Ambushed in Uncanny Valley - Phase 1
By RPLKTR on March 1, 2026 7:26 pm
I welcome all critical feedback. Can relicense if you're interested, just ask.
This is part one of two. Thom Yorke once said that while Kid A is "looking at the fire from afar", Amnesiac is "what it feels like to be standing in the fire". There's a similar relationship between the tracks "On The Prowl" and "Force Projection" on the "Phantom Liberty" soundtrack. In game, you might hear the former when entering and sneaking through a hostile location, while the latter blasts with full force once you get detected and shit hits the fan. Similarly, Tool's "Parabol" and "Parabola" both serve similar roles and form a fantastic whole as a result.
This is my attempt at a similar pairing. Part one flows into part two, hence the abrupt ending this week. Ninth week, so the track's 9/8 and 99 BPM. So will be part two.
And happy #303day on Tuesday, but since I used a Roland acid box just last week, I'm not doing that again.
› Technical musings
‹ Technical musings
Part 1 is supposed to set the scene and the mood, so a full-on 707 kit would overpower it. But I definitely want that sound for Part 2. So to keep the parts thematically consistent, I still used the Analog Rytm parts this time. I just processed them through my Moog Spectravox and Pittsburgh Modular Crush. The Spectravox ships with a single VCO like the one in Mother-32, and that what I'm using today, tuned to C (and then briefly C# at the end).
PGH Crush is an analog bit crusher if you can believe it, it works by using a square wave to mimic the "binary" 1s and 0s and then simply samples and holds the input with the given frequency. Surprisingly effective. Here, I patched Spectravox's envelope follower output to modulate the sample rate of Crush and it sounds pretty sweet. Then I recorded a performance with the filter bank sliders to make the drum sounds more dynamic and interesting over time.
The glitches are programmed mostly with automated Ableton Redux and MIDI-sequenced Illformed Glitch², an all-time favorite of mine.
I haven't touched my Polyend Medusa pretty long, but it's still just as powerful of a sound as ever. And the janky filter that self-resonates at 75% of the dial can actually be used musically in that state when distorted. It will come in more handy next week, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. This week let me toot my own horn a little bit and say that I still think the 3-operator digital FM synthesis user interface on the Medusa (that I added) is uniquely fun and tactile, and with the analog filter it sounds better than it has any right to. I'm especially happy with the bell sounds in particular.
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99 BPM 9/8, C-minor. Polyend Medusa analog bass and digital FM pads and bells. Fender Acoustasonic Std Jazzmaster guitar. My favorite Analog Rytm with its hybrid TR-707 kit through Spectravox. Pianoteq piano sprinkles. No AI used in any part of the process. For this year every cover art is a photo I took.
