Storyteller

The third ARCart release was also the second ARC(ANE) release. It came out in June 2000 with the catalogue number ARCN02, and is titled “Storyteller”. I think it was the first release I put out through Prime Distribution on a P&D basis. I believe that stands for production and distribution, but in any case it meant that I didn’t have to pay for the cut, artwork and pressing up front with my own money – Prime paid and took those expenses out of the sales revenue from the release.

The first track, “The Nowhere Express”, was recorded in April 1999. At about seven minutes in duration, it’s the longest track released on either ARCart label. The bassline is a looped section from something playing on the radio at whatever time I happened to make the track. This is overlaid with sounds from the Roland JD-800 that are heavily processed and filtered. I was manually tweaking the fine tuning knob for the tone settings up and down half a semitone or so throughout the track to create the barely noticeable pitch shift. It’s quite a chaotic sounding and noisy track for me but I like its hypnotic trancey vibe. It even has a couple of breakdowns.

“Divine Confusion” was recorded in March 2000, on the same day as and immediately before I recorded “Got To Get Down Again” which contains some of the same sounds and which will feature in a future post for ARCN05. The rich nature of the vocal sample meant that it was virtually impossible to cut it for vinyl without it distorting, so this is the first time it’s available with a pristine sound. It nearly wasn’t – when mastering these files I was dismayed to find the original recording (on an HHB so-called professional audio CDR, recorded on an HHB professional audio CD recorder) had degraded massively, along with quite a few other original recordings on a number of master CDRs that have effectively become unplayable and lost. By sheer luck I found a copy of this track somewhere on a DAT that I must have used to bounce the audio to a compiled master for the cut.

“Shift It”, recorded in February 1999, is a rare example of me using the Roland TB-303 in a released track. It’s a full sounding but very basic track, with a 3/4 bass throb under the beat, and a simple 303 pattern that pitch shifts up and down in semitones. There is also some subtle manual tweaking of the tuning knob. The 303 sounds like it has some chorus or flange on it to make it a bit edgy, and lots of stereo delay from the saved setting on my Lexicon Vortex which featured on pretty much every track I made for years.

The title track, “Storyteller”, is also the oldest on the release, recorded in December 1998. It’s more mechanical sounding than the other tracks on the record due to the incessant snare pattern. The only sounds which vary in this track are the delayed vocal samples and a high pitched synth pattern that (of course) moves up and down in tone.

All of these tracks were sequenced using the Alesis MMT-8, except “Divine Confusion” which used the Notron (I have the metallic blue Mark 2 model which is not currently pictured on that Wikipedia page).

Files are in lossless FLAC format, compressed from WAV files which are taken from the original DAT recordings.

download lossless FLAC version of Storyteller

Please get in touch if you have any problems downloading, unzipping, or playing the files.