I was excited to open the 2018 Asheville Electro Music Fest with two new musical compositions and a video. Many thanks to Greg and Hong Waltzer for your hard work putting together the festival!

I was inspired to write the music and narrative for this piece after listening to 99% Invisible's podcast on Fordlandia. Melody Cooper performed the narration.

Tech details:
The LinnStrument 128 is now my main midi controller, and was used exclusively for these compositions. I used an iConnectivity 4+ with an iPad Pro2 utilizing AUM as the hub and recorder with Jubal flute, Yonac's Kauldron and Kaspar, and Moog Model 15 synths. My Waldorf blofeld was brought in through the audio inputs of the iC4+. I recorded the three improvisational sections live, though it took a few takes... The piano is The Gentleman from Native Instruments.

It was great to dig up some old work and include it in this piece. The dense swampy sound is a Micromoog recorded on a 4 track reel to reel in the 1980s. Additional jungle sounds are from a Handsonic HPD-15 circa 2000. The riot rhythm section was a part of a piece called Oscillator I wrote in 2001 using Acid.

For recording narration and mixdown I used Samplitude, which I have used for more than 20 years, utilizing its native processing and NI, PSP, EIOS, Soundtoys, and Exponential Audio Nimbus plugins.

This is the ambient piece I opened with. The environments were recorded on my Nexus 6 (!) Great to have a decent recorder, camera, etc. in your pocket all the time. Oh, and a phone.

Tech details:
The opening prelude horns are from Motu Ethno recorded long ago. The nice little loop under the first part was from some bit of fun I was having with new software last winter. The beautiful and eerie second part is an acoustic guitar that was left plugged in and volume up onstage at a festival I was engineering. I came across it at mixdown and gave it a bit of noise reduction and efx with Soundtoys and PSP plugins. I guess it's truly a solo performance by the guitar itself. The improv is Moog Animoog and blofeld synths looping through Kosmonaut. AUM was used as a hub for the synths, Kosmonaut plugin, and file launching.