I wasn't very focused this week as I didn't have a specific idea to drive my experimentation. I only knew I wanted to have the Stylophone CPM-DS2 as the main drone. So I did start with it.

After that, I wanted to try out other machines that I haven't recorded to tape yet. So I brought the Sonicware Liven Texture Lab on the 2nd track. This simple granular synthesizer got fed with one of the jingles they play in subway stations in Tokyo. It's a patch I've used several times already but I feel it has something special (and it plays well to cover the high end register).

After a first listen back, it felt like a distant memory. I then embraced the idea of creating could play while someone dies (the death soundtrack if you will). They say you relive your life in fast-forward when you die and I found that this connects well with the cassette tape medium (a single line where you record what happens).

So then I prepared a few of the field recording I took on my phone the past few months, as memories of my own life. And I played them on the 3rd track using the Blackbox (nice sampler from 1010music) and adding some reverb and delay to transform them as distant memories too.

And then I saw the Roland S-1 lying around and since I still had a 4th track free, I thought: heh why not? So I added this looping 1-bar pattern with a few modulations here and there. That felt like the spiritual element of a near death experience so I kept it in.

All in all this unexpected collage of sounds wasn't sounding too bad, although a bit messy (and life is messy and so is death). But then it all made sense when, again, I switch the speed from HIGH to NORMAL. The slowing down of the cassette tape added that indescribable vibe, and it made the whole track better.

I finally drenched it in the Nightsky reverb and recorded straight to the Zoom L-12 (no Golden Master this time as it had some buzz that I couldn't get rid of). I added a tiny bit of EQ and compression with Ozone 9 Elements in Audacity and voilà! Bon appétit.

Thanks to all of you who left nice words of encouragement. I hope you'll like this track too.
Have a nice week everyone!

Tags: ambient, cassette, field recording, lofi, nightsky, pvc, roland s1, space, stylophone cpmds2, switzerland, texture lab, week 7 2026, zst, View by:Ashtom