As mentioned earlier Macrohelion appeared as a parallel side-project to Atropine and Anstalt because we were without a proper sampler for an extended period and quite frankly one just has to make music of some sort to feel good. Initially we were unsure what to do, but quickly discovered that the attack of the rack mounted FM-synth Yamaha TX81z was powerful enough to make quite passable bass-drums on as well as most other types of frequently used percussion sounds such as snares, snades, hi-hats, crashes and whatever else. When coupled with an Oberheim Matrix-6 and a Casio CZ-5000, we discovered that we could compose rather freely and as an added bonus we managed to make something with a novel sound. Much of what you'll hear in Macrohelion consists of those three synthesizers, but we also used the Roland Juno-106 and Roland Juno 2 to a lesser degree.
Of course, Macrohelion differs substantially from anything else we've done before or since which as I also mentioned had to do with a necessity to learn how to build a track with very few options open to us. In general the sound is less bleak and the tracks for the most part are rigidly structured. We even tried recording vocals for them, but we lost interest in that since we felt the vocals were detracting from the songs instead of adding to them. Also it was nice with a break from screaming all the time =).
On the third and final workload for Macrohelion it's becoming more and more apparent that we'd hit another dead end and with that we folded the concept altogether. Regardless, I think we came out the other end as more accomplished musicians and many lessons were learned as a result of making the 50 tracks that make up the entire production of Macrohelion.
Here are three examples of Macrohelion, one from each remaining tape:
Macrohelion - Undercurrents
Macrohelion - Exeunt
Macrohelion - Overthrown
Onto more recent events then:
As recently as late last year we had another look at Macrohelion and decided to revive it - at least to explore the project within a real studio environment. Things are a lot easier these days, but that is not without pitfalls of its own. So we made a couple of new tracks as Macrohelion, but we're not entirely convinced it's even remotely related. We cheated a bit and added digital drums and all the previously used synthesizers were discarded in favour of old analog equipment which were sequenced using a Kenton CV/MIDI converter and then recorded as audio. It's quite different, but in very much in the same tonal range as most other things we've made over the years. This is not the final version.
Macrohelion - Soldering Iron
Enjoy!
.//Cthulberg
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Brief interjection!
In November of 1999 we played two shows at OSF (now Elektrostat). One by Pogrom Synod early in the evening, just to soften up people's heads with some nice easy listening and later on we played the first real Atropine concert. I say "real" because most of our previous shows had been in collaboration with Order of the Solar Temple.
photography : SHL@Bleed
This concert is now posted in its entirety on last.fm. These are full-length previews for now. I may enable them for downloading if there is any interest at all. Nikko of Anax Imperator kindly lent us his voice on Shinkansen. This recording is completely lacking in quality, since it was recorded on a camcorder which was massively overloaded. However, this is my favorite to listen to as it conveys very poignantly what it was like at an Atropine concert back then.
Hope you "enjoy" it =)
.//Cthulberg
photography : SHL@BleedThis concert is now posted in its entirety on last.fm. These are full-length previews for now. I may enable them for downloading if there is any interest at all. Nikko of Anax Imperator kindly lent us his voice on Shinkansen. This recording is completely lacking in quality, since it was recorded on a camcorder which was massively overloaded. However, this is my favorite to listen to as it conveys very poignantly what it was like at an Atropine concert back then.
Hope you "enjoy" it =)
.//Cthulberg
A shift in activities 1993-1995
Time for another post then. Now where was I? Ah right...
In order to have some sort of place within Anstalt, it was imperative that we maintained some sort of normalcy and in general make synthetic sounds which people wanted to hear. Anstalt was at most times drawn between making accessible and danceable music and the more hardcore EBM type of music. Tracks like Human Input and Eternal illustrate this conflict perfectly. While Human Input is a frenetic assault of traditional EBM complete with angered vocals and a super tight bass-line, Eternal is a very repetitive and noisy trance techno track replete with hypnotic force. I'd post them here for sake of reference if I could, but they are not my tracks to post since I took no part in their creation. I might eventually check for permission though.
[edit] It would seem that - courtesy of Eskild - 32 old (and not so old) Anstalt tracks are up for grabs by checking this link and following the "more" link for another page of free downloads [edit]
After some concerts and live television appearances from Anstalt [I think I only ever personally participated in two Anstalt performances and that was at the release of Re-Incarnation of the Sun at Volapük and for a seemingly endless concert at Hulen in Bergen - which incidentally was the first time I met the amazingly splendid folks of Anax Imperator.] I remember it being stressful to be in a band which pulled in so many directions at once. Such a largish bunch of people, little or no resources combined with lugging a ton of gear including drum-pads and at least 4-5 synthesizers around the countryside makes for some tribulations. Anyway, my focus was not very accessibility oriented at the time [whereas now, I am a veritable pop-whore!] and Alx as well was very interested in experimenting with "abnormal" music of various kinds. I mean that's where we started out!
SNIPPET-ALERT!: This is more or less what the first ever proper Atropine song sounded like live @ Hulen in 1994 Caution! This is poorly executed and taken from the "12PM" Anstalt demo (ca. 1994) where it is dubbed the "Piggy Mix" (for good reason) =). Don't expect much. But it is a rare recording though. There's always that. The first incarnation of Haemorrhage was recorded in 1992.
So Alx (and sometimes me as well) made a ton of tracks in preparation for having to embark on the assembly of an Anstalt CD. This did not materialize while I was still in the band, and so Anstalt released tracks on quite a large number of compilations globally. During 1994/95 there was also a bit of collaboration between various Anstalt members and Industrial Heads who shared a studio in downtown Oslo for quite some time. A couple of other notable people who also had a studio in the same building: Nemlig Hemlig [AKA Masters Ov Møh] and Silver Ale which was a one-time name for the conceptual/elitist MAC-OS sound wizardry of a certain mr. Blokkum-Flø.
