The Null Device Blog

Due to a scheduling mix-up, the lineup of Rein[forced], Null Device and The Dark Clan have no venue at which to play.    Which means, essentiually, that the show is off.

Bummer, becasue we had some new stuff in the pipe to play.

I’ve got some new music that’s been occupying me.

The most obvious is Depeche Mode’s “Sounds of the Universe.”  It’s pretty decent.  The sounds are very old school – if “Playing the Angel” resembled “Violator” in structure,  this one almost resembles an old OMD album.  Lots of modulated bleeps and buzzy analog sounds.  With every album, Gahan’s vocal delivery gets a little more effortless.  And with every album, it becomes harder to forgive some of Gore’s lyrical tropes, which he tends to reuse quite often.  The leadoff single “Wrong” is undeniably catchy, as are tracks like “In Sympathy”, “Fragile Tension”,  and “In Chains.”   There’s really not a bad song on the album – the worst are just sort of bland, but the good ones are rife with hooks.  It also displays many of the hallmarks of an album that will grow on me.  There’s also a 5.1 mix of the album that may sound pretty cool.

Also, the iTunes bonus Trentemoeller mix of “Wrong” is all kinds of cool.

I’ve only had PSB’s new album “Yes” for a few hours, but it’s so far probably the most unabashedly pop PSB album in years.  Where “Fundamental” came close, flirting with some edgier techno mixed in with the PSB wry-observational mold, “Yes” goes over the top right off the bat, with the Xenomania-produced “Love, Etc.”  It reminds me of the opening track “Can You Forgive Her” off “Very”, with the sort of hands-in-the-air chorus hooks and the midtempo, headnodding backbeat.  I’m sure I’ll have more on this album as it sinks in.

Dubstep as a genre has been for me, somewhat problematic.  I love it conceptually, and there are many individual tracks that I adore, but I can only take the whole genre in small doses.  The artists for the most part are all fantastic at creating brooding moods and building lots of musical tension…except for the most part, that tension never gets released and after a full album I feel deeply unfulfilled.  This is why Caspa’s new album “Everybody’s Talking, Nobody’s Listening” is so intruiging to me.  It has all the hallmarks of dubstep – deep, wobbly basses,  frenetic hi-hats, sparse percussion, loads of ambiences – but for a change he breaks up the electro-dread by throwing vocalists and MC’s back into the mix under a verse/chorus structure.  A few tracks shed the doom-and-gloom for more chilled-out tracks, like “Lon-Don City” which sounds like the kind of R&B you’d hear on the radio in a dystopian future UK (gratuitous autotuning notwithstanding).

Since Galactica went dark a few weeks back, I’ve been digging into the soundtracks by Bear McCreary.  It’s both incredibly impressive and kind of disheartening to me that a 27-year-old dude with little prior experience could so effortlessly write soundtracks involving a full orchestra, uillean pipes, a taiko ensemble, and a bunch of duduks.  I’d want to be him when I grew up, if I wasn’t already a decade older than he is.   Anyway, while most soundtracks sound like wallpaper when separated from their source material (or, in the case of Williams, Goldsmith, et al, are all brassy neo-Wagnerian bombast), these work pretty well on their own. 

In the cheesy techno category, I’ve picked up anotehr single by the Breakfastaz.  “Crazy/Method of Doubt” is a unapologetic nu-breaks, but damn is it fun.  If it were warmer out right now, this’d be great for driving fast with the top down.  If I had a convertable.  Which I don’t.  But the effect is the same.

I was in the studio yesterday, tweaking some hi-hat lines that weren’t qite sounding right.

That’s not the annoying part.

Nori, my ever-faithful feline studio companion, leaped into my lap while I was diligently tweaking the aforementioned parts.

That’s not the annoying part either.

After a few minutes or so of me looping these hihats over and over, adjusting and selecting, Nori reaches out with one paw and smacks the “delete” key, deleting the selected regions containing my hi-hats.  With another paw she hit the space bar, causing the track to start playing.

That’s still not the annoying part.

As I was about to hit “undo” and retreive the deleted parts, I noticed how much better it sounded without them.

In short, the cat was a better judge of production than I was.

THAT’S the annoying part.

Looking over some stuff the other day, it turns out we’re a lot closer to having a new release than I thought.

So, here’s what we’ve got on tap, in no particular order, for the next “EP” (although it’s less of EP than a …well, whatever), tentatively titled “Recursions”:
Travelogue (2008 version)
Triangular (Null Device’s Panjabi Lowrider mix)
Footfalls (2008 Version)
The Choir (unreleased from Excusions sessions)
Hourglass (Live, Acoustic @ The Inferno)
Think It Over (Dub, Unreleased from Excursions sessions)
Unspecified remix 1
Unspecified remix 2
Twisting and Turning (Null Device Club Mix)
The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove

So yeah, how bout that.  I’ve got most of this stuff already done.  Need to record a few more parts for Lovegrove, finish the Panjabi Lowrider Mix (it’s almost done), finish wrangling the last two mixes, and then master the puppy, and I’m good.  The first two tasks I should have done in a week or so.

I’m attempting to get some different remixers than normal to do stuff, but that may or may not happen.  I’ve got a couple of “blue sky” possibilities that may turn out to be just too danged expensive, but it’s worth a shot.

Haven’t fully decided how to release it yet.  We’re leaning towards “free” again, but we may do a “bonus track version” on iTunes or something (I’ve got a few notions clattering about in my noggin for what I can do for a bonus track – the phrase “An Irish Pub in Amritsar” keeps popping up).  We’ll likely do a short run of physical CDs too, for sales at shows.

So, uh, yeah!  Something may actually happen!

Elizabeth and Jill enlighten Nick about the obsession with Robert Pattinson.