Here’s my modular synth set from my ambient/drone show. This is slightly edited from the live performance because of a couple issues with the raw recording).
Downloadable, so feel free to share.
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I’ve been working on a few loop tracks, inspired in part by Chuck Person’s Ecco Jams.
These will probably end up being a proper release, but until then you can listen here.
Listen to “Guru Meditation (schädel mix)” by stAllio!.
stAllio! made another record, and asked me to do a remix. Here’s his description of the record on which it appears:
stAllio!’s triumphant return to the world of sonified data! once again, stAllio! plunges deep into his hard drive and listens to the data — image files, executables, and link libraries alike are converted to sound for his review. the choicest bits of data are then meticulously assembled into music: glitchy melodies, skittery rhythms, and thunderous beats emerge from the digital noise. you could call it IDM (interpreted data music), dirty 8-bit, or glitch-hop. stAllio! used to call it databent music, but these days prefers the simpler term “data sound.”
You can hear the original version of the track here.
A little too much Boards of Canada, and this came out.
Another one in 7/8.
Initially this used only Sufi plugins as sound sources, including drums, but I went back and polished it up a bit, and used a few other things instead. (It still leans heavily on Sufi plugins, though).
“Once one has eaten at the hearth of Yomi it is impossible to return to the land of the living.”
Halloween, 2012
Listen to “The Attic of the Milestone (Decisions, Decisions) (prod. by DJ Empirical)” by Mikal kHill.
Mikal kHill asked me to craft a new beat for an older song of his, to be placed in a new context as a part of a zombie-themed concept album, The Walking Dead, which was released in conjunction with Halloween. The album features a raft of nerdcore specialists, and is quite good overall. (And Z, of the blog “Hipster, Please”, agrees.) Check it out!
Incidentally, I think this is the first released thing I’ve done that features one of the excellent Sufi plugins. In this case it’s (perhaps obviously) Palmas, the clapping drum machine. I love these things and hope to make wider use of them.
Listen to “Shivablast (produced by DJ Empirical)” by Beefy.
Rusty Shackles, the amazing artist who did my birthday show poster last year, had the idea to put together nerdcore rapper Beefy with a slew of producers to create a tribute EP to the show The League, a comedy about fantasy football. Knowing I had at least a passing interest in the show (I’m a huge fan of How Did This Get Made, a podcast co-hosted by some of the same actors involved), he reached out to me to contribute.
I produced two of the tracks, which bookend the EP. First, the lead-in track “Shivablast”, which musically homages NFL music* while incorporating elements of Indian music, referencing the ethnicity of “Shiva”, the girl their trophy is named after. She comes in again at the end of the EP, with the other track I produced, “SKSK” (short for “Shivakamini Somakandarkram”, Shiva’s full name). This one’s not a proper “song”, so much as just a funny way to end the record: the guys on the show sing her name to the tune of “Hava Nagila”, so I sampled them, added Indian drums, and some sub bass.
Go check it out — it’s free, and fun. The other folks involved are great, and the end product came out nicely.
Oh, and here’s the instrumental of “Shivablast”:
Listen to “Shivablast (instrumental)” by DJ Empirical.
*This had to be suggested to me, as I have no knowledge or interest in football.
I freakin’ *love* How Did This Get Made, a podcast exploring crazy bad (or just plain crazy) films, and I especially love Jason Mantzoukas, who’s often the most emotional of the co-hosts.
On their episode reviewing Battlefield Earth, Jason was particularly vocal about his dislike of the film, and after listening to the episode a few times, decided to make a kind of supercut of just his bits. Thus, the name, “Manzoupercut”.
The beat in the background is one I produced as well.
Listen to “Lazy Raps (demo)” by DJ Empirical.
Just a little thing I made out of some loops while I was supposed to be working on something else.