Oceanography by Tinty Music

Is it new? Is it a remix? Well, yes. And no. This collection contains edited and reworked versions of "The ocean has murky depths to soothe your troubled soul" and "Densha no naka (Deep in thought on the Yamanote)"

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On 31 May 1997, I gave what turned out to be my last live performance (so far), in the performance space at Anomalous Records in Seattle. The instrumentation I used was a Korg 01W synthesizer, a Boss delay pedal, an Audio-Technica microphone (which I stuck out the window), an AM/FM portable radio, a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder, and a cheap turntable that a friend of mine had rescued from a dumpster. I routed everything through a Mackie 1202 mixer, and recorded the results directly to DAT.

The performance consisted of two pieces, "Densha no naka (Deep in thought on the Yamanote)" and "The ocean has murky depths to soothe your troubled soul", and lasted about a half-hour. The two pieces were calmer and more focused than my three previous live efforts; by the time I had finished, one of the four attendees was fast asleep on a sofa.

I subsequently released my recording of this performance on cassette as Live at Anomalous 31 May 1997. In 2014, I included them as part of the Live Anthology 1996–1997 Revisited (also available on Bandcamp) I put together when remastering and reissuing a good chunk of the Tinty Music catalogue.

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One thing that always bugged me about "The ocean has murky depths…" was that the radio was a bit too high in the mix—largely because one of the more audible bits I encountered while navigating up and down the dial was a commercial, and one of the talking heads I captured wasn't saying anything interesting. But I left these bits in because they were still part of the performance.

Recently, however, I decided to see if there were something I could do about that. The 2021 edit included here is the result. After not having much luck isolating the frequency range of the bits I hoped to mask somehow, I decided to do a bit of cutting. Consequently, I edited the original from 16:55 down to a little over 12 minutes in length.

As long as I was mucking about with the original, I thought I'd try a few other things. The second iteration of the 2021 edit mixes in a reverb-drenched copy tor added murkiness. Then I took that even further by cutting out bits to emphasize the moaning voices, and mixed those bits back in.

Playing a bit more with that reverb-drenched copy, I ended up with "The containment tower is always containing something".

Finally, I thought I'd see if there were anything I could do with "Densha no naka". After a few false starts, I isolated a couple parts of the frequency spectrum, then added in bits from here and there—some processed, some left as is. The result, "Under the channel", incorporates bits from "The ocean has murky depths…", "The scars of memory", "The nature of silence", "The containment towers…", "20 June 1998", and "Tincture #8".

Revelling in cultural irrelevance since 1987. Unafraid to rush headlong into obscurity for the sake of art and making sense out of the world. Folds, spindles, and mutilates as needed—but no brickwalling allowed.

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