Spoken Word with Electronics is an audio series delivering to you a two side recording of unusual stories paired with vintage modular electronic sounds
THIS WEEK:
Welcome, fellow occupant of Quarantonia! A few months back I posted the first installment of Spoken Word with Electronics, an audio history series. The first episode was a tribute to David Berman of the Silver Jews/Purple Mountains. Since then I’ve been finishing up a lot of the separate selections from interviews and other recorded vocals.
Here’s Spoken Word with Electronics Issue #2, with a lot more to come.
Think of each installment as a two-sided record, a Side A and a Side B.
SIDE A: Paul Krassner recalls the day JFK was shot. Audio comes from a comprehensive interview I did with Paul in 2017, mixed in with a lot of electronic accompaniment. The printed piece ended up in The American Bystander, Issue #4. There was a huge amount of information recorded that couldn’t fit in the printed piece, though, and these audio pieces will provide a much denser portrait of P.K. – Often going into territory he rarely discussed.
Future installments will have five or six other focused memories of Paul’s on a variety of wonderful topics. Stay tuned for some fun stuff.
SIDE B: Our flip-side track of the album is an apocalyptic carnival ride called “Earth, Take Four” — I’d completed this a few months back but it feels timely. Watch out for the volcanoes!
The wind in “Earth, Take Four” is a combination of different colors of noise. Red noise sounds like turbulence or thunder, where blue or purple noise can sound wispy and thin. You can make your own weather if you blend curves of different colors in and out. The panning is controlled by sending a triangle wave into a voltage controlled panner.
Stuck at home for the next foreseeable month or two and want a fun obsessive project? If you’re familiar with Moog/MOTM/Dotcom modules, you can build your own CV Panner right here. Even includes templates for etching your own traces and printing your own panel. A commercial build is also available, though you’ll need to build your own case and pick up this power system, connected to the power connector of a Dotcom Box 2.
If you’re like me, you’ve been practicing social distancing for decades. Stockpile on soap! – Ethan