the streets of titan city
By neon liminal on March 29, 2026 8:36 pm
Long song warning part 2. Also lots of text part deux. Also part 2 of Titan City Nights.
› story
‹ story
The streets are so hot the rain turns to vapour as soon as it hits the ground. The walls of the pseudo-crete prefabs perspire rivers onto the sidewalks, pouring down spillways and gutters into the deluge beneath the habitat, waiting in reservoirs to be purified and pumped up to the city once again. The water in this shit mining-town tastes like sweat and rust and apathy.
I keep to the awnings and overhangs, deluded into thinking I can somehow get more wet if I'm not careful. During the day it's easy to get lost in the fog, but at night, as the city wakes up, the dull phosphor of the streetlamps are drowned in an iridescent rainbow, neon signs glowing through the mist on every corner, down every alley, hanging in the window of every bar and club, lighting up the markets like a psychedelic funhouse. A city blinded by Titan's yellow burn during the day needs its colour at night, and those nights would be dark and soulless were it not for our neon citadel.
Water we gotta ship in from the Rings, but Titan gives us all the noble gasses we could want for, and we turn that bounty into something wondrous and beautiful. To me, at least. Makes me feel at home, seeing that rainbow everywhere.
› composition notes
‹ composition notes
This is another edited live performance with much the same semi-modular/modular gear:
ASM Hydrasynth on a self-playing patch for the main ambiance and cyber-stuff
Moog Grandmother on distant accidental guitar
Pulsar-23 with a weirdo patch making rumbles and pulsing machinery
Various effect pedals and modular effects
Recorded to a 1010 bluebox eurorack version.
Four Hydrasynth patches this week before I arrived at something I liked. Definitely need to be more intentional with my sound design, cuz I was a little too "let's be ambient" and not "what is this sound going to do and how does it fit the narrative". Loosey goose does not always result in useable results, sweetheart.
Grandmother was definitely more intentional - I wanted a lead with noise, and wow is it beautiful. There's something to be said about well curated/tuned noise in a synth - actually both the Grandmother and Hydra have some amazing colours of noise - and grandma did not disappoint. The noise on grandma adds just enough grit to the lead, meanwhile, red noise on the Hydra patch is making a few rumbling engine sounds and low hum of something beneath the surface.
Pulsar was a simple but weird patch that connects the LFO on a slow sine wave to the trigger on the BD and Bass modules, so they pulse in and out of existence and dance around each other. I could have modulated this a little more but it actually worked as a really good "breath" and "heartbeat" for the track. Fun fact! The trigger inputs on the pulsar actually behave like a VCA. Which basically means you've got a weirdo 4-oscillator drone synth.
Recorded 2 takes, first was 16 minutes second much shorter ... relatively speaking ... anyway went with the shorter take but used some bits and pieces from the first as well. Edited down to 8 minutes? Added some city traffic and rain and spaceship sounds ... cuz space ... There was a lot of fine tuning on the sound but I think it came out well.