We have collected/created the sounds featured on ‘Quake Raiser’ over the last 8 months while living in Japan. The sounds have been borrowed from our everyday environments and can hopefully give you an insight into our lives here that looking at photos can’t. The deconstruction and manipulation of these sounds has also helped us understand these strange environments! All the processing/recording/performing we have done ourselves with whatever equipment we have had available to us at the time.
*Please note!!! We both agree that Quake Raiser is definitely a headphone listen so please don’t just listen to it through your laptop speakers!!!
TRACK DESCRIPTIONS
1. Perspective (LG)
The first half of this track is basically no-input bass worship while the second half is a couple of seriously delayed samples of typical random van announcements in Ebino.
2. BELL (JB)
I recorded this track at 12.02am on the 1/1/2011 at a Buddhist Temple in Takatsuki, Osaka. It was recorded using my mobile phone. The recording is of a huge bell that is struck exactly 108 times at the beginning of every year. The temple dates back to the 12th century. I wanted to maintain as much of the original recording, which includes the sound of my daughter breathing, as possible, with only minimal manipulation.
3. Short and Violent (JB)
Named after the people who created the sounds for the original recording of this piece, Short and Violent is a phone recording of around 90 children rehearsing their parts to several different songs simultaneously. There were drums, percussion, accordions, xylophones, San-Shin (tradition Okinowan three stringed instrument), melodeons, keyboards and wind instruments. Sounded amazing in the cavernous space that it was played in. It was then manipulated on the computer.
4. Acoustic (LG)
I recorded this track during the brutal winter of 2010/2011 with a second hand acoustic guitar in our ice-box bedroom. I borrowed a cheap mic from school that we usually use for recording English dialogues for tests, apparently it’s good for kareoke too. I then processed it on the computer.
5. Sweet (JB,LG)
Currently the only collaboration between the two of us, ‘Sweet’ combines the distant echoes of baked sweet potato spruker on a sleepless summers night in Kobe with Lach’s no input tomfoolery from around the same time. There are also some samples from Dad They Broke Me and Pissbolt in the mix. John also put together a video for this track that you can check out here.
