Semiautonomous Etudes by Dave Seidel

This album derives from a series of daily recording sessions made in February 2025. I had recently acquired two Ciat-Lonbard devices, the Clicker and the Peterlin, and was exploring them in conjunction with several pedals. As I often do, I sought to discover the idiomatic sounds and behaviors of these devices, without a preexisting compositional agenda or theoretical framework. They are noisy and unruly by nature, untethered to notions such as precise pitch. The chaotic and aggressive sounds that resulted are appropriate in the light of the current political situation in the US in 2025, where the country is being plundered and savaged by a lawless coterie of scoundrels and oligarchs.

The album title reflects the process by much the sound was produced, where I exerted only a limited amount of control over the setup, which otherwise essentially did what it wanted to do. The Lovecraft-derived track titles emerged from my impressions upon listening to the finished music. (I will add that my interest in Lovecraft refers to the work, and not so much to the deeply-flawed person.)

All tracks were recorded as single takes, direct to stereo (tracks 1 and 3 are excepts from the same take), and edited only for length and to add fade-ins/fade-outs as appropriate. There are no overdubs.

[Technical notes follow for the curious.]

The Peterlin is chaotic by design and became the de facto heart of the ensemble, driving much of the activity. Tracks 1 and 3 feature the oscillator outputs of the Peterlin and the Clicker, along with the main output of the Peterlin, as played into the Strymon El Capistan as a sound-on-sound looper.

I was also entranced by the Prismatic Wall pedal (by Electronic Audio Experiments), which is described by its creators as "a sympathetic resonator designed to transmute incoming sounds into the vibrations of an illusory bank of tuned strings". This is heard on tracks 2 and 4. In both cases, the Prismatic wall is "plucked" by a channel of the Clicker.

On Track 2, I used the Make Noise 0-Ctrl to trigger the Clicker and control pitch on the Prismatic Wall. The result is processed by the Chase Bliss Thermae, which adds pitch-shifted repeats.

In track 4, I used a 5-note CV keyboard made by Martin Freeman as the primary controller of pitch in the Prismatic Wall, and this was the only piece on which I controlled the notes. Here the Clicker is triggered by the Peterlin. The output of the Prismatic Wall goes through the Eldritch Blast fuzz pedal.

Microtonal electronic and electroacoustic music. Long tones (mostly), slow paces (usually), and an emphasis on sonority.

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