Sprank by Machinefabriek
Looking for inspiration for a new live setup, I stumbled across some videos of the Korean-American improviser Bonnie Jones. She used a few guitar effects pedals, but turned upside down, with the bottom plate taken off. Pressing a plug to the pedals’ circuit board, glitchy, buzzing sounds emerged. A eureka moment!
I screwed open some effects units, and started fumbling around with an unraveled microphone cable, attaching a needle to each copper wire, to be able to work precisely on the circuit boards, as if performing surgery on electrical equipment. From some pedals I could hardly get any sounds, but there we three (two Boss reverb/delays and a Behringer equalizer) that yielded some great popping, squeezing, and buzzing sounds.
Since I still wasn't sure if these circuit bent pedals would work (for me) in a live situation, I used the recordings of these experiments to sculpt a new piece with. ‘Sprank’, the result, is like a more subtle sequel to ‘Kluwen’, my previous Norwegianism release. 20+ minutes of pure electronic sounds, from gentle, high-pitched drones, to nasty crackling and low-frequency pulses.
Tracklist
| 1. | Sprank | 21:32 |
Credits
A collage made with recordings of circuit bent effects pedals.
Rutger Zuydervelt, February 2016