While Brilliance Without Phase was being assembled in the studio Alx was quite busy, but it also meant not having a sampler around since it was working double time elsewhere. This gave rise to a purely electronic construct called Macrohelion, and that project was worked on quite regularly from late 1994 to mid 1996. I'll do a post about this project later on. This music was made solely with synthesizers. No drum-machines involved, which made it quite challenging. Macrohelion is a very personal project meant to really get into chromatics and how to really compose songs properly, which means it was not circulated by us at all, thus only a few people have even heard about it. Three full 90 minute DAT-tapes and a stack of Atari song disks is where we're at at the moment. Converting them to MAC-OS will take time. Lots of time. More on the headway we're making in the aforementioned future Macrohelion post.
Anyway, it seemed pretty much clear over time that I had no real place in Anstalt - and since Alx wanted to keep busy doing all sorts of things (which is still his modus operandi), I left/got phased out of the band sometime during 1994/95. The input to Anstalt of Alx and myself was pretty much dimished as it was, and this is well-illustrated on Brilliance Without Phase where we are represented with only two tracks - the first called Default and the last which is called Self Destruction. In retrospect I see a lot of omissions which would have made the record more coherent, but hindsight is hindsight and what's done is done. In any event it is a nice audio document of the combined activity of a lot of people. Most, if not all of it used to be hosted by Eskild, but alas it is no longer possible to get downloads of this. The demos were better though and I still enjoy listening to them. On cassette.
Sorry if this post did not make as much sense as I had intended. It was a rather chaotic period and I guess this was destined to reflect in the post.
Until next time,
.//Cthulberg
In order to have some sort of place within Anstalt, it was imperative that we maintained some sort of normalcy and in general make synthetic sounds which people wanted to hear. Anstalt was at most times drawn between making accessible and danceable music and the more hardcore EBM type of music. Tracks like Human Input and Eternal illustrate this conflict perfectly. While Human Input is a frenetic assault of traditional EBM complete with angered vocals and a super tight bass-line, Eternal is a very repetitive and noisy trance techno track replete with hypnotic force. I'd post them here for sake of reference if I could, but they are not my tracks to post since I took no part in their creation. I might eventually check for permission though.
[edit] It would seem that - courtesy of Eskild - 32 old (and not so old) Anstalt tracks are up for grabs by checking this link and following the "more" link for another page of free downloads [edit]
After some concerts and live television appearances from Anstalt [I think I only ever personally participated in two Anstalt performances and that was at the release of Re-Incarnation of the Sun at Volapük and for a seemingly endless concert at Hulen in Bergen - which incidentally was the first time I met the amazingly splendid folks of Anax Imperator.] I remember it being stressful to be in a band which pulled in so many directions at once. Such a largish bunch of people, little or no resources combined with lugging a ton of gear including drum-pads and at least 4-5 synthesizers around the countryside makes for some tribulations. Anyway, my focus was not very accessibility oriented at the time [whereas now, I am a veritable pop-whore!] and Alx as well was very interested in experimenting with "abnormal" music of various kinds. I mean that's where we started out!
SNIPPET-ALERT!: This is more or less what the first ever proper Atropine song sounded like live @ Hulen in 1994 Caution! This is poorly executed and taken from the "12PM" Anstalt demo (ca. 1994) where it is dubbed the "Piggy Mix" (for good reason) =). Don't expect much. But it is a rare recording though. There's always that. The first incarnation of Haemorrhage was recorded in 1992.
So Alx (and sometimes me as well) made a ton of tracks in preparation for having to embark on the assembly of an Anstalt CD. This did not materialize while I was still in the band, and so Anstalt released tracks on quite a large number of compilations globally. During 1994/95 there was also a bit of collaboration between various Anstalt members and Industrial Heads who shared a studio in downtown Oslo for quite some time. A couple of other notable people who also had a studio in the same building: Nemlig Hemlig [AKA Masters Ov Møh] and Silver Ale which was a one-time name for the conceptual/elitist MAC-OS sound wizardry of a certain mr. Blokkum-Flø.
While Brilliance Without Phase was being assembled in the studio Alx was quite busy, but it also meant not having a sampler around since it was working double time elsewhere. This gave rise to a purely electronic construct called Macrohelion, and that project was worked on quite regularly from late 1994 to mid 1996. I'll do a post about this project later on. This music was made solely with synthesizers. No drum-machines involved, which made it quite challenging. Macrohelion is a very personal project meant to really get into chromatics and how to really compose songs properly, which means it was not circulated by us at all, thus only a few people have even heard about it. Three full 90 minute DAT-tapes and a stack of Atari song disks is where we're at at the moment. Converting them to MAC-OS will take time. Lots of time. More on the headway we're making in the aforementioned future Macrohelion post.
Anyway, it seemed pretty much clear over time that I had no real place in Anstalt - and since Alx wanted to keep busy doing all sorts of things (which is still his modus operandi), I left/got phased out of the band sometime during 1994/95. The input to Anstalt of Alx and myself was pretty much dimished as it was, and this is well-illustrated on Brilliance Without Phase where we are represented with only two tracks - the first called Default and the last which is called Self Destruction. In retrospect I see a lot of omissions which would have made the record more coherent, but hindsight is hindsight and what's done is done. In any event it is a nice audio document of the combined activity of a lot of people. Most, if not all of it used to be hosted by Eskild, but alas it is no longer possible to get downloads of this. The demos were better though and I still enjoy listening to them. On cassette.
Sorry if this post did not make as much sense as I had intended. It was a rather chaotic period and I guess this was destined to reflect in the post.
Until next time,
.//Cthulberg
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