PERICLES releases in 2011 > > >

Greetings!

The last post on this blog was over a year ago when I released my 'Rafael' GlitchFM original mix. A few months after 'Rafael', Asheville based label Waveform Modulations released my debut album 'Camel Rider'- a full on mystical bass adventure consisting of 17 tracks. Since then I have released several EPs, mixes, compilations, singles through soundcloud, and an album. 2011 was an interesting year to say the least. My live electronics group The Landsquid toured all the way from the southeast up through Montana and down through Colorado, churning back through Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and the Carolinas. We shared the stage with Nasty Nasty, Protohype, Conspirator, Bluetech, Eprom, and lots of fantastic future music artists. Upon returning to Atlanta, I set out to finish my new original mix called 'Ancient Desert Vol. 1', which was released in May. I then spent the summer and fall leading ghost tours and working at a museum in Charleston, where all of this dream had begun in 2007 while attending College of Charleston.

Throughout my time in Charleston I had been working on lots of new and different sounds, bpms, and synth usages, and had collected a few albums worth of this newer kind of music. So in October I decided to compile an albums worth, searching through these codes to see which linked together in the most pleasing way, and the result was my self released album 'Sun Beams'. The fun concept I have kept with this is that since it is posted on bandcamp, and is therefore constantly up for edits, I have been shapeshifting the tracks, like ancient swiveling dna morphing through time.

Originally 'Sun Beams' was 13 down tempo/ ambient pieces with a few bits of crunk or heavy bass here and there, but it slowly began oozing around into another form, much more future crunk/ dance vibe, and I'd say now it has found a balance point at 16 tracks representing just about all the energies I desired to express from the original point of conception.

As I type this up I am planning on making a move at the beginning of 2012 somewhere...it'll be either Asheville, Atlanta, Los Angeles, or maybe even some land very far away. It is to be seen. I have a lot in the works for the new year, lots of new releases, lots of new imaginary sonic realms to conjure up. That's the beauty of art/life/time, there's always a new part of the puzzle to uncover, and that is what keeps me moving forward always.

Here is a catalog of compilations + eps I've contributed to as well as my own mixes and albums since 'Rafael'.

Thanks for reading > > >

PERICLES releases:

Pericles | Camel Rider | CD Baby

Ancient Desert Vol 1 – Pericles – Mix Set – Free Download











COMING SOON: 'Ancient Desert Vol. 2' Mix, Ambient Compilation through Waveform Modulations, Future Bass Comp through Vermin Street, Second Full Length Pericles album, + more!

Follow my soundcloud accounts where I release free tracks weekly:

PERICLES

FI3STO

ANDY KRUNKMAN

Isis Pericles

DL the official GlitchFM PERICLES mix "Is the Question Rafael?"

PERICLES' official GlitchFM mix "Is the Question Rafael?" features 25 brand new original tracks!

Click the 'download' button on the far right of the tab below--->

PERICLES- Is the Question Rafael (OFFICIAL Glitch.FM mix 2010) for Btwn 0|1 by Between Zero and One

PERICLES- Star Key (Free DL!)

PERICLES- STAR KEY by PERICLES

As an artist, it's a beautiful thing to observe ones own creations as they evolve over long periods of time. The original loop for this track once resided only at the very end of a track from very early 2010 entitled "It's Please". On a few occasions, as I listened through this track, I found myself captivated by a heavily effected melodic groove that was originally created as an outro variation to use in live performances.

After my intuition was triggered by these sounds a few times, I went into the lab and extracted the groove as a loop. It was an E flat quarter note pattern put through a VST synthesizer that has multiple interweaving filter cutoff modulations, giving it a very liquid psychedelic feel. I took the original bpm of 176 down to 140 to give the notes more clarity and time to resonate. After sculpting the loop into its new home, I duplicated it 64 times. The track was then a 5 minute long entrancing sonic mantra, but it felt like it had room still to be filled in, so I went back to "Its' Please" and extracted one of the pad synthesizer VSTs and played with different chord variations to see what brought out and provided foundation for the already existing riff. After a bit, I found the sounds that completed the equation, and the intentions for this remix were fulfilled.

I titled this 'tranceforever', and used this as intro/outro/transition material in my live sets and as a meditative tool over the last few months, but didn't feel the urge to take a different level. However, today as I was meditating in my room to this track streaming out of my monitors, I found myself mentally creating sounds all around what I was hearing, and more than anything else being compelled to add some heavy half time drums over it.

