Alex Rae

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Some pieces I have made

The pieces here are drawn from a stretch of several years, and encompass a wide range of styles and techniques. Some are presented as they were, without change, while others required a certain degree of completion or mixing, as they were originally created to be played in a live setting and had never yet made it into a decent recorded form. Most of these come from a particular context -- a collaboration, a series, a class, a performance style -- and can function as stand-alone pieces as well. Here they are intentionally grouped and ordered.

Altogether, these tracks comprise a full CD length (about 60 minutes). Each one has short accompanying notes.

About the music

stairloop (1995) - A short piece based, in theory, on the act and sound of trudging up one staircase and down another in a loop. This was realized through analogue studio techniques, primarily using tapeloops, splicing, equalizers, volume, and tapespeed controls.

for c - (2005) This was actually a gift. It was made by playing a simple patch in Pd and layering two tracks in a multitrack editor. The patch was played in realtime. The clicks and slight aliasing are more or less intentional.

for d - (2005) This was another present. It is made entirely from an extremely low-fi recording of a voice-mail message (except for the sine tone), processed and sliced up in Soundforge, then sequenced and assembled in Reason.

papeq - (2000, recorded 2006) "Computer music." That is to say, the majority of the samples in this track are derived from the sounds of a computer, the hum of the fan, a floppy disk drive in operation, a CD drive opening, and so on. This is one of a large number of tracks which were made to be performed live under the name xrae by triggering loops and altering the sounds via a number of midi controllers. Made using a hardware sampler and a hardware keyboard/synthesizer/sequencer

sarahsnippet - (2002) This was a small part of an electronic music/spoken word collaboration, performed live at a small local venue. The sound source was exclusively that of the voice, some prerecorded, manipulated, and sequenced, and some manipulated live. This piece is a (very) short stand-alone segment made just using simple processing and cut-and-paste techniques in a basic wave editor.

one - (2005) This is the first (and thus far only) installment in a long-distance "collaboration" with a long-time musical partner, intended to involve emailing the other a short (few seconds at most) audio file from or around which a short piece would be constructed, much like responding to a letter. [The original audiofile can be found here.]

maiday - (2005) This was created in Audiomulch, as a live take. Made towards the end of a long and noisy Parisian May Day full of marches and parades that ended in the quiet of my apartment, the piece was itself the end result of a long night of improvising through endless variations and arrangements of these elements.

carnivalish - (2005) This was created by request for a tiny film as part of the Fourty-eight Hour Film Festival; initially intended to float through the background of a scene, it ended up a little out of place, and over the credits. A trifle different from most of my other work. It was sequenced note for note by hand in Reason.

boild - (2001, recorded 2006) Another of the live looping xrae tracks, this piece clearly is largely about combining and layering various types of noise, hopefully to some hypnotic effect, and slowly transforming the constructed space.

gldnshtrm part I - (2004) This is Part I of a simple cut-up of a short sample of a bombastic bigband riff from the opening scene of an old film. Part of the intention may have been to first play with and then break down the bombasticity, and then turn it into something else. For the most part, this piece (both parts) was made linearly, from beginning to end, copying and pasting as from the preceding moments as needed.

somatic ion stance - (2004) Technically, this is a remix of Matmos's Action at a Distance (part of Wired magazine's Creative Commons licensed release (hear it here). Except for some sine and saw waves, it is derived from clips from their track, though otherwise bears basically no resemblance. The name is also loosely related to the artist and title of the original.

tabla3 - (2003) This (another loop-triggering live xrae one) was an experiment in using samples of tabla in this sort of a rythmic and textural context. That is, in using the sound of the tabla, both directly and in less- (or un-) recognizable form, without forcing it to fit in simply as a supporting element to a "traditional" western rythmic framework, as filler or atmosphere. It was also an attempt to do something with the tonal element of the tabla, which seemed a natural thing to do in the context of the highly simplified harmonic/melodic contexts which I often prefer.

grits32 - (2000, recorded 2006) Another looping xrae track, this is an attempt to work with lots of squirrely noisy sounds, juxtaposing them against an emerging sense of spaciousness (a common theme). It is also intended to cross the line between being pleasing and not pleasing to the ear, while maintaining a certain catchy appeal. Due to the number of layers and parameters set to be changed in realtime, this was one of the more difficult tracks to perform.

gldnshtrm part II - see part1. They are separated because how else could they be separated?

tubey - (2001) Here we have an exercise in using ordinary things found around the house, such as an unwrapped tube of wrapping paper, a broken banjo, and my mouth, and hoping then to sum them into something more, while yet preserving their mundane origins. This is not a piece of grand aspirations.

copyright alex rae 2006