Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Ninja Jamm

https://soundcloud.com/ninja-tune/sets/ninja-jamm


Credits

Ninja Jamm has been made by the people at Ninja Tune & Seeper.

Coldcut
Ed Kelly
Christian Curtis
Ariel Elkin
Aneek Thapar
Evan Grant
Andy Wallen
Chris Bradley
David Sweeney

http://ninjajamm.com/credits


4 and 20 beats

Kai 360

On April 1st 2013, I reconnected with my friend and mentor Kai Eckhardt and with the singer Sandhya Sanjana in Amsterdam to embark on a recording, tentatively titled 4 and 20 beat, due to its original 24 beat cycle sketched out by Kai.

The recording session was held at Quark studios in Amsterdam, where we gathered in the beautiful garden area of the studio and I explained my idea of creating a composition for a 360 panorama audio experiment. (Something along the lines of the website www.raw360.net that I have been developing alongside design scientist CHU).

Kai quickly understood my flow and sketched out an incredible 24 beat beat in his notebook. This syncopated poly-rhythmic loop acted as the frame upon which Sandhya and he applied matching vocal lines in the Indian spoken syllabic tradition.

In a bionic flurry of genius, Kai improvised a further nine overdubs, five on bass three on keyboards and one shaker loop. Each new overdub was a subdivision of the previous and some had a harmonic correspondence too resulting in a series of loops that are 24, 12, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, and 1 beats long. Finally, Sandhya performed her soaring vocals and vitalized the twisting poly-rhythm with her long sustained focus.   

Two days later Quark and I arranged the loops and composed a song: 4 and 20 beat. Next I painstakingly cut a series of 72 bars tracks (3 x 24), including some new drum loops and turntable parts and narrative, so together with CHU we started experimenting with feed the loops into our 360 panorama platform. Once again CHU innovated the possibilities of 360 degree audio space.

Thanks for all the genius and innovative thinking that have made this idea come into being. However, this is only the beginning of an on-going series of musical experiments, i intend to apply the original 'tracks' made by Kai and Sandhya into a panorama.

Steve fly

www.raw360/4and20

www.raw360.net