Toxic

Finally managed to get my studio back up and online. As a direct result of that and also sorting out some problems I was having (see below), I've got a really good draft of another track for the EP!

"Toxic" is now available on the Dirty Fire Project Myspace Player.

I've recently tried to upgrade the PC I do music on, including getting a proper sound card for it instead of relying on the onboard Realtek chipset. However I've had to fight to get any sort of performance out of it as the latency was massive (> 100ms) and things were just sounding completely wrong (even if games were sounding fine). One new version of Asio4All later, followed by reducing the buffer size (counter-intuitively) and the latency is holding at around 21ms which is just fine! Also, with this track there was some kind of problem with the arp synth line spazzing out occasionally and hitting a note at maximum velocity on a change. Finally narrowed it down to a difference between two settings for the LFO synchronisation - one for some kind of MIDI clock that is internal to the synth and another that takes the signal from the host (Ableton Live). The problem hasn't completely gone away, but it has made it miles better! Had to try things like separating out the arp synth in the break to a different channel and starting it early but enveloping the volume until it's official "trigger" time. And still it seems that it's pot luck whether the problem will happen at render time. Most annoying.

However, I'm really pleased with the track. Points awarded if you can tell what two sci-fi programmes some of the samples come from ;)

~mouse:dFp

Link

Okay, been busy with the rig I used for "The Chain", and I've come up with a track to follow it on the EP.

"Link" is now available on the Dirty Fire Project Myspace Player.

It's quite techno but descends into a dubstep-hybrid track! I rather like it :)

~mouse:dFp

Electric Dust Club night

Well done to DJ EbonyFae for hosting the first Electric Dust club night at the Purple Turtle in Camden Town last night. Timing couldn't have been better, after catching up with a friend from waaaay back I walked into the Turtle just as "Never Been To Tokyo" was playing :D The rest of the night was filled with glow spinners, dark electronic and industrial, some both quirky and great choices from all over the spectrum. There was also a burlesque show (though personally it didn't look that burlesque to me) and Nitrocide played a wicked set. I caught up with him later on and with any luck we'll bump into each other at Glade next week for some muddy mayhem :)

Top night, congrats and I hope that it's the beginning of a nice, regular event :D

~mouse:dFp


Edit: We did bump into each other at Glade. He's a dude :)

"The Chain" Preview

I've been working on a revamped version of a track that I originally made to start practicing with side chaining effects and compression - "The Chain" is the result. It's been on the trig.com player for a while but I've made quite a few improvements and I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. A preview of the track is now available on our Myspace player

~mouse:dFp

Artwork for "Breaking The Robot"

Here's a preview of the artwork photography for the forthcoming EP "Breaking The Robot".
It was taken by the excellent Barcelona-based photographer Diana Danzo as part of her "In The Factory" sequence. I picked it because I love the textures and the industrial element... I think it sums up a lot of how I feel about how DFP is sounding and the image itself has proved to be a great inspiration (it's been gracing my desktop for a few months now and I love it more each time I see it.)
~mouse:dFp

"Breaking The Robot" Preview

A preview of the title track from the new Dirty Fire Project EP "Breaking The Robot" is now available on our Myspace player - come check it out!

~mouse:dFp


Edit: Dread to think what's up there now. I still need to get to grips with the new MySpace stuff.

RSS Feed Added

I've added an RSS feed for this site, so y'all can keep tabs on what's going on :)
Blatantly procrastinated a few hours writing a tool that I can upload articles with, but it should make the whole process easy as possible to update the site.
Let me know if you get any problems with the RSS feed ...


Edit: This is completely redundant now :)

DFP's First Flyer!

Dirty Fire Project make it onto their first flyer!

Thanks to DJ EbonyFae for mentioning DFP on the flyer for the Electric Dust event happening on Sunday 13th July 2008 at the Purple Turtle in Camden Town, London. It's a dark electronica night set apart from the run of the mill industrial and EBM style nights indicative of the Camden scene, with multimedia acts, performances, poi spinners and pole dancers. I'm *so* there.

Edit: I went there and came through the door while Never Been To Tokyo was playing :) Also, DJ EbonyFae, aka Bonnie Baker is awesome.

EP Blog 1 - Breaking The Robot

Helloooo!

Right. This is my first blog about the making of the new EP. It's going to be titled "Breaking The Robot" and it'll be coming out on Xynthetic. When? Not quite sure yet, but this blog is hopefully going to be prodding me to get the work done :)

I've got a rough tracklist worked out but these things are just bound to change. However, the EP is based around an idea and that, with any luck, will encompass the individual tracks and give the whole thing a sort of one-y mungeness, if you know what I mean. Not a problem if you don't :)

So far, I've been working on two tracks. "Gravity Forest" is the working title of the first, although that's blatantly a case of a title looking for a song, it may not remain so named for very long. I was in an amazingly bad mood on Monday night and I managed to direct it into getting a draft of a track down in Live using my new Akai controller (MPD32). It's kind of moochey, play-with-your-head style and a little bit like "Fuff" (from the first EP) in feel. Very early days for this track so it'll probably change massively :)

The other thing I've been working on is a new version of the title track, "Breaking The Robot". I put the original tune together a long time ago and there were always some bits which didn't quite sit right. So they've gone, basically. I'm aiming to make this into an industial-techno tune, and from how things have gone today when playing with it, I think I've got a chance of doing that :D All said and done, the title track has got to be good (note that there was no title track on the previous EP, but I guess it would probably have been "Never Been To Tokyo" based on people's reaction to it). Work is on-going, but I'm liking the chance to dust this track off and re-forge its elements...

Many of my ideas for tracks that are included in my notional list of candidates are currently residing in FruityLoops, so I'm going to be spending a lot of time converting these into Live sessions (where appropriate), so that I've got an eye towards mixing in Live and being able to do a live set with a reduced amount of software.

So, I've started. So, I'll finish.

Stay tuned, there'll be more to follow :)

~mouse:dFp


Edit: I've still not used that bloody Akai controller properly yet. It sits on my desk, the Tap light blinking at me sullenly.

Beside You Through The Wires remix now available

The dFp remix of Phylum Sinter's track "Beside You Through The Wires, Forever" is now available on our MySpace and Trig.com music players. It's about the darkest, most breakbeat thing we've done :D Enjoy!

The track will feature on Phylum Sinter's forthcoming album "From Unity To Segmentation" on Xynthetic Records. For more information about the album, see Phylum Sinter's mini site at Xynthetic.

Keep an eye out for announcements about the album release and the next EP release from dFp!


Edit: You can get this remix on dFp's Soundcloud.

Dirty Fire Project interview by Phylum Sinter

Phylum Sinter interviews mouse:dFp about the remix, music, why country and western must die and pandas.

Exclusive preview of Dirty Fire Project's remix of Phylum Sinter's "Beside You Through The Wires Forever" at the end of the interview!

http://www.xynthetic.com/segmentation

Okay, we lied about the pandas.

~mouse:dFp


Edit: No mini-site any more :(