Halogen :: Baked

MMCD001 - Halogen :: Baked



Well here it is. My debut album is finally available to the public on CD. At the moment we are working on the availability of the Digital Download but rest assured it will be here soon.
To get your hands on the CD you can buy it from the Maternity Media website for £10 with no P&P. Also first 25 orders receive a free hand made card made with photographs i have taken, so get in quick!

IG88 - Mututal Mastication

Mutual Mastication marks the second full length solo release from the IDMf net label since the grandiose cyborg-tronica from Synaecide's Scientifica. Being a community of musicians brimming with talent, the label has yet to fully define its 'sound' beyond the extremely liberal constrictions of IDM. However there is one constant throughout their catalogue and that is sheer quality.
IG88's release is no exception. Moving through the brooding 80's darkwave aesthetic of album opener Poission D'avril to the rolling rhythms and luminous melodies of An Ice Cube's Sunrise, you can feel a overwhelming sense of majesty in the music and we're only half way through.
Overall the album feels very visual, possibly influenced from the psychedelic track titles, but images of hazy digital forests and purple smoke fill my mind, extremely dreamy yet never sedating. I also contribute a remix of the track Nebulous Eyes which acts as the album closer, so there's another reason to go and get this musical gem for FREE.

Download
IG88 on Myspace

Frequency Nine

Carl Sagans Ghost

Awesome ambient (duo?). Very mellow, very slow shifting washes of sound and ebbing melodies.
Lots of stuff to download for free, and they have stared a collaboration project that i'm interested in. Check it out on the site.
http://carlsagansghost.com/

Daniel Klag

Was looking for some experimental music stuff for Lydia Loop to check out when she went to New York. Stumbled upon this guy. More mega ambient experimental stuff in the vein of William Basinski but with more composition and harmonic development. He told me he's looking for a label to release on, from what i heard i would suggest Moteer or Raster Noton.
http://www.myspace.com/danielklag

Unique Beat Podcast

My buddy IG88 informed of a new podcast that featured my track 'Not The Remix'. Alongside it are some other pretty interesting tunes as well as something special from the aforementioned IG88 who i recently completed a remix for. You can hear the podcast here.

Album Update

The Halogen - 'Baked' debut album is being printed and duplicated as we speak. Trying to locate some places to sell it, review it and play it. Release date set for 5th October - so get the word out.
Album track previews can be heard on the http://www.myspace.com/halogenbulbs

University of Brighton Degree Show 2009

My time on the Digital Music and Sound Art course has come to its conclusion. For my final year university degree project i created an interactive installation using glass bowls and contact mics. The signal from the mics were sent to a mixer and then to a laptop where all the sound processing was done using the Plogue software Bidule. Each of the five mics used had a different chain of effects which created the strange sounds.
Included was:
*Music boxes
*Rubber tipped mallets
*Rulers
*A whisk
*Wooden spoons
*Bottle caps
Participants were invited to be creative and experiment and make their own compositions and soundscapes regardless of any previous musical experience or aptitude.
The installation was named Contact.
A huge thank you goes to Alain Guisan, without whom this would not have been possible.

see more photos here










Other amazing stuff included:

Hemisphere
Zak Norman

Another interacitve installation, Hemisphere used an EEG scanner (more commonly used in hospitals) which scans your brain frequencies and converts in to data that can automate parameters of a prefabricated musical composition as wells syncronize with visuals.
Different levels of thinking (concentration, logic, memory, emotion and facial expression) resonate at different frequencies which are picked up by the EEG consequently changing different aspects of the music and visuals.



The creator, Zak Norman, and his screens.



TEEJ
Tom Marshall

A live improvised performance with electric guitar, drums, keyboards and live looping using Ableton Live, all of it was played against a giant backdrop of audio responsive visuals. It was amazing, check his blog here.





Duffular
Dan Duff

A touch screen granular sampler. Users can select from a bank of samples and set loop points whilst effecting them with, filters, reverb, delay, pitchshifting and distortion. Generates beautiful soundscapes reminiscent of Tim Hecker.



The Listening Tree
Adam Ward

A walk-in environment consisting of a simulated tree surrounded by fake leaves, lights that look like fruits and real bark on the floor. There were eight speakers hung around the room that played a montage of field recording soundscapes, moving from a rainforest to the sea and into the busy urban sounds of Brighton's center. People could enter the space and sit on the bench provided to hear the 10 minute piece. This was one of my favourites.


Sadly, Dan was not part of the installation.

Lo-Fi Hi-Fi
Max Hart

Another notable piece was the work of Max Hart who studied Performance and Visual Art which was exhibited just down the hall from our room. Three perspex tubes were mounted on to three upward facing motor fans, each housed a steel rod that guided a vinyl up toward a tonearm needle, dismantled from an ordinary record player. The fans were automated by programme normally used for a lighting rig, they would push the vinyls to the top of tubes and cause them to spin against the needle which was played out through a loudspeaker. It looked and sounded genius-insane.

Halogen Motion Mix

Iambic asked me to make a mix for his Phuture Frequency drum and bass centered radio podcast site. The Motion Podcast section deals with mixes of various genres and has some really great stuff up there. My mix has some tracks of many of the people i have mentioned in the Frequency posts on this blog, also included are some previews from my debut album, an awesome track from a recent find: Friendly Foliage, and also a track from my mate Dirty Long Legs who is also one quarter of our 80s inspired music power team (all will be revealed).

Tracklisting:
Juri - Thought It Was Love
Saine - Live A Little
Friendly Foliage - The Way to The Western Sea
Jonti Danimals - Nightshift in Blue
Rumpistol - Rehux
Praveen - Float
Dirty Long Legs - Eugene and Ezra
Halogen - Millicent
Juri - Void
Bluermutt - Shaping My Vision of a Nice Day
Helios - Shoulder to Hand
Halogen - Etik
Fennesz - Perfume for Winter
Listen and download here

You Are Atlas

I finally uploaded the album to archive.org
i thought it was safest there, it's a magical place and people actually listen to your music, which is nice.
Continuing with the previous ethos employed by the past albums, all music is improvised and recorded on to cassette tape. This means there is a lot of muffled whispers and random clattering, which can be interpreted as added 'ambience' if you like...
I condensed about 3 hours of material into 8 separate tracks, its very strange, but i like that and hope you will too.
Download Link

Frequency Two

Wow, my posts are churning out at an average of one per month.
Super focused.

so new musical gems are:

Wixel
Belgian band make fuzzy tape scratched atmospheres with out of tune guitars and xylophones.
Very pretty, all thanks to this guy - www.brandoninvergo.com for introducing me to them.

TheMalm
Regular Podcasts of awesome music, also make trippy ambient minimal and crazy beats of the tea and toast variety.

ZXYZXY
Unsigned maestro of beautiful electronica with a certain Eastern post-rock timbre, his track 'Kmode' is available on the IDMF InDepthMelodics compilation. Dope.

IDM Forum Compilation

One of my tracks was picked for a lovely little EP by very special website:
www.idmforum.com, they made their own Netlabel and InDepthMelodics is the first of many free download albums they're releasing.
There are some really incredible tracks on here, my personal favourite our by 'ZXYZXY', 'Binary Pulses' and 'JWilson', but they are all pretty stand out tunes.
A special mention to the Mastering engineer: Altered Tensions, who did a stellar job.

Download here