Synthesized Paranoid Doodling by Ferryman's One Man Sound Machine

[Ferryman_1957]

Well, the title says it all. This is a Cut Ups fest submission inspired by William Burroughs, the master of the cut up technique. I took a few passages from "The Naked Lunch" by Burroughs and ran them through a cutup generator. I looked for phrases to inspire the theme/style of the piece, and "synthesized paranoid doodling" jumped out at me. So something full of weird synth sounds was my goal.

I then turned to the music. I ran another section of The Naked Lunch through a cutup generator and then picked out every letter from A to G to give me a note sequence (including "m" for a minor chord). I got this (unsurprisingly there are a lot of "a"s....):

A A A A D E A A A A E Am E E F E A B

I noodled on this and came up with two basic sequences based around A-D-E and E-F-A (with a B at the end), and then I started on an Am. It's very simple but there are some big synth sounds in there so I had to keep it simple anyway. And simple is what I can play the best......

I don't record vocals any more, so I wanted to add another dimension to this. I recorded the sound track from the William Burroughs movie "The Cut Ups" under the track, stopping and starting at various random points and fading it in when I felt it added to the general mayhem. I also cut a phrase out "look at that picture" and placed it at strategic points.

So it is what it is. Every noise comes from my Bass VI run through synth pedals (at one point I have a synth pedal feeding into a synth pedal). There are a couple of clean traditional guitar noises, apart from that everything else is synth. No keyboards were harmed in the making of this.

Drums are BR-800, with imported snare and cymbal sounds and some editing done in the rhythm editor. All recorded on the BR-800, mixed in my DAW and mastered in Ozone. 

[Flash Harry]

- Immediately a lost King Crimson track.

Then slips into a cool PSB and out into some Tubeway Army and then way off into the distance where it bumps into Dr Who..

The drum cut up is fab..

This is so Good Nigel.


Awesome!!!!!!!

[Bluesberry]

Huge track and very interesting...hard to take it all in on first listen....monumental

[SE]

 Loving the technique explanation, production as always amazing, but the most important thing it,s a great listen, magic stuff!!

[Greeny]

Well - I knew I was in for a treat being both a Nigel and a Burroughs fan, lol. Dystopian Sci-Fi prog goodness. Early Human League meets Doctor Who (which, coincidentally, they started off their musical journey by performing the Doctor Who theme at house parties...). And there's a delicious synth noise in there at 2:20(ish) straight from 'Music for Chameleons' by Gary Numan. That bit alone made me a bit giddy with excitement, lol. I love everything about it. Those synth tones are so far up my street that I want to live there permanently. Special mention for the drums - absolutely stellar.

Sheer magnificence!

[DarrenG / The Devil's Toupee]

Wow , this is genius. Bloody great! Love it. Those amazing synth sounds you got with your bass pedal are terrific. I love that weird "dr. Who" sound too and the " look at that picture " clips are so catchy...I'll be saying that in my head now for a while ha!
I hope you do more like this mate. darren

[Ray Brookes]

WOW! What a sonic ride this is, Nigel. Great production all round and those synths will be swirling around in my head for hours. Love the Dr Who thematic refs and that drum track is awesome. I wouldn't have a clue how to start putting something like this together.

[thetworegs]

 i'm l im l i'm lis i'm a listening to the i'm l i'm liste i'm listening to the track now and l lo l lo l lo loving it

[Pete C]

Amazing - it's like Big Audio Dynamite meets 1980 era Ultravox. Great listen and fantastic production.

Pete

[StephenM]

"No keyboards were harmed in the making of this."

cool stuff...really neat... this afternoon I had the big speakers on and listening down through the new songs list (really good btw).... my son and I were sitting on the couch listening while eating...and he liked all the stuff on... and this came on and we both just started cracking up... not that the song is funny really just very cool...
and it sounded so good on those tri amped system ....
got to hear some more so I can say more