Folded

This is one of the first pieces we worked on for the Grackle Pop project and remains a favorite of mine. Once every so often we will whisper about giving it a proper studio rebirth. As it is, I recorded the acoustic guitar through cheap headphones used as a microphone going straight into my computer's crappy soundcard, for those trying to glean my next-level studio techniques and gear. Much thanks to Spencer for playing the main guitar.

Folded by Bluffs

Don't get too Sentimetal

Just a little something I put together while trying various combinations of riffs and sequences to create a *gasp* unused intro to a track that will be coming out on our 1st EP. The video is from a delightfully saturated and grainy palm sized Japanese Harazumi camera. Which, upon searching Google for the site, I was sad to find Urban Outfitters is now selling. Good for superheadz I suppose.

PFHAAAHTUH

Track names. When you produce somewhat non-descript instrumental electronic music, they're mostly an arbitrary label given for pragmatic reference purposes (else this blog would be replete with things like "Beat #63"). Dealing with as many faceless pieces as we do, it really just comes down to whatever nonsense pops in our heads upon the first instance of hitting "Save As". Case in point: PFHAAAHTUH. I think Ben came up with this name. Was he eating toast with Jif while he named it? Why is it screaming at us? Given the dark recesses of Ben's psyche, they are questions probably best left unanswered.


PFHAAAHTUH by Bluffs

It's..!

Hi there. You can find background about this blog's inception by clicking the...wait for it...About The Blog tab (this message brought to you by the Dept. of Redundancy Dept.) and Ben's fine post below. Otherwise, here's the first track up to bat.

There won't be any rule set that we follow in posting these things (e.g. oldest to newest), so I thought it would be fitting to start with a piece that some have described as sounds for a sunrise. This is also a good example of the many works under our Grackle Pop project that set out to create computer/electronic-based songs which would eventually be augmented and translated by "real" musicians playing assorted instruments (another big reason a lot of these pieces have steeped in solitude).

What Hop Theme by Bluffs

Step 1

"My name is Ben and I have a musical completion problem."
"Hi Ben!"

I love synthesizers, I love programming rhythms, I love sound design, and I love composing. I adore sitting down and start building a musical moment. Sometimes it starts with a sound, sometimes a rhythm, and occasionally it all starts with an idea of how to tie new things together. I work swiftly; one sound tells me what the next sound should say. Like the pied piper, a drum beat whispers to me what musical mice should follow it. Next thing I know all the aural aesthetics, the sounds I like, the harmonics that tickle me, have joined forces and left me with the raw core of a song. My mind whirls at the possibility of what could come from this newly formed musical creature. So much so, that I don't know what to do next. Sometimes I like something so much I don't know how to do it justice. "I will figure this out" I think to myself. I file it away, only to join the scores of other half formed, near completed, and soon to be finished tracks. I have, literally hundreds of tracks, files, and sequences lying dormant, waiting for their time in the sun. Sometimes I will take one of these ideas to Scott, whom I love working on music with, and we start to explore it. For years now me and Scott have made music as Grackle Pop, which is sort of our Blue Harvest title for all the things we work on. Not being attached to the track as I sometimes am, Scott can help draw it out and form it. Before we know it we have an exciting song... it just needs a bit more work. Then of course me and Scott will start a track together, or start working on one of his own musical ideas, riding that wave of creation that rollercoasters from detailed minutia, tireless attention to a detail that will only be a passing influence on the sound, to the heartbeat rising thrill of adding a new part that seems to be the missing piece of the puzzle that makes you exclaim "Hell yeah!" Sometimes we will work on these songs over weeks, months... years. In between we jump ship and visit other tracks that are also racing towards the finish line, uncovering new previously unrealized potential in the track, nudging it towards completion. We are so close, just a little more. We then turn to another new idea, another musical sculpture waiting to be freed from the blocky loops in which it is contained. This has gone on and on. Leaving us with a vast library of unfinished works; musical creatures waiting to be completed so that they may be unleashed out into the world.

We know we have a problem. That's the first step right? Admitting it? We are the only thing standing in our way.
So as you might ascertain from the 'About The Blog' description (up top there - which has a pretty similar message to this post) we are working on this. We both have realized we just need to let some of it go. Sometimes I find myself haunted by a riff or melody of a track we made that NO ONE HAS HEARD. While this may sound quasi-poetic, it's just kind of frustrating. So we will attempt to use this site as a remedy. Letting out some of the sound. Sometimes it will be whole tracks, finished as they are for the time being, to let them run around in the sun, only to be called back in to be improved, mutated and detailed, only to be released again. Sometimes it will be just a little peek, just to let you look through the keyhole at what’s happening. Other times, we may just let you look through our scrapbook, at faded snapshots of creations that were. So stay tuned.

-Ben