of this was Three Minute Pop Song (Parts 1-3) from the 12 Post-Apocalyptic Pop Songs album, but even back with early pieces from A Harsh Light & the And EP I was attempting to explore the spaces between notes more than the notes themselves, the decay of the sound and its interaction with the resonance of the space more than the tune.

As for this current album: tracks 2 and 6 are basically what they say they are. I played each of seven notes in a chosen scale individually, slowly moving the e-bow from the bridge at the bottom of the strings up to the bottom of the fretboard and back once, in the case of track 2 on electric guitar over a 20 minute period, and track 6 on acoustic guitar over an 8 minute period, occasionally flicking between pick-ups in the case of the electric. I find the richness and complexity resulting from such a simple process to be pleasing.

Track 3 began by recording 3 tracks on a pedal powered harmonium: an ascending scale beginning at the bottom of the keyboard up to the top and back to the bottom; a descending scale from top to bottom and back to top; and a third beginning in the middle of the keyboard up to the top down to the bottom and back to the middle. I then chopped these 3 tracks into equal bars and rearranged them using a rule derived from prime numbers. The track begins with the sound of the foot pedals being pumped and ends with the sound of air escaping the bellows after the pumping stops.

Track 5 is the last 15 seconds of thrash metal band Slayer's song South of Heaven, sampled, layered, chopped into small pieces, looped and rearranged almost randomly, whilst trying to retain a sense of progression or build to crescendo in the piece, with a generous sprinkling of reverb and delay.

Track 4 is built entirely from samples taken from the blog of Heather Roche, specifically a post titled Super Fragile, Quiet, Slow-Moving Multiphonics for Bass Clarinet. I recorded myself playing the samples, again following vaguely mathematical patterns, directly from her blog onto my laptop. I recorded a couple of takes, which I then layered and edited minimally. The background hiss on the track is the accumulation of Heather's breath on overlapping samples. Heather's blog post can be found here: heatherroche.net/2023/11/17/super-fragile-quiet-slow-moving-half-hole-multiphonics-for-bass-clarinet/

The quote from Mr Rogers (US children's TV presenter and author Fred Rogers, 1928-2003) serves as a statement of intent for the album as a whole.

credits

released December 22, 2023

Written, arranged, performed, recorded, & mixed by CJ Robinson between August & November 2023 at 33 Fairfield Rd, Buxton. Except Bass Clarinet on Track 4 played by Heather Roche (www.heatherroche.net), sampled, arranged, & mixed by CJ Robinson with kind permission. Track 5 is constructed from a sample of the last 15 seconds of South of Heaven by Slayer, sampled, arranged, & mixed by CJ Robinson without permission.

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The Erratic Buxton, UK

Genre-less Experimental Music and Sounds.

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