Being as today is my Mayan galactic signature birthday, Blue Lunar Hand, I felt compelled to create something seeing as many universal forces were lined up. The first thing I did in this track was to bring up the drum sampler VST Battery as the second layer to the already existing 'tranceforever' audio file, which was still set at 140 bpm. I intended to write some thunderous crunkstep style drums to invoke a tribal shamanic vibe that would pace the loop at the half time feel and give my brain more of a format with which to base the bass on.

Once I had a good mix between the original loop and the drums, I started pulling out treasures from my 'random samples' folder including quotes from Martin Luther King and Lil Wayne. I pulled the 3rd dimension out of all the new samples with tens of effect patches as well as manual glitch cut and pastes. Quickly I had an entire sonic world of pyschedelic swirls to complement the drums and groove loop.

The next step was to create the bass with the vst plug-in Massive, which as any producer knows is some of the most fun! When I create my bass lines, I go into Massive and activate 3 oscillators, usually dedicating two of them to the low register octaves and one of them as an additional higher octave. I play with which filters sound best and once I have set one, I map it out and create a basic wobble. Once I've got all the sound design finished and the bass is sounding nice and three dimensional, I play with all variations of wobble setting, and usually end up with a very slow wobble rate but a very jagged micro modulator that gives the bass a sonic key edge feel.

The next step is finding a melody that ties all previously existing elements together, and once again Massive is my preferred vst for this step as well. In this process, sometimes I will get extremely detailed and complex with creating the rhythm of melodies, and sometimes I find that the most simple minimal style works best, as I did for this track. Once I have a track at this level, I step back and analyze all existing sections and sounds and listen through a few different variations. Sequencing is one of my favorite parts of production because it is in essence creating the very telling of the sonic tale.

After I have the track in an order I feel good with, I begin to use various VSTs to create transitional sounds between sections that create a cohesive uniting flow from one chapter to the next. From this point I have a working track that could be considered finished, but this is really just the beginning of another major editing stage during which I apply glitches, build ups, further transitional entities, and create final arrangement. This can be the longest phase in production. When I have at last solved the sonic puzzle, and have rendered it to a single wav file at -5-7 decibels, it goes into the mastering machine Izotope Ozone.

This device is unbelievable and provides the final boosts, EQs, and polishing over the production. I'll render a few variations and audition them on as many sound system dynamics as I can to ensure the final track is clean, full, and every single choice made or left unmade is exactly what I want.

Enjoy this free DL and stay tuned as the SRI GAJA release on Waveform Modulations this fall draws closer. Here is a screenshot from today's work:

PERICLES- Ancient Tunnel of Eyes

The track, "Ancient Tunnel of Eyes", was originally created during my two week experimental phase of production for CAMEL RIDER II. My goal was to consistently maintain impulse and see each sound through to where it belonged. To me, the sounds become such delicate child-like figures that I become emotionally attached to the space they live in. My entire production ethic parallels this motherly feeling I experience with my sounds. However, in the case of "Ancient Tunnel of Eyes", I ended up reworking just about every little part of the whole track multiple times before the midi rubiks cube was solved, and even once I felt all necessary choreography had been completed I still felt the urge to rearrange. Like all crafts, with enough dedication to these details and an understanding of the symbiotic nature of the relationship between creator and created, a harmony can be found, the majestic beauty being the fact that the same path can truly never be tread twice.

Here is a screenshot of the 'ancient codes':



All of my recent production has all been in the spirit of pushing myself further and further into what I call the feeling of 'Ancient Desert', and each day and night I have been breaking down walls, perpetually discovering new sources of freshness. What excites me the most is that I have yet to utilize my secret weapon for my SRI GAJA album- a certain one of a kind VST that synthesizes these specific types of sounds I have literally been craving my entire human life! More on that soon, and also the expected due date for SRI GAJA is ~summer, and I'll be producing tracks for a few different compilations and EPs to be announced soon s wel!

Mythos (SRI GAJA sounds)

Mythos by PERICLES

This is a psy-scape of sounds created for the album...a gathering of the elephantine elements, free DL, enjoy!

Grab my latest productions!

Latest tracks by PERICLES

Trunk Swing- free DL!

Here is a recent sample straight out of the land of ancient warrior elephants, "Trunk Swing". ENJOY! A version of this could end up on the album, but for now it's an experiment in creating pachydermic motion.


PERICLES- Trunk Swing by PERICLES