Further working on this second track, I have been thinking about a Guest Lecture from first year from a Sound Designer (the name escapes me), referring to her work on a desert scene, where she discussed how the sound was approached much more from how the space feels rather than how it actually sounds. To me, that is what I am doing here: I am projecting my feelings within these imagined spaces using ambient music as interjection, which got me thinking of something I could add to the second track. 

The idea I had was to use loops and some techniques I have used in the past, inspired mostly by Mania and Finnish Noise stylings, is to use overdubbed clean metal sounds to construct this imagined monotonous mechanical churn of a boat, further elaborating on the influence of Crowhurst’s voyage on the track, which I think adds a nice layer of activity underneath the monotonous sound blanket, as well as giving the work some of the overambitious scope with minimal equipment, which I feel like is a staple for Noise, building a boat out of a bit of metal, a guitar string, some bottlecaps and a Screwdriver.

I did some more looking regarding Crowhurst’s story and found another documentary containing readings of his Journal (I am not particularly fond of the cadence, but I feel like I can work with it). I found the last entry particularly striking, as well as some mentions of divine beings and connections with higher powers, combining the playing of the “game” with living entirely and adding a religious tint (weirdly enough the Cardigans track the ambient part is based off here feels more ironic than I intended). I added the sample to my track, using the whole rest of the documentary as a subtle texture with asymmetric distortion in FL, which enhances sound into crackles, so that the sample doesn’t appear; it moreso emerges from the wall. I also used Fruity Granuliser to add an extra layer, compiling sections of empty space from the documentary to add subtle watery layers and building from the documentary’s imagined space, and incorporating it into mine.

I tried adding a Harsh layer as well, but didn’t find that it fit at all, I really enjoy the blanket sound but I’m not sure if others will enjoy the complete lack of motion, so maybe it needs to be worked on more to be more inviting with standard progression, similar to the first track, I think (maybe some crackling action on the top end I am thinking can appear). 

I started working with the third track a little too, incorporating another guitar drone and adding a field recording I made a couple months ago (titled Blood On The Tracks after the Bob Dylan album for some reason) after watching the Youtube documentary Down The Bottleneck, part of falling down a rabbit hole of learning about the long dead Opie & Anthony radio show, which was a Shock-Jock radio show infamous for going great lengths to produce incredibly distasteful, mean spirited Radio. To put it short, the story made me completely disgusted with alcohol, gave me that pit in my stomach feeling, and I somewhat overdramatically recorded myself cutting open and draining 2 4 packs of beer with the idea being to use the recording for something (or as a reminder of that moment, I’m pretty dramatic). I don’t know if it would be appropriate to sample a Lady Di call, or make it expressly clear that that was an impetus to creating the track, but that at least was the thing that set me off, as I have had struggles with alcohol, it really struck me.

I guess extrapolating further from the overarching theme of isolation, alcoholism has been a similar escapism from feeling to ANW, Caller Lady Di, in particular, is perplexing because of her constant lying and bending of the truth, denial and seeking of attention 9she would call in with no knowledge of what the show even was) without taking anything said on board, leading to eventual early-onset dementia and isolation from her and the rest of her family. I don’t want to project myself onto someone as if what I have experienced is comparable; I am just articulating what is out there and how it has had an effect on me. The sound of this track is already really lonely; the bass skitters more than on other tracks, coming out as hushed breaths. I wanted to continue this projection of emotional content onto these spaces, so I further combined what I am doing with Luc’s live set on my Minilogue with this work, recording some minimal ambient to accompany the already existent breathy drone created from the Nucleus Module.

The first layer of synth is a slow expanding heavy delay & reverb sine-based loop to create space within the mix, aiming for a Celer-type lushness smothered by the main wall, the second is a more Pluck-oriented swell loop expansion with some ping pong delay added after to put it more within the space, making it make more sense within the mix. These two are added on top of a stretched guitar loop, which is heavily reverbed into pure sines. The sound of these drones, combined with the slowed field recording, feels really miserable. The guitar loop also appears on the outro for the second track in a more present iteration, as to help with the flow of the album, and as it stands, I am very happy with the first disc so far; it feels cohesive and expressive as to what I feel like I want to convey. I want to return to it next week to listen while I finish off my project proposal and work on my presentation, but as it stands, I am very happy with it and think it is some of my best work.

I also had a 1-to-1 with Jose this week. I sent him my draft of the proposal, which I admittedly hadn’t worked much on, and he gave me some valuable sources for further research into this connection between Noise and ASMR, Noise and Catharsis and Sound and Meditation. He gave me some great studies to explore for the research side of this project, which I would like to try incorporate into some further discs of this work, but right now I’m happy with what this does, gives me chills thinking about things. For future discs I want to explore more of a stripped-back sound and obvious ASMR conventions, referential to the article denouncing the art form in the prior entry, riffing on the idea of artificial intimacy and seeing what effect I can get from that concept.