This track steps out of my normal world of writing or remixing. While I have dabbled in industrial in the past and Trent Reznor’s production style has had a significant influence on me at times, the original for this song veers strongly into the avant garde of the industrial scene, and definitely out of my usual sphere of influence. This made for an interesting and very fulfilling challenge as I had to work my usual style around sounds and structures that were basically foreign to me.

Occult Celebrity from Johan Ess is a beautifully dystopian view of the organized chaos surrounding 21st century celebrity, and the structure of the original follows this theme to a tee. Sounds come and go, rhythms seem to change at will, and Johan’s vocal treatment reinvents itself multiple times just like today’s celebrities.

What I tried to do with this remix was to massage some order from amid the chaos, replacing constant change with familiar repetition. (Think scene kids finding a niche and replicating it amongst their circles.) The chaos is still there. The reinvention still happens. What once appeared random is now an evolution of derivatives, changing over time with only occasional drastic jumps to emphasize a point in time.

I like the fresh approach I’ve taken to telling the same story that Johan has created, only with the fingerprints of Solarno all over it. I feel that it gives the story a different voice and setting while leaving the base emotion intact.

This remix ranks among the most complex tracks I’ve created to date. It contains nearly 50 channels strips of audio, instruments, busses, auxiliary sends, and sub mixes. My poor 4 1/2 year old MacBook Pro is being stretched to it’s limits, yet I keep throwing more at it. As with many of my recent works, my workhorse synth for the original bass lines and pads has been the impOSCar from G-Force. I love this synth. Love. All drums and percussion are from NI’s Battery 3 using the Toksin kits.

I hope you enjoyed this remix of Johan Ess’s ‘Occult Celebrity’.
Thank you for listening.
Cheers!

You can hear the original and more here:
http://johan-ess.bandcamp.com/
and here:
http://www.johan-ess.com/

This is a jazzy little remix I did back in 2007 of Moby’s seminal 1990 single Go. I recently decided to remaster it to bring it up to my current harmonic standards. The original master had a decidedly muted sound due to my not being overly familiar with multi band compressing or exciters at the time. In my mind the overall mix still has a few minor issues, but I did not want to go in and start making changes just for the sake of making changes as it still holds its own.

I really like the idea of the laid back jazz groove replacing what was considered a techno classic back in the day. I believe that Moby’s learning of classical music theory at a young age allowed him to create more complex music than many of his contemporaries in the late 80′s and early 90′s. This natural complexity and depth that he brings to even his early music like Go is a big reason why it so naturally slides into other genres of music.

Enjoy!

If you like what you hear, you can download the MP3 by clicking the download button in the player.

A little less evil. A little more disco. That pretty much sums up this remix of SKatterBrain’s dubstep wonder, King Jellyfish. I’ve downplayed the prominent dubstep wobbles in favor of a hard disco feel with a driving bassline. The heavy wobbles of the original now become a bit sparser, intending to add variation and interest. The main vocal hook (“The jellyfish are so heavy”) is used a number of times to glue the track together.

To chop up the provided wobble track, I segmented it into one measure chunks and then dropped those individual .wav’s into Logic’s EXS sampler as a new instrument. This allowed me to ‘play’ the short wobble sections as I would any sampler instrument. The new bassline was created using impOSCar, with a secondary bassline from Massive. A new pad track was added using impOSCar to supplement the original synth stab track. Noise sweeps were done with Logic’s ES P synth. And finally, all drums/percussion are from an instance of Ultrabeat.

Hope you enjoyed the track. Thanks for listening. If you like the track you can download the MP3 by hitting the download button in the player.

Cheers!
Jim

The original can be found here: http://music.dan303.com/album/king-jellyfish-machines
And make sure you check out Dan’s main site: www.voltage-controlled.com

1. Hark! The Herald Robots Sing!
2. Ukranian Bell Song
3. Good King Wenceslas
4. Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabelle

What self respecting robot doesn’t love a rousing round of Holiday carols? Here are four carols presented by my house robot band, The Singing Sines, including two where they decide to sing.

The first track, ‘Hark! The Herald Robots Sing!’ was actually recorded back in 2007, but has been remastered for this release. ‘Hark!..’ is a whimsical electro look at ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!’ with a strong four-on-the-floor dance hall feel. My desire was to create a fun and upbeat version of ‘Hark…’ that would appeal to both fans of traditional carols and modern electronic music.

Of note: ‘Hark!…’ features the first known recording of my house robot choir, The Singing Sines. As this was their first time in my studio they were obviously nervous and had trouble enunciating at times.

The original, ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ has a very interesting history. The lyrics predate the commonly heard music by over a hundred years. Charles Wesley wrote the original, somber hymn in 1739. His co-worker George Whitefield then changed the lyrics to what we commonly hear today. The music that we commonly hear for ‘Hark…’ is actually from a secular cantata written by Felix Mendelssohn in 1840 to commemorate the invention of the Gutenberg printing press. It wasn’t until 1855 that William Cummings combined the Whitefield lyrics with the Mendelssohn music to create the song we all love and recognize today.

I have always loved the ‘Ukranian Bell Song’ (more commonly known as ‘Carol of the Bells’), primarily because unlike most Christmas songs, it is in a minor key. This minor key made it very easy to imagine the song played out in a dark, almost evil setting. When I did my original version back in 1992 I took this dark and evil inspiration and put it into song. At the time I was working with old 4 voice MODtracker software, so that version is very simplistic and rough. This is my 2011 take on my original version. It is not your everyday, take home to Mom version.

The ‘Ukranian Bell Song’ was originally written in 1904 by Ukranian composer Mykola Leontovych and based on a traditional pre-Christian folk chant used during the spring to welcome the new year in the Ukraine. So like many Christmas songs, this one has its origins in a very non-Christmas past.

‘Good King Wenceslas’ is a truly international Christmas carol. The melody itself is from a 13th century Finnish spring carol. The lyrics we know today were written in the mid 1800′s by English hymnwriter John Mason Neale. The lyrics are based on the legends/myths/stories/histories of an actual Bohemian Duke, Saint Wenceslaus I, who was immediately considered a martyr for his good deeds upon his assassination in 935.

This carol is told more like a story than most carols, with a third person narrator and two main characters. As such, I decided to present it as a story played out by three voices. I had my robot choir, The Singing Sines, break into three groups, the Narrator, the King, and the Page and try to bring something different to each character. The results: A light airy narrator style, a mild, if not worried, page style, and a stern and noble king style. I do believe the group that worked on the King imagined themselves as William Shatner.

This was all placed over an aggressive and glitch enhanced dub step style music track. It came together quite nicely. Well played Singing Sines, well played.

Any quality Holiday collection should include at least one slower, quiet song, and this final beautiful, lesser known carol fills that need and fits in nicely with the other three pieces.

The music for ‘Bring a Torch, Jeannette Isabelle’ was originally written as a dance for French nobility in the 16th century. It became more well known as a Christmas carol after its English translation in the 18th century.

Pianos, strings, a slow pulsating bassline, and a complete lack of percussion fulfill all that is needed for this beautiful waltz. The nice thing when working with such a piece is that I can focus on the melody by allowing subtle accompaniments to fall in around the melody. After the first three songs, the listener can calm down and just drift along with this one.

If you like what you hear, the download button in the player will take you to my store where you can purchase one or all of the tracks on this EP.  The EP is available on a pay-what-you-want basis, including free.

Thank you for your interest in my music. I appreciate all of my fans who take the time to listen and/or download my songs. As always, 50% of the proceeds from sales of Solarno music goes to charity!

Cheers!

1. Methane 1
2. Methane 2
3. Stone of Lazhward
4. Starling 520

Kyanos is the first in a series of EPs that will explore the nature, science, and history of color.

Kyanos is the ancient Greek word that eventually became known to describe the color we know today as cyan. Contained here are four songs inspired by the search for information surrounding the color cyan.

Methane 1 is a dronescape/dubstep journey around the Alpine lake Lago Maggiore, where between 1776 and 1778 the physicist Alessandro Volta first discovered and isolated the gas Methane.  Methane when burned is cyan in color.

Methane 2 is a fun little synth pop jaunt, drifting between swirling synth leads and heavy layered bass lines. This track makes extensive use of the impOSCar synth from G-Force, a spectacular soft-synth version of the mid 80′s OSCar. The OSCar was notably used by Stevie Wonder, Ultravox, Jean Michael Jarre, Orbital, Sneaker Pimps, and BT.

So what does this track have to do with Methane? Get ready to geek out… Methane has a bond angle of 109.5 degrees, and this song has a speed of, you guessed it, 109.5bpm.

Stone of Lazhward refers to the blue (in many cases cyan) stone Lapis Lazuli. Lapis Lazuli has been mined from a location in north eastern Afghanistan called Lazhward for over 6000 years. With that as inspiration I opted for a Persian influence as is made apparent with the opening oud-esque melody line. While the oud melody line is not created from authentic Persian melodies, it is my interpretation of the Persian dastgah musical structure.

The closest western analogue to a dastgah would be a 8-tone scale from which a series of melodies called gushe are created using usually 4-5 of those tones. For Stone of Lazhward I created 8 such gushe and their corresponding chords based more or less on a simplified B-flat scale which are repeated in sequence three different times.

Where the other three tracks on Kyanos have something specific to do with cyan, Starling 520 is more about bringing together ideas and influences from the first three.

Background on the name of the track? 520 happens to be the approximate wavelength of the color cyan in nanometers so I have managed to sneak in a reference to the science of cyan. Starling is a bit more vague, but makes sense in my mind. While listening to the track as it evolved, it reminded me at times of some of the loungey, future-synth songs found in sci-fi movies from the late 60′s and throughout the 70′s. I combined that thought with the hearing of a bunch of birds one evening and Starling came to mind. As far as bird species goes, Starlings have a very sci-fi name to them. Cheesy? Yes. Effective? Definitely.

If you like what you hear, the download button in the player will take you to my store where you can purchase one or all of the tracks on this EP.  The EP is available on a pay-what-you-want basis, including free.

Thank you for your interest in my music. I appreciate all of my fans who take the time to listen and/or download my songs. As always, 50% of the proceeds from sales of Solarno music goes to charity!

Cheers!

Two announcements to make:

1) ‘Robot Junkyard – Derivative’ is now available throughout the interwebs!
2) Solarno now giving 50% of net proceeds of all sales to charitable organizations!

Yes, ‘Derivative’ is finally available at all of your favorite digital download sites including iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby, Bandcamp, and more.  ’Derivative’ takes away the sound palate restrictions of the original ‘Robot Junkyard’ and breathes new life into most of the songs by looking at each one through a different lens.  ’Deriviative’ includes two remixes from producer Echo Chaser.

I am now going to be using my Solarno music project as a vehicle to raise funds for two non-profits that are deserving of any help they get.  50% of the net proceeds from the sales of Solarno music will be split between the American Red Cross and the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA).

The American Red Cross is an organization well known to most around the world, IMBA not so much.  IMBA helps local agencies around the world build and maintain quality mountain bike trails, negotiate for expanded wilderness access, and generally make riding a bike more fun for more people.  I can tell you that as an 18 year cycling industry vet, IMBA is one of the most valuable and beneficial assets the industry has.  Please check the links for more info on either group.  Even if you don’t purchase any music by Solarno, please consider giving.

As always, if you like what you hear from Solarno, please become a fan on Facebook